Poltergeists

The word poltergeist is German for “noisy spirit”, and noise is the heart of these cases: knocking and rapping, objects thrown or moved, furniture overturned, stones falling on roofs. Unlike apparitions tied to a building, poltergeist outbreaks usually centre on a household and often on one person – frequently a child or teenager – and they tend to start suddenly and fade within weeks or months. Famous cases include the Bell Witch of Tennessee (1817–21), the Fox sisters’ rappings in Hydesville, New York, in 1848, which helped launch Spiritualism, the Enfield poltergeist in north London (1977–79) and the Rosenheim law office in Bavaria in 1967.

Parapsychologists such as William Roll argued that the disturbances might be caused unconsciously by the living person at the centre, coining the term “recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis” in 1958 after studying a case in Seaford, New York. Skeptics point to a long record of trickery: in 1888 Margaret Fox demonstrated on stage how she had made the raps by cracking her toe joints (she later retracted her confession); in Columbus, Ohio, in 1984, a TV camera left running recorded teenager Tina Resch toppling a lamp she claimed had flown; and investigators at Rosenheim were accused of missing simpler explanations.

Today most researchers see poltergeist cases as a mix of real household stresses, misinterpreted noises, attention, suggestion and sometimes deliberate pranks – often by a young person under pressure. That doesn’t make the families’ fear any less real, and our files try to tell these stories with care for the people involved.