The Poltergeist

Again with the school work. But this time I thought I would share with you a review I did on William G. Roll's The Poltergeist, as I know several of you share my interest in the paranormal.

Book Review of The Poltergeist by William G. Roll

Things that go bump in the night; levitating and thrown objects; unexpected banging sounds - these are the things that mark the territory of a poltergeist. But are these occurrences to be credited toward a supernatural source? An agitated spirit? Perhaps they are the unfettered subconscious emotions of a particular person. Perhaps they are simply the affects of a misguided human who has faked the events. This is what William Roll explores in his The Poltergeist.
The beginning chapter lays the groundwork for studying poltergeists, using some basic ideas that are found throughout the author’s experiences. For instance, to study a poltergeist one must go out into the field where the phenomena is happening. It is not a controlled environment for the researcher. However, poltergeists “are very sociable” (Roll 11). This means the phenomena mostly occurs when people are around.

To help the reader understand more about poltergeists, Roll spends a few chapters discussing various cases involving poltergeist phenomena. Before 1958, the author found 47 cases of activity that fit this description. These span the globe. The stories involve numerous witnesses to events such as common tools moving by themselves or a piece of wood acquiring frog-like hopping abilities. One may even note that often the same objects are affected on several different occasions. In 20 cases, people were looking directly at the objects when the mysterious motion began. Then there were the mysterious knocking sounds. Some people actually reported that they could communicate with the poltergeist by having it knock a specific number of times in answer to direct questions. At other times the mysterious entities seemed to take a certain amount of wrath out on those observing it, people having been hit by various objects. But ultimately, as Rolls digresses into the historical records, he finds that poltergeists are creatures of habit, repeating patterns of behavior.

There is Rolls own research to consider. He provides detailed accounts of several investigations in which he was personally involved. His first case took place on Long Island, at the Hermann House. The phenomena in this case mainly involved bottles opening and spilling of their own accord, which then evolved into a figurine, a globe, bowls and vases, and a lamp seemingly moving by themselves. Many of these moved repeatedly until a few of them were broken. Roll and his colleague spent a great deal of time studying these objects, trying to figure out ways that the displays of motion could have been staged or planted by human constructs. They determined it was not this at all, but was perhaps recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis (RSPK). And like many such cases, this one turned out to be short-lived and did no real damage to anyone (25).

But not all cases are given such a resolution. With the Housing Project Poltergeist (Newark, NJ), a young boy and his grandmother had a terrible time with poltergeist phenomena that practically destroyed all of the grandmother's valuable objects. They flew around and broke whenever the boy was anywhere on the premises. Similar things also happened when both the boy and his grandmother were staying in a hotel room together. Roll found the situation to be curious and rarely discovered anything he could consider proof of a true poltergeist. Many of the incidents could have been fraudulently created by the boy, even if in the beginning there were true paranormal happenings. However, even under a lie detecter test, the boy “seemed as unconscious of the fraudulent events as he had been of the apparently genuine ones” (54).
Then there are the poltergeists that deviate from the norm. One in particular had an affinity for biting people. In Indianapolis, this particular poltergeist was accused of biting one woman as well as repeatedly biting her mother. Along with typical poltergeist behavior (breaking items and banging sounds), it did more violent things to the mother as well. Later in the case, it was thought that some of the activity was definitely self-inflicted and the other phenomenon was human-based.

Strange lights can also be considered poltergeist phenomena as in a Clayton, North Carolina case. The lights would flash off and on at various times in the house, usually when one particular person was present in the room. The source was never detected even though electrical engineers checked and rechecked the house’s electrical system. When the family moved, the lights did not follow them.

Other cases are also discussed that have the traditional poltergeist qualities. These were both in the U.S. and Europe. They plagued homes (even following a family to a new location). There was a poltergeist in Miami that broke items in a warehouse. This particular poltergeist allowed Roll and his contemporaries to study it (or more likely the owners of the warehouse allowed for the disruption of their business) and experiment with it.

When it comes to the idea that the phenomena may be caused by RSPK, Roll often tried to study the catalyst person in laboratory settings at Duke University. The one thing all poltergeist experiences have in common is a catalyst person (159), and often this person is pubescent. Some of the people were very obliging; others were not.

Roll himself does not discount the idea that poltergeists are spirit entities, but he feels that such disturbances can be explained as psychokinesis. If one considers that physical objects all have psi fields (according to the psi field theory) that are influenced by an outside source (energy generated by a human in the case of poltergeists), then when the objects' fields are affected, they react (or may be energetically charged to eventually react) (167).

Personality is also a large factor in the phenomena. People who have a common tendency toward “tension, mostly anger, which cannot find ordinary ways of expression” are involved in all these cases (174). Another factor maybe changes in hormone levels within the catalysts, as may happen around puberty.

For those interested in exploring poltergeist activity, the appendix of the book provides a wealth of knowledge. It gives suggestions on how to go about doing an interview and a poltergeist investigation.

Work Cited: Roll, William G. The Poltergeist. New York: Nelson Doubleday, Inc., 1972.