poltergeist

A ghost that manifests itself by noises, rappings, and the creation of disorder.

[German : poltern, to make noises (from Middle High German boldern) + Geist, ghost (from Middle High German, from Old High German).]

Although the name is a Victorian borrowing from German, the phenomenon has been repeatedly described in English sources from Elizabethan times onwards; sometimes a boggart or similar household goblin was blamed, sometimes witchcraft, sometimes a demon or a ghost. Famous examples, much discussed by learned writers at the time, were the ‘devil’ haunting the royal palace at Woodstock in 1649; the ‘Tedworth Drummer’ which caused innumerable disturbances in a Wiltshire house from 1661 to 1663, and was thought to be a demon magically sent by an aggrieved ex-soldier whose drum had been confiscated by the magistrate living there; and the ‘Cock Lane Ghost’ of 1760-2 (Bennett, 1987: 184-8; Finucane, 1982: 140-3, 157; D. Grant, The Cock Lane Ghost (1965)).

The name of unexplained rappings, noises, and similar disturbances. The term poltergeist (Polter Geist, or rattling ghost) is indicative of the character of these "beings." It is believed poltergeists rarely cause serious physical injury, but can cause much damage by breaking fragile objects and occasionally setting fire to pieces of furniture or clothing. Supposedly a person may be pulled out of bed or levitated.

Most psychic manifestations require darkness, but poltergeists act in daylight. However, the movement of objects usually happens when no one is looking. One frequently reported claim is that objects rose or fell through the air slowly. Otherwise objects are often seen in flight but seldom beginning to move.

In the late nineteenth century, to explain the crashing noises that occurred such as the sounds of breaking crockery later found intact, Adolphe d'Assier advanced a theory in his book Posthumous Humanity (1887). He suggested inanimate objects also possess a double, a phantasmal image and it is the duplicate that is flung by the poltergeist. D'Assier stated the sum of motion a moving body possesses is found by multiplying the mass of the moving body by its velocity and its live force at the moment of fall is equal to half the bulk by the square of velocity. D'Assier's theory was discarded.

Reportedly, Italian psychical researcher Ernesto Bozzano collected statistics on hauntings and claimed that out of 532 cases, 374 were ghostly manifestations and 158 were poltergeists.

Historical Poltergeists

Supposedly the poltergeist is not indigenous to any one country or any particular period. Author Andrew Lang claimed several cases belonging to the Middle Ages and at least one dates back to 856 B.C.E. In different cultures around the world, the reported phenomena are similar regardless of the country of origin.

Believers claim the disturbances are particularly active in the neighborhood of one person, generally a child, a young woman, an epileptic, or a hysterical subject. According to the theory advanced by Spiritualists, the center of the disturbances is a natural medium, through whom the spirits desire to communicate with the world of living beings. In earlier times, such a person might be regarded as a witch, the victim of a sorcerer, or even an evil spirit. Some believe the poltergeist developed out of witchcraft and is a direct forerunner of modern Spiritualism, possibly a link between the two.

Amongst the earliest poltergeist cases recorded were those of the Drummer of Tedworth (1661) and the Epworth Phenomena (1716). Supposedly the case of the Drummer of Tedworth began in 1661. A vagrant drummer was taken before a justice of the peace and deprived of his drum. The instrument was found in the house of Mr. Mompesson. Later, disturbances broke out in the house. Loud knockings and thumpings and the beating of an invisible drum were heard. Articles flew around the rooms and the beds (particularly those of the children) were shaken. After the drummer was sentenced to leave the manifestations ceased, but reoccurred when he returned.

Contemporary opinion classified the case as witchcraft by the drummer. Modern psychical researchers such as Frank Podmore believe the "two little modest girls in the bed" were responsible for the knockings and scratchings of the poltergeist rather than the drummer.

In the Epworth case, the family of the Reverend Samuel Wesley (father of Methodist founder John Wesley) reportedly described levitations, loud noises, and rappings, together with apparitions such as rabbits and badgers. Podmore was of the opinion that Hetty, one of John's sisters, was in some way responsible for the disturbances. Hetty did not give an individual account of the manifestations.

Poltergeists Around the World

Supposedly in Germany, Justinus Kerner recorded a poltergeist case in his book The Seeress of Prevorst (1845) that occurred in 1806-07 in the Castle of Slawensik, Silesia.

In Italy, the newspaper La Stampa of Turin claimed on November 19, 1900, poltergeist occurrences in a wine and spirit shop. Cesare Lombroso investigated the case and wrote: "I went into the cellar, at first in complete darkness, and heard a noise of broken glasses and bottles rolled at my feet. The bottles were ranged in six compartments one above another. In the middle was a rough table on which I had six lighted candles placed, supposing that the spirit phenomena would cease in the bright light. But, on the contrary, I saw three empty bottles, standing on the ground, roll as though pushed by a finger, and break near the table. To obviate any possible trick, I felt and carefully examined by the light of a candle all the full bottles which were on the racks, and assured myself that there was no cord or string which could explain their movements. After a few minutes first two, then four, then two other bottles on the second and third racks detached themselves and fell to the ground, not suddenly but as though carried by someone; and after their descent, rather than fall, six of them broke on the wet floor, already soaked with wine; only two remained whole. Then at the moment of leaving the cellar, just as I was going out, I heard another bottle break."

In America, reportedly in 1850, disturbances occurred in the house of the Reverend Eliakim Phelps at Stratford, Connecticut. Twelve-year-old Harry Phelps was put in a water cistern and suspended from a tree. Mrs. Phelps was often pinched and pricked, and once, from a vacant room, a bottle of ink was thrown at her white dress.

The story known as "The Great Amherst Mystery" (after the 1888 book by Walter Hubbell) occurred between 1878-79 at Amherst, Nova Scotia, in the Teed family. The phenomena centered around Esther Cox, a sister of Mrs. Teed. A cardboard box, moving beneath the bed of its own accord, was the first manifestation. The next night Cox's body began to swell to an abnormal size. Soon after, a noise, "like a peal of thunder" woke everyone in the house.

Supposedly the bedclothes flew off Cox's bed, night after night; an invisible hand wrote in the plaster: "Esther Cox, you are mine to kill." Cold water on the kitchen table bubbled and hissed like boiling water, yet its temperature remained unaffected; and a voice announced the house would be set on fire and for many days lighted matches were seen falling from the ceiling on the bed.

The spirit communicated by raps, and said he was an evil spirit bent on mischief and would torment Esther until she died. Things became so bad that Esther left. In the house of a friend, Mr. White, for a month everything was quiet. One day, while Esther was scrubbing the hall floor, the brush suddenly disappeared from under her hand. A few moments later, it fell from the ceiling. The spirit was heard to walk about the house, banged the doors, attempted to set the house on fire, stabbed Esther in the back with a knife, and piled up seven chairs in the parlor and pulled one out near the bottom allowing them to fall with a crash. This lasted for nearly a year.

Walter Hubbell, the actor, was supposedly a witness. In 1907, the psychical researcher Hereward Carrington interviewed some of the surviving witnesses at Amherst. The testimonies he gathered confirmed Hubbell's narrative.

The Staus Poltergeist

One case occurred in the home of the Joller family in Switzerland. In 1860-62, disturbances broke out in Staus, in the home of Mr. Joller, a lawyer. Knocks were first heard by a maid, who also claimed she was haunted by grey shapes and the sound of sobbing. In the autumn of 1861, she was dismissed and another maid hired.

In the summer of 1862 the disturbances began again. Joller's wife and his seven children claimed to have heard and seen many sights and sounds, though Joller remained skeptical. After a while he was convinced that neither trickery nor imagination would suffice as an explanation of the phenomena. Meanwhile the manifestations appeared before thousands who were attracted by stories of the phenomena circulating around town. The Land-Captain Zelger, the Director of Police Jaun, the President of the Court of Justice, and other people arrived to investigate the disturbances and some suggested a commission be appointed to examine the house.

Three of the police were to conduct a formal inquiry. They demanded the withdrawal of Joller and his family, and remained in the house for six days without witnessing anything abnormal. They drew up a report to this effect. However, after the Joller family returned to their home, the interruptions were renewed. Joller became the butt of ridicule and jokes and finally left his ancestral home.

Poltergeist Fires

Alexander Aksakof described several instances of poltergeist fires in his book Animisme et Spiritisme (1906). One occurred in 1870, at the country house of a Mr. Shcnapoff, near Orenburg, Russia and was investigated by various locals. It seems that Mrs. Shcnapoff was the medium in this case. When she was sent away from the house, the phenomena ceased. On one occasion a bluish phosphorescent spark was seen flying through the air, bursting a cotton dress into flames in her bedroom. Another time the dress she was wearing caught fire. In extinguishing it her husband was severely burned, yet she suffered no injury.

Sporadically, events were claimed to have occurred to justify the Russian belief in the "domovoy," the Slavic house elf who performs various domestic duties during the night and watches over the sleeping household. The Shcnapoff case is similar to the Morell Theobald case where the poltergeist obligingly lit the kitchen fires. An even more domesticated poltergeist was recorded by J. A. Gridley in his book Astounding Facts from the Spirit World (1854). He wrote that on one occasion the breakfast table was laid by spirit agency.

Stone Throwing

The medieval Annales Fuldenses includes a chronicle of stone throwing approximately 858 C.E. in the town of Bingen on the Rhine. It was believed stones were thrown by a malignant spirit, and they struck dwelling walls.

Joseph Glanvill in his study Sadducismus Triumphatus (1681), recorded the witch trial of Mary London. She was a servant girl who, in addition to vomiting pins, had stones flung at her. The stones vanished after falling on the ground.

Poltergeists in the 1900s

In the early period of the Society for Psychical Research, London, opinions about poltergeist phenomena were dominated by the skeptical theories of Frank Podmore, but an alternative view was presented by Sir William Barrett in 1911. Amongst reported cases, Barrett investigated one at Derrygonnelly, in Ireland, where he claimed the phenomena had intelligence. Four times he got answers to numbers that he mentally asked.

In 1926, Eleonore Zügun, a Romanian peasant girl, was brought to London by psychical researcher Harry Price to London, and studied at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research for more than three weeks. The girl exhibited stigmata. Poltergeists stuck pins and needles into her body. Objects wandered around the room when she was in it. Reportedly no fraud was detected.

Hereward Carrington investigated the Windsor Poltergeist case involving a haunted town. Many of the Windsor residents conspired to play a prank on an old judge to mock his belief in Spiritualism. Carrington's account of the hoax was published in his book Personal Experiences in Spiritualism (1918, pp. 112-24). As is the case with many believers confronted with evidence of having been defrauded the judge refused to accept Carrington's explanation and insisted the manifestations were genuine.

One of the most interesting things about poltergeist phenomena is that in modern times, when there has been a marked decline in the physical phenomena of mediumship (most of which was fraudulently produced by tricks that will no longer work), poltergeists (not the product of fraud) continue to be reported, and many have been accessible to parapsychologists with modern monitoring equipment.

In Germany, the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie (Institute for Border Areas of Psychology) under the direction of Dr. Hans Bender has studied 35 cases of poltergeists since World War II. Of these, the Rosenheim Case, 1967-68, attracted the most attention. In a lawyer's office in Rosenheim, Bavaria electric lamp bulbs exploded, neon tubes continually went out, fuses blew, photostatic copying machines did not work, telephones rang or conversations were cut off unaccountably, and sharp bangs were reported. The focus of these events seemed to be Annemarie Sch., a nineteen-year-old employee. The disturbances ceased when she left the office, although witnesses claimed further events took place in her new office.

In Britain in 1977, the Enfield Poltergeist attracted wide attention. The poltergeist effects reportedly appeared in-house in the North London suburb of Enfield and focused its activity around the Hodgson family, Peggy Hodgson and her four children. Events recorded included inexplicable movements of objects, often flying through the air, levitation and transportation of one of the children, and noisy knockings. The case was investigated by members of the Society for Psychical Research, and author Guy Lyon Playfair who published a book on the phenomena.

In the United States, parapsychologist William G. Roll of the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man, made poltergeists one of his specializations following his initial investigation of the Seaford Poltergeist of Long Island in 1958, when disturbances took place in the family of Mr. and Mrs. James Herrmann and their two children. Bottles were uncapped and the contents spilled, and toys were broken, in addition to the usual noises and movement of objects. Roll's monograph, The Poltergeist (1976), summarized the parapsychological aspects of the subject.

Sources:

Barrett, Sir William. "Poltergeists, Old and New." Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 25, no. 64 (August 1911).

Bell, Charles Bailey. A Mysterious Spirit. N.p., 1934.

Bell, Charles Bailey, and Harriet Parks Miller. Bell Witch of Tennessee. Reprint, Nashville, Tenn.: C. Elder, 1972.

Beloff, John, ed. New Directions in Parapsychology. London: Paul Elek (Scientific Books), 1974. Reprint, Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1975.

Bender, Hans. "Modern Poltergeist Research—A Plea for an Unprejudiced Approach." In New Directions in Parapsychology, edited by John Beloff. London: Paul Elek (Scientific Books), 1974. Reprint, Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1975.

Britten, Emma Hardinge. Nineteenth Century Miracles. N.p., 1883.

Carrington, Hereward, and Nandor Fodor. Haunted People; Story of the Poltergeist Down the Centuries. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1951. Reprinted as The Story of the Poltergeist Down the Centuries. London: Rider, 1953.

Dingwall, E. J., K. M. Goldney, and Trevor H. Hall. The Haunting of Borley Rectory. London: Duckworth, 1955.

Fodor, Nandor. On the Trail of the Poltergeist. New York: Citadel, 1958. Reprint, London: Arco Publications, 1959.

Gauld, Alan, and A. D. Cornell. Poltergeists. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979.

Lang, Andrew. Cock Lane and Common-Sense. London: Longmans Green, 1896.

Owen, A. R. G. Can We Explain the Poltergeist? New York: Helix Press, 1964.

Playfair, Guy Lyon. This House is Haunted; An Investigation of the Enfield Poltergeist London: Souvenir Press, 1980.

Price, Harry. "Same Account of the Poltergeist Phenomena of Eleonore Zügun." Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research (August 1926).

Richat, Charles. Thirty Years of Psychical Research. New York: Macmillan, 1923. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975.

Roll, William G. The Poltergeist. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976.

Sitwell, Sacheverell. Poltergeist. London: Faber & Faber, 1940.

Thurston, Herbert. Ghosts and Poltergeists. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1954.

This article has been nominated to be checked for its neutrality. Discussion of this nomination can be found on the talk page. (July 2008)

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2008)

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (December 2008)

For other uses, see Poltergeist (disambiguation).

Poltergeist (help·info) (from German poltern, meaning to rumble or make noise, and Geist, meaning "ghost" or "spirit") denotes an invisible spirit or ghost that manifests itself by moving and influencing objects, generally in a particular location such as a house or room or place within a house. Poltergeists have been reported in many cultures. Each has its own name for the phenomenon, while the features of the phenomenon are the same everywhere (rapping noises, object movement etc). This does not prove that the phenomenon is real however, but rather that it is a common experience and may be due to a common psychosis. Places that poltergeists have been reported include India (where they are known as a Mumai), the United States, England, Japan and Brazil.

Contents 1 Famous poltergeist infestations 1.1 Lithobolia (1698) 1.2 Borley Rectory (1937) 1.3 Rosenheim (1967) 2 Signs 3 Hypotheses 3.1 Physical explanations 3.2 Self-delusion and hoaxes 3.3 Psychic Connection 4 Poltergeists in fiction 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

Famous poltergeist infestations

Although poltergeist stories date back to the first century, most evidence supporting the existence of poltergeists is anecdotal, which is hardly surprising as the nature of the phenomenon is unpredictable and sporadic. Indeed, many of the stories below have several versions and/or inconsistencies.

• Drummer of Tedworth (1662).

Lithobolia (1698)

A pamphlet, printed in London in 1698 by Mr. Ricard Chamberlain, provides an account of a poltergeist-type haunting that had occurred some years before. Two copies of the pamphlet exist in the British Museum called: "Lithobolia, or stone throwing Devil. Being an Exact and True account (by way of Journal) of the various actions of infernal Spirits or (Devils Incarnate) Witches or both: and the great Disturbance and Amazement they gave to George Walton's family at a place called Great Island in the county of New Hampshire in New England, chiefly in throwing about (by an Invisible hand) Stones, Bricks, and Brick-Bats of all sizes, with several other things, as Hammers, Mauls, Iron-Crows, Spits, and other Utensils, as came into their Hellish minds, and this for space of a quarter of a year....", some cases, these types of spirits share aspects with elves and goblins.

• The "Wizard", Livingston, West Virginia (1797).
• The Bell Witch (1817).
• The Haunting of The Fox sisters (1848) - arguably one of the most famous, because it started the Spiritualism movement.
• The Great Amherst Mystery, 1878-79.
• Hopfgarten near Weimar (1921).
• Eleonore Zugun - The Romanian 'Poltergeist Girl' (1926).
• The Epworth Rectory
• The Wayne, NJ (1931)

Borley Rectory (1937)

William Roll, Hans Bender, and Harry Price are perhaps three of the most famous poltergeist investigators in the annals of parapsychology. Harry Price investigated Borley Rectory which is often called "the most haunted house in England."

Rosenheim (1967)

Dr. Friedbert Karger was one of two physicists from the Max Planck Institute who helped to investigate perhaps the most validated poltergeist case in recorded history. Annemarie Schneider, a 19-year-old secretary in a law firm in Rosenheim (a town in southern Germany) was seemingly the unwitting cause of much chaos in the firm, including disruption of electricity and telephone lines, the rotation of a picture, swinging lamps which were captured on video (which was one of the first times any poltergeist activity has been captured on film), and strange sounds that sounded electrical in origin were recorded. Fraud was not proven despite intensive investigation by the physicists, journalists, and the police. The effects moved with the young woman when she changed jobs until they finally faded out, disappeared, never happened again, and never were spoken about again.

In the Rosenheim case of 1967 ^[1], The Rosenheim Poltergeist (1967). [2] (German and most extensive). [3] [4] Friedbert Karger's whole perspective on physics changed after investigating the events. "These experiments were really a challenge to physics," Karger says today. "What we saw in the Rosenheim case could be 100 per cent shown not to be explainable by known physics." [5]. The phenomena were witnessed by Hans Bender, the police force, the CID, reporters, and the physicists. Documented by the BBC in a TV series, "Leap in the Dark," the first series, transmitted in 1973, consisted solely of documentaries. From the second series onwards, the episodes were a combination of documentary and drama.

Other cases:

• The Black Monk of Pontefract [6]
• The Enfield Poltergeist (1977).
• The Mackenzie Poltergeist (fairly recent) - Famed for haunting Greyfriars church yard, Edinburgh, UK.
• The Canneto di Caronia fires poltergeist (fairly recent (2004-2005)) - Famed for defying all attempts at a scientific explanation, Sicily, Italy [7].
• The Entity Case allegedly involved a single mother of three named Carla Moran who was being repeatedly raped by an invisible entity and its two helpers over the course of several years.
• The case of Tina Resch, widely reported in the media in 1984.
• A recent case in Barnsley near Sheffield in England, where poltergeist effects were witnessed by the police force. [8]
• In Denver, Colorado there have been several reports of unknown forces positioning toys, furniture, and objects in patterns and strange positions.^{[citation needed]}
• The Thornton Road poltergeist of Birmingham (1981).
• Easington Council in County Durham, UK paid half of a medium's fee so that she would exorcise a poltergeist from public housing in Peterlee as it was deemed more cost effective than relocation of the tenant (2008). ^[2]

Signs

Many things that seem to occur often with poltergeists are:

• Objects are moved or thrown around, sometimes at the victim
• Objects appearing in random places
• Raspy or vague voices are heard (sometimes are only heard from an EVP)
• noises are heard (such as tapping, dragging, thumping or footsteps)
• being pushed, tugged, or knocked down by an unknown force
• A ghostly figures or shadows being seen (sometimes are only seen on a thermal imager or camcorder)
• Haunting or activity starts after something bad happening (such as a death)
• Forcing things on the victim (such as poison)
• Rapping noises ( e.g.: one means no, two mean yes)
• Electronics malfunctioning (during the presence of the poltergeist)
• Victim may have strange feelings or sensations during the presence of a poltergeist (such as nausea or EMF sickness)
• High EMF ratings from an unknown source
• Cackling is heard upon presence of a poltergeist (usually only heard from an EVP)
• Cold spots are often felt usually in dark areas
• Blood appearing on floors, walls, ceilings, shiny and grimy surfaces
• Inappropriate drawing of faces or contents usually on foggy mirrors
• Unexplainable fear within the home or depression
• Sensation of poltergeist activity becomes stronger and more prominent

Hypotheses

Historically, several different hypotheses have been put forward to explain the poltergeist phenomenon.

Physical explanations

Some scientists and skeptics propose that all poltergeist activity untraceable to fraud has a physical explanation such as static electricity, electromagnetic fields, ultra-, and infrasound and/or ionized air. In some cases, such as the Rosenheim poltergeist case, the physicist F. Karger from the Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik and G. Zicha from the Technical University of Munich found none of these effects present and psi proponents claim that no evidence of fraud was ever found, even after a sustained investigation from the police force and CID. Whether this is true or not, police officers did sign statements that they had witnessed the phenomena. Other aspects of the case were hard to explain: The time service was rung hundreds of times, with a frequency impossible with the mechanical dialing phones of 1967. The municipal authority disconnected the office from the mains supply and hooked it up to a dedicated generator hoping to stabilize the current. But surges in current and voltage still occurred with no detectable cause according to Zicha and Karger. Others think poltergeist phenomena could be caused by more mundane phenomena, such as unusual air currents, air vibrations such as in acoustic levitation, or tremors caused by underground streams.^{[citation needed]} http://skepdic.com/poltergeist.html^{[unreliable source?]}

John Hutchinson has claimed that he has created poltergeist effects in his laboratory while scientist David Turner has suggested that ball lightning might cause the movement of objects blamed on poltergeists.^[3] Some scientists go as far as calling them pseudo-psychic phenomena and claim that under some circumstances they are caused by obscure physical effects.^[4] Parapsychologists William G. Roll and Dean Radin, physicist Hal Puthoff and head of electrical engineering at Duke University who specializes in electromagnetic field phenomena, claim that poltergeist phenomena [the movement of objects at least] could be caused by anomalies in the zero-point field, ^[5] this is outlined in the above article and in Roll's book Unleashed and mention is made of it in a chapter of Dean Radin's book Entangled Minds. The basic theory is that poltergeist movements are repulsive versions of the casimir effect that can put pressures on objects. Thus, anomalies in this field could conceivably move objects. This theory has also been mentioned in the current book on paranormal phenomena Science by Marie D. Jones.^[6]

The theory is not complete, however, because it accounts for the movement of objects but not for the strange voices, seeming personality, and strange electrical effects displayed in some cases.

Self-delusion and hoaxes

Skeptics think that the phenomena are hoaxes perpetrated by the agent. Indeed, some poltergeist agents have been caught by investigators in the act of throwing objects. A few of them later confessed to faking.^{[citation needed]}

Skeptics maintain that parapsychologists are especially easy to fool when they think that many occurrences are real and discount the hoax hypothesis from the outset. Even after witnessing first hand an agent throwing objects, psi-believing parapsychologists rationalize the fact away by assuming that the agents are only cheating when caught cheating, and at no other time. One reason given is that the agents often fake phenomena when the investigation coincides with a period of time where there appears to be little or no 'genuine' phenomena occurring. Another stated reason is that some of the phenomena witnessed would be hard to fake, even for magicians when under the watch of many people, let alone untrained children and non-magicians.^{[citation needed]}

The current consensus among most scientists is a mixture of the self-delusion and hoax hypotheses and a bit of the caused-by-scientifically-explained-forces hypothesis [tremors, abnormal air currents etc ].

Psychic Connection

Many have been led to believe that poltergeists are in fact, not the undead, but are creatures created by the mind. They become real and out of control, growing in power and boldness, until either they go away, usually in 3–6 months, and travelling to another victim or killing the victim.

See also:

• Mischievous fairies
• Undead

Poltergeists in fiction

Both the name and concept of the poltergeist became famous to modern audiences from 1982 in the Poltergeist movies and the subsequent TV series Poltergeist: The Legacy. The first Poltergeist movie actually gave an accurate depiction (during the first half of the film) of a "typical" poltergeist infestation, right down to the depiction of the focus as a prepubescent girl. The term also became quite famous when J.K. Rowling used it in Harry Potter where she names the poltergeist as 'Peeves' who causes disruption at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

See also

• Ghost hunting
• Spiritism
• Apparitional experience
• Psychokinesis
• List of basic parapsychology topics
• Stigmatized property

References

1. ^ Fairley, John; Welfare, Simon (1984). Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers. London: Harper Collins. pp. 28-31. ISBN 0002166798. 
2. ^ "Council pays psychic for exorcism". BBC News. 2008-02-12. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7240405.stm. Retrieved on 2008-02-13. 
3. ^ Ball lightning scientists remain in the dark, New Scientist, 20 December 2001
4. ^ "Physicists probe the paranormal". psychicsworld.com. 2000-05-01. http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/13/05/8. Retrieved on 2007-10-30. 
5. ^ Roll, W. Poltergeists, Electromagnetism and Consciousness PDF at [1],
6. ^ Jones, Marie D. PSIence: How New Discoveries in Quantum Physics and New Science May Explain the Existence of Paranormal Phenomena (New Page Books, 2006)

External links

• Poltergeist caught on video, The Sun UK newspaper, August 9, 2008. * Andrew Lang, The Poltergeist and his explainers, The Making of Religion, (Appendix B), Longmans, Green, and C°, London, New York and Bombay, 1900, pp. 324–339.
• Haunted Ontario - Founded in 1996 by Bob Milne, Haunted Ontario chronicles the ghosts, spirits, spooks, and poltergeists said to haunt Canada's most populated province.
• Poltergeist: The Legacy Website
• Dehaunting Techniques
• International Journal of Parapsychology
• Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research
• Skeptic's Dictionary
• [9] The Entity Case
• 1926 silent short film of the Eleonora Zugun poltergeist case On YouTube, with German title cards.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - poltergeist

Nederlands (Dutch)
klopgeest

Français (French)
n. - esprit frappeur

Deutsch (German)
n. - Poltergeist

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - κακοποιό πνεύμα

Italiano (Italian)
poltergeist

Português (Portuguese)
n. - fantasma que provoca ruídos

Русский (Russian)
полтергейст

Español (Spanish)
n. - duende

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - poltergeist (sorts spöke)

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
敲击吵闹恶作剧的鬼

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 敲擊吵鬧惡作劇的鬼

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 시끄러운 소리를 내는 장난꾸러기 요정

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 騒霊

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) نوع من الأرواح الشريرة يعتقد بانها تحدث صخبا‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮שד רעשני ורע העוסק בעיקר בהזזת חפצים‬

If you are unable to view some languages clearly, click here.

To select your translation preferences click here.