Case file · Poltergeist · House or mansion
The Callihan Poltergeist of Olive Hill
Also known as Olive Hill poltergeist, A Demon in Olive Hill, Kentucky
From November 1968, glass and furniture reportedly broke or flew around an elderly Olive Hill couple, drawing parapsychologists Roll and Stump.
John and Ora Callihan were an elderly couple living outside Olive Hill, a small town in Carter County in eastern Kentucky. According to Jeremy D. Wells, editor of the Carter County Times, writing for Appalachian History in 2020, their trouble began on 15 November 1968, when glass started cracking in the picture frames around their home. Wells quotes Ora’s own recollection, which he traces to George Wolford’s Carter County: A Pictorial History: a framed picture of Jesus was among the first things to break, a bottle of bath oil flew against a wall and burst with a sound like a shotgun, and a washing machine boomed though nothing was found wrong with it.
Wells writes that the family moved to another house nearby hoping it would stop, but that the activity resumed on 7 December 1968 with several witnesses in the room. Small objects were said to fly, tables overturned and heavy chests tipped; a family friend was struck by flying plastic containers, and John Callihan was hit on the head by a bowl. The investigators who came later concluded that the activity centred on the couple’s twelve-year-old grandson. The Psi Encyclopedia’s entry on William G. Roll records that the disturbances had destroyed most of the household’s ceramic lamps and figurines.
William G. Roll, project director of the Psychical Research Foundation in Durham, North Carolina, travelled to Kentucky with fellow investigator John Stump. The Psi Encyclopedia dates the visit to 1969. It says Roll watched the kitchen table lift fully off the floor, turn about 45 degrees and come down on the backs of the chairs, and that he and Stump counted ten occasions on which the boy could not have touched the object that moved, against 205 incidents the family reported. Wells says Stump logged about 90 earlier events from the family and recorded roughly 50 more during a single weekend. Roll and Stump published a short report, “The Olive Hill Poltergeist,” in the Proceedings of the Parapsychological Association in 1969, and Roll gave the case a chapter, “A Demon in Olive Hill, Kentucky,” in his 1972 book The Poltergeist.
Roll did not think the house was haunted. He read the events as “recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis,” an unconscious effect he linked to a young person under stress. The Carter County Times columnist adds that Ora Callihan nevertheless described apparitions of her own: the spirit of a former resident, a man said to have been able to raise “knocking spirits,” and a figure she likened to a large, white-clad nurse. The grandson’s parents belonged to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and, according to Wells, blamed a demon, asked the researchers to leave and tried an exorcism that included burning the boy’s clothing. The reports reportedly faded only after the family moved away to Ohio. Wells stresses that public doubt and ridicule hurt the family, and the boy’s name is left out here for that reason.
What people report
Breaking glass in picture frames, a bottle bursting against a wall, lamps and figurines smashed, small objects flying, tables overturning, a heavy chest tipping and a kitchen table reportedly rising and turning. Ora Callihan also described apparitions of a former resident and of a white-clad nurse-like figure.
Where and when
Reported at the Callihans’ rural home near Olive Hill and, according to local accounts, again at the nearby house to which they moved. Both were private homes; the family left the area.
Timeline of the haunting
- 15 November 1968Glass begins to break Olive Hill, Kentucky
Local historian-journalist Jeremy D. Wells dates the first events to this day, when glass began breaking in picture frames at the Callihans’ home.
- 7 December 1968Activity resumes before witnesses Olive Hill, Kentucky
After the family’s move, small objects, tables and chests were reported moving with several people present, and John Callihan was injured by a bowl.
- 1969Roll and Stump investigate Olive Hill, Kentucky
William Roll and John Stump visited. They reported ten incidents in which the boy could not have touched the object that moved, and Roll described watching a kitchen table lift and turn.
- 1972“A Demon in Olive Hill, Kentucky” New York
Roll’s book The Poltergeist gave the case a chapter and, according to Wells, counted it among six he considered authentic.
What could explain it?
- Roll’s own reading was not a ghost at all but “recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis,” a hypothesis that has never been demonstrated by mainstream science.
- Mischief by a young person is the standard sceptical explanation for poltergeist cases centred on a child. The investigators personally saw ten of the 205 events the family reported, so the great majority rests on family testimony, and a boy who could reportedly predict where a heavy table would flip invites the question of whether he was causing it.
- Stress and expectation: an elderly couple, a household in turmoil, a church that read the events as demonic and later press attention can all shape what people notice and report.
- Ora Callihan’s nurse-like apparition may owe something to local surroundings. Wells observes that St. Claire Hospital, run by Sisters in nearby Morehead, had opened in 1963.
- The surviving record is mostly Roll’s published summaries and later local retellings; contemporary 1968–69 newspaper reports were not examined for this entry.
Ghost tours, books and screen
Roll’s 1972 book The Poltergeist gave the case its best-known write-up. Locally it lives on through Wells’s columns in the Carter County Times and a podcast, Haunted Hollers, whose first episode was devoted to it.
Where it’s reported
Sources
First published · Updated
