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When a Poltergeist isn't .....
By: Becky
Most of us are familiar with the poltergeist phenomena. Hollywood dramatised it in a film of the same name and there are famous cases notably the Enfield Poltergeist. The term Poltergeist literally mean 'noisy ghost' but is there another explanation for the phenomena which we usually attribute to Poltergeists?
What are Poltergeist Phenomena?
The kinds of phenomena commonly attributed to Poltergeists are varied. Movement of objects, Objects appearing or disappearing, raps and bangs, objects being piled up one on top of the other, lights switching on and off, fires starting and objects being thrown are all common poltergeist activity. So What could cause these effects before our eyes unless it is in fact a noisy ghost?
Electromagnetic Fields and the Poltergeist Phenomena
While many of the effects attributed to poltergeists can be explained by more mundane occurrences ( raps and bangs can be caused by natural movement of buildings 'settling down', plumbing or even sound travelling from other parts of a building) some of the more spectacular effects appear to defy the laws of nature. But do they?
John Hutchinson, a pioneer in electromagnetics, appears to have discovered that poltergeist activity is in fact of an electromagnetic nature. But does his discovery pose more questions than it answers?
Basically, what Hutchison did was cram into a single room a variety of devices which emit electromagnetic fields (such as Tesla coils, van de Graaff generators, RF transmitters, signal generators, etc.). What he found was that after they had been running for a while, effects began to occur that were identical to those which have come to be considered poltergeist phenomena. Objects of any material levitated into the air and hovered there, or moved about and then fell; fires started around the building; mirrors smashed at a distance of 80 feet away; metal distorted and broke; water spontaneously swirled in containers; lights appeared in the air and then vanished; metal became white-hot but did not burn any surrounding materials; etc
In fact practically everything that psychical researchers had been documenting for many years as poltergeist activity and that observers had considered to be the work of spirits eventually turned up in the laboratory where John Hutchison's device was operating. Although it was made up of different parts, it operated as a single entity, and phenomena occurred in the same unpredictable way as reported poltergeists: you could be there for days and nothing would happen, then suddenly coins would flip and fly, water would swirl and a transformer would blow. And there was also an unfortunate aspect of the device: it had a tendency to destroy itself. It is worth recalling at this point that psychical researchers have in fact dubbed poltergeist activity as "destructive haunting".
However while there is no doubt that Electromagnetic fields are capable of causing these kinds of effects the question is how? Hutchinson himself thinks that perhaps somehow the fabric of space-time is actually breached
"The idea is to excite the surface skin of the masses and their atoms to create an unstable space-time situation. This might allow the fields from the Tesla coils and RF-generation equipment to lock up in a local space-time situation. My thought is that now a small amount of energy is released from the vast reservoir in space-time at the sub-atomic level to create a disruptive or movement effect."
Maybe in this case the 'logical' explanation is almost as fantastic as the paranormal one!
A case study
3 Rose Lane, Adisham.
In 1976 the Orchards and their 15 year old son David had been living a peaceful existence in their cottage situated near the end of a quiet country lane on the edge of Adisham, a small, quiet and secluded Kent village lying between Canterbury and Dover. The cottage consisted of a lounge and kitchen downstairs and two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.
The first indications of problems were when electrical items in the house like the vacuum cleaner switched themselves on and off and began glowing. Then water would appear in the house as if from nowhere. In the dogs basket, in the television set, on carpets, mattresses and books and even in electric bulbs. The strange thing is that when the water was emptied the television set would work as though nothing had happened. The water always "left it's mark" - a circle with a dot in the centre.
Objects would move from their usual place in the house and float around the room, often with such force as to smash windows and even to continue moving once outside the house. Settees and chairs would tip up on one end and appear to be held there by some unseen force uable to be moved by the Orchards.
A broom was snatched right out of Mrs Orchards hand and became attached to the ceiling; a line of books on a shelf flew, one by one, down the stairs, one striking Mrs Orchard on the forehead; the pet cat levitated and hovered close to the ceiling and then ran out terrified when it was released; water pipes bent and buckled as people watched in complete amazement. In one instance a Rayburn stove moved across the floor, watched by an incredulous official from the local authority.
In desperation, Mr Orchards called in the police and was visited by a PC from Bridge who then telephoned SEEB (The local Electricty Provider) at Folkestone. As a result, SEEB wrote to Canterbury Subdivision HQ of Kent Police suggesting that quantities of water had been thrown into electrical appliances despite the fact that many gallons could be seen running down the lane.
The Orchards finally managed to take the local electricity board to court based on the idea that a PME (Protective Multiple Earthing) in their garden was at the heart of the matter. A SEEB engineer called by the Orchards had told them that their was a very bad short on the PME Pole. Another engineer who tested the pole and other circuits in the house noted that his meter moved backwards and fowards when the circuits were isolated. However they summarised that there was nothing that they could do with regards to the phenomena occurring in the house and suggested in a later letter that they 'look in a direction other than the electricity supply for an explanation'.
However the judge did not accept their claims and decided that the damage to the cottage, which was uninhabitable by July 1977 was probably caused by a member of the Orchard family.
© Critical Thinkers 2005
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