This kind of experimentation went on the back burner, though, for nearly twenty years until Professor Gilbert Murray, a Professor of Greek at Oxford University, revived interest. He played a parlour game with his family in which he would go out of the room and then try to ‘guess’ targets that they set for him. Murray fared better when the target set was a scene containing some action and some emotion than when it was a simple object or word. His experience has since been corroborated by recent experiments by parapsychologists like Charles Honorton doing ganzfeld work (see chapter 3 (#litres_trial_promo)). Murray was also unusual in that the whole family, friends and witnesses would try to ‘send’ the picture to him – most telepathy experiments involve only one sender.
Some of his results were remarkable. When the target was ‘Jane Eyre at school, standing on a chair and being called a liar by Mr Brocklehurst’, Murray came up with: ‘My mother being at a French school … I reject that. But a sense of obloquy. Girl standing up on a form in a school … a thing in a book, certainly. I think they are calling her a liar.’
When the subject was the sinking of the Lusitania he got it straight off. ‘I’ve got this violently. I’ve got an awful impression of naval disaster. I should think it was the torpedoing of the Lusitania.’
For a time even Murray himself thought that he might be getting clues to his targets through his extremely good hearing, but he was not consciously aware of hearing the targets being discussed. He certainly fared better when they had been discussed than when a target was simply written down, although this did not completely hamper him. Sometimes he picked up things that were in the minds of the senders, but which they had neither spoken nor committed to paper. For example, when his daughter set him a target of a scene from a Russian book in which some children were being taken to see their grandparents, he came up with the information that they were taken across the River Volga. He had never read the book, nor was the river mentioned when the target was discussed, but in fact he was correct: the book did describe the children being taken across the Volga.
In the 1920s, more and more research time was given over to laboratory-type experiments, with tests for clairvoyance and telepathy through guessing cards. But, by then, this type of research was taken more seriously in America, where universities were getting in on the action and academics were being given funding to study the paranormal full-time (unlike the SPR volunteers).
In the 1930s the work of J.B. Rhine, the founding father of modern parapsychology, firmly established academic interest in the subject. It was Rhine who coined the word ‘parapsychology’ and also ‘ESP’, or extra sensory perception, an umbrella term covering telepathy, clairvoyance and all other forms of paranormal communication.
Rhine was first attracted to the subject after hearing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes and a dedicated spiritualist, give a talk in Chicago. It sparked an interest in him and his wife Louisa – another great contributor to psychic research – that would last a lifetime. But after an unhappy encounter with a celebrated medium, who they both deemed to be a fraud, the Rhines were convinced that the way forward was through systematic and academically credible research. While working at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Rhine professionalized the subject by introducing statistics. Although earlier work had been done with ‘guinea pigs’ who claimed no specific psi abilities, most research had centred on people who claimed or appeared to have specific talents. It was Rhine who initiated large-scale testing of ordinary individuals, and made sure that all his results were compared with those he might have expected to obtain by chance: a protocol that has been adhered to by parapsychologists ever since.
Rhine refined the standard card-guessing games by having a colleague, Karl Zener, devise a new set of five cards, each featuring a simple symbol: star, plus-sign, circle, rectangle, wavy line. These cards, made into packs of twenty-five with five of each, are known as Zener cards. The idea behind them was to get away from the emotive connotations of playing cards, and also to give very clearly individual symbols for ‘guinea pigs’ to try to ‘pick up’.
Testing students at random, Rhine soon found several individuals who demonstrated unusual psi abilities. He was able to test them and find consistent patterns: they performed less well when they were tired, they performed less well on certain drugs. He and his fellow researchers devised experiments that distinguished between telepathy and clairvoyance.
It was the publication of Rhine’s book, Extra Sensory Perception, in 1934, that put parapsychology on the map. By and large, Rhine’s methodical approach and statistical rectitude confounded them. The book and its sequel became popular with mass-circulation newspapers and magazines and national radio stations queuing to interview Rhine. The orthodox psychologists (themselves still pioneering a new discipline) gave grudging approval to Rhine’s work.
He was not entirely above criticism although (luckily for the growing band of parapsychologists encouraged by the acceptance of his work) none of the research with which he was associated was seriously discredited until 1978. Even then, it was not Rhine himself who was accused of distorting statistics, but a British mathematician, S.G. Soal, who had tested a great deal of people with a card-guessing experiment in the 1940s. Only when he looked at their results for ‘temporal displacement’ did he find two of them were scoring well above chance. Temporal displacement means that although they were not necessarily getting the right card each time, they were accurately predicting the following card or a preceding card. (In the case of Soal’s examples they were both guessing the card to come, but that need not have been the case.)
Soal was accused of falsifying his results, and Rhine was implicated because his Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University checked and approved some of Soal’s research. Thirty years later a computer expert scrutinized Soal’s research and confirmed that ‘the sad and inescapable conclusion remains that all the experimental series in card-guessing carried out by Dr Soal must, as the evidence stands, be discredited’. Rhine, though not colluding, had been economical with the truth when publishing conclusions that seemed to authenticate Soal’s work.
The Soal scandal is one of relatively few accusations of straightforward cheating that have been levelled at psychical researchers and parapsychologists, although they have regularly been accused of being duped or of misinterpreting data (see chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)). In general, the early members of the Society for Psychical Research and the pioneers of laboratory work inspired by Rhine set high standards for those who came after them.
2 (#ulink_c80e2117-cf29-5cb3-a371-b7a0ca195681)
Things That Go Bump in the Night (#ulink_c80e2117-cf29-5cb3-a371-b7a0ca195681)
Pete the Polt is an obliging sort of ghost who believes in paying his way: he materializes five-pound notes for the people he is haunting. Crumpled fivers arrive out of thin air. They turn up pinned to the ceiling; wedged between the blades of machinery; one even appeared in the open air and fluttered to the ground at the feet of the man of whom Pete seems to be particularly fond. This man also found a ten-pound note on the window of his car. Altogether, about ninety pounds have appeared, as well as several one-pound coins and handfuls of pennies.
Pete the Poltergeist has been making his presence felt for the last six years – not always in such a benign way. His ‘home’ is a small lawnmower repair workshop, with a hardware shop in front, in the Cathays district of Cardiff.
The business is owned by John Matthews and his wife, Pat. They are helped out by Pat’s brother, Fred Cook, and his wife, Gerry. Fred seems to be Pete’s particular favourite, but all four of them have seen plenty of evidence of Pete’s existence. So, too, have several other people: neighbouring shopkeepers, salesmen visiting the business, customers and other staff who have worked there over the years.
Most impressively, Dr David Fontana, a lecturer in educational psychology at Cardiff University, who was deputed by the Society for Psychical Research to investigate Pete, has been able to witness phenomena occurring. On one occasion, he was accompanied by a colleague from the university when Pete was demonstrating his prowess as a stone thrower.
It was stone throwing that first alerted John Matthews to his uninvited guest. The business was then being run from a single-storey building in the yard at the back of the shop and workshop. At that time, John had a partner, Graham, and both men were constantly irritated by the sound of stones hitting the corrugated roof. They assumed it was vandals and reported it to the police more than once. The police investigated and found nothing.
When the business transferred to the bigger premises, the stone throwing increased – but this time it was inside. As John, Graham and a young lad who worked for them, Richard, were busy repairing lawnmowers, they would hear small stones striking the walls all around them and dropping to the workbenches and the floor. Originally, they suspected each other.
‘So one afternoon after we’d locked the shop and there was nobody else around, we all put our hands on the counter so that none of us could cheat. And the stone throwing continued,’ said John, a down-to-earth Welshman in his fifties who had never even heard the word poltergeist at this stage.
‘After a bit, Richard said we ought to write down what was happening. As soon as he spoke a pen plopped down on the counter. So then he started asking for things. He said, “Bring us a plug. Bring us the big end off a mower.” All sorts of things. As he asked for them, they arrived. I couldn’t have found them that fast myself in the workshop. That’s when we knew it was something intelligent.’
Since then, both Graham and Richard have left, though not because of Pete. Pat has started to work more in the shop and her brother and sister-in-law, Fred and Gerry, are also both there most days. There have been other part-time employees, all of whom have seen and heard Pete.
‘At first Richard seemed to be his favourite, but now it is Fred,’ said John. ‘It does more for Fred than anyone. It was when Fred said, “Why don’t you bring us something useful, Pete,” that the money started coming.’
But the money is a relatively recent development, and has coincided with Pete getting altogether quieter. For a long time, John, his colleagues, and anyone else who was there – including Dr Fontana – were able to have throwing games with Pete, aiming small stones into the most active corner of the workshop (the area where most of Pete’s phenomena occurred) and having stones thrown back instantaneously. By marking the ones they threw they could check that they were not getting the same ones back and, after experimenting with rebounds and different trajectories, David Fontana was satisfied that there was no natural explanation for the stones.
Other phenomena have included bolts materializing in mid air, cutlery being taken out of drawers and spread on the table (almost as though Pete was trying to lay the table), cutlery being bent, paper and paperclips materializing to order (the paper often seemed to have come from the offices above the shop, where an accountant has his business). Distinctive teaspoons from a restaurant a few doors away have also turned up on the staircase at Fred and Gerry’s home. On one occasion, Pat challenged Pete to produce a dirty paintbrush and one which was not one of their own arrived at her feet.
Pete seems to be fascinated by the carburettor floats which John uses in his business. These are small rubber floats pierced by a sharp metal pin, which allows them to be stuck into different surfaces. They have been found sticking from the ceiling of the workshop. When Pat asked for money, she found a float holding a crumpled five-pound note on to the ceiling. They have appeared in all sorts of odd places in the workshop and, most surprising of all to John and Fred, they have turned up away from the business premises, usually at Fred and Gerry’s house.
‘On one occasion we left one on top of the heater in the workshop when we locked up at night, challenging it to move. As we drove home, Fred went to buy some fags and when he scooped up his change off the shop counter, there was a float with it,’ said John.
On another occasion, Fred thought he had been stung by a wasp because he felt a sharp prick under his shirt but, when he undid his buttons, he found a carburettor float pinned to him. And once, when Fred, Pat and Gerry were sitting under a sun umbrella in Fred and Gerry’s garden, all three of them saw the pin from a float pierce the canvas umbrella. John and his family are a pragmatic, easy-going group, none of whom have had any previous interest in or experience of psychic matters. Both couples, John and Pat, and Fred and Gerry, are in their fifties, with grown-up families. They have accepted the presence of Pete the Polt in much the same way that they accept any new arrivals in the business – everyone is made to feel welcome. They have even become fond of Pete, and Fred described the experience of encountering such an active poltergeist as ‘a privilege’. But not everything about the experience has been happy. There have been one or two narrow escapes. For instance, when a large bolt of wood was hurled across the workshop and when metal stepladders were thrown across the shop, breaking some of the plates that were on sale. Seed and fertilizer, which is sold in the shop, has frequently been scattered all over the floor and the counter when they have arrived at work in the morning and, on one occasion, fertilizer was thrown over a customer. When Pat is in the toilet she is upset to find stones being thrown around her while the door is locked.
‘I don’t like the idea of him being in there with me,’ she said. Although she does not mind when Pete fingers and plays with her hair.
Other phenomena have worried the family because of the risks. The poltergeist has seemed able to create fire and once they arrived at work to find the engine of a giant lawnmower had been started and left running, emitting dangerous fumes. This happened on a Monday morning, so there was no possibility that the mower had been left on by them: it would have run out of petrol over the weekend. Only a strong man could have started the difficult engine, from which a spark plug had been removed for safety.
‘That worried me a bit. If it could start that engine and put back a spark plug that we had removed, what couldn’t it do?’ said John.
Fred, who was originally very fond of Pete, has had the most alarming experiences, and now tries to discourage the whole affair, ignoring new phenomena. On four occasions he has seen an apparition in the workshop, the figure of a small schoolboy, aged about nine or ten, but dressed in the sort of clothing worn in the 1940s and 1950s – a school cap, grey shorts, heavy shoes. Once, the apparition was sitting on the handle of a lawnmower, swinging its legs; once on the shop till; and once on a set of shelves in the ‘active’ corner. Fred could not make out a face or hands and the apparition seemed not to be limited by the physical shape of the room because when it was sitting on the top shelf in the workshop half of its body should, logically, have stuck through the ceiling. Although John was with Fred during at least one of these sightings, John could see nothing.
When Fred saw the apparition for the fourth time he was alarmed. The ghost child was standing in the workshop, near the doorway to the small kitchen, waving to him. He tried to speak to it, but it disappeared.
The most worrying thing for the whole family was the risk to their business. When the stone throwing was at its height John even spoke to his insurance company about the danger to customers. In fact, only one customer was hit, and not hard enough for injury to be caused, but she left the shop indignantly because she believed one of the staff had fired the missile at her. John and Pat were concerned that publicity would affect them adversely.
‘I never believed in any of this before. I would have thought someone was nuts if they said all this had happened to them,’ said John. ‘So I thought people would think I was nuts.’
Two things rule out the possibility of faking in this case: the family’s lack of motive for it and the substantial number of people who would have to be in on any plot. None of the people involved with the business stood to gain the slightest advantage from having Pete there and they all carefully avoided publicity. The incidents have happened over such a long period of time, and with such a variety of witnesses, that there can be no question of one person faking it all: the minimum number of people involved would have to be five or six, because events have occurred even when none of the four main family members was present. (Dr Fontana witnessed throwing while on his own in the workshop.)
Dr Fontana scrupulously investigated the possibility of underground water or vibrations from traffic or other physical events causing disturbance in the building. He went to the premises on numerous occasions, often unannounced, and never saw anything that made him suspect trickery. (Although Graham, John’s original partner, was a practical joker and was known at times to flick stones about when everything was otherwise quiet. Graham’s leaving the business did not end Pete’s activity, and there were plenty of times before that when things occurred and Graham was not present.)
The case was ideal for investigation because the activity has lasted a long time and the poltergeist has not been shy about performing in front of strangers.
‘The chances of getting another case as good as this are slim,’ said Dr Fontana. ‘It is the sheer volume of activity and the number of witnesses, many of whom I have tracked down and interviewed, that make it special. Poltergeists sometimes will not “perform” in front of anyone except the inhabitants of the house or building and investigators have to take a great deal on trust. That has been partly true with Pete. I have sometimes gone to the workshop when John has rung to say there was a lot of activity, only to find nothing happens while I am there. But I have also been able to witness actual phenomena and, on many occasions, I have seen the results of activity (for instance, the shop floor and counter covered in seed).
‘It is very time consuming investigating a case like this, but very rewarding. The amount of activity was so great that at times I had to guard against getting blasé – I’d find myself feeling bored with the stone-throwing games and wishing something else would happen. Yet I know that most investigators would be delighted to witness and take part in reciprocal stone throwing with a poltergeist.
‘I was also intrigued by my own reactions. When I was there, I would eliminate all possibilities of fraud or natural causes and would know that I was seeing genuine phenomena. But as soon as I was away from the premises and reflecting on what I had seen, I would find myself trying to reject the evidence of my own senses by coming up with all sorts of tortuous rationales for what was happening.’
The Cardiff case is still being monitored, and will probably become one of the Society for Psychical Research’s celebrated cases. One of the most unusual features about it is that, unlike most poltergeist cases, it is not centred on an adolescent or young person, nor are any of the main participants emotionally unstable. John Matthews points out that the highest peak of Pete’s activity coincided with his business going through a bad time: two very dry summers had reduced the need for lawnmowers, and consequent lawnmower repairs. But he and his relatives are equable people, old enough to have lived through other vagaries in their business life and uninclined to let problems get them down.
Another unusual feature is the reciprocal nature of the phenomena. At one time, it was possible to ask Pete to start throwing stones more or less at will. It was possible to ask not just for paper clips but for coloured paperclips and even to name the colour.
The word ‘poltergeist’ is German for noisy spirit (although the Germans themselves do not use the word, preferring ‘spuk’) and a noisy spirit is certainly present in the Cardiff case. Poltergeists and ghosts are generally regarded as different phenomena, although there are so many overlaps in the definitions of the two that it is not always possible to keep them apart. Classically, a ghost is an apparition which goes about its own business, regardless of whoever or whatever is around. Haunted houses, with their tales of headless knights, cowled monks and grey ladies, abound. The apparition can be seen, perhaps frequently, but it does not interact with those who see it.
A poltergeist, on the other hand, does interact. The Cardiff case is exceptional: most are not as intelligent or as responsive as Pete. But poltergeist cases always involve some attempt, however crude, to monopolize the attention of the living. Typical poltergeist activity includes rapping and making other noises, moving around ornaments and furniture, ‘bringing’ objects from other places. When small items are seen moving they often appear to travel as though being carried and, instead of losing height in a gradual trajectory, fall as though dropped. Although poltergeists rarely harm anyone, they can be destructive of property and they can pinch or push human beings. Some poltergeists produce water in unexplained pools, some seem to make objects hot to touch. There have been changes over the years. Before this century, cases did not involve switching on and off electric lights or causing electrical equipment to malfunction, and there are now more cases involving water, probably because today buildings are linked to the mains water supply. On the other hand there are fewer cases today of one of the poltergeists’ nastier habits, the daubing of excrement, possibly because there are far fewer cess pits around.
These two groups, ghosts and poltergeists, are separated by large grey areas which overlap, or fit into neither category. The Cardiff case involved an apparition and, in other ways, it was outside the norm for poltergeist cases. The most common reported paranormal incidents do not fit into the definition of either ghosts or poltergeists and deserve a category of their own: hauntings. Like ghosts, these are centred on a place not a person, but they do not involve an apparition. Their standard trademarks are raps, imitative noises, voices, luminous effects and the opening and closing of doors.
Despite the limitations of this arbitrary breakdown, most investigators believe it is easier, if not always completely accurate, to categorize phenomena in one of these three groups: ghosts, hauntings or poltergeists.
There is no shortage of material to categorize, although the numbers of properly attested and witnessed cases are not as great as might be expected. Poltergeists have probably come in for the most investigative attention, simply because they make their presence so powerfully felt and are so disruptive that their hosts seek help. Hauntings are not so threatening and many old inns, hotels and stately homes regard ghosts as attractions. Plenty of families cheerfully co-exist with them.