Translated from the German, the word “poltergeist“ means “noisy spirit“. This term is used to describe all sorts of noises and spontaneous movements of objects around the house without any rational explanation. The poltergeist phenomenon is studied by parapsychologists. However, modern science takes parapsychology lightly.
Today, we will talk about both perspectives on poltergeist – a parapsychological and a scientific one.
What is poltergeist according to parapsychologists and mystics?
Whether we believe in spirits or not, we should not deny that something like this happens. Many homes seem to have their own poltergeists. The question is – what causes can be hiding behind this mysterious phenomenon? However, first of all, let’s focus on the parapsychological point of view.
It is believed that poltergeists can not cause physical harm to people, but may have quite a heavy impact on their physical health. Not everyone is ready to accept the fact that they share their house with an unknown being or spirit that is unpredictable in its actions…
There are not many witnesses who state they saw poltergeists with their own eyes. Some people claim to have seen things flying around their apartment, others – to have heard strange creaks and other sounds, and others say they have heard a human speech from non-human voices. From the paranormal point of view, a constant flickering of light, odd phone calls, and creaking doors are the signs of the presence of poltergeists in the house.
According to mystics, poltergeists also divide into “categories”: they may be both good and bad. There are evil ones that can cause physical harm, neutral ones that just make sounds and drop items and ‘good’ ones that “hide” small items such as a spoon or a fork.
Until the twentieth century, it was believed that a ‘noisy spirit’ was a soul that could not find peace or a person who had died in a specific house.
Mystics claim that there are no ways to deal with a poltergeist. Or better to say, there are some ways, but they do not always help. One of the common ways for a religious person is to find a priest and ask him to bless the house. At the same time, some people have no choice but to share their home with a being (though it is rather a phenomenon) of an unknown origin.
But is this phenomenon really purely paranormal? There also are some scientific explanations of the poltergeist.
What is poltergeist according to science?
Unfortunately, until now, science can not clearly explain the cause of this anomalous phenomenon. However, Frederic W. Myers (one of the first investigators of paranormal phenomena) stated that the poltergeist has nothing to do with spirits and ghosts and is a completely explainable phenomenon.
There is a hypothesis that this anomaly is nothing but the malfunctions of our own psyche. More precisely, it is a “mental projection“ of an unhealthy, developing, or teenage psyche, which projects intensive negative energy onto the surrounding environment.
Nandor Fodor, the author of this hypothesis, devoted most of his life to the study of poltergeist cases and found that almost in all the houses where strange things were happening, there was an unhealthy psychological atmosphere.
Parapsychologist William G. Roll also thinks that this kind of unexplained activity occurs in families where adolescents had an unhappy childhood.
In the middle of the 20th century, there was another theory, which attempts to explain the phenomenon of the ‘noisy spirit’ from the standpoint of physics. Some scientists believe that the ball lightning and this anomaly are phenomena of the same nature. It means that the poltergeist could be caused by some natural forces that science has no understanding of right now.
What do you think? Do you believe that poltergeist is indeed a spirit or do you tend to think that there must be a common-sense explanation?