Poltergeist is translated as "noisy spirit" for a reason. With this phenomenon, there is often a characteristic spoilage of various things. Nasty things of this kind, in addition to purely material damage, bring moral damages to the owners of "bad" apartments: they are accused that they themselves staged the destruction of the apartment, but a thorough search for any self-interest usually does not yield results.
Drawing by Sebastian Mayer
With poltergeist, there are different types and methods of damage to home, household items and objects. The latter are often destroyed upon collision with the surface on which they fell. But there is a whole group of obvious violations of the physical integrity of objects in the absence of obvious physical reasons.
This is most often the deformation of metal things. They bend or break - as if by themselves. For example, in one case, bystanders sitting around the wearer heard the sound of metal cutting and saw that a metal tape worn on a person's wrist was falling off his hand.
Another poltergeist carrier was able to bend the teeth of a metal fork with light strokes. By the way, the famous Uri Geller is most famous for his ability to bend various metal objects with light touches.
Sometimes the destructive effects are wild, violent and unbridled: it is even known that the roof of a house is deflected due to the outbreak of a powerful poltergeist! But this is an exception. Much more often round holes begin to gap in the window panes. Sometimes they appear as if by themselves, sometimes - as a result of a lightning throw of an object at the window.
Some objects break into very small pieces. A case is described when books, thrown by an instant impact on the floor, broke into pieces, as if they were made of glass! In another case, coffee cups were scattered into twenty or more pieces, so small that they could never be obtained in the "investigative experiment." Glassware may break into small granules. But it also happens that very fragile things that have fallen to the floor do not break.
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Sometimes there is spontaneous tearing or ripping of clothes, shoes, hats. So, in the middle of the eighteenth century in Italy, a fourteen-year-old carrier of the phenomenon was literally harassed for several months by the fact that his wig and clothes were constantly torn to shreds.
The same thing happened with new clothes and wigs: they immediately fell from the body, torn to pieces. This usually happened in the presence of witnesses who stood nearby, looking in surprise at what was happening.
In 1682 in England, wigs worn by a 21-year-old young man were torn to pieces right on his head. In the winter and spring of 1990, T-shirts, underpants, shirts, trousers, boots of nine-year-old Sasha from the village of Sovkhoznoe, Nikolaev region, Ukraine, a carrier of rather violent and cruel manifestations, were constantly torn.
Drawing by Sebastian Mayer
In general, a poltergeist is characterized by numerous breakdowns of various household items, their mechanical damage. For example, in an electric typewriter, springs weaken or the buttons of some letters begin to "jam", the operation of a vacuum cleaner, washing machine and other household appliances is incomprehensibly disrupted. The corresponding masters are powerless to eliminate violations, which sometimes stop by themselves.
Out of 500 outbreaks of poltergeist, spontaneous breakdowns were noted in 24 cases (5 percent), tearing and cutting of fabrics, clothes, hats - in 30 (6 percent), deformation and breakage of metal things - in 6 (1 percent), damage to domestic plants, their uprooting - 5 (1 percent), damage to buildings - 18 (4 percent).
Inhabitants of poltergeist apartments sometimes go to court with a request to provide new housing, even in cases where there are no threatening breakdowns and destruction. So, in April 1988, the Associated Press reported the following message:
Eastingham. The authorities of the English city of Nottingham have decided that a special panel of judges should consider the lawsuit of the family of John and Hellen Castello to replace their state apartment, in which they claim ghosts have settled.
The family, in which there are three children, left their former apartment in May last year, as they were shocked by a whole series of unusual phenomena that took place in it: the inexplicable movement of furniture without any human intervention, the mystical pulling of cords from electrical plugs and the sounds of a guitar. which none of those present touched.
Several police officers and two employees of the local municipality witnessed some strange phenomena."
Whether the court satisfied that request of the plaintiffs, it was not possible to find out. However, in some cases, the impossibility of living in apartments with noisy spirits who have moved in is so obvious to the authorities that they themselves provide the victims with new housing, even if they did not even think to go to court. A similar thing happened in Poland in 1985 and in the USSR in 1990.
In the small Polish town of Myszkow, in September 1985, noisy spirits began to create disorder in one of the apartments where a married couple lived with three teenage children. It all started with knocking on the door, then objects began to fall and move, then they began to appear in the hallway.
There, in an unknown way, suddenly materialized at a height of one and a half meters from the floor and with force were hit by glasses, glasses, a jug, cans, an alarm clock, a spatula for dough, bottles, bowls, a basin, glasses, a bronze figurine, a jar of pickled mushrooms, an umbrella, empty cans, tin can with nails, empty canary cage, packs and bags of groceries, juice bottle, large and small plates, ashtray, saucers, can lids, sugar in a glass jar, custard kettle, pepper shaker, rearview mirror from cars, decorative fungi, butter, bread, margarine, mustard, tea in a can and in a pack, an aluminum cup holder, a can with sugar residues, a coffee mill, a pepper mill, a camera, kitchen knives, spoons.
All this somehow overcame doors, glass, brick walls, reinforced concrete floors, refrigerator walls and hit the floor in the hallway with force.
Everything that could break was beating. That which did not beat at once was shattered later, large fragments repeatedly shattered into small ones. Some glass objects burst as if from pressure from the inside into very small pieces. Heaps of glass dust or small grains remained on the floor from the necks of the bottles. Objects exploded with a sound of up to eight to ten decibels.
Bottles and other items from neighboring apartments, including the floor below, appeared in the hallway. There were also, but no one knows where, wine glasses, a 400 W electric stove, window glass and potatoes. In some cases, after the explosion of glass objects in the hallway of the lower apartment, fragments were found from what broke up above.
All objects being moved after falling had a temperature several degrees higher than the ambient temperature, which was felt when touched. In one case, a half-liter enamel jug moved into the hallway got so hot that it hissed when filled with water and the enamel bounced off its bottom.
On December 24, 1985, the city authorities allocated new housing to the unfortunate family. By March 1986, the poltergeist was on the decline.
Drawing by Sebastian Mayer
In Moscow, in late October - early November 1989, a destructive poltergeist broke out in one of the apartments on Marshal Konev Street. The eyewitnesses were not only the inhabitants of the apartment, but also their relatives, acquaintances, neighbors at the entrance, as well as the deputy head of the 132nd police station, Major Nikogosov, Major Khatskevich and police sergeants Altukhov, Vasilkov, Vasilyuk, Kuryanov, Makarov, Yunko.
Something phantasmagoric was happening in the apartment. By themselves, various objects were thrown off, flying or falling, gas and water taps were opened, electric lamps exploded, window glasses cracked and broke - first internal, then external, glass shades of chandeliers beat.
The electricity meter turned out of the panel by itself, then the panel itself, the apartment was de-energized, but the outrage continued. Major Nikogosov ordered everyone to leave the apartment and into the stairwell and checked to see if anyone was left. After that, a powerful explosion was heard in the empty apartment. In the place of the toilet, as it was soon discovered, only a heap of fragments remained.
Another time, in an empty apartment without people, a three-liter glass jar broke into small granules. Before the eyes of militiaman Vasilkov, in the room where, except for him, there was no one else, one of the two stools standing next to each other rolled noisily on the floor. After driving half a meter, she suddenly stopped. Policeman Vasilyuk saw how the nickle was moving on the floor with a clatter.
The greatest atrocities took place in the bathroom. Once a fountain of hot water hit there. The plumbers who were called said that the hot water tap had been cut off like a razor: "We would like this!"
The brackets that held the sink protruded from the bathroom wall. They were laid on the floor together with the sink. After a while there was an explosion: the sink was shattered, each of the cast-iron brackets was split into two parts. Two cast-iron legs escaped from under the bathtub, one of them split along.
From time to time there was a pungent smell of ozone. The general devastation was completed by the second fire. It flashed at the same time in two rooms, separated by a third, which did not burn. Living in such a restless apartment became not only impossible, but also dangerous. I had to urgently evacuate.
The family remained practically on the street. Naturally, the question arose about providing an equivalent apartment. People's deputies, first deputy chairman of the Voroshilov district executive committee MM Chikin, the Commission for the Study of Poltergeist and Other Unexplained Phenomena of the Bioenergoinformatics Committee at the Union of Scientific and Engineering Societies of the USSR joined in its decision.
Several meetings of the housing commission of the district executive committee took place, then the issue was considered at the district executive committee itself. It was resolved positively:
"The order for the apartment was received by the Sokolov family, in whose house an unusual incident took place," the newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda reported in its March 3, 1990 issue. “Unfortunately,” the newspaper noted, we do not yet have a law that would guarantee social protection of victims of poltergeist.”
Based on materials from the book "Poltergeists", author I. Vinokurov
