In his latest book, John Fraser explores classic historical poltergeist cases (Pontefract, Cashen’s Gap and other standards, along with newer cases like “The Cage” in St. Osyth as well as several lesser-known ones) with updated material and his own follow-ups and analysis, and explores the phenomena from psychological, parapsychological, and cultural perspectives.
Fraser admittedly does not know all the answers, but he knows what questions to ask.
He suggests that poltergeists may not be as rare as they are thought to be, and presents representative examples of local poltergeist-ish incidents in and near his own home town that received local attention at the time but never became documented internationally in a book or journal. He also discusses the growing observation that there seems to be a “contagion” aspect to poltergeists (a fascinating concept previously explored in depth by researcher Darren Ritson), where exposure to a poltergeist agent or location may cause a virus-like spread of the phenomena to new locations and experiencers.
For the last 100-plus years poltergeist cases have been regarded as distinct from traditional apparitional hauntings (based on the objective physicality of poltergeists as opposed to the mainly subjective sensory perceptions of a haunting). Fraser, however, suspects that most actual apparitional cases may have poltergeist (physical) elements (or, viewed from another angle, are poltergeist cases with imbedded apparitions), and thus poltergeist and apparitional hauntings are the same thing. Cornell and Gauld previously reported that 29% of poltergeist cases had visual apparitions. Fraser believes that after you subtract folkloric (i.e., fictionalized) ghost stories & legends (which are typically “pure” apparitional haunting motifs without poltergeistic components) from the database of hauntings, the “real” remaining cases generally contain poltergeist elements and it may be that there are very few authentic apparitional cases that do not include poltergeist elements or vice versa. Many parapsychologists would argue against this (perhaps relying on Cornell & Gauld’s statistics). Loyd Auerbach has reported that in the rare (in his opinion) instances where apparitional figures are seen in poltergeist cases they are usually shadowy forms without distinct details or facial features, where most figures in standard hauntings look like fully-formatted people.
Fraser makes many references to Tony Cornell & Alan Gauld’s seminal work, ‘Poltergeists’ (1979). Hopefully Cornell & Gauld’s study, which serves as a “meta-analysis” of poltergeist cases up to that point, with resultant statistical phenomenological trends and breakdowns, will eventually be updated and expanded with the analytical inclusion of more recent cases (“The Cage,” Bothell Hell House, Tina Resch, et al), in the same way that Cal Cooper updated Rogo & Bayless’ ‘Phone Calls from the Dead” research.
In one interesting chapter, Fraser looks at Eastern Europe, especially Romania, which does not have a tradition of reported “poltergeist” cases but has a long tradition of vampire encounters. Fraser breaks down the actual phenomenology of reported vampire cases and finds that what has been reported is identical to what in the Western world would be called a poltergeist. The phenomena are the same, but interpreted differently and described by different words due to cultural tradition and expectations.
In the never-ending debate between living agent-generated psychokinesis and the intrusion of an external entity/ghost as the cause of poltergeist phenomena, Fraser leans to the recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis camp. Fraser, like most mainstream parapsychological researchers, suspects that “we” are the ghost, not dear deceased Uncle Fred. Fraser, also, admits that he might be wrong.
Highly recommended!
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Top reviews from other countries
Samantha Treasure
Breath of fresh air
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 4, 2021
John Strong
Brilliant, five stars.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 5, 2020
Dr Peter A. McCue
Interesting case reports, but not a very lucid presentation
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 13, 2020Customer
Excellent study of the poltergeist phenomena
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 7, 2020