Ghosts and Poltergeists
Austin Society to Oppose Pseudoscience
Human beings have probably enjoyed telling and listening
to ghost stories for as long as human beings have had a language.
It’s fun to be frightened when one knows one is
really safe after all, hence the popularity of horror films and horror
fiction. The body of a dead human being is almost instinctively frightening to
most people — cold, stiff, with ghastly color and terrible blankness of
expression. To enhance one’s fright further, one need only imagine the body
becoming somehow reanimated, yet retaining the essential features of death —
including the additional horror of decay and decomposition.
Ghost stories offer one step up in sophistication from
the walking dead. Ghosts are more insubstantial, and better suited to the
average living room, than animated corpses. Paperback book sales indicate that
ghost stories are more popular today than ever before, especially if the book
gives the impression that the story “really happened.” The haunted house” is a
standby of paperbacks, film and TV as the 20th century nears its
end, and is as “sure-fire” a theme as it has ever been.
Actual, real-life reports of ghosts have a great deal in
common with reports during the past 40 years of “flying saucers.” Just as a
light or glow in the sky, whatever its real cause, becomes a “flying saucer”
to anyone who has just been reading about them in the papers, so an unusual
sound in a dark house at night, whatever its real cause, becomes a ghost to
anyone who has read or heard enough ghost stories. As in the case of the
flying saucer sightings, scientists find little to work with when they
investigate “ghost sightings.” Somehow nothing ever happens while the
scientists are around, and they find themselves left with the eyewitness
testimony of others, contradictory descriptions, and meaningless “evidence”
such as broken dinnerware.
The pitfalls that ghost stories offer for well-meaning
investigators is illustrated in a classic way by the fate of the magnum opus
of England’s 19th century Society for Psychical Research, the
2-volume, 1,300-page Phantasms of the Living, published in 1886. The
aim of this work was to collect cases in which, for instance, an individual,
at the time of death, is seen as an apparition by relatives and friends
hundreds or even thousands of miles away, and the sighting is exhaustively
documented by letters, diaries, or multiple simultaneous witnesses. In almost
every case in the book the relatives were said to have documented the
apparition before having heard actual confirmation of the individual’s
death. But, as usual, the facts turned out to be quite different. In a
devastating article published in 1887, A. Taylor Innes revealed that in not
one of the cases collected did there exist any
letter or document written at the time by anyone involved. This kind of
discovery has been made over and over by diligent investigators. Ghost stories
“grow in the telling,” and trivial everyday events quickly grow into signs,
portents, and phantasms of whatever important event is worth spinning a tale
about.
A more recent example is the so-called Amityville Horror,
the subject of several books and at least two awful movies. The best-known
book on the topic is by a novelist named Jay Anson. On its dust jacket tit is
proclaimed “a true story,” although all the other
works listed by Anson are fiction. Independent investigators, however, found
that not a single detail of the supposedly “real” events in this 201-page book
which could be checked independently was correct. They also found that Anson
never visited the house or carried out any sort of journalistic investigation
of the alleged incidents involving the “haunting” of a five-member family by
the ghost of a murderer. A detailed analysis of the book by Robert L. Morris
shows it to be a tissue of deliberate fabrications, faulty memories, and tall
tales. (See references.)
It must be emphasized that these are not isolated cases.
In every case where a thorough investigation has been undertaken, “ghost
stories” collapse utterly. For instance, Borley Rectory in
England
was made famous during the late 1930’s as “the most haunted house in England,”
and as “a really haunted house.” When the Rectory and the tales about
it were thoroughly investigated in the mid-1950’s
by a magician and two parapsychologists, every feature of this “iron-clad
case” collapsed. (See references.)
No two ghosts are described quite alike in appearance.
Some are the stereotype white-sheeted figures, others look like normal people
except for being transparent or being able to walk through walls, others look
like recently dead or long-dead corpses, often bearing monstrous wounds.
Ghosts are only rarely described as being “solid,” which makes it puzzling if
they are also said to wear clothes, make noise, move things around, or, in
some cases, to produce a “cold feeling” in the air. Probably ghosts are
reported as completely invisible more often than not.
Ghosts which are completely
invisible, but still manage to make noise and move objects are called
poltergeists (“noisy ghosts”). Typically, in a house haunted by a poltergeist,
furniture is moved, things fall from shelves, jars and bottles are overturned,
objects are tossed through the air, and breakables are broken, all apparently
without anyone nearby. In essentially every case in which poltergeist
phenomena have been investigated, and were not found to be due to natural
causes (e.g., vibration from passing trains, subways, mild earthquake tremors,
etc., or subsidence and settling of the house), there have been one or more
adolescents in the family. Further, the pattern is that the adolescent is
frequently highly restricted and repressed. Inexperienced investigators whose
heads are full of “psychic” marvels have often concluded that poltergeist
phenomena are therefore not due to ghosts at all, but are the result of the
frustrated adolescent channeling blocked energies into psychokineses! That is,
that the adolescent creates the poltergeist phenomena by mind power, sometimes
without being aware of it. More experienced investigators have simply laid a
trap for the adolescent, and usually have managed to catch him or her using
not the unknown powers of mind, but the well-known powers of fingers, arms or
feet to achieve the “psychic” manifestations. Only the most elementary stealth
and misdirection, well within the abilities of most 10-year-old children, are
required to produce even the most “authentic”-looking poltergeist
manifestation. Parents, law-enforcement officers and reporters spend their
time looking for the “haunts” and marveling at the “manifestations,” never
paying any attention to where little Timmy is or what he is doing.
Investigators have witnessed teenagers leaning into a doorway and tossing a
plate directly at their seated, distracted parents. The parents look up to see
a plate in mid-air moving rapidly toward them, with nobody around. The child
is already halfway back to his room by the time the plate strikes the wall,
ready to pretend to be asleep or to cry out, “What happened, Ma?” as the mood
strikes. It is an easy way to get your name and picture in the papers, and an
easy way to give you and your friends a real opportunity to snicker
justifiably at the stupidity of adults.
Poltergeist phenomena seem to be about the most commonly
reported “house haunting,” particularly in the United States. Newspaper and TV
reporters consider such ghost episodes as a godsend, particularly in times
when there are few stories of local interest. As long as these stories
continue to receive massive publicity, both in the form of supposed “true
stories,” and in the form of popular fiction, there will continue to be new
and equally bogus cases.
For further reading
Appearances of the Dead, by
R. C. Finucane, Prometheus, New York,
1984.
“Poltergeists and ‘Haunted Houses,’” by Milbourne
Christopher, in ESP, Seers, and Psychics, Crowell, New York,
1970, pp. 142-173.
The Haunting of Borley Rectory, by E. J. Dingwall,
K. M. Goldney, and T. H. Hall, Duckworth, London, 1955.
Four Modern Ghosts, by E. J.
Dingwall and T. H. Hall, Duckworth,
London, 1958.
“A Case Study of the West Pittston ‘Haunted’ House,” by
Paul Kurtz, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 11, No. 2, Winter 1986-87, pp.
137-146.
Review of the Amityville Horror by Robert L. Morris,
The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 2, No. 2, Spring/Summer 1978, pp. 95-102.
“The Columbus
Poltergeist Case: Part 1,” by James Randi, The
Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 9, No. 3, Spring 1985, p. 221-235.
Acknowledgments
ASTOP – The Austin Society to Oppose Pseudoscience – has
prepared fact sheets on various pseudoscience topics for the benefit of
teachers and others interested in promoting critical thinking. Dr. Rory Coker,
Professor of Physics at the University
of Texas at
Austin, is the author of this fact sheet. The
International Cultic Studies Association (formerly American Family
Foundation), a professional research and educational organization concerned
about the harmful effects of cultic and related involvements, prints and
helps distribute these fact sheets. Because ASTOP fact sheets seek to
stimulate critical thinking, rather than advance a particular point of view,
opinions expressed are those of the authors. These fact sheets may be copied
for educational purposes, but they may not be reproduced for resale.
