In an article about a poltergeist, published in one of the issues of the American newspaper "Boston Pilot" for 1852, it is stated that noisy spirits, having entered the house and turned everything upside down there, are capable of creating such a thing in an hour that a thousand monkeys are hardly heats up in a day.
And this is not an exaggeration at all. And if we add to this the evidence of noisy spirits affected by the invasion at different times and in different countries, in one way or another imprinted in the memory of mankind, the picture will become even more expressive. However, fortunately, noisy spirits rarely run so badly.
And the phenomena are really outlandish. Out of nowhere, a wide variety of sounds and even human voices are heard. There are ghosts, sometimes voiced, entering into conversation. Extremely unpleasant odors are felt, someone's invisible touches are felt, something hits the body, sometimes inexpressible horror rolls over, all the time it seems that someone is invisible nearby.
Everything in the room starts to move, roll over, fly along difficult trajectories, beat, break, explode. Notes with threatening requirements are found. Jets of water spray from the walls and ceilings, now in one place, now in another fire breaks out, which is not always possible to extinguish in time. Clothes, shoes and hats are torn to shreds right on the person.
They disappear from their usual places and find themselves in impossible (say, in a closet locked with a key) various necessary things and objects. Some of the victims of the poltergeist (fortunately relatively rarely) begin to show signs of possession.
And inside a house or room, all of a sudden, no one knows where and how, and sometimes with breaking windows, stones, pieces of brick, gravel, coal, dirt, earth, tree branches, pieces of feces, shot, shells, vegetables, fruits, banknotes, suddenly begin to fall out, small animals and much more unusual. In general, as they say, trouble has come - open the gate.
The above are just some of the dirty tricks that noisy spirits do. But even in such a set, they almost never fall on the owners of the phenomenon (owners of houses, apartments) and those present at once. Usually, two or three of the above actions appear simultaneously or overlapping.
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Having failed to obtain the desired result, the phenomenon begins to use more and more new means of influencing a person, having a very rich arsenal of possibilities, often of such a criminal nature, that the case goes to court with all the ensuing consequences.
Of course, forensic evidence is not akin to scientific evidence, but some surviving protocols associated with outbreaks of poltergeist lawsuits and trials provide researchers with invaluable factual material. The first known case of this kind took place in 1533-1534 in France.
This unusual "defendant" is also being tried today. In the investigation of one (of the last) case, I not only took the most direct part, but also became the object of investigative actions.
Lawsuits of this kind often abound in very sharp turns, similar to what happened to the Russian peasant Chekanov, in whose house a poltergeist outbreak began at the end of September 1888, which stirred up the entire district. The unfortunate man was prosecuted for "spreading false rumors and stirring up minds." However, the investigation concluded that he was completely innocent: the "rumors" were true! At the end of December 1888, the criminal case was dropped, and the accused was fully acquitted.
But this was not always the case. People involved in the poltergeist, its bearers, victims, families in general, or even suspected of "letting in" the phenomenon by means of witchcraft, were sometimes subjected to the most severe tests: they were sentenced to death, stabbed in prisons, they were considered marked with the seal of Satan himself. But sometimes the court did not see the corpus delicti in their actions - it simply turned out that there were no actions themselves!
True, in the old days this was quite rare. Over time, acquittals (in relation to the carrier of the phenomenon) sentences began to prevail over convictions: even the most biased judges were unable to see the elements of a crime in a person's actions.
A paradoxical situation developed: the crime was present, but the criminal was absent. After all, not noisy spirits are to blame! But it turned out they were. Let's get acquainted with some of them.
The famous Orleans case opens this long litigation between mankind and mischievous and harmful noisy spirits, stretching for almost half a millennium.
Orleans Spirit
At about five o'clock in the evening on February 25, 1533, Father Pierre entered the bedroom of the novice boys of the Franciscan monastery in the French city of Orleans. It was the will of the authorities, disturbed by the intrigues of an invisible spirit, who settled in the boy's bedroom and annoyed them with knocks and blows.
Father Pierre arrived in order to sort things out on the spot, armed with a vessel with holy water and other accessories necessary in such cases.
Despite the measures taken by the holy father, strange blows continued to be heard with the same force. They even showed some kind of system! Already knowing what's what, the boys explained to Father Pierre: the spirit answers "yes" or "no" to the questions asked aloud with a certain number of strokes.
Of course, the holy father wished to make sure of everything personally. Soon, Father Pierre learned that the knocking spirit was speaking on behalf of the wife of François Mesmin, Bishop of Orleans. Madame Mesmin reported that her mortal remains were unworthy to lie in the holy monastery ground and should be reburied, since she was cursed for her excessive adherence to Lutheranism and incredible extravagance (!).
The experiment was repeated in the presence of church officials and townspeople with the same results. They opened all the places from which knocks were heard, but there was nothing there. The boys were whipped, and the knocking stopped for a while. However, the next day, scratching began as if with claws.
The bishop's vicar arrived, but there was no response to the questions asked by him, which was attributed to the recent break-in of the places from which the knocking was heard. At the same time, the monks noticed that it was always knocking near the same boy, who was under the greatest suspicion.
Unable to deal with leprosy, as they thought, either a knocking spirit, or a knocking boy, the monks wrote a letter to Adam Fumier, the king's adviser, informing him that they were extremely annoyed by a certain spirit posing as the bishop's wife. The bishop himself claimed that the Franciscans had arranged all this with the aim of hooking him up.
The king instructed Fumier to figure it out, which he did: thirteen monks accused of deceiving the king - they say, they knocked themselves or in collusion with a novice - were brought to Paris and imprisoned. The boy was interrogated under torture at the Fumier house.
The unfortunate man was forced to incriminate himself, making a false confession that he himself had been knocking imperceptibly. The trial took place in Paris in November 1534. A damn dozen monks languished in prison for a long time in completely unbearable conditions, until the last of them died of hunger.
Today it is clear that the monks, like the unfortunate boy, turned out to be innocent victims, not deceivers. After all, it was the most common teenage poltergeist that broke out in the monastery, where conditions were favorable for the occurrence of an outbreak. But as happens nowadays, the incident was attributed to a deception - it was easier and more profitable for the one in power, so that its ideological foundations would not be undermined.
In the public consciousness of the French, the Orleans outbreak of poltergeist left a mark in the form of a proverb that has survived to this day. “This is the spirit of Orleans,” the French say in response to an obvious fable …
Poltergeist and the witch hunt
The belief that a poltergeist is capable of letting sorcerers or witches have survived to this day. I must say, not without some reason: indeed, in a number of cases, it seems that a poltergeist outbreak is triggered, and a family member (more often a teenager) becomes a carrier of the phenomenon, a sorcerer or a witch.
The latter, as a rule, do not even know about it. Their reputation works for them. In the era of the witch hunt, living with such a reputation was deadly.
The medieval trials of witches confirm this. So, on November 27, 1679, a polttergeist outbreak began in the house of an old shoemaker, William Morse, who lived in Newbury, Massachusetts, with his wife Elizabeth and grandson John, a lively and agile boy. Elizabeth was a midwife, and therefore rumor attributed to her the ability to conjure, like all her companions by profession.
And in the house of old Morse, the devil knows what was happening: stones and household items flew in all directions, the owner's cane started dancing on the fireplace, the chair overturned by itself and immediately flew onto the table and all that stuff. Soon, the manifestations of an unknown force became completely frantic, and a few days later a gossip neighbor spread the news of the devilry in the Morse house throughout the neighborhood. The curious often came there.
One of the first to arrive was the sailor Calib Powell. He introduced himself as an astrologer and promised grandmother Elizabeth to end all this horror within 24 hours. She agreed, and on December 2, 1679, her grandson John was given into the good hands of an impostor, who took the boy to him, and the manifestations in the shoemaker's house naturally subsided.
But William Morse the next day announced to the magistrate that Calib Powell, in alliance with the devil, was plotting against his family. The sailor was immediately arrested. Perhaps the old shoemaker tried in this way to deflect suspicion from his midwife.
Meanwhile, with the return of the grandson to the house, the riot of spirits resumed again, but now with terrifying force. The boy was spun on its own axis, pinched and hit, knives and pins stuck into him. Grandfather and grandmother were scratching, pinching and beating.
The grandson raged, barked, clucked, complained that he saw the ghost of Powell, that is, he displayed the usual forms of behavior characteristic of a person who considers himself bewitched. Then everyone knew how the victims of witchcraft behave.
In March 1680, the court acquitted Powell, and immediately the attention of society turned to Mother Elizabeth: all the sins attributed to her by popular rumor were recalled. The unfortunate woman was brought to trial on charges of witchcraft, and in May 1680 she was sentenced to death.
To everyone's indignation, the governor of the state, who doubted her involvement in the case, postponed the execution of the sentence, and after vigorous efforts from her husband in June 1681, the elderly midwife returned home.
Until her death, she denied her involvement in witchcraft, but only in our days, when we know much more about the phenomenon, her absolute innocence became quite obvious: in this case, a classic triangle was formed - grandparents plus living with them apart from their parents a grandson, who often happens to be the bearer of the phenomenon even without "witchcraft". But then they did not know about it.
In another American case, a potential victim escaped formal accusations of witchcraft simply because her incredible scandalousness and quarrelsomeness seemed to her neighbors a much greater evil.
And it was like this: on June 11, 1682, stone throwing began in the house of Quaker George Walton in Portsmouth, which stopped only at the beginning of September.
His neighbor, aged Ann Jones, has long claimed the Quaker's land, throwing statements at the magistrate and even the presidential administration. Mother Anne had an enduring reputation as a witch (I think, in a figurative sense, she fully deserved it) and was considered the daughter of a witch.
When the stone-throwing began, Walton suspected, not without reason, that the misfortunes were caused precisely by her: the old witch more than once threatened that stones would fall on his head someday. Indeed, he had been hit hard several times.
Later, however, witnesses in the magistrate said that "they saw neither the hand, nor the person who threw stones." However, the Quaker reasonably judged that suing Anne Jones was more expensive for himself, which raised her witchcraft rating to a height unattainable for colleagues …
The truth about the "spirit of Coc-Leym"
The most scandalous poltergeist of the eighteenth century was the outbreak in Cock Lane. Rather, the events associated with it were scandalous, which thundered throughout England and turned the whole of London upside down, since it took place in the capital of foggy Albion, in the town of Cock Lane.
For exactly two hundred years the expression "the spirit of Cock Lane" was used as a synonym for the word "deception", until in 1962 this most discredited spirit in England, and possibly throughout the world, was finally and irrevocably rehabilitated, although the first steps towards clarifying the truth were made at the end of the nineteenth century. But I'll start in order.
In 1756, a certain William Kent married Elizabeth Lines, who died in childbirth a year later. The widower invited Fanny, the deceased's sister, to live with him. Love broke out, but they could not be legally married: then it was forbidden to marry the sisters of their deceased wives.
Difficulties arose with housing, the owner feared trouble due to the illegal residence of his beloved in his house, they had to look for new housing. They found him in the home of Richard Parsons, a minister of a London church. He had an eleven-year-old daughter, Elizabeth.
One day in November 1759, when William was away on business, Fanny, who did not like to sleep alone, invited Elizabeth to share a bed with her, which provoked a poltergeist: Almost immediately after they went to bed, under her and in all parts of the room heard some kind of knocking, banging and scratching.
Fanny thought the sounds were coming from the room of the shoemaker, who often worked at night. But when everything repeated on Sunday night, it became clear that the shoemaker had nothing to do with it. Fanny decided that things were much worse: the sounds mean that she, like her sister, will soon die - Fanny was six months pregnant.
They had to move out of the apartment and in December 1759 rent a new one nearby, since William could not pay as much as Parsons demanded. There poor Fanny died on February 2, 1760 from smallpox.
In the meantime, the knocking at Richard Parsons' house continued. He called the carpenter, but he could not find anything unusual. The volume of the sounds increased. Finally, we managed to establish contact with the knocking spirit: one knock from his side meant "yes", two - "no." By scratching, he expressed his displeasure.
Here's what he found out. It turns out that it was the spirit of the late Fanny. He claimed that she was poisoned by William and demanded that she be beheaded. This was not to say that all this too pleased Parsons, but William never paid the full twenty pounds for the housing, and there was a hope, taking advantage of the opportunity, to somehow demand it.
Meanwhile, rumors of the poisoning spread throughout London and became the property of the newspapers. Everyone was intrigued not so much by the poisoning itself as by what the spirit from Coc Lane reported about it. Parsons' house became famous, crowds flocked to it, and the nearby streets were filled with carriages.
William Kent knew nothing of the alleged murder until January 1762, when he read about himself in the newspapers. And only then did I understand why lately people began to point fingers at him. Then William came to Parsons' house to personally make sure that the newspapers were not lying. Priest John More, a friend of the owner of the house, began to ask the spirit questions:
"Are you really Fanny's spirit?"
- Yes.
“William killed you?”
- Yes.
- Anyone else involved in the murder?
- Not.
Outraged to the extreme by the accusation of murdering his beloved, William exclaimed in anger:
“You're just a lying spirit!
The public demanded an investigation and verification - not the fact of the murder, but the reality of the knocking. A commission was created, but nothing happened at its two meetings - the spirit refused to knock in such uncomfortable conditions, because the girl was sometimes even tied hand and foot! For the third time, they threatened to put her in jail with her parents if the spirit did not knock, which, of course, scared Elizabeth to death and forced her to resort to a childishly primitive deception.
The girl tied a rope to the board and, imperceptibly tugging at it, caused knocks. Leprosy, of course, was immediately discovered. She, of course, was reported in the newspapers the next day. This was the end of the spirit of Cock Lane, but the story unrelated to it.
Soon, on February 25, 1762, a book by an unnamed author was published, dedicated to the events described. It was called Mystery Revealed. And William Kent brought legal action against those who so grossly defamed him. In July 1762, the Parsons couple appeared before the court, their maid Mary Fraser, who was the first to establish contact with the spirit who "confirmed" her suspicions of Fanny William poisoning, Parsons' friend, Priest John More, who interrogated the spirit in the presence of William, and some others.
The judges were not convinced by the testimony of the neighbors, who claimed that the knocking came not only from the bed, but also from the walls of the room, and were absolutely sure that Elizabeth could not have faked them. They were also distributed when the girl's arms and legs were held by other people.
The court ruled on July 10, 1762, according to which Parsons was sentenced to two years in prison, his wife to a year, and Mary Fraser to six months. John More and one of his accomplices, the court ordered to pay William Kent in moral damages 588 pounds.
Parsons, as the most guilty, in the opinion of the court, was also assigned an additional punishment: to defend himself three times at the pillar of shame. In fact, it was a terrible punishment: usually the condemned was thrown with stones, dead cats, rotten eggs and offal.
But Londoners felt the greatest sympathy for Parsons, considered him undeservedly punished, and when he stood at the pillory, a collection of money was organized in the crowd in his favor. After all, many heard knocking in conditions when the girl, well, could not play pranks in any way!
Such a demonstration of their feelings for a person at the pillar of pillory was unusual for that time. In the same year, at the same pillar, another person sentenced for a very bad deed was stoned to death by the crowd …
The truth about the "spirit of Cock Lane" was only restored in 1962, when the English researcher Trevor Hall, critically assessing the facts for and against deception, came to the conclusion that the Cock Lane phenomenon was genuine. He outlined his considerations in the article "The Spirit of Cock Lane", published in the fourth issue of the "International Journal of Parapsychology" in 1962.
Sideville process
In the house of the parish priest Tinel in the French town of Sideville, on November 26, 1850, a poltergeist outbreak began, which lasted until February 15, 1851. She was associated with two boys, twelve and fourteen years old. The parents entrusted their sons to the priest's care so that he would prepare them for the ordination.
According to the order of the Bishop of Paris, on February 15, the boys were removed from Tinel's house and entrusted to another priest, after which all strange phenomena ceased. But before that, many dozens of people, familiar and unfamiliar to Tinel, had encountered them, attracted by rumors all over France about unusual phenomena in his house.
Knocking in the presence of the boys rang out for about a week, until the eldest of them asked the invisible to knock out the required motive. His desire was immediately granted.
The adults, having learned about this, began to diversify the tasks: they asked the spirit to knock as many times as there were letters in their surname or the name of the place where they came from. The spirit brilliantly performed the tasks, with pleasure tapping out the motives of popular romances, waltzes, and folk songs announced for performance.
But sometimes the knocks were so powerful and deafening that the floor shook and the furniture moved from its place. However, household items fell, moved, flew, turned over and in complete silence. For example, before the eyes of an eyewitness, the music stand, which was on the table, flew off, but did not fall, but flew up to the witness parallel to the floor and landed at a distance of two meters from the table.
As the Mayor of Sideville watched, the spatula and tongs bounced off the fireplace twice by themselves. Another time, a hammer flew out of its place, falling completely noiselessly to the floor. Once the table moved by itself, two men tried to prevent it, but to no avail: the table clearly fulfilled its task, moving about ten centimeters.
Soon it was rumored that the shepherd Felix Torel from a neighboring village was to blame for the incident. It must be said that he himself provoked these rumors: the shepherd repeatedly boasted of possessing some mysterious power and knowledge in the field of witchcraft.
Many believed that the braggart acted on the boys with witchcraft. Even Ti-nel himself called the shepherd a sorcerer, the culprit of the strange phenomena observed in his house. Rumors reached the shepherd's employer, who, out of harm's way, refused him a job.
Having lost his job, Torel went to court. He demanded that the priest pay him 1200 francs in compensation for moral damage for libel and for losses caused by dismissal. The proceedings began on January 7, 1851, and on January 28, witnesses were questioned: eighteen from the priest's side, sixteen from the shepherd's side, and on February 4 the court issued a decision.
It states that "whatever caused the unusual phenomena in the Seidville parish priest's house, it is clear from the testimony that their true cause remains unknown." This is followed by the following statement: “Although the defendant (priest), according to the statements of some witnesses, told them that the plaintiff (shepherd) himself boasted and told that the disturbing phenomena in the priest's house were his handiwork, and the defendant expressed his own suspicions about this and himself considered the shepherd to be the instigator of these phenomena, nevertheless, on the other hand, a significant number of witnesses showed that the plaintiff did everything in his power to convince the people that those phenomena were really the work of his hands.
And finally, the truly Solomon solution:
"The complaint of the plaintiff, as well as the claim brought against him, must be declared devoid of foundation, since the suspicions and losses to which he pointed were caused by him."
The court acquitted the priest, and ordered the shepherd to pay the legal costs.
