Today I was interviewed by aspiring reporters. The setting was Bill White's journalism class at Lehigh University. The topic of the poltergeist was the most popular one. The questions I was asked were intelligent and probing.
I began studying the paranormal when I was eleven and read my first parapsychology book, The Unknown Guest, Maurice Maeterlinck. Parapsychology is the scientific study of psychic phenomena, psi, done without bias. The author wrote about the Society for Psychical Research in Great Britain, founded in 1882 by Cambridge scholars and its journal, Proceedings.
When I was a child I believed ghosts existed, but the adults told me they were figments of my imagination. I realized this was not fiction like Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's vampire, Dracula. This was real! The next book I read was The Screaming Ghost by Carl Carmer. I was scared by the stories, but, more so I was captivated. Since then I read every book and article about psi and other areas of the paranormal that I could buy or borrow. Now that I have access to the Internet I research websites also. I also investigate alleged cases of psi and have had my own experiences, both of which I analyze objectively. Research helped me get rid of the fear. There was a time I would not read "ghost" book if I was alone and only read these during the day. I'd pull the covers tightly around me so no poltergeist would rip them from my bed. No ghostie was going to steal my sheet and blanket! When I got very scared by thinking about what I had read during the day, I pulled the covers over my head. In my need to be safe from a poltergeist I thought this would help. Today I can laugh at this.
Poltergeist is a German word meaning "noisy ghost." Documentation of this psi goes back to the earliest recorded historical times. Typical poltergeist activity includes throwing and breaking objects, stone throwing, drumming, disappearing and reappearing objects, furniture being moved, electrical and electronic devices being affected, fire setting, water gushing, rapping, knockings and, rarely, a person's body being scratched, hit or bitten and writing on the wall.
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