The home of the Poltergeist is everywhere—except, apparently, in ships, shops, boarding-houses, hotels, and in the abode of criminals. There are exceptions as regards shops; ships may have been infested—or sunk—by Poltergeists; but I have yet to hear of one of these entities infesting the home of a habitual criminal. Perhaps they think that one rascal in a house is enough! I do not pretend to understand why criminals should enjoy this immunity, except on the principle that ‘dog doesn’t eat dog’.
There have been reports of Poltergeists infesting aircraft; and there is the silly myth about ‘Gremlins’ (the air-borne equivalent of Puck and pigwidgeon) that make aviators’ lives a misery—a fable that must have been killed stone dead by W. E. Woosnam Jones’s amusing article in the Spectator.1 The fiction of the Gremlins arose, of course, through the strange anti-gravitational phenomena witnessed when an aircraft takes sudden and violent ‘evasive action’. When a machine makes a sharp plunge downwards, anything loose in the cabin is displaced and temporarily suspended in mid-air. For example, I read2 how a wireless operator was ‘amazed to see two milk bottles floating about the cabin of a Hudson as if suspended on invisible wires. He reached up to catch one—and found himself hanging on to it with his feet clear of the floor.’ The reader can reproduce this effect for himself. Let him take a thin board or metal tray and on it place an empty matchbox or other light object. Then hold the board at arm’s-length, at right angles to his body. Then lower the board (supporting matchbox) very suddenly. He will find that the box, being the fighter of the two, will part company from the board, and remain ‘suspended’ for an appreciable amount of time. If the downward motion of the arm could be continued indefinitely, the box would never touch the board.
It is curious that we seldom hear of Poltergeists on board ships. (Perhaps they are bad sailors!) And yet many vessels have been ‘lost without trace’, and the disasters were never explained. Sometimes ships are discovered abandoned with not the slightest sign of life aboard. The Mary Celeste (1872) is a famous case. This American brigantine was discovered by the British ship Dei Gratia, floating peacefully on a calm sea, with sails set, between Lisbon and the Azores. But she was sailing erratically—so much so, that the British crew boarded her to investigate. There was no sign of life on board. There were half-eaten meals; the captain’s wife had left a piece of material in her sewing-machine; the crew had left even their pipes and tobacco; there were no signs of mutiny or fire; there had been a spell of fine weather and the ship, which must have been abandoned at a moment’s notice, was in first-class condition. The last entry in the log book was dated November 25, 1872. So when the British found her on December 5, she had been abandoned for, probably, ten days. From that day to this, not a trace of the crew or the captain or his wife and child has been found and the mystery was never solved. There have been theories galore—but no facts. I do not remember ever having heard the suggestion that Poltergeists might have been the cause of the precipitate and unpremeditated flight. But that is a possibility. If Poltergeists can cause people to abandon their homes (as at Willington Mill, Borley, Battersea, Hinton Ampner, Calvados Castle, etc.), they can make life equally unbearable aboard ship.3 A large French vessel, the Rosalie, was found abandoned in 1840: all sails set, perfect condition, calm weather, and a valuable cargo. Every living soul (except a canary) had disappeared without trace.4 The mystery was never solved. Another ship, the Carol Deering, went ashore off the coast of North Carolina. There was not a soul on board. All had disappeared about the time that a meal was about to be served, and the craft was in first-class order. The mystery remains a mystery.
A still greater mystery was that recorded by The Times (September 24, 1875). A small fleet of ‘fore and aft’ fishing vessels was becalmed off Chance Cove, Newfoundland. Suddenly one of them, the Mary, was struck by something ‘coming directly from the heavens; was lifted out of the water, and without a moment’s warning, went to the bottom in sixteen fathoms of water’. The crew were saved, with difficulty, by men from the other vessels, who rowed out to them. An equally mysterious affair occurred quite recently. At a Ministry of War Transport inquiry, held on May 3, 1944, it was revealed that the 200-ton coasting steamer Speke completely disappeared in September, 1943, on a forty-mile trip from Liverpool to Preston, with a load of woodpulp and a crew of nine. She was neither seen nor heard of again, though her two lifeboats were washed ashore. The Ministry stated that there was nothing wrong with the ship, which was equipped with radio. (See the London dailies for May 4, 1944.)
If Poltergeists can cause the disappearance of the crews, then they can cause the disappearance of the ships. During the year 1921 about twelve vessels completely vanished without trace—almost simultaneously. The White Star steamship Naronic disappeared in February, 1893—without trace. There were seventy-five men on board. Not one was ever heard of again, though there were lifebelts for all and many lifeboats. The Danish training ship Kebenhaven vanished at the end of 1928, and a British training ship, the Atalanta, disappeared in the early part of the year 1880. There are records of other large vessels, all disappearing mysteriously. Are we wrong then, in assuming that Poltergeists do not infest ships?5 Perhaps. I have yet to hear of a Poltergeist in a submarine.
There are few records of Poltergeists infesting shops, but one at South Kensington in 1907 attracted some attention. This was the stationery shop of Arthur George. Books jumped from shelves, bottles of ink were flung all over the place, and a lamp fell over.6 In the press room and printing shop of the Charleston News and Courier,7 South Carolina, on August 31, 1886, showers of hot stones fell over an area of seventy-five square feet. More than a gallon of them was picked up. One does not read of the Geist making ‘pie’ of the type—but what an opportunity!
When is a shop not a shop? The Poltergeist answer is ‘when it’s a British Restaurant’. According to the Caterer and Hotel Keeper (December 25, 1942), and the Evening News of December 21, 1942, a Poltergeist interfered with the conversion of ‘Fairseat’, a 400-year-old mansion on Highgate Hill, into a British Restaurant. Workmen complained that their tools were moved to distant parts of the house, bells were rung, materials disappeared, and ‘the most weird noises are heard’. A policeman heard a bell ringing in the middle of the night. He had the house surrounded, and investigated, but the bell-ringer was never discovered.
Poltergeists do not often interfere with those running hotels, hostels or catering establishments. But only this summer there was a great commotion in the hostel of the Women’s Land Army, at Gill House, Aspatria, Cumberland. There were strange noises, ‘ghastly smells’, etc., all of which disappeared with daylight. ‘Several girls vowed they had seen a phantom shape walking through doors.’ (There was plenty of ‘girl’ material here to work on.) One girl was awakened ‘with the feeling that she was being strangled and pulled through the bed’. A local clergyman was asked to exorcise the place. He and his wife slept there and though nothing exciting happened, ‘they felt there was something unearthly about the place.’ Then two W.L.A. chiefs decided to spend a night in the ‘haunted dormitory’. But before dawn, ‘they left the dormitory pale and haggard’. All this was early in August, 1943, and I take my account from the South Wales Echo (August 2, 1943). The Daily Mail (August 3, 1943) followed up the story, and said that the room was to be closed and locked. The vicar, in an interview with the Daily Mail, is reported to have said: ‘I heard rappings travelling to and fro along one of the walls and a sound which suggested an alarm clock being wound up…. In my opinion they were caused by a Poltergeist’. I wonder whether the vicar had ever read John Wesley’s account of the Epworth Poltergeist that made a noise ‘like the winding-up of a jack’.
Poltergeists are domestically-inclined, and their chief haunts are private houses, comfortable homes, family circles (especially if a young girl is present), small houses in preference to large ones, and they prefer the country and quiet places to the town and noise. They are fond of farms, and can hardly keep away from rectories! And they love the homes of holy men. Poltergeists infest new houses as well as old, cottages have attractions for them, but they shun hotels and boarding-houses like the plague! Poltergeists like company—young company for preference. And they like girls better than boys, and if they are infesting a place one can be sure that the focus of the disturbances is in or near a girl’s bed. The reader will find some striking examples of this in the present volume. For every interference with a boy’s bed, there are a hundred girls’ beds disturbed. I think they are afraid of schools, even girls’ schools. Tombs and crypts have an occasional—and morbid—interest for Poltergeists, with a famous example in the haunted vault at Barbados.
Though most Poltergeists prefer to have a roof over their heads when ‘performing’, a few roam the fields and make a nuisance of themselves. The New York Sun for June 22, 1884, reported the bombarding by stones of two young men, George and Albert Sanford. Stones, from the sky, fell on them, and the showers lasted two days. They were witnessed by fifty people. Two years later, showers of leaden shot fell from the sky on two men working in a field near Waterboro, S.C., according to the Charleston News and Courier (November 12, 1886). And the Hindu Magazine for March, 1906, reported showers of stones falling outside the house of Gonori Deoghur. In the fields, ‘clods of earth danced all round the spectators, rising five or six feet into the air, in broad daylight’. A stone, weighing 100 pounds, was ‘levitated’ out of a well and flung into the yard.
I was once asked to investigate a ‘fresh-air’ Poltergeist that was alleged to infest the Great North Road at the cross-roads (last resting-place of suicides and criminals) at Potter’s Bar, Middlesex. If one stood at these cross-roads, I was informed, sounds of galloping hoofs could be heard every night between 10 and 11.1 stood there on three evenings and heard the ‘galloping’ on each occasion. But I also made the discovery that the sounds always preceded the Edinburgh express that dashed through Potter’s Bar station, a few hundred yards away. The phenomenon was probably an auditory illusion.
While I am on the subject of my own investigations, I may mention that, after a lecture I gave at the Institut Métapsychique, Paris, a few years ago, a member of the audience asked me whether I would ‘lay’ the ghost that was frightening the attendants in charge of the kiosks at—of all places!—the top of the Eiffel Tower. In these kiosks were sold souvenirs of the Tower—models of the erection made of soap, marzipan, etc. and cheap jewellery. At night, these articles were locked in flat glass-topped trays or cases, screened by roller-blind shutters which, when locked, protected the kiosk and its contents from ordinary human interference. Anyway, it was difficult to get to the summit of the Tower after the lifts had stopped working for the day. And yet, night after night, the glass cases were disturbed, though they were never found unlocked. But the souvenirs inside them were discovered broken, out of alignment, and many of them disappeared. I visited the kiosk and inspected the locks and saw the damaged goods. I then asked the management whether I could spend a night on the top stage of the Tower, but I was refused permission. So my projected investigation fell through.
Another ‘high’ Poltergeist that I was asked to investigate was making life unbearable in the Concordia Hütte—that haven of refuge8 for climbers lost or stranded on the Great Aletsch Glacier near the Jungfraujoch, 9, 415 feet above sea level. I heard about the disturbances there from a party of Alpinists who arrived at the Schweizerhof Hotel, Interlaken, during one of my visits to this famous Swiss resort. The climbers had spent the previous night in the hut and—allowing for exaggeration—there certainly appeared to have been pandemonium amongst their belongings. Their clothes, their food, the blankets and lanterns supplied by the Swiss Alpine Club, their own ice-axes and alpenstocks—all became displaced during the night, or ‘wandered about’, or lost themselves. Sleep became impossible. They also told me a story of how a man had perished in the Hut, after dragging himself there out of a terrific snow blizzard. They asked me whether I would visit the Hut and ‘investigate’. I said I would—if they would guarantee the phenomena happening while I was there. Unfortunately, Poltergeists, like some humans, cannot be relied upon. As the poet once wrote:
That when the glum researchers come,
Those brutes of bogeys go …
And it is a tiring and expensive journey from Interlaken to the Jungfraujoch, the terminus of the Jungfrau Railway. And the Concordia Hut is a long way from the terminus. So I declined, especially as I had been to the Joch only a few days previously.
It is not often that Poltergeist disturbances are directly connected with a murder, suicide or, in fact, a death of any sort. But in the Orient Express I once had a strange experience that one could link up with a suicide. In May, 1926, I was travelling from Vienna to Ostend. During the night I was awakened suddenly as if a pistol had been fired. It was then nearly 2 a.m., and we were approaching Frankfort-am-Main. I went to sleep again. At about 5 a.m. I was again startled out of a sound sleep, as we were nearing Cologne. When we arrived at Ostend, the attendant in charge of my compartment in the Schlafwagen admitted, after some coaxing, that a representative of an Amsterdam diamond firm had blown out his brains in the very carriage I had occupied. The tragedy occurred just outside Würzburg, and it was near this town that I was first awakened. The body was put out at Frankfort. The attendant told me that he had had other complaints of noises, ‘pistol shots’, etc., including the horrible auditory illusion (as it must be) of the train leaving the metals.9
Places of entertainment are seldom ‘infested’, but in March, 1928, June, the actress, complained that when resting in her dressing-room at the Adelphi Theatre, the couch on which she was lying received a number of blows from an unseen hand. Also, she declared, her arm had been gripped by something that had raised four weals. And taps could be heard coming from behind a mirror. I was asked to hold a séance in June’s dressing room. This I did on March 14, 1928, and Miss Cicely Courtneidge was among the sitters. Nothing happened. I similarly investigated reports of ‘happenings’ at Drury Lane Theatre and at St. George’s Hall, but the Poltergeists had fled by the time I arrived.
In the last chapter I recorded an occurrence at Lamberhurst in which a horse was spirited out of a stable into a hay-room, the door of which was too small to admit even a man, except with difficulty. Similar ‘stable miracles’ were actually witnessed at Gross-Erlach, in Württemberg. In addition to the usual disturbances inside the house, the stables were the focal-point for many of the phenomena. These included the untethering of the cattle which, when re-tied, were again untied in the presence of witnesses. The annoyance became unbearable and the place was vacated.10
If Poltergeists infest cottages, they also haunt castles. I was once asked to investigate alleged disturbances at Arthog Castle, Merionethshire. There was the usual bell-ringing nuisance, knockings and other noises. I wrote for further particulars, and receiving none, concluded the Geist had disappeared. The castle is some 750 years old.
The classic castle-Poltergeist is that which infested the Château of T., in Calvados, Normandy. The case is fully recorded in Haunted Houses by Camille Flammarion (London, 1924),11 and should be read in detail. Briefly, the castle had a ‘reputation’. As far back as 1867, when Monsieur de X. inherited it, there were heard typical Poltergeistic thumps and bumps. Then things were quiet for some years. In the autumn of 1875, X. engaged the young abbé Y. as tutor for his little son. That restarted the trouble. Whether the abbé or the boy was the medium is doubtful, but most of the phenomena centred in or about the abbé and his room and the manifestations (which persisted with hardly a pause from October 12, 1875 to January 30, 1876) were of the most amazing description, and were as diverse as they were amazing. In an attempt to put an end to the disturbances, the castle was exorcised on January 14, 1876. This did stop the nuisance for a time, but the trouble broke out again in August and September of 1876, and, I believe, continued intermittently for many years. A Novena12 was said at Lourdes (just as one was said at Borley nearly seventy years later) for the peace of the castle, and, we read, ‘everything has stopped’. But, as I have stated, the exorcism did not have a very lasting effect. I reiterate that Poltergeists cannot be exorcised. Prayers may make them quiet, but they won’t make them quit. But the Poltergeists at ‘Beth-oni’, Tackley, Oxon., were successfully exorcised.
As at Borley, Willington, the ‘Mill on the Eden’, Mrs. Mara Mack’s home, and some other places, the dates and times of the phenomena were entered in a diary. I cannot reproduce even a tenth of the entries, but will mention some of the striking incidents, which included: the usual nocturnal thumps, knocks and hammer-blows; noise like the ‘winding of a big clock’13 heard by the abbé; the movement and piling up of furniture; conversation mimicked and persons followed by footsteps (that recalls Mr. Hayes’ adventure at Borley); sounds ‘like a big log being thrown against the wall’ and ‘a heavy elastic body rolling down the stairs’; ‘tripping noises’ like the steps of animals; a ‘rushing gallop in the hall’; ‘a long-drawn trumpet call’; ‘the sobs and cries of a woman in horrible suffering’; spontaneous opening and closing of doors and windows; toilet articles on a dressing table upset (as in the Scottish ‘Poltergeist Manor’); horrible ‘cries of demons or the damned’; chairs piled on table in the Blue Room (why do so many haunted houses possess Blue Rooms?); beds and bedding disturbed (of course!); all the books (about 100), ‘except three on Holy Scriptures’, thrown out of a bookcase on to the floor; in the Blue Room a coverlet thrown into the middle of the room, and a night-table found resting on a pillow; the disappearance of a collection of Roman Catholic medals and crosses that had been attached to doors, and their sudden reappearance in a room three days later (Roman Catholic medallions14 also came tumbling down the stairs at Borley); a ‘noise like that of an animal with boards under its feet’ and another ‘like a stick jumping on one of its ends’; ‘loud cries like bellowings’; on January 25, 1876, two beds turned over ‘in an absolutely identical manner’; the music played on a harmonium was ‘repeated for a considerable time’ in the opposite corner of the room, when player had ceased; the levitation of a cupboard heavily laden with books and linen, ‘which rose 20 inches from the ground’, ‘remained up for some time’, and resisted the efforts of the abbé to push it down again; the continued movement of some bedclothes which continued to be disturbed after a pistol had been fired at them; and the playing of a locked organ, when the key was in its owner’s pocket many miles away.
Well, the reader now knows of a very few of the things that occurred—and may be still occurring—in this strange castle in Calvados. And if ever a case was authenticated and documented, this one is. The owner, his wife, his servants, priests and visitors, all testify to having witnessed the phenomena—many of them in daylight. I repeat, the case should be read in full in Flammarion’s Haunted Houses in order that justice may be done to it.
Many British castles and family seats can boast of ghosts or stories about them. One of the most picturesque is the tradition, that has persisted for centuries, connected with Knebworth House, the ancestral home of the Lyttons. In the East wing of the mansion was (the wing was demolished in 1811) a haunted chamber known as ‘Spinning Jenny’s room’. In this room was incarcerated a young girl who was forced to spin, and spin, and spin, with little food and less leisure. Semi-starvation, plus incessant toil, plus the treatment meted out to her, drove Jenny out of her mind—and she died. Variants of the story say she was starved to death or committed suicide. Then came the Poltergeist phenomena. From the day of her demise could be heard the rhythmic whir of Jenny’s spinning-wheel and the movements of the young girl as she toiled at her work. ‘Whirring noises’ are not very common in Poltergeist haunts, and several correspondents have told me about this phenomenon connected with the Knebworth ghost.
The story of ‘Spinning Jenny’ was published as a tract (The History of Jenny Spinner, the Ghost of Knebworth House. [Written by Herself] London, 1800), and through the kindness of Miss Eglantyne M. Jebb, M.A., Principal of the Froebel Educational Institute (temporarily evacuated to Knebworth House), and the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Lytton, K.G., P.C., etc., I have been enabled to study a reprint. This was included in the privately-printed A History of Knebworth House and its Owners (Letchworth, 1915). How the tract came to be written is interesting. It appears that at a jolly Christmas party at Knebworth House in 1800, the châtelaine of the mansion challenged her guests to write the complete story of ‘Spinning Jenny’. The only one who responded was a Miss E. M. James, then aged twenty-five, who, in three days, composed the fictional autobiography of Jenny that I have mentioned. The tract (which was afterwards privately printed) is cleverly written and is reminiscent of one of Ann Radcliffe’s15 horrific novels. In Miss James’s narrative, all ends well—as it should do at a Christmas party. Jenny is rescued by her boy friend, whom she marries; the villain of the piece (whose intentions were strictly dishonourable) is foiled and unmasked, and all—except the villain, of course—live happily ever after. The real story is, as I have stated, very ancient, and Lord Lytton tells me that ‘Spinning Jenny’s room’ is mentioned in some of the old documents connected with the house.
From châteaux to telegraph offices is rather a jump, but this chapter is intended to show how varied is the ‘home of the Poltergeist’. And this is why I am including a brief account (published originally in the Occult Review for May, 1911)16 of the Dale Tower case. The ‘tower’ was a two-storied telegraph office on the main line of the Atlantic Coast Railroad, at Dale, Georgia. It was opened only for three months of the year during the tourist traffic. The upper storey was a living room occupied by three young operators, and the lower apartment was the instrument room. Stairs, closed by a trap, gave access to the upper apartment from the lower one. There was no house of any description within a quarter of a mile.
On January 4, 1911, the ‘tower’ was opened for the season. The first untoward incident was the spontaneous opening of the trap-door, which would not remain closed. Even nailing and an iron bar would not keep it down. Then strange footsteps were heard, and things began to float about the room, rather like the anti-gravitational phenomena mentioned a few pages back. A cooking dish rolled down the stairs, through the lower apartment, and landed under the structure. ‘An ordinary can-opener flew wildly about the room and fastened itself on the centre of the ceiling’. Then bolts and nuts were hurled through the window from outside. The young men beat a hasty retreat and left the tower. Immediately, a chair was hurled at them out of the window by—what? Apparently, the manifestations then ceased. This is a typical Poltergeist story, in a new setting. Trickery appears to have been impossible, though collusion on the part of the young men might be the explanation.
I could cite many more queer tricks of the Poltergeists—queer tricks in queerer places. But I have said enough, I think, to illustrate the versatility of the entities as regards both pranks and places. I have not touched upon those Poltergeists that molest savage men and infest savage homes. In every land, literally ‘from China to Peru’, the Poltergeist is found doing the same old tricks in the same old way. I hope to cite a few of these cases when I come to discuss the ‘evidence for the Poltergeist’. But the only thing new about them will be their settings.
In this and the three preceding chapters, I have briefly summarised nearly a hundred Poltergeist cases, ancient and modern, in order to give the reader a clear and general picture of what these entities are, what they do, and where and how they do them. But the evidence I have found room for has been scanty and sometimes unconvincing, though fully documented. We will now examine in detail (sometimes in great detail) a few of the classical cases (mostly English) of Poltergeist-infestation, beginning with the famous Drummer of Tedworth, who made such a noise in the world in 166117.