We don't know much about the causes of poltergeist outbreaks. This ignorance gives rise to a problem for which there is still no reliable solution. We are talking about ways to stop the poltergeist.
Defending against the phenomenon is extremely difficult. Attempts to stop it often fail. If they turn out to be successful, then there is no guarantee that the actions to terminate it simply coincided in time with a spontaneous, temporary or final, lull.
In general, the means, methods and methods of protection against a poltergeist are used based on its supposed cause. If witchcraft is supposed, they turn to the appropriate craftsmen - to healers, shamans, sorcerers and other specialists in this matter. If the tricks of the spirits of the dead, they try to appease them in every possible way.
If hooliganism - they turn to the police, insanity - to psychiatrists, unusual radiation - to physicists. It has been noticed that priests and individual craftsmen from the people are much more likely to succeed in stopping a poltergeist than, for example, scientists.
A poltergeist is often not indifferent to attempts to stop it: it is at this time that its manifestations, sometimes, sharply intensify. So, for example, on January 7, 1853, in order to stop the destructive poltergeist in the house of Captain Zhandachenko Nikolai Prokhorovich (Liptsy settlement near Kharkov), three priests with a clergy were invited to serve in the cathedral.
From the morning and from the moment the clergy arrived, everything was quiet. And then, according to an eyewitness, the following happened:
“As soon as the 'spells' started, there was a double knock with a crash in the corner where the image hung; all eyes are directed there - and we see: the part of the board on which the image was written (about half of it), separates and falls on the table after the brick with which the board was split. General and complete confusion. The impression of what happened has not yet subsided, as a boiler of boiling water appears from the stove.
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Heading out of the furnace through the air, between me and Nikolai Prokhorovich, and moving swiftly, he hits Nikolai Prokhorovich's left thigh with such force that he pushes him to the right, and the boiler itself, bouncing to the side, falls between the clerk and the parishioners, spilling water and filling the front of the kitchen with steam. The parishioners were dumbfounded. The service ends hastily - and the priests hurry to leave the house where such unusual events are taking place.
In January 1889, in the town of Alexandria, Rivne district, in the hut of a peasant, household items were "enraged": they flew, fell, ended up in the most inappropriate places. The priest was invited: "During the prayer, an earthen pot from the stove flew through the whole hut and jumped on the priest's head, hitting him hard." Modern analogues of such cases are also known.
The religious practice of terminating a poltergeist is based on the postulate that the person or place in connection with which the phenomenon is supposed to manifest itself can be "possessed" by evil spirits (demons) or the spirits of the dead. The ritual of driving out evil spirits is called the ritual of exorcism.
The rite of healing the possessed or possessed as early as the sixteenth century was laid down in the missal of the Kiev Metropolitan Peter Mohyla. In the Roman Catholic Church, the ritual of exorcism to combat poltergeist in the seventeenth century was authorized by Pope Urban VIII. These rituals are still practiced by clergymen today. They are based on the belief that with appropriate prayers and ceremonies it is possible to force unclean spirits to leave a person or the place in which they seem to have settled so reliably.
Thanks to the efforts of the researcher W. Roll, as well as his English colleagues A. Gould and T. Cornell, it became possible to find out the effectiveness of the exorcism ritual in relation to the termination of poltergeist.
Of the 116 poltergeists treated by Roll during 1612-1974, 30 (26 percent) performed an exorcism ritual to stop the outbreak. Of these, in 4 cases (13 percent) - successfully, that is, the outbreak has stopped. In 26 (87 percent), the ritual did not help, moreover, in 5 and 26 the manifestations only intensified, and in 4 out of 26 only a temporary positive effect was obtained.
Moreover, in two cases out of four successful, it was not known how long the outbreak lasted, and two more lasted two and three months, respectively, that is, all four could end on their own and the time of the ritual may have coincided with the natural end of the outbreak. Overall, Roll concludes that exorcism is not effective as a means of ending poltergeist.
The results obtained by Gould and Cornell contradict Roll's data. Of the 500 cases they treated between 530 and 1975, 59 (12 percent) had exorcisms. Of these, in 34 cases (58 percent) - successfully, in 16 (27 percent) - unsuccessfully, in 9 (15 percent) only temporary improvement was obtained, then it became bad again.
The reason why, according to Roll, exorcism, as a means of stopping poltergeist, is ineffective, and according to Gould and Cornell, it is effective in more than half of the cases, is not entirely clear. Unless because in relation to this dark phenomenon, in reality, everything turns out to be completely different from what it really is. True, other foreign researchers believe that only 20 percent of exorcism rituals reach their goal, that is, they stop the outbreak. But that's not bad either.
As for the modern practice of expelling a poltergeist by Orthodox clergy in Russia, successful attempts are known. For example, E. A. Ermilov from Nizhny Novgorod described the case of the termination of a poltergeist there on March 24, 1990 by Father Nikolai, Archbishop of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas. Moreover, the "destruction" of the phenomenon was carried out directly at the apartment of the victims.
In the overwhelming majority of known cases, families in which poltergeist began resort primarily to the help of the church. Sometimes they work with them in the church, sometimes the priest comes to the apartment. As a rule, this happens once, rarely several times during the entire outbreak. And this, as experience shows, is clearly not enough. For, for example, in 1666 the Monk Hilarion expelled the devil, who settled in the poorhouse on Kulishki, for five weeks. And exorcism sessions on the possessed and carriers of poltergeist manifestations often last for weeks.
In the history of the poltergeist, only three attempts to "treat" the host with hypnotic suggestion are described, and all of them were successful. Moreover, it turned out that with the help of suggestion it is possible to control the phenomenon to some extent, for example, inspire the wearer to stop knocking at night or occur only at certain hours of the day, for example, during the day at a predetermined time. The first experience of this kind took place back in 1904.
From the point of view of searching for other ways to stop the phenomenon, the results of the analysis of accidentally discovered natural causes of the end of the outbreak are interesting. It is known, for example, that when a carrier moves to a new place of residence, sometimes everything goes away. Roll found 35 cases where all unpleasant manifestations ceased if the carrier moved or even someone else with whom he often communicated.
Sometimes outbreaks ended for other reasons. For example, when the bearer paid a debt that was not returned to the deceased, the ghost of which constantly made this request to the bearer. Cases of the termination of a poltergeist are described, when their carrier left his adoptive parents and moved to live with his own mother.
In a number of cases, researchers considered the whole family as a carrier of poltergeist manifestations, but from the point of view of family problems as a whole. Experienced researchers have been able to stop the phenomenon by revealing an intra-family emotional conflict and convincing the family to cope with their problems.
Poltergeist researchers know that the presence of a large number of observers and curious people often interferes with the manifestation of a poltergeist. Sometimes the same results are achieved when a new person appears on the stage.
But this is not always the case. Roll found that of the 116 cases he studied, in 67 of them the presence of observers did not interfere with the play of noisy spirits, and in 23 cases even facilitated them. And only in 16 cases the presence of observers forced the spirits to stop their games (however, it is not known whether there were a large number of observers in these cases).
In some cases, close observation is especially strong against the play of spirits. For example, if you fix an object with your gaze, it usually prevents it from moving. Here is one such observation, which took place in 1849 in a carpentry workshop in Sounland, Yorkshire, England:
“Sometimes one of us stared at a chip on the floor for a long time. While they were looking at her, she did not move. But as soon as the observer weakened his attention, this very sliver, lying on the floor at a considerable distance from the one who was looking at it, rose into the air and flew in his direction.
Sometimes Mr. Kouter would sit in the workshop for two or three hours in a row, watching a piece of wood in the hope of seeing it rise into the air. He never managed to see this, although he, like everyone else, saw chips many times that seemed to have just taken off."
