Part I
On the pages of books by Stephen King or Edgar Poe, mystical plots seem to be something far from reality. But there are anomalies that people come across every now and then in life. One of these "outrageous" phenomena is the mystery of the poltergeist. Where does this phenomenon come from? How did the hypothesis that it was caused by children came about?
What is a poltergeist
From the point of view of "normal" science, a poltergeist is an element of popular consciousness, a mythological and folklore character, or even (if we are talking about modernity) an example of mass "psychosis", shared schizophrino delirium, or even banal charlatanism. From the point of view of paranormal science, poltergeist is a very real phenomenon. But many "venerable" esotericists are not able to find an unambiguous explanation for him.
The mystery of the poltergeist has worried mankind since ancient times. The earliest reports of the anomalous presence of evil spirits date back to the first century AD. Some researchers point to evidence of a poltergeist in the Bible. Others point out that characters with similar functions are found in pre-Christian fairy tales and legends of various cultures. So, among the Slavs, the role of a poltergeist is played by the figure of a brownie or a bannik. And in Germanic mythology there is an ugly dwarf Kobald, who sometimes, being embittered with the owners of the house, can cause disorder and chaos in the house. However, the poltergeist has his own stable image, different from specific mythological heroes.
Poltergeist in history and its study
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From the Middle Ages until the beginning of the 21st century, written evidence of a collision of people with an unusual force that did not have a visible appearance, but clearly manifested itself outwardly, appeared in different countries every now and then. Broken household utensils, spilled water, flying furniture - this is just an incomplete list of poltergeist "pranks". Where it comes from, science could not give an answer, and traditional consciousness explained this by the anger of ancestors, the intrigues of Satan or the spirits of the dead.
In the 19th century, with the spread of spiritual practices and the growing fashion for idealistic teachings, researchers of the paranormal began to study the poltergeist. Many of them were physicists: for example, Sir William Barrett, who founded the famous Society for Psychical Research. Another well-known spiritualist, Alexander Aksakov, wrote about involuntary mediumistic practices (moving objects) in Russia. He first coined the term "telekinesis".
At the beginning of the same 19th century, the most famous case of aggressive poltergeist behavior in history occurred. In the American state of Tennessee, in the area of one of the farms, voices, singing and laughter began to be heard, and then a "arsonist" witch began to appear in the house of farmer John Bell - presumably the previous mistress of his possessions, whom an enterprising American drove from his land. Later it turned out that this story is just a local tale, one of the many legends of the New World about poltergeists. In one of the transcriptions, Bell dies from poison, in another - from the hand of a witch, in the third - from the spirit of a slave he once killed, in the fourth - from a fire in the house.
Where does the poltergeist come from - bold assumptions
Paranormal researchers have developed several hypotheses for the appearance of a poltergeist. Spiritualists traditionally believe that mysterious movements are carried out by the spirits of the dead or by ghosts. This point of view is shared, for example, by Ian Stevenson. Despite his classical education (psychiatric), he attributed anomalies not only to living, but also to “dead” agents and allowed them to be dealt with with the help of exorcism.
Poltergeist interpretations often directly reflect intellectual fashion trends. In the twenties and thirties, during the psychoanalysis craze, for example, the appearance of the poltergeist was associated with sexual disorders, especially with those that occur during puberty. It is noteworthy that back in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, researchers began to notice an obvious connection between the "poltergeist" and the presence of a teenager or a child at the place of its discovery …
Adult? Get it
Parapsychology is a study of the influence of the psyche on the material world, not recognized by academic science. Parapsychologists are actively studying the manifestations of poltergeist. Over time, they began to attribute it to the phenomenon of psychokinesis. They consider moving objects, rustles, smells and other "signs" of evil spirits to be the result of negative emotions displaced into the outside world. This point of view is shared, for example, by William Roll and Nandor Fodor, who believe that in most cases the poltergeist is caused by people with an unstable psyche, adolescents or children.
Over time, this version became especially popular among researchers and overshadowed all other hypotheses (for example, such as geomagnetic anomalies or unexplained physical phenomena). Now, not only in the pages of esoteric literature, but also in the media, stories began to appear about children and adolescents who unconsciously take revenge on others and take out grievances on them with clots of uncontrollable energy. Since most often the center of the conflict field is the family, the manifestations of the poltergeist, as a rule, are found in the house.
Several documentaries were shot on this topic: for example, a film about a poltergeist in Anfield, which was unconsciously trying to attract the attention of a single mother with many children, was called by 12-year-old Janet. By the end of the 20th century, versions of child and adolescent psychokinesis managed to almost completely conquer the minds of poltergeist researchers. While on the threshold of the XXI century, children in this story remain “extreme”. And neither "normal" nor "para-" science has found a more intelligible explanation of the poltergeist phenomenon. But all this leaves researchers with a lot of reasons for scientific research. Since the secret of a poltergeist is a mystery not only from the realm of the supernatural, but also a key to understanding the development of social thought.
Part II. Are poltergeist manifestations unfunny jokes or wild fantasies?
From German, Poltergeist is translated as "knocking spirit". According to popular belief, it appears unexpectedly and manifests itself in the form of extraneous sounds, smells, and movement of objects. Since the 17th century, there are many records of encounters with this phenomenon. What manifestations of poltergeist do people observe most often?
Arsons - how are they related to poltergeist?
The famous "poltergeist arsonist" worked in the early 19th century in the area of Tennessee, Texas. Legend has it that for several months one of the local farmers and his neighbors heard singing, ominous laughter and voices in the area. Their source, according to legends, was the spirit of a witch who took revenge for being driven from the earth during her lifetime. At night, she made her way inside houses and set fire to objects that were near people - for example, a blanket.
Nandor Fodor describes similar incidents of fire in the book "The Rage That Sinks At Home". So, in the town of Amherst in Nova Scotia, lighted matches flew to the bed from the ceiling from nowhere. And in Talladega, Alabama, a father of six has had a ceiling fire in his own home more than twenty times. In a few days, the poltergeist managed to deprive him of almost all of his property.
Voices, rustles and other sounds: when it doesn't exactly "seem" …
Aggressive poltergeist behavior is more rare than a rule. More often, eyewitnesses who encounter it hear "voices", laughter, singing, whistling, hum and other sounds. The same "witch Belov" allegedly killed the owner of her beloved house not by fire, but by beating. At that moment, the household heard swearing and screaming at home, and some time after the funeral of the father of the family, a voice from the fireplace announced that he would return in seven years.
In 1967, at the legal office of the city of Roseinham in Bavaria, noises and rustles were accompanied by telephone rings and interruptions in the operation of electrical appliances. Researchers who have dealt with this case have found that the poltergeist is especially active in the presence of a nineteen-year-old girl. Parapsychologists regard this case as one of the many confirmations of their hypothesis that poltergeist is not an independent phenomenon, but an unconscious psychological "projection" of suppressed emotions.
Household manifestations of poltergeists - playing with electricity and household utensils
Traffic jams in the presence of a poltergeist burned out not only in Rosenheim. At the end of the eighties, in the house of the Roshchins family near Moscow, the electricity meter burned out, then began to work again and gave readings sixty times more than the norm. Such manifestations of poltergeist are sometimes initially associated not with "otherworldly anomalies", but with the phenomenon of people, in whose presence household appliances break down and electricity fails.
Another poltergeist habit is to spill water, write graffiti on walls, and change the temperature and weight of objects. So, in British Anfield in the late seventies, an invisible force made "hot" children's toys, knocked over to her on the floor. And in the Tomsk village of Svetly in 2011, a family was found, a poltergeist in whose house wrote the name Fatima on the walls and doors.
If malfunctions of electrical appliances and manifestations of magnetism are attributed to physical or geomagnetic anomalies, then sounds and smells to many directly indicate the unsatisfactory state of mind of the "eyewitnesses" of the poltergeist. Although the supporters of parapsychology believe that there is nothing fantasy in these stories, and the human higher nervous system, perhaps, is really capable of influencing matter.
Part III. What a poltergeist looks like - a guide to identification
The folklore of many countries is full of stories about the poltergeist. But for those who ask themselves what a poltergeist looks like, it will be difficult to identify it. After all, a poltergeist, according to the researchers of anomalous phenomena, is not a ghost or a ghost, but an invisible clot of energy that manifests itself only in the presence of a person.
Folk sketches and opinions of researchers
Poltergeist eyewitnesses in Russia, who give interviews to journalists and talk about their incidents in blogs, are divided into two camps. Some are faced with a "traditional" poltergeist: objects falling from the upper shelves, cooled, heated, or even burnt or discolored things, strange rustles, sounds and breezes from the window. Others see a very specific character - a brownie, a reel, “something alien”.
But even everyday consciousness shares the image of a poltergeist and, for example, a famous household member from folk tales. A brownie is tied to a specific place, and a poltergeist is tied to a person, you can't scare a brownie with an icon or a cross, and the most popular way to drive a poltergeist from the Middle Ages is prayer and exorcism. Moreover, they cast out demons both in Europe and in Russia. In Christian culture, their manifestations are traditionally associated with the obsession of a particular person.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, with the development of research on paranormal phenomena, the first "scientific" hypotheses of the manifestation of poltergeist appeared. Spiritualists (supporters of spiritualism) associated it with the activity of spirits, physics, biophysics, geophysics - with energy anomalies, parapsychologists - with the unconscious human impact on the material world. Poltergeist agents, as a rule, are considered people with an unstable, suppressed psyche - often adolescents, children, young women. The emotions that they experience in connection with the oppression of their personality, one day become so strong that they can no longer be held inside. This aggression is projected into the "outside" and forms the phenomenon that is considered to be a poltergeist.
How to recognize a poltergeist?
It turns out that outwardly, a poltergeist does not have any specific appearance, unlike a ghost or ghost. Although other eyewitnesses are trying to describe a specific image. Sometimes it manifests itself as a spot of light, and sometimes (which for parapsychologists once again confirms their theory) as a copy of someone present in the house - especially a young girl, teenager or child. But more often than not, a poltergeist remains invisible, and you can only learn about its presence by the characteristic signs of this anomaly - the movement of objects and changes in their physical properties, smells, rustles and other sounds, interruptions in the operation of electricity and household appliances.
The main thing, parapsychologists assure, is attachment to a specific person, in whose presence all the traffic jams burn out. If this person is removed from the place of appearance of the poltergeist or psychotherapeutic work is carried out with him, having established the cause of emotional problems, the poltergeist, as a rule, is removed as quickly as it appeared. Some researchers of anomalous phenomena also claim that the poltergeist appears only during the day, and at night people are disturbed by some other otherworldly forces - for example, the same ghosts or ghosts. And supporters of spiritualism and magic say that in order to find out what a poltergeist looks like, you need to hold an occult session in the house and “materialize” the spirit for a while.
Part IV. How to get rid of a poltergeist: three proven ways
Smell, rustles, sounds…. The sudden appearance of an otherworldly force in the house is always accompanied by fear and horror. What to do when it seems that evil spirits have settled in your house? How to get rid of a poltergeist and is there a way to permanently send an uninvited guest home?
Method one - exorcism, prayers, faith
In the Middle Ages and modern times, priests fought against poltergeists. The house in which evil spirits appeared was sprinkled with holy water and prayers were read. But the struggle with restless spirits did not end there. The literature contains many descriptions of the process of "casting out demons" from the eyewitnesses of a poltergeist, which, as a rule, followed the cleansing of the place. But for some reason it was not so easy for the clergy to do this.
Many researchers of anomalous phenomena began to speak out in favor of the fact that in the presence of shepherds, the poltergeist is just beginning to manifest itself even more aggressively. Others drew attention to the fact that if this is true, then by repeating the practices regularly, some of the poltergeists can really be expelled. Parapsychologist Ian Stevenson attributed such precedents to cases of manifestation of "external" otherworldly force. The rest of the known episodes, he considered the manifestation of "inner demons", like most other parapsychologists.
Method two - tenderness and affection
To expel poltergeists with tenderness and affection is recommended by most parapsychologists. It is not the spirit itself that requires attention and respect for oneself in this case, but the source of its origin - one of the family members. Typically, this is the one who feels the most depressed and oppressed and has a vulnerable psyche. According to this theory, children or adolescents often act as poltergeist agents.
Parapsychologists believe that if you find out in whose presence the poltergeist manifests itself more actively, and carry out psychotherapeutic work with this person, the problem will disappear by itself. If the unconscious "signals" of the suppressed psyche are ignored, it may happen that the poltergeist will disappear, and psychological problems from internal conflicts will develop into external ones. And they will no longer be projected onto "flying dishes", but onto relationships with peers and life in society.
Method three - an arsenal of folk remedies
In the common people, it is recommended to deal with a poltergeist or a bastard in an old-fashioned way. One of them is the tactics of appeasing and feeding: for the poltergeist, you need to periodically leave some food and empty cutlery. If the activity of the evil spirits begins to subside, you can make or buy a small toy for it, say "Take it and go" and throw it out the window or out the door. If all this does not help, and the poltergeist begins to behave aggressively, you can swear at him or throw a dead cat into the house.
Herbalists recommend sprinkling the house with an infusion of the serpentine mountaineer or serpentine, as well as St. John's wort or wormwood to combat poltergeist. Moreover, it is better to collect wormwood on a waning moon, and St. John's wort - on a growing one. The popular consciousness does not shun church methods either. Additional help in the fight against poltergeist is provided by candles, icons and crosses, which can be placed and hung in different corners of the house and read a prayer on them.
Turning to fortune tellers and healers can also be an effective tool for those who sincerely believe in such techniques. After all, the main mystery of the poltergeist, as various researchers assure, is connected precisely with the state of mind of his eyewitness. Therefore, the power of self-hypnosis and inner calm will always play into the hands of those who are faced with this mysterious phenomenon. In addition, given the fact that real eyewitness accounts vary, it is really advisable to rely only on your own strength.
Author: Ksenia Zharchinskaya