From unexplained noises to flying objects to attacks on people, this is some of the strangest, scariest poltergeist activity ever documented

My huband and I moved in to a house in Greeley, Colorado in March of 2009. About a month ago, we were getting ready for bed, turned off the light and the tv, when we heard a noise coming from the dresser that's by the foot of our bed. The dresser has metal handles. It sounded like someone was lifting the handle and letting it drop.

November of 2013 up to now, Dunedin, Florida. After three months of weird stuff going on, I started to research it. First of all, I don't believe in ghosts or the devil and I am not religious. I sway to the Buddha and Hindu beliefs, but practice only being the best person I can be. My point is, I am simple and level-headed.

Rosalie The Child Ghost

 

He is known as Prince of Poltergeists.  When he was 15 years of age Price founded the Carlton Dramatic Society  and wrote small plays including a drama about his early experience with a poltergeist which he said took place at a haunted manor house in Shropshire.

A few years later, Price came to the attention of the Press when he claimed an early interest in space-telegraphy. He set up a receiver and transmitter between Telegraph Hill, Hatcham and St Peter's Church Brockley and captured a spark on a photographic plate, though according to the most recent biography of Price by Richard Morris, this was nothing more than Harry writing a press release saying he had done the experiment. Nothing was verified. The young Price also had an avid interest in coin collecting and wrote several articles for The Askean, the magazine for Haberdashers' School. In his autobiography, Search for Truth, written between 1941 and 1942, Price claimed he was involved with archaeological excavations in Greenwich Park, London but in earlier writings on Greenwich denied he had a hand in the excavation. From around May 1908 Price continued his interest in archaeology at Pulborough, Sussex where he had moved to before marrying Constance Mary Knight that August. As well as working for paper merchants Edward Saunders & Sons as a salesman he wrote for two local Sussex newspapers the West Sussex Gazette and the Southern Weekly News where he wrote about his remarkable propensity for discovering 'clean' antiquities. One of these, a silver ingot, was stamped around the time of the last Roman emperor Honorius, a few years after another celebrated Sussex archaeologist Charles Dawson found a brick at Pevensey Fort in Sussex which was purportedly made in Honorius' time. In 1910 Professor E.J Haverfield of Oxford University, the country's foremost expert on Roman history and a Fellow of the Royal Academy announced it a fake.

A report for the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries (number 23, pages 121-9) in the same year reported that:

'...the double axe type of silver ingot was well known and dated from late Imperial times but the one recovered from Sussex was an inferior copy of one found at the Tower of London, with alterations to give it an air of authenticity. Both the shape and lettering betrayed its origin.'

Price's first major success in psychical research came in 1922 when he exposed the 'spirit' photographer William Hope. During the same year, Price traveled to Germany together with Eric Dingwall and investigated Willi Schneider, traveled to Mount Brocken in Germany to conduct a 'black magic' experiment in connection with the centenary of Goethe, involving the transformation of a goat into a young man. The following year, Price made a formal offer to the University of London to equip and endow a Department of Psychical Research, and to loan the equipment of the National Laboratory and its library. The University of London Board of Studies in Psychology responded positively to this proposal and, in 1934, the University of London Council for Psychical Investigation was formed with Price as Honorary Secretary and Editor. In the meanwhile, in 1927, Price joined the Ghost Club, of which he remained a member until it (temporarily) closed in 1936.

In 1934, the National Laboratory of Psychical Research took on its most illustrious case. £50 was paid to the medium Helen Duncan so that she could be examined under scientific conditions. A sample of Helen Duncan's ectoplasm had been previously examined by the Laboratory and found to be largely made of egg white. Price found that Duncan's spirit manifestations were cheesecloth that had been swallowed and regurgitated by Duncan. Price later wrote up the case in Leaves from a Psychist’s Case Book in a chapter called "The Cheese-cloth Worshippers". During Duncan's famous trial in 1944, Price gave his results as evidence for the prosecution.

Price's psychical research continued with investigations into Karachi's Indian rope trick and the fire-walking abilities of Kuda Bux in 1935. He was also involved in the formation of the National Film Library (British Film Institute) becoming its first chairman (until 1941) and was a founding member of the Shakespeare Film Society. In 1936, Price broadcast from a supposedly haunted manor house in Meopham, Kent for the BBC and published The Confessions of a Ghost-Hunter and The Haunting of Cashen's Gap. This year also saw the transfer of Price's library on permanent loan to the University of London followed shortly by the laboratory and investigative equipment. In 1937, he conducted further televised experiments into fire-walking with Ahmed Hussain at Carshalton and Alexandra Palace, and also rented Borley Rectory for one year. The following year, Price re-established the Ghost Club, with himself as chairman, modernizing it and changing it from a spiritualist association to a group of more or less open-minded skeptics that gathered to discuss paranormal topics. He was also the first to admit women to the club.

In the same year, Price conducted experiments with Rahman Bey who was 'buried alive' in Carshalton and drafted a Bill for the regulation of psychic practitioners. In 1939, he organized a national telepathic test in the periodical John O'London's Weekly. During the 1940s, Price concentrated on writing and the works The Most Haunted House in England, Poltergeist Over England and The End of Borley Rectory were all published.

Price's archives were deposited with the University of London between 1976 and 1978 by his widow, and include his correspondence, drafts of his publications, papers relating to libel cases, reports on his investigations, press cuttings and photograp

In September 1878, Mr. Daniel Teed and his wife, Olive Cox Teed, lived on Princess Street in Amherst. Their household included Mrs. Teed's niece, 19-year-old Esther Cox. Miss Cox soon became famous as part of "The Great Amherst Mystery."

Before the ghostly manifestations, Miss Cox had been the victim of an attempted rape in a secluded part of Amherst. Her attacker, Bob MacNeal, was a shoemaker with a terrible reputation that Miss Cox had not known about. She escaped the attack with minor injuries. The "mysteries" started soon after this event.

The hauntings began with small poltergeist phenomena: little fires, voices, and rapping noise. It soon escalated to include times when Miss Cox would seem to inflate like a balloon, even to her extremities, and then abruptly return to normal size. These events were witnessed by a large number of people.

The hauntings followed Miss Cox outside the house. Once, the knocking and rapping noises interrupted a Baptist Church service that Miss Cox attended. Although she sat towards the back of the church, it sounded as though someone was hammering on the front pew, making it impossible to hear the service. Miss Cox left the church in humiliation, and the noises stopped immediately.

Desperate to find the source of the problem, Miss Cox tried automatic writing and consulted spiritualists. The primary ghost claimed, in automatic writing, to be Miss Maggie Fisher. Miss Fisher had attended the same school as Miss Cox, but had died around 1867, before graduating. Miss Cox had not known Miss Fisher, but was aware that they'd been in school together.

Other ghosts came forward during this time, announcing themselves as: Bob Nickle, age 60, also a shoemaker like Bob MacNeal who'd attacked Miss Cox. Another was Mary Fisher, sister of Maggie Fisher. Other ghosts included Peter Teed, John Nickle, and Eliza MacNeal. The number of ghosts and "coincidences" among names and professions reduces the credibility of this part of the story.

Further, Bob MacNeal, Miss Cox's attacker, later claimed that he'd been haunted for years by the same Bob Nickle. The accounts sound as though Mr. MacNeal was trying to shift the blame for his violent acts, to the ghost.

Nevertheless, Miss Cox continued to be plagued with hauntings wherever she went.

Hoping to turn her misfortunes to her advantage, Miss Cox went on tour in June 1879, hoping to draw audiences to hear her story and make a living from the income. She was assisted in this by actor Walter Hubbell, who'd visited Amherst specifically to witness the now-famous ghostly manifestations.

However, the crowds were skeptical and easily angered. One evening in a theatre, a rival theatre-owner leaped to his feet and began heckling Miss Cox and Mr. Hubbell. The crowd joined in, and soon a riot broke out. This was Miss Cox's last time on stage, as her touring efforts were a clear failure.

The series of manifestations continued until one dramatic event changed everything:

Miss Cox went to work for Arthur Davison of Amherst. Mr. Davison was a skeptic, although he admitted to witnessing numerous poltergeist events at his home when Miss Cox was there. The worst was when the ghost(s) set fire to his barn and it burned to the ground.

Mr. Davison accused Miss Cox of arson, and she was convicted of the crime by an ambivalent court. Her sentence was four months in prison, but public support for the unfortunate woman led to her release after only one month.

After that, Miss Cox was troubled by minor poltergeist events, but nothing significant.

She later married Mr. Adams of Springdale, Nova Scotia. Her second husband was Mr. Shanahan of Brockton, MA.

Esther Cox Shanahan died in 1912.

In 1948, a disturbed teenager named Wanet McNeill was forced to live with her father after her parent's bitter divorce. The girl and her father moved to an uncle's farm, just west of Macomb. Wanet was very unhappy with the situation and her emotions were high. Soon those emotions took a most dangerous course. In the weeks that followed, Wanet managed to start fires all over her uncle's farm with nothing other than the power of her mind. She had no idea that she was causing the phenomena. The kinetic energy in her body caused an eruption of power that ignited combustible material all over the house.

The mysterious fires began on August 7 at the farm of Charles Willey. He resided outside of Macomb with his wife, his brother-in-law and Wanet’s father, Arthur McNeil, McNeil’s two children, Arthur Jr., age 8 and Wanet, 13. McNeil had recently divorced and had gotten custody of the children. His former wife was now living in Bloomington, Illinois, where Wanet desperately wanted to be.

The fires began as small brown spots that appeared on the wallpaper of the house. Seconds after they appeared, they would burst into flames. This began to happen day after day and neighbors came to help keep watch and to dowse the small fires with water. Pans and buckets were placed all over the house in preparation. Still, the fires materialized in front of the startled witnesses. Volunteers began standing by with hoses and buckets of water to put out the blazes. The fire chief from Macomb, Fred Wilson, was called in to investigate and he had the family strip all of the wallpaper from every wall in the house. Dozens of witnesses then watched as brown spots appeared on the bare plaster and then burst into flames. More small blazes even spread to the ceiling.

"The whole thing is so screwy and fantastic that I’m ashamed to talk about it," Wilson said. "Yet we have at least a dozen reputable witnesses that say they saw brown spots smolder suddenly on the walls and ceilings of the home and then burst into flames."

During the week of August 7, fires appeared on the front porch, ignited the curtains in every room, and even engulfed an entire bed. The National Fire Underwriters Laboratory investigated and reported that the wallpaper had been coated with flour paste (a flame retardant) and that no flammable compound, such as insect repellant, was present. They had no explanation for the fires they witnessed.

In addition to insurance investigators, the Illinois State Fire Marshal, John Burgard, also visited the farm. "Nobody has ever seen anything like this," he announced to the press, "but I saw it with my own eyes".

That week, over two hundred fires broke out and on August 14 finally consumed the entire house. Willey drove posts into the ground and made a shelter for he and his wife while McNeil moved his children into the garage. The next day, the barn went up in flames, followed by the milk house (being used as a dining room) on Tuesday. On Thursday, two fires were discovered in the chicken house and that same afternoon, the farm’s second barn burned down in less than an hour. A company that sold fire extinguishers was on hand with equipment, but it did little good. An employee of the company stated that "it was the most intense heat that I’ve ever felt."

The family escaped to a nearby vacant house but the fires continued. The United States Air Force even got involved in the mystery. They suggested that the fires could be caused by some sort of directed radiation (presumably from the Russians!) but could offer no further assistance.

By this time, the farm was swarming with spectators, investigators, and reporters. Over one thousand people came to the farm on August 22! Theorists and curiosity-seekers posed their own theories and explanations. They ran the gamut from fly spray to radio waves, underground gas pockets, flying saucers and more. The authorities had a more down-to- earth explanation in mind. They suspected arson. They realized that they could not solve the riddle as to how fires could appear before the eyes of reliable witnesses, but things were getting out of hand on the Willey farm. An explanation needed to be discovered, and quickly!

On August 30, the mystery was announced solved. The arsonist, according to officials, was Wanet. They claimed that she was starting the fires with kitchen matches when no one was looking, ignoring the witness reports of fires that sprang up from nowhere, including on the ceiling. Apparently, this slight thirteen-year-old girl possessed some pretty amazing skills, along with a seemingly endless supply of matches!

Fire Marshal Burgard and a State’s Attorney named Keith Scott had taken Wanet aside for an hour’s worth of "intense questioning". After that, she had allegedly confessed. She stated that she was unhappy, didn’t like the farm, wanted to see her mother and most telling, that she didn’t have pretty clothes. The mystery was solved! This was in spite of the fact that witnesses to the fires had seen them appear on walls, floors and even on ceilings, all when Wanet was not even in the room.

This explanation pleased the authorities but not all of the reporters who were present seemed convinced. The hundreds of paranormal investigators who have examined the case over the years have not been reassured either. One columnist from a Peoria newspaper, who had covered the case from the beginning, stated quite frankly that he did not believe the so-called "confession". Neither did noted researcher Vincent Gaddis, who wrote about the case in his landmark book "Mysterious Fires and Lights". He was convinced the case was a perfect example of poltergeist phenomena.

What really happened on the Willey Farm? We will probably never know because the story just went away after that. Wanet was turned over to her grandmother. The insurance company paid Willey for the damage done to his home and farm. The reporters all had closure for their stories and the general public was given a solution that could not have possibly been the truth. But that’s often the case, isn’t it?

The Smurl Haunting was an alleged demonic possession in the United States, on which the film The Haunted was based.
The claimed incidents began in 1974 and lasted until 1989 in the home of Jack and Janet Smurl in West Pittston, Pennsylvania. Whether the haunting was genuine or an elaborate hoax is debated.
The Smurl house was split. Jack and Janet lived in one half of the abode while Jack's parents, John and Mary, lived in the other half of the semi-detached house.
According to the Smurls, the first signs of paranormal activity began in 1974. They reported that a television set burst into flames, and a stain appeared on a carpet overnight. Water pipes began to leak even though they were repeatedly resoldered by a plumber, and scratches resembling those from a large cat appeared on paintwork and bathroom fittings.
By 1977, the reported events were escalating. Toilets flushed without human intervention, footsteps were heard on the stairs, chest drawers opened and closed unaided, radios worked when they were not plugged in, rocking chairs rocked while empty, and a sour smell filled the house.
In 1985, John and Mary claimed to hear loud, obscene language, and Jack and Janet's house became often extremely cold.
Two days after this, an icy cold swept the house and a strange black human shape allegedly materialised in the kitchen in front of Janet. It was about five feet nine inches tall, and with no facial features. It later appeared to Mary Smurl in her kitchen.
The violence and frequency of the events continued to escalate.
In 1986, the family brought in a controversial pair of demonologists, Ed and Lorraine Warren, who announced the house was haunted by three minor spirits and a powerful, evil demon. They tried to persuade the demon to leave by playing holy music and praying. The alleged demon reacted by shaking mirrors, dressers and drawers.
Jack alleges he was raped one night by a scale-covered succubus with a young girl's body and an old woman's head. Janet also claimed she was sexually assaulted by a shadowy humanoid figure (described as an incubus), and that pig noises were heard from the wall cavities. The attack on Janet and the shadowy apparition are similar to the description of the attacks on Carla Moran that were portrayed in the movie, "The Entity".
The Smurls brought in Father Robert McKenna. He conducted two exorcisms in Latin and more than fifty Catholic Masses, which allegedly infuriated the demon further. The demon was said to follow them on a vacation to the Poconos and harass Jack at work.
It was at this point the Smurls appeared on television on a Philadelphia talk show called The People are Talking hosted by Richard Bey. The demon allegedly reacted by raping Jack again, and appearing to him as a half-man, half-pig. Janet was throttled and thrown about by invisible forces.
One obvious question that skeptics always ask is why the couple did not move out of their house if the attacks were so violent and distressing. The Smurl's response being that the demon could apparently follow them anywhere; having shown this to them when they abandoned the house for a week only to be intensly harassed at the campground where they were staying.

Some of the best-documented, frightening, and controversial poltergeist cases of the last 30 years.

CHAIRS MOVE ABOUT by themselves. Walls shake from loud, unexplained banging. Water drips from a ceiling. Hairbrushes disappear for days, only to reappear in their place on the dresser. These are some of the classic symptoms of a poltergeist haunting. From the German for “noisy ghost,” a poltergeist refers to phenomena usually credited to mischievous spirits or ghosts and are characterized by psychokinesis or other physical manifestations.

Cases have been cited almost since the beginning of recorded history. Three famous cases have taken place in this century, gaining notoriety, perhaps, because they have been extensively investigated, reported, and in some cases even photographed and videotaped.

• The Thornton Heath Poltergeist Case •
Twenty-seven years ago, in Thornton Heath, England, a family was tormented by poltergeist phenomena that started one August night when they were woken in the middle of the night by a blaring bedside radio that had somehow turned itself on – tuned to a foreign-language station. This was the beginning of a string of events that lasted nearly four years. A lampshade repeatedly was knocked to the floor by unaided hands. During the Christmas season of 1972, an ornament was hurled across the room, smashing into the husband’s forehead. “As he flopped into an armchair,” reports Haunted Croydon [link no longer works], “the Christmas tree began to shake violently. Come the New Year and there were footsteps in the bedroom when there was no one there, and one night the couple’s son awoke to find a man in old fashioned dress staring threateningly at him. The family’s fear grew when, as they entertained friends one night, there was a loud knocking at the front door, the living room door was then flung open and all the house’s lights came on.”

Having the house blessed failed to rid the house of the phenomena. “Objects flew through the air, loud noises were heard and the family would sometimes hear a noise which suggested some large piece of furniture... had crashed to floor. When they went to investigate, nothing would be disturbed.”

A medium who was consulted told the family that the house was haunted by a farmer of the name Chatterton, who considered the family trespassers on his property. An investigation bore out the fact that had indeed lived in the house in the mid-18th century. “Chatterton’s wife now joined in in causing mayhem, and often the tenant’s wife would be followed up the stairs at night by an elderly gray-haired woman wearing a pinafore and with her hair tied back in a bun. If looked at, she would disappear back into the shadows. The family even reported seeing the farmer appear on their television screens, wearing a black jacket with wide, pointed lapels, high-necked shirt and black cravat.”

After the family moved out of the house, the poltergeist activity ceased, and none have been reported by subsequent residents.

• The Enfield Poltergeist Case •
Another English ghost – this one in Enfield in North London – made headlines in 1977. The strange activity seemed to center around the daughter of Peggy Harper, a divorcee in her mid-40s. Again, it started on an August night. “Late at night,” An Urban Ghost Story relates, “Janet, aged 11 and her brother Pete, aged 10, complained that their beds were ‘jolting up and down and going all funny.’ As soon as Mrs. Harper got to the room, the movements had stopped – as far as she was concerned her kids were making it all up.”

But things got progressively more bizarre from there. Shuffling noises and knocks on the wall were followed by a heavy chest of drawers sliding by itself across the floor. Mrs. Harper promptly got her children out of the house and sought the assistance of a neighbor. “The neighbors searched the house and garden but found no one. Soon they also heard the knocks on the walls which continued at spaced out intervals. At 11 p.m. they called the police, who heard the knocks, one officer even saw a chair inexplicably move across the floor, and later signed a written statement to confirm the events.”

Several people were witness to the events that occurred in the following days: Lego bricks and marbles were thrown around the house, and were often hot to the touch. In September of that year, Maurice Grosse of the Society for Psychical Research came to investigate. “Grosse claims that he experienced the strange happenings – first a marble was thrown at him from an unseen hand, he saw doors open and close by themselves, and claimed to feel a sudden breeze that seemed to move up from his feet to his head.”

Grosse was later joined in the investigation by writer Guy Lyon Playfair, and together they studied the case for two years. “The knocking on walls and floors became an almost nightly occurrence, furniture slid across the floor and was thrown down the stairs, drawers were wrenched out of dressing tables. Toys and other objects would fly across the room, bedclothes would be pulled off, water was found in mysterious puddles on the floors, there were outbreaks of fire followed by their inexplicable extinguishing.”

The case became decidedly unnerving when the spirits revealed themselves – through Janet. Speaking in a deep, gravely voice through Janet, the spirit announced that his name was Bill and had died in the house – a fact that has been verified. The voices and the phenomenon have been recorded on tape and film, and Playfair has written a book about the case called This House is Haunted. Despite the documentation, however, much controversy surrounds the case. Skeptics claim that the case is nothing more than the work of a very clever and mischievous girl – Janet. The poltergeist activity always stopped when she was watched closely, and when she was taken to a hospital for several days to be tested for physical or mental abnormality, the phenomena ceased in the house. Some researchers believe that Janet taught herself to speak in the strange male voice, and that photos of her levitating in her bedroom merely caught her jumping off her bed. Was this poltergeist case just the result of an attention-seeking 11-year-old?

• The Danny Poltergeist Case •
In 1998, Jane Fishman, a reporter for the Savannah Morning News, began a series of articles about a possibly haunted antique bed in the home of Al Cobb of Savannah, Georgia. Cobb bought the vintage late-1800s bed at an auction as a Christmas present for his 14-year-old son, Jason – a purchase he later regretted.

“Three nights later,” Fishman reported, “Jason told his parents he felt as if someone had planted elbows on his pillow and was watching him and breathing cold air down the back of his neck. He felt sick. The next night he noticed the photo of his deceased grandparents on his wicker nightstand flipped down. So he righted it. The next day, the photo was facing down again. Later that morning, after leaving his room for breakfast, he returned and found in the middle of his bed two Beanie Babies – the zebra and the tiger – next to a conch shell, a dinosaur made of shells and a plaster toucan bird. That got his parents’ – and his twin brother, Lee’s – attention. Trying to make sense of the irrational, Al called out, ‘Do we have a Casper here? Tell me your name and how old you are.’ Then he left some lined composition paper and crayons and, with his family, walked out of the room. In 15 minutes they returned and found written vertically in large block childlike letters, ‘Danny, 7.’”

With his family out of the house, Al Cobb decided to continue trying to communicate with the spirit of Danny. With the same kind of notes, Danny indicated that his mother had died in that bed in 1899, and that he wanted to stay with the bed. He also made it clear that he didn’t want anyone else sleeping in it. “The same day they found a note reading, ‘No one sleep in bed,’ Jason, who had moved out of the room, decided to stretch out and pretend to take a nap. That, says Al, was a mistake. ‘I doubled back in the room to pick up my clothes,’ remembers Jason, ‘when this terra cotta head that had been hanging on the wall came flying through the room, just missing me before it smashed on the closet door.’”

“No one really knows,” Fishman writes in her second installment, “who – or what – is leaving the copious notes, moving the furniture, opening the kitchen drawers, setting the dining room table, flipping over the chairs, lighting the candles, arranging the posters to spell out a person’s name, Jill, then hanging the finished product on a bedroom wall. Jason also spoke of other spirits: ‘Uncle Sam,’ who had come to reclaim his daughter he said was buried under the house; ‘Gracie,’ a young girl whose sculpture sits in Bonaventure Cemetery; and ‘Jill,’ a young woman who left a number of handwritten messages, among them one inviting the Cobbs to a party in their living room.”

Parapsychologist Andrew Nichols, head of the Florida Society for Parapsychological Research, investigated the case. “What happened at the Cobbs,” he told Fishman, “– more specifically to Jason – would have happened without ‘Danny,’ or the bed. It was the electromagnetic energy of the wall – that Jason started sleeping next to when they moved the bed there – that charged a psychic ability that the boy already had.

Poltergeists that Follow People
Poltergeist activity is a fairly common paranormal phenomenon experienced all over the world. While people define poltergeist in many different ways, most define poltergeist to be spirits or mental activities that makes themselves known by moving objects. The ghost, energy or phantom is usually invisible and tends to make a lot of noise.

Causes of Poltergeist Activity
Spirit-generated poltergeists are said to be created by the violent or angry death of a person who places a "mark" on the area where the death occurred. The energy created by the anger or violence supposedly replays through poltergeist activity over and over throughout time.

Many also believe that a poltergeist can be caused by a person's pent-up mental frustrations being released on objects. This psychokinetic activity, or "mind over matter," results in a release of psychic energy. Mental poltergeist activity can result in a shaking bed, moving objects and other frightening events.
Early Poltergeist Reports
One of the first known accounts of poltergeist activity happened in London in 1698. Mr. Ricard Chamberlain wrote about a poltergeist known to him years before in a pamphlet called Lithobolia. Lithobolia, which means "stone-throwing devil," is a typical account of a spirit poltergeist.

According to Chamberlain, an invisible witch or evil spirit of some type tortured a family by throwing stones, bricks and other large items for several months.
Poltergeists that Follow People
Poltergeists that follow people are also commonly reported. In these cases, it seems as if the poltergeist has chosen the specific person to follow from place to place. A classic example of a poltergeist following people is seen in the Rosenheim case of 1967. Annemarie Schneider was a 19 year old secretary in a law firm in Rosenheim, Germany when she supposedly began causing mental poltergeist activity.

While the poltergeist activity started in the law firm, it followed her as she changed jobs. This case, one of the first known poltergeists to be filmed, has not been disproven to this day. At the time, Dr. Friedbert Karger, a physicist from the Max Planck Institute, documented and investigated the events.
Getting Rid of a Poltergeist
According to paranormal experts, there is no known way to be rid of poltergeist activity once it starts. In the case of Annemarie Schneider, she was relieved of her traveling poltergeist when the phenomenon finally just ebbed away.

Mental poltergeist activity may be solved by simply avoiding the causes of stress or finding other ways of releasing stress. An investigation may be held to determine the root cause of mental poltergeist activity. This usually entails interviews with family and friends of the person experiencing the activity.

During a poltergeist investigation, experts take notes to find any patterns in the activity before, during and after the poltergeist event to see if the recurring instances of poltergeist activity have anything in common. A poltergeist investigation may be held by a psychic who tries to connect with any residual energy left from the occurrence.

Overall, the existence of poltergeist phenomena is open to debate. There is little documentation concerning poltergeist events, though many people over the years have claimed to have poltergeist experiences.

(from German poltern, meaning to rumble or make noise, and Geist, meaning "ghost", "spirit", or "embodiment") denotes a spirit or ghost that manifests itself by moving and influencing objects.

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 province 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.

Poltergeist activity originates with agents

Poltergeist activity tends to occur around a single person called an agent or a focus Foci are often, but not limited to, pubescent children. Almost seventy years of research by the Rhine Research Center in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, has led to the hypothesis among parapsychologists that the "poltergeist effect" is a form of psychokinesis generated by a living human mind (that of the agent). According to researchers at the Rhine Center, the "poltergeist effect" is the outward manifestation of psychological trauma.[citation needed]

Separate existences

Poltergeists might simply exist, like the "elementals" described by occultists.

Another version posits that poltergeists originate after a person dies in a powerful rage at the time of death. According to yet another opinion, ghosts and poltergeists are "recordings." When there is a powerful emotion, sometimes at death and sometimes not, a recording is believed to be "embedded" in a place or, somehow, in the "fabric of time" itself. This recording will continue to play over and over again until the energy embedded disperses.

However some poltergeists have had the ability to articulate themselves and to have distinct personalities, which suggests some sort of self-awareness and intent. Practitioners of astral projection have reported the existence of unfriendly astral life forms, which Robert Bruce called "negs" (whom we might also identify with elementals). If they exist, these may well have the ability to affect the physical world.[citation needed]


Caused by physical forces

Poltergeists are ghosts that make noises or move objects through the air. While ghost hunters are ghost hunting it is sometimes dangerous if there is a poltergeist around. Some scientists and skeptics propose that all poltergeist activity that they can't trace 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, though criminologist Herbert Schäfer quotes an unnamed detective watching the agent pushing a lamp when she thought nobody was looking. However, 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. Poltergeists are dangerous, they may kill people.

John Hutchinson has claimed that he has created poltergeist effects in his laboratory. Also worth noting is that scientist David Turner proposes that poltergeists and ball lightning may be linked phenomena. [2] Some scientists go as far as calling them pseudo-psychic phenomena and claim that under some circumstances they are caused by obscure physical effects.[3] 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, [4] 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.[5]

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.

See also:

* Hutchinson effect
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 when you do not catch them, the phenomenon is genuine. 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 most agreed upon hypothesis among most scientists is a mixture of the self-delusion and hoax hypothesis and a bit of the caused by scientifically explained forces hypothesis [tremors, abnormal air currents etc ]

Famous poltergeist infestations

Although poltergeist stories date back to the first century, most evidence to support 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; however there are a few that do not, for example, the Miami poltergeist has event records signed by all witnesses as to the way things happened. These witnesses include police officers, a skeptical magician, and workers at the warehouse. The Rosenheim case is another, with multiple witnesses and unexplained electric and telephonic phenomena.

* An "evil spirit" threw stones and made the walls shake in a small farmhouse. This was the first recorded poltergeist case. (858)
* Drummer of Tedworth (1661).
* 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.
* Hopfgarten near Weimar (1921).
* Eleonore Zugun - The Romanian 'Poltergeist Girl' (1926).
* The Borley Rectory phenomena (1929).
* The Rosenheim Poltergeist (1967). (German and most extensive).
* The Black Monk of Pontefract
* The Enfield Poltergeist (1977).
* The Miami Poltergeist, a poltergeist witnessed by police and a skeptical magician who did not believe it was a ghost, but admitted he witnessed phenomena he could not explain. Many others witnessed phenomena including reporters, parapsychologists, and workers at the warehouse.
* 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
* 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.
* In Denver, Colorado there have been several reports of unknown forces positioning toys, furniture, and objects in patterns and strange positions.
* The Thornton Road poltergeist of Birmingham (1981).
* Easington Council in County Durham, UK paid a medium to exorcise a poltergeist from public housing in Peterlee as it was deemed more cost effective than relocation of the tenant (2008).

Although some parapsychologists suggest that poltergeists could be a form of recurrent PK, there is very little evidence for PK recorded on film or witnessed by objective parties. There are famous poltergeist cases where the activity was seen by objective parties and even skeptics