What Poltergeists Do and Poltergeist Noise May 2, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern , trackback
Introduction
Been reading a lot about poltergeists recently, perhaps the most fascinating of all Fortean phenomena. I’ve collected a list of my favourite poltergeist actions; and then my favourite poltergeist sounds. I try and pass very quickly over the banal and well known. These come from tens of different cases.
Poltergeist Acts
Stones thrown; showers of potatoes; ‘the flight of keys, nails, spoons and forks (and these were bent in mid air)’; objects disappear and reappear; ‘crockery-smashing orgies’; three pails full of broken glass and china; all boxes piled up on one side of a room; chairs walked around the room; chairs ended up on the table; a piano dragged around the room; jugs emptied in the middle of beds; skirting board glowing red; fires started; congealed blood sprang out of a basin and the basin broke; egg flew across the kitchen and hit a cat on its head; ruined beer with sand; salt mixed with bran; family ‘found the furniture strewn about the rooms, and curious figures, constructed of clothing… There were eleven figures, arranged in life-like attitudes’; ‘a blanket formed to look like a figure, sitting by the fire’; invisible mouse under covers; invisible animal in a linen bag; marks of a claw in ashes; a cone shaped fountain of light; black cloud that threatened to grow as big as the house; a hand moved up and down in mid air; child sees ‘funny cat’ [the creepiest]; astronomical designs on the ceiling; sulphorous smell; window shook violently; house or room shook; cold blast; pail of cold water seemed to boil; can opener flew around the room then fastened onto the ceiling; untethering cattle; horses ‘tails were in the mangers and their heads were where their tails should have been’; horse with foot in its mouth; cold hand plucks thigh; slapped woman in her face; arms, legs, trunk, hands of residents swelling; a great weight on residents’ feet; individuals forced to go on all fours; pitched ghost hunters out into the street…
Poltergeist Noise
With the sounds it is striking the way that certain ones repeat. The whirring, winding sound is particularly fascinating. You have to admire too the ingenuity of those describing what they heard: ‘like an animal with boards under its feet’!
Cracks; knocks; raps; ‘some of the raps seemed intelligent’; sound like a bullet lodged in wood; hollow cough; continuous explosion of fireworks; hollow thumps resembling the shot of a cannon at a distance; like the shoeing of a horse; vibrations; ‘an alarm clock being wound up’; ‘winding of a big clock’; winding up of a clock; whistling or whizzing; like a very large bird flying around in the room; ‘groaning and fluttering’; like two able threshers on a boarded floor; sawing noise; ‘whirring noises’; purring in children’s bed; ‘like a spinning wheel’; sounded like a ropemaker [not sure about this one]; ‘ungrateful skippings’; rustled like silk; hissing (as if trying to say something); person stamping about in clogs; galloping; ‘like an animal with boards under its feet’; pad-pad-pad; like a man walking with a wooden leg; ‘like a stick jumping on one of its ends’; ‘as of a piece of wood or a balance rapidly striking each end of the floor’; dragging noise; like a sack falling on the floor; ‘heavy elastic body rolling down the stairs’; panting; jingling of money; falling money; ‘an animal leaping from chair’; leaping sound from the windows; sounds of harmony; singing in the chimney; sounded like a box pried open with a crowbar; a matchbox ‘landing with a noise like a bar of iron’, like a cat with claw caught in rat trap; like a saucer dropped and broken; church music; reading in monotone; like an altercation between a man and a woman; says ‘hush, hush’; whistle and groan; says ‘bo, bo, kick, cuck’; and a particular favourite ‘I was assailed by a noise I had never heard before’…
Quite
Challenge
Can anyone add to this list or begin to explain some of these phenomena: drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com
