Poltergeist is a paranormal phenomenon that does not have an accurate natural confirmation, expressed in a series of actions that emphasize the presence of some invisible and intangible entity (noise, knocking, footsteps, spontaneous movement of objects, spontaneous combustion, etc.). Often not a phenomenon is called a "poltergeist", but rather the essence itself.
The American poltergeist researcher W. Roll, one of the world's leading experts on this phenomenon, once analyzed the events preceding the manifestations of the poltergeist.
He studied 92 cases of outbreaks with a clearly identified carrier of the poltergeist (the one in whose presence the phenomenon manifests itself) and found that in 38 cases (41 percent) the outbreak was preceded by serious family problems or changes.
In 15 cases (16 percent), manifestations followed after the carrier or family moved to a new place of residence, after the departure of one of the parents, or after a stranger, for example, an unexpected guest, spent the night in bed next to the carrier, usually with the child. … In 12 cases (13 percent), the focal face was hurt or subjected to severe psychological pressure before the outbreak.
In 8 cases (9 percent), the outbreak began after moving into a reputed restless home, after a seance, or after a poltergeist began in the host's home. In two cases, the outbreak followed the death of relatives or friends of the host, in one - after the future host was frightened by the usual knock on the door; however, he had recently moved into a house that was considered restless.
Events of a strange and frightening nature, and sometimes threats to do something like that, can be provoking factors. For example, in November 1846 peddlers, as usual, passing by the house of a certain Monsieur Bottel, stopped to ask for bread, which was immediately brought out by a maid. However, soon one of them returned and asked for more, but this he was rudely refused.
Then the peddler, in anger, promised to "do" something. At night in the house, plates began to fall from the table, the next day the servant, stepping into the place from which the peddler shouted threats, began to convulse, the carter who rushed to her aid fell into a puddle, the invited priest could not help, besides, at his house began to dance furniture. All these misfortunes lasted for several weeks.
A. Guseva from Cherepovets told about something similar in 1991:
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“I will describe to you a case that our mother, an eyewitness, told us. She was born in 1882, and the case was in the village of Dmitrovka, Yegoryevsky district, Moscow region.
The neighbor had two sons, both married, and he decided to separate the older one. It seemed to him offended, and, leaving, he said to his father: "I'll do it for you." And did. This is how it all happened: soon there was such a noise in the hallway, in the upper room, in the yard, as if a herd of horses was racing. What will be brought from the city for the holiday - you look, everything is scattered, mixed … And the paper will be picked - wherever "they" took it.
The owner himself - grandfather Jew - just walked around hungry. In our village they ate from a common cup, everyone eats, and from his spoon everything flies into the air. They invited the priest to serve a moleben, brought icons, put them on benches. Before they had time to look back, the icons were under the bench.
The priest began a prayer service, and a log flew at him, the deacon began to sprinkle the room - a fur coat was thrown at him. Children of four or five years old were thrown by "they" under the ceiling, and they fell to the floor. They were asked: "Are you hurt?" And they answer: they say, no, we are not in pain.
My mother was then ten or twelve years old. They will pick berries with their girlfriends and want to treat grandfather Judea, and he answers: "I can't." The girls say: from us, de you can - and give berries. And they fly from his hand into the air …
Scientists came from Moscow, one of them said: "You, grandfather, need to see a doctor, get some medical treatment." Before he could say, a log flew into him, then into the second, into the third. And the firewood, which is interesting, flew end-to-end at them. They never showed up again. All this was in front of my mother's eyes. And when the old man died, everything was quiet."
In some cases, it is reported about the specific actions of an outsider in relation to the future carrier, for example, to the fourteen-year-old Odessa girl Lena. She lived with her father, mother and two younger brothers. They had a spare room, which they rented out to the young couple. Soon after, on 23 August 1910, Lena's mother died. On September 25, the couple were kicked out, as Sophia, the tenant's wife, constantly offended Lena.
A few days before that, Sophia almost made Lena drink a glass of some kind of black liquid, smell something that had no smell, and rubbed something on Lena's whiskey. Then she said: “Well, now it will. Enough! You will be grateful! But, look, not a word to anyone, otherwise you will die!"
The next day Lena's head and neck began to ache, after Sophia's departure she began to have seizures, and on September 28, 1910 - knocking, falling, breaking objects - the usual set of "teenage" poltergeist.
The Ural landowner VA Shchapov, who suffered from a poltergeist in 1870-1871, many years later appeared on the pages of the magazine "Rebus" (1903, No. 11-14) with his reflections on the possible causes of the poltergeist. He writes that the phenomenon cannot be considered spontaneous: “Almost always in these seemingly“spontaneous”phenomena, the previous, so to speak, interference or participation on the part of any person who“let loose”, as they say simply, these phenomena are found. This term - "letting go", "letting go" - was created by the people."
Shchapov gives a number of examples proving the likelihood of "the previous intervention of an outsider - whether gifted with natural abilities for this or acquired them artificially (which remains a mystery)."
He took some examples from books, some from his own observations.
So, the person who "let in" evil spirits into the house of the priest of Lychentsy in the Vladimir province of Father John Solovyov in 1900-1901 was the stealing cook Praskovya. Before going to prison, she ran to the local sorcerers and then threatened Father John that on the day of the Intercession "both laughter and sin" would happen to him. But how she looked into the water!
About his own case, Shchapov reported the following. His neighbor, the old Cossack Roman Frolov, really wanted to acquire the Shchapov mill, but Shchapov needed it himself. Frolov began to threaten. One of his threats was justified in the literal sense: "They will drag by the hair!"
Frolov decided to keep Shchapov out of the house and did it. According to Shchapov, Frolov was looking for a person who would help him do this. And he helped: Shchapov had to move to another place. And he ordered that his damned house be broken down.
In 1903, Shchapov investigated the causes of the start of strange events with fourteen or fifteen-year-old Natasha, who served as a servant in Odessa. She was just taken from the village. The tenant in the family where she served was a middle-aged doctor. For some reason, everyone was afraid of him, even the owners of the house. Natasha - even more so. Once the hostess asked Natasha to help the temporarily departing doctor to take out his things. Natasha was gone for a long time, and the hostess needed her.
She began to look for her. Found it under the stairs. Natasha was completely exhausted, and the hostess barely lifted her off the floor. Later Natasha said that the doctor for some reason looked at her for a long time and stubbornly with the piercing and heavy look of his black eyes. She tried to leave and asked if he had forgotten what, but he silently continued to look at her until she seemed to be forgotten under his gaze, and when he had already left, she stood still for a long time, and then she barely became kind to the stairs and, exhausted, sank to the floor. And the next morning, a typical "teenage" poltergeist began. I had to fire Natasha.
In the end, Shchapov concludes that with all such, called "spontaneous" phenomena, "the intervention of an outsider seems to be inalienable and undoubted." He considers it necessary "to turn to a practical investigation on the spot, how and in what way simple people, often even illiterate people, achieve this, and make these" lapses "and" oversights ", which undoubtedly exists among the people as an irrefutable fact."
One response to Shchapov's materials is very curious. The author of the response explains the case with Natasha by the fact that the doctor is a very strong physical medium, and his mediumistic abilities found support in Natasha's mediumistic abilities. And an exploitable medium is easy to find in almost every home.
I will add to this that the carrier of poltergeist manifestations in the house of the priest John Solovyov was a fourteen-year-old nanny, in the house of Shchapov himself - his twenty-year-old wife, in the city of Odessa in 1910 - fourteen-year-old Lena, in the village of Dmitrovka near Moscow at the end of the 19th century - the elderly father of the family.
In all these cases, as in the case of Natasha, there were open or secret actions preceding the outbreak on the part of obvious enemies of the families in which the future carriers lived. Some of the enemies carried out these actions personally, some resorted to the help of an "outside person", in the words of Shchapov himself.
The reader, I hope, remembers the hypothesis proposed by VT Isakov about the “witchcraft” nature of the induced poltergeist, that is, caused by those who need it. Isakov calls this person a “hidden face”.
It rarely has the ability to cause a poltergeist in the house itself, as the doctor did, using Natasha for this purpose, and therefore it is usually forced to seek help from a "sorcerer" ("an outside person", according to Shchapov), like, for example, the old Shchapov's mill the Cossack Roman Frolov or the one who robbed Father John and the cook Praskovya caught on this.
The hypothesis of witchcraft as one of the root causes of subsequent poltergeist misfortunes has reached our days almost in its original form. Let's consider it in more detail.
Witchcraft and poltergeist
As researchers Gould and Cornell point out, most modern parapsychologists are very skeptical that sorcerers, witches, and similar individuals are capable of occult actions to cause a poltergeist at a distance. At the same time, of the 500 cases they examined, in 36 (7 percent) the victims named witches the perpetrators of misfortunes: in 26 cases - before 1873, in 10 - for the period 1873-1975. In the current century, witches have been considered the root cause of poltergeist in outbreaks of 1901, 1914, 1926, 1928, 1930 and 1970, in reality, the number of such cases is much higher.
However, they were considered does not mean they were, even if we take into account the testimony of the alleged witches, given under torture: what did they not slander themselves! However, not all. For example, in 1655, a servant from Thorn, Prussia, a clear carrier of poltergeist manifestations, was suspected of causing them through witchcraft. She was subjected to the most severe torture, but nevertheless resisted self-incrimination.
In 1789 in Germany, another unfortunate woman, suspected by the police of witchcraft, was sentenced to punishment with rods - in fact, for being a carrier of a poltergeist. 99 years later, another German focal agent, fifteen-year-old Walter of Rezau, was sentenced to six weeks in prison for the same "act". Fortunately for him, by that time, torture and corporal punishment in relation to witchcraft were a thing of the past, and witchcraft itself was no longer subject to prosecution in the eyes of the authorities and in terms of legislation.
But in the ordinary consciousness, witchcraft continued and continues to live. Is this accidental? Most likely not, and there are reasons for that. The most important of them is that people have repeatedly noticed that the outbreak of a poltergeist is sometimes preceded by some strange from their point of view actions on the part of the alleged sorcerer, carried out, in their opinion, consciously.
Parapsychologists drew attention to the fact that there are quite similar cases of something like this: a certain old hag with a sinister reputation, entering someone's house, offers a young servant some food or thing of dubious origin.
The indignant girl refuses to accept the suspicious gift. The old hag leaves, muttering some curses. The next day, the servant becomes a carrier of violent poltergeist manifestations, sometimes accompanied by psychosomatic disorders. Similar cases were observed in 1654,1659,1681,1692-1693,1696, 1707, 1816, 1838-1840, 1846, 1852, 1870 and later.
It is noteworthy that witches do their "witchcraft" actions not secretly and not at a distance, but in the immediate vicinity of the future carrier, in front of his eyes, and they strive to enter into direct contact with him - through the transferred or solicited thing, or even directly, through contact, as Florence Newton did to the young maid Mary Longdon in 1661, for which she was accused of witchcraft, and on March 24, 1661, she was sentenced to imprisonment by a jury in Cork, England.
It all started with the fact that Mary refused Florence's request to give her a piece of the master's corned beef. The refusal caused an outburst of furious anger in the petitioner. A week later, Mary met Florence, and for some reason she kissed the girl with violent force. She soon found herself in the very center of incredible events. All over the house some grotesque ghostly figures were looming.
The girl began to have extremely severe seizures, so violent that several men could not restrain her. She began to spew needles, pins, nails, stubble and straw - in incredible quantities and very often. Then stones began to chase her, they accompanied the girl wherever she went, and hit on the head, shoulders and arms, then fell to the floor and disappeared.
Then the incredible began: suddenly she disappeared from the bed, finding herself in another room, on the roof of the house or in the owner's bed. According to the testimony given in the court, the latter saw an unprecedented number of stones chasing the servant, which disappeared right before our eyes when they fell to the floor. He also told how the Bible fluttered out of Mary's hand and flew into the center of the room. Another time, two Bibles that were lying on the girl's chest disappeared instantly and appeared in another place.
The jury passed a not very harsh sentence for those times, because Florence could well have been sentenced to death. But she was lucky - she got off with prison.
In another case in 1697, Christina Shaw, the twelve-year-old daughter of a Scottish landowner, was cursed three times for something by an unknown witch. Soon, incredible poltergeist incidents began to happen to the girl, in particular, she soared into the air and hovered above the floor in front of the priests who filled the room. There were about twenty suspects in witchcraft. Five of them were executed, one, without waiting for the trial, hanged himself at the stage of preliminary investigation.
European researchers are usually extremely skeptical about the possibility of any connection between poltergeist and magic or witchcraft, while their Brazilian colleagues are more likely to admit it. For example, one of them, H. Andrade, writes that in each of the cases of Brazilian poltergeists he personally studied, when it was possible to find out all the connections of the members of the family attacked by noisy spirits, it turned out that among the unfortunate households there was necessarily one of the potential victims of revenge by, for example, a rejected lover, an envious relative, an angry neighbor, or even a member of the same family.
Any Brazilian, Andrade points out, knows that the country is full of centers of black magic, where people have the opportunity to use unknown forces for inhumane purposes. The researcher makes the following comparison: just as a knife can be used to cut off either a loaf of bread, or someone's head, unknown forces hidden in a person can be directed to the accomplishment of both good and evil.
Therefore, in order to summon a poltergeist in someone's house, you should get at your disposal at least a few evil spirits capable of fulfilling your order for an appropriate reward; it is also necessary to have a victim that is malleable to the influence of evil spirits with an insufficiently developed spirituality, so that it would be unable to withstand evil spells.
Black magic, the researcher believes, has become one of the most acute social problems in Brazil, and poltergeists that break out in this country are often distinguished by their fierce, unbridled and extremely destructive nature, which is relatively rare in Europe.
As Gould and Cornell point out, Western researchers, when analyzing the possibility of the "witch" origin of poltergeists, noticed that in some cases the potential host was frightened of something before meeting the alleged witch. From this they concluded that in all other cases, the poltergeist could be triggered by a feeling of fear or by a fright experienced shortly, without any connection with the visit of the alleged witch.
However, Gould and Cornell believe that such an assumption is rather risky with respect to a poltergeist: the phenomenon is many-sided, little is known about it, but for now it is necessary to accumulate and analyze facts, and not build baseless assumptions.
In any case, the problem of witchcraft as one of the possible reasons for triggering a poltergeist still cannot be removed from the agenda. If it turns out that such a connection exists and is based only on psychological interpersonal relationships, we will assume that people are lucky: the purely psychological nature of witchcraft would provide a sufficiently reliable level of protection against it.
However, there is reason to believe that bioenergy-informational mechanisms of influence are also involved in the case of witchcraft, which in some cases is almost impossible to resist.
