Friends, I have a book problem. 

I have a lot of them. My ideal solo outing involves a coffee to-go, a drive into the foothills, and a visit to one of my favorite bookstores. And since my love of books and bizarre subjects is well-known among my loved ones, I have received many strange and wonderful books as gifts over the years.

During my . . . ample time at home in 2020, I found my weekly bookstore visits to be a thing of the past - at least, temporarily. But this time alone with my bookshelves gave me a unique opportunity to really look at what was there. I re-read some old favorites, found some great resources for researching this podcast, and then . . . I found a couple of mysteries lurking on the dusty bottom shelves. 

One of these mystery purchases was my inspiration for beginning this particular Scholar Minor subject series - which we’ll revisit again in a handful of episodes - as it discusses one of my very favorite topics and lifelong preoccupations: ghosts and hauntings. 

This book is visibly old, long separated from its dust jacket, and is a faded navy blue. There are no lines of text or illustrations on the cover, nothing on the back, and no clues to its contents - aside from a faded golden imprint on the spine, in text so small it’s difficult to decipher without my glasses: “Ghosts and Poltergeists, Thurston”. 

Inside the yellowed front cover is the penciled-in price that I paid for it in one corner - a hefty $7.50 - and, the name Elmer and the date 1960 handwritten in breathtakingly precise cursive lettering. Now, where the heck this particular book came from, I have no memory. But it’s a great find, and we’ll be putting it to good use today to learn a little bit about our first ghostly subject: poltergeists. 

Before we get into the details, what is a poltergeist? In this case, the etymology of the term is beautifully to-the-point. “Poltergeist” comes from the German “polter” meaning “rumble”, and “geist” translating to “ghost” or “spirit”. So a poltergeist is a “rumble-ghost” or a “loud ghost”. As we’ll soon discover, this is definitely accurate packaging for the poltergeists we encounter in folklore and tradition. 

If you've ever seen a depiction in media of a haunted house with the cupboards opening and slamming shut, cutlery flying through the air, heavy objects being thrown across the room - these are the sorts of behaviors attributed to poltergeist activity. Poltergeists are essentially the petulant troublemakers of the ghostly family tree.

The paranormal community generally agrees that there are two primary types of (non-demonic) hauntings: intelligent hauntings and residual hauntings. 

Residual hauntings are essentially memories. They repeat themselves, acting out a past event or habit - think of the stories you’ve heard that end with things like, “Some say you can still hear the White Lady weeping in her old room, or see her looking out the window for her lost love, just as she has every Tuesday night for a hundred years.” Residual hauntings are very commonly reported, especially in historic places, but generally don’t seem to notice or care about the living humans in their midst. Instead, they are repeating actions indefinitely like a broken record. 

Intelligent hauntings, on the other hand, are the hauntings believed to have a personality behind them, one that is aware of and interacts with the world around it. Think back to our Spiritualism episode - a ghost knocking a certain number of times to respond to a question, for example, would be considered an intelligent haunting. 

A spirit that appears only when a child is in a room, carries on conversations, or moves or alters objects in its environment is considered intelligent because there is a consciousness there. Most of the time, intelligent hauntings tend to keep their distance - generally using more passive (or passive-aggressive as the case may be) methods to communicate. 

Poltergeists, however, are a different story. They are certainly “intelligent hauntings”, but they are far more likely to make their presence known through direct and often dramatic interaction with their environment. As the author of our mystery book puts it, “The Germans have long been familiar with a mischievous devil called the “Polter geist,” whose delight it appears to be to enter houses and turn everything upside down, doing more mischief in an hour than a thousand monkeys would do in a day.”

After some digging, I was able to find out some useful information about our mystery book and its author. Ghosts and Poltergeists was written by a man named Herbert Thurston - released posthumously in 1953 - and my edition came out only one year after its initial publication. Thurston was an English Roman Catholic Priest, Jesuit, and scholar who contributed extensively to the Catholic Encyclopedia, a comprehensive encyclopedia of the traditions and aspects of Catholicism, which began publication in 1907. 

Thurston did incredible amounts of research and writing about liturgical, spiritual, and historical topics - and eventually joined the Society for Psychical Research in 1919. Despite a profound interest in the happenings of the spiritual plane, Thurston approached the contemporary Spiritualist movement with skepticism, believing that most spirit communication came from a medium's subconscious rather than actual ghostly interaction. For more details on the Spiritualist movement and the Society for Psychical Research, check out Scholar Minor's past episode "Spiritualism and Seances". 

Though Thurston was very critical of Spiritualism, he did believe that spiritual phenomena like poltergeist activity and visits from the world of the dead were possible and, in fact, probable. Thurston was even open to the idea that ghosts may not be human spirits at all, and rather visitors from some alternate dimension. Either way, Thurston had a particular fascination with poltergeists, believing that their ability to manipulate their environment was "proof of the existence of a world of spiritual agencies, not cognoscible directly by our sense of perception."

In 1877, a parapsychologist and physicist named Sir William Fletcher Barrett, who was investigating poltergeist phenomena in Ireland, visited a small hamlet called Derrygonnelly where a young woman named Maggie was apparently the center of otherworldly activity. Maggie was the eldest child in a household of six, and paranormal activity in the home seemed to escalate whenever she was around. 

In this case, it seemed that the poltergeist spirit had a particular dislike of artificial light - and it would throw or knock over candles and lamps whenever they were lit. Barrett further describes this textbook example of a poltergeist haunting: 

"The movement of objects is usually quite unlike that due to gravitational or other attraction. They slide about, rise in the air, move in eccentric paths, sometime in a leisurely manner, often turn round in their career, and usually descend quietly without hurting the observers. 

At other times an immense weight is lifted, often in daylight, no one being near, crockery is thrown about and broken, bedclothes are dragged off, the occupants sometime lifted gently to the ground, and the bedstead tilted up or dragged about the room . . . I myself have seen a large pebble drop apparently from pace in a room where the only culprit could have been myself, and certainly I did not throw it."

As poltergeists were considered “intelligent” hauntings, Barrett ran a series of tests to see if the entity was able to communicate directly. To do this, Thurston explains, Barrett “Further putting his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, [he]asked the spirit to ‘knock the number of fingers he held open.’ The experiment was repeated four times, with varying numbers, and in each case the answer was given correctly.”

Thurston informs us that records of poltergeist phenomena, as we recognize it today, has been recorded as far back as the 12th century. A manuscript titled Itinerarium Kambriae, written around 1191 CE by Giraldus Cambrensis, describes the following strange occurrences in Pembrokeshire, Wales: 

“In this part of Pembrokeshire it has happened in our own times that foul spirits have held intercourse with men, not indeed so as to be seen, but so as to make themselves sensibly manifest . . . they rendered their presence known by the throwing of lumps of dirt and of other things meant to deride rather than to do bodily injury. In [William Not’s] house . . . they made rents and holes in garments both of linen and cloth . . . 

But what was stranger still, in [Stephen Wiriet’s] house the spirit used to talk with men, and when people bandied words with it, as many did in mockery, it taxed them with all the things they had ever done in their lives which they were least willing should be known or spoken about.”

Fast forward to 1958,  years after the publication of Herbert Thurston's book. In Long Island, New York, the Herrmann family began to experience strange phenomena in their new home. Bottles from the kitchen and bathroom were found upended and uncapped around the house, including a small vial of holy water the family kept on a bedroom dresser. 

Putting the strange events down to prankster teenagers, Herrmann later discovered bottles moving around the bathroom as if carried by an invisible force. He called the police, who themselves witnessed more bottles popping and exploding, and attempts to debunk the occurrences came up with nothing. 

The case quickly gained media attention and a priest was brought in to exorcise the spirit from the home. Dr. J.B. Rhine, of Duke University's Parapsychology Laboratory, also came to investigate. Rhine and his team theorized that the activity may be a result of the teenage children present in the home - as poltergeist activity seems to frequently correlate with moody teens. Following Rhine's investigation, the activity gradually decreased until it stopped and the family relocated. 

The Herrmann house, which interestingly was less than ten miles from the infamous Amityville Horror House, was likely one of the inspirations for the widely-known 1982 horror film "Poltergeist". While a lot of the activity attributed to the titular poltergeist in the film is not typical of recorded poltergeist phenomena, it threw the term and concept into the popular culture spotlight. It is a favorite of many horror film buffs even today. 

Strangely, and as a slightly off-topic but fascinating sidenote, many of those who worked on the film Poltergeist believe it to be cursed. Four cast members died during or shortly after filming, including the little girl in the film's lead role: Heather O'Rourke, who was only 12 at the time of her passing. Though it hasn't been confirmed, rumors circulated that real human skeletons were used in scenes of the film, and an actual exorcism was performed on set by one of the other cast members who died, Will Sampson.

So, how likely are you to encounter a poltergeist? Well, parapsychologists have noted that poltergeist phenomena seems to occur more often around women than men. And in many cases adolescents become the "focal agents" of the activity, giving rise to the theory of Spontaneous Recurring Psychokinesis - which Manchester Metropolitan University describes as when: 

"built-up stress . . . unconsciously projects outwards in the form of mental energy, which effects the physical environment and produce the phenomena attributed to Poltergeists."

This theory suggests that Poltergeists are not entities themselves but rather manifestations of overwhelming emotion from a living person. While the phenomena is certainly more likely to appear in a stressful or emotional home, based on prior cases, as with many tales of ghostly activity - it's hard to say what exactly poltergeists are for sure. They could be spirits of the dead, visitors from another plane, manifestations of emotion, or misinterpreted non-paranormal coincidences. We just can’t say for sure. 

Another great question is, if you’ve got a poltergeist, how do you get rid of it? Thurston laments that while there are a myriad of guidelines for performing demonic exorcisms, getting rid of a regular ghost doesn’t have a set formula to follow. 

But Thurston suggests that poltergeist hauntings usually clear up on their own after a while. If they don’t, holy objects, generic blessings and prayers, and holy water are your best bets. Or - you can simply learn to cohabitate with the mischievous spirits, as it’s unlikely that they’ll actually harm you. Just flip your sofa over and throw spoons around. 

That’s it for us today folks, thank you from the bottom of my heart for joining Scholar Minor once again. You can visit my website, www.ursaminorcreations.com, to check out previous episodes and some additional content. I’m also working on setting up a YouTube channel, so stay tuned for the details of that project. 

As always, a link to my website and a bibliography of my sources is available in the show notes. And I apologize that this episode is coming out a little later than usual - but I had a particularly hectic week and received my COVID vaccination - make sure you’re staying aware of eligibility requirements in your area, and get your vaccine! It’s easy, free, and good for you and your community. 

Take care, and I look forward to learning with you again next week.