As a “ghost hunter,” different people have asked me the same question on different occasions: “Can ghosts hurt me?”
The short answer is, no, they cannot. Some spirits are capable of influencing your emotional state and obsessing spirits are known to influence your decision-making, mood and behavior, but these are usually short-lived.
However, in very rare instances parapsychologists have encountered what Doctors Philip Stander and Paul Schmolling call in their book, Poltergeists and the Paranormal: Fact Beyond Fiction, an assaultive poltergeist. This term describes poltergeist phenomena that are malicious. Usually, one person in particular is apparently attacked by unseen forces, but is not seriously injured. Their hair is pulled, scratch and bite marks appear on their skin, and they are sometimes shoved.
The Bristol Witch
The book Poltergeists and the Paranormal: Fact Beyond Fiction by Doctors Philip Stander and Paul Schmolling recounts the small book A Narrative of Some Extraordinary Things That Happened To Mr. Richard Giles’s Children, published in 1800 in Bristol (southwest England) by pharmacist Henry Durbin. It tells about the events that surrounded the two young daughters of the innkeeper of the Lamb’s Inn in Lawford’s Gate, Richard Giles.
On night during the winter of 1761, eight year-old Dobby and 13 year-old Molly were kept awake by strange rapping noises coming from their bedroom. Soon the rapping noises became more persistent and the adventurous girls worked out a code so they could communicate with the alleged ghost. They were horrified to learn that it was the spirit of a “witch” from Mangotsfield (south Gloucestershire, southwest England).
Soon the girls were assaulted. Mysterious scratches and even bite marks appeared on their skin, some in places, Durbin’s book sites, that they could not have bitten themselves. Apparently, he did not take into consideration that they could bite one another.
Regardless, many other outstanding citizens and some clergymen observed these phenomena and they all concluded the odd occurrences were supernatural. Visitors were frightened when the spirit would throw things that them and fascinated when the spirit gained a voice and would answer questions, even posed in different languages, to which the girls, even if they were skilled at throwing their voices or had a confederate helping them, would have no way of knowing the answer to.
The “haunting” finally ceased the next year when a local cunning woman, a woman skilled in white magic, entered the scene.
The Bell Witch
In The Bell Witch: The Full Account, Pat Fitzhugh borrows heavily from Our Family Trouble, a tell-all by Richard Williams Bell about the terrible events he and his family encountered at the hands of a violent spirit from 1817 to 1821 Adams (Robertson County), Tennessee.
In retrospect, the trouble began in the winter of 1817 when 13 year-old Betsy Bell and her sister were kept awake by scratching noises coming from their bedposts. Over the next few weeks, the noises became louder and their bedcovers were ripped from the bed by unseen hands. It would physically attack family members, especially Betsy and her father John Bell, and later visitors to the home. It would pull hair, pinch and scratch, and no one was able to do a thing to stop the assaults.
Soon, the spirit found its voice and declared it was the spirit of a Native North American Indian whose bones had been desecrated. Then, it said it was the spirit of the “witch,” Old Kate Batts, who had been cheated on a land deal with John Bell and had returned to torture the man. Voices of this spirit’s alleged relatives, Blackdog, Mathematics, Cypocryphy and Jerusalem, soon began to speak. But, this identity was a lie, as well, but the spirit that plagued the family would forever be called “the Bell Witch.”
Even though the voices were often abusive, except to the mother, Lucy, they could answer questions from visitors that no one else had any way of knowing. Though, a lot of the time they would tell dirty little secrets about the visitors and set them running from the house; this showed the spirit could even read minds. One of the most famous visitors is said to have been future president General Andrew Jackson, whose carriage was brought to an abrupt halt on his way to the house by, it is said, the spirit.
The spirit could not be exorcized by any means, and when Betsy was sent away the spirit followed her. At times she would become lethargic and pale, almost like she were in a trance.
When Lucy fell ill, the spirit became more concerned about nursing the mother back to health then torturing anyone. It would shower her with hazelnuts, which was about the only thing Lucy could eat. But, as soon as Lucy was well again, the terrible phantom was back to work tormenting the living.
Eventually, the phenomena became less frequent and ended one day in 1821. Allegedly, the spirit promised to return in seven years, which it did. It apparently only stayed a short while and said it would return in 107 years before it disappeared. However, the year 1935 passed without a single sighting.
Poltergeists
Did you notice any similarities in these two legends besides the belief in witchcraft?
- The phenomena seemed connected to children.
- The phenomena started with rather benign sounds that could easily be explained away but were annoying nonetheless.
- The children were first assaulted, then other family members and then guests.
- There were a number of outside parties that attested to the reality of the haunting.
- The spirit found a voice.
- The spirit was able to answer questions that no one else could have possibly known.
Some of these correlations mark the alleged existence of a poltergeist, a German phrase that means, “noisy ghost,” that the book Poltergeists and the Paranormal: Fact Beyond Fiction by Doctors Philip Stander and Paul Schmolling credit Catherine Crowe, author of Night Side of Nature, or Ghosts and Ghost Seers, with introducing to the English language.
These cases may be extreme, but various parapsychologists throughout the years have documented them.
In Haunted People: Story of the Poltergeist Down the Centuries (1968) Hereward Carrington retells an investigation that took place in the 1930s where he formulated the idea that poltergeist activity was caused by internalized emotional trauma during the onset of puberty was somehow externalized in a supernatural spectacle. Alan “A. R. G.” Owen updated this theory in his book Psychic Mysteries of Canada (1975), explaining that the externalized tension could cause the phenomena between the ages of 10 and 20. Quest For the Unknown: Mind Power by Reader’s Digest explains that Professor Hans Bender of the Freiburg Institute in Germany theorized that sexual tension and frustration could be included in the idea that sexual development played an important role in poltergeist activity. He also added that menopause and erectile dysfunction could also bring on these anomalies. However, most parapsychologists site what H. J. Irwin wrote in his book, An Introduction to Parapsychology; that these phenomena can be externalized by anyone with pent-up tension.
The Rumanian Devil
Another case of a rather abusive poltergeist sited in Poltergeists and the Paranormal: Fact Beyond Fiction by Doctors Philip Stander and Paul Schmolling is that of young Rumanian Eleonora Zugun. By all accounts, this young girl did not have a happy childhood. In 1926, as the story goes, she ate some candy she had stolen and she was soon attacked by an unseen force she accredited as being the Devil come to punish her for her sins. When priests could not exorcise her, she was sent to live in an insane asylum.
German parapsychologist Fritz Grunewald read about the phenomena in the local papers and was able to get the girl released and brought to a monastery where he could study the remarkable forces that plagued her. Bites marks and welts would appear all over the girl’s skin, even in places where she could not have bit herself. But after Grunewald died of a heart attack, she was returned to her family.
Luckily, Viennese Countess Zoe Wassilko-Serecki, who was also interested in the paranormal, brought the girl to live with her and published accounts of the odd occurrences in the small book, Spuk von Talpa (1926).
Eleonora was taken to see noted parapsychologist Harry Price, but the phenomena soon stopped. By the summer of 1927, Eleonora was just a normal girl.
Conclusions
What are we to make of such stories? Obviously, the first explanation is that all these children were making all of it up and playing tricks on people that later got blown all out of proportion, as things tend to do. What would they get out of it? Attention, mainly.
But, what if we believe that stifled emotions could indeed cause these manifestations? And, if the person doesn’t know they’re themselves responsible for the supernatural events, how can things be helped?
In Hauntings and Poltergeists: Multidisciplinary Perspectives by James Houran James and Rense Lange, we discover that William G. Roll of the Psychology Department ate the University of West Georgia in Carrollton, Georgia was the first person to this phenomena Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis (RSPK). These bursts of seemingly mental energy usually only last a short time.
For a more indefinite solution, great results have been seen when the agent of a poltergeist is allowed to see a psychologist and work through the trauma that can quite literally affect other people.
