poltergeists
Moderators: kiore, Blip, The_Metatron
jerome wrote:The old debate having died down a bit (I think it's a year since the last entry) it struck me that I have missed talking about poltergeists. I have become in the last twelve months even more convinced the humble poltergeist deserves more love and attention from the scientific community, and it struck me that it might be interesting to look at a few cases in more detail, and see what people thought.
This is one of the more interesting poltergiest/haunting cases, and occurred at Epworth parsonage in the 18th century. I will offer a letter that opens our contemporary accounts, from Mrs S Wesley the mother to her son Samuel who was away in London at the time.
TO MR. SAMUEL WESLEY FROM HIS MOTHER
January 12, 1716-17.
Dear Sam,-
This evening we were agreeably surprised with your pacquet, which brought the welcome news of your being alive, after we had been in the greatest panic imaginable, almost a month, thinking either you was dead, or one of your brothers by some misfortune been killed.
The reason of our fears is as follows. On the first of December our maid heard, at the door of the dining-room, several dismal groans, like a person in extremes, at the point of death. We gave little heed to her relation, and endeavoured to laugh her out of her fears. Some nights (two or three) after, several of the family heard a strange knocking in divers places, usually three or four knocks at a time, and then stayed a little.
This continued every night for a fortnight; sometimes it was in the garret, but most commonly in the nursery, or green chamber. We all heard it but your father, and I was not willing he should be informed of it, lest he should fancy it was against his own death, which, indeed, we all apprehended. But when it began to be troublesome, both day and night, that few or none of the family durst be alone, I resolved to tell him of it, being minded he should speak to it. At first he would not believe but somebody did it to alarm us; but the night after, as soon as he was in bed, it knocked loudly nine times, just by his bedside. He rose, and went to see if he could find out what it was, but could see nothing. Afterwards he heard it as the rest.
One night it made such a noise in the room over our heads, as if several people were walking, then run up and down stairs, and was so outrageous that we thought the children would be frighted, so your father and I rose and went down in the dark to light a candle. Just as we came to the bottom of the broad stairs, having hold of each other, on my side there seemed as if somebody had emptied a bag of money at my feet; and on his, as if all the bottles under the stairs (which were many) had been dashed in a thousand pieces. We passed through the hall into the kitchen, and got the candle and went to see the children, whom we found asleep.
The next night your father would get Mr. Hoole to be at our house, and we all sat together till one or two o'clock in the morning, and heard the knocking as usual. Sometimes it would make a noise like the winding up of a jack, at other times, as that night Mr. Hoole was with us, like a carpenter planing deals; but most commonly it knocked thrice and stopped, and then thrice again, and so many hours together. We persuaded your father to speak and try if any voice would be heard. One night about six o'clock he went into the nursery in the dark, and at first heard several deep groans, then knocking. He adjured it to speak if it had power and tell him why it troubled his house, but no voice was heard, but it knocked thrice aloud. Then be questioned if it were Sammy, and bid it, if it were and could not speak, knock again, but it knocked no more that night, which made us hope it was not against your death.
Thus it continued till the 26th of December, when it loudly knocked (as your father used to do at the gate) in the nursery and departed. We have various conjectures what this may mean. For my own part, I fear nothing now you are safe at London hitherto, and I hope God will still preserve you. Though sometimes I am inclined to think my brother is dead. Let me know your thoughts on it.
S. W.
While obviously at this distance we are unlikely to be able to establish causes, we can at least look at what the texts tell us, and discuss how we would have set about investigating the case. This letter and the ones that will follow were collected by the addressee Samuel Wesley, and later published, and accounts and testimony were also collected by his younger brother John Wesley, who was away at school at the time of the disturbances.
Any thoughts?
j x
chairman bill wrote:OK. Let's take the accounts at face value. I have no reason to doubt the events as described, but some caution should enter into our analysis. For example, eye-witness testimony is unreliable. People will embellish events & mis-remember them, even quite soon after they occur. Further, as people talk about their collective experiences, they can take in the different perspectives & add them to their own 'recollections', even though they had not originally been part of what they remembered. This is conflation of memories, rather than pure embellishments, but it is functionally the same thing, in that memories are distorted. All this can happen quite soon after & does not require great passage of time. When you consider that our memories are quite possibly rememberings of the last time we called a memory to consciousness, and not a recollection of the original memory of the actual event, the likelihood of embellishment & distortions increases. So, later recollections are potentially even less reliable.
chairman bill wrote:
If you've ever been in a house that is in the process of experiencing settling or subsidence, you'll know that strange noises are not uncommon, nor are events such as doors opening & closing by themselves. Some will remain stubbornly open or closed (due to structural changes), others will sort themselves out as the building settles & returns to a near-normal state in terms of being level, uprights being uprights & not set askew, and so on. As floorboards & joists move, they creak & pop. Items of furniture can move (the extent of which is subject to all the things I've said earlier about memory - i.e. the pudding gets over-egged & slight movements become significant movements), things will roll, plates will fall off walls & dressers, and so on.
chairman bill wrote:
In more modern housing, internal plumbing adds to the range of events that can be ascribed to ghostly goings-on. Internal plumbing and subsidence just multiplies the range of causative factors.
So, there we go. One relatively common, and simple, non-supernatural explanation that might account for events.
epete wrote:Ah, should have read the thread. I see it has advanced well past that.
CookieJon wrote:Psychological experiments conducted by aliens pretending to be poltergeists?
Onyx8 wrote:Not really it's still just anecdote. Create a narrative around a three hundred year old story, and then...what?
jerome wrote:Onyx8 wrote:Not really it's still just anecdote. Create a narrative around a three hundred year old story, and then...what?
Just to point out I understand your reservations, but it's not actually technically anecdotal. This is direct testimony: the percipients talking about their own experience. Anecdote as a term has been used in many contexts, but the original sense of hearsay, or a story told without personal observation of the reported facts is the usual one employed in the UK. This may differ in America - and there i have seen it employed in the hard sciences so the term has a perjorative sense, meaning data based upon observations not experimental findings often.
Anyhow this is not an anecdote, in a technical sense.
j x
Return to Paranormal & Supernatural
Users viewing this topic: No registered users and 1 guest