Poltergeist: A Classic Study in Destructive Haunting (22 page)

Mrs.
Scholes said: “Phillip, get dressed, quick.
We’re going.”

Half an hour later, they were tucked up in the spare beds in Mrs.
Kelly’s house.
For them this particular poltergeist episode was at an end.

But Marie Kelly and her husband Vic had lost all desire for sleep.
Vic Kelly had not bothered to go and investigate earlier, convinced that there was a natural explanation.
Now he decided it was time to get professional advice; he telephoned the police station, and told his story.
When the police car arrived ten minutes later, Vic and Marie Kelly went out to meet them.
An inspector named Taylor was accompanied by two uniformed constables.
The five of them went into number 30, where everything seemed normal, and the policemen began a methodical search of the house.
They went through every room, peered under beds, examined windows for signs of entry, and finally agreed that there was no sign of an intruder.
They went back to the station, and the Kellys went back into their own home.

Vic Kelly was still not happy.
As he and Marie sat discussing the events, and she again described the falling powder, the pools of water, the rattling cupboard, Vic said: “What about your friend Mr.
O’Donald?
He’s interested in ghosts isn’t he?”

It was almost midnight, but neither of them felt like sleeping.
They walked up the street, and observed that Mr.
O’Donald’s downstairs light was still on.
They knocked on his front door and explained their problem; without hesitation, Mr.
O’Donald went for his coat.

From the ghost-hunter’s point of view, the situation at number 30 looked promising.
As they entered the house, they were met by a blast of cold air—they described it as like walking into a refrigerator.
But now they were hoping for manifestations, the ghost refused to oblige.
So they sat in the lounge, and Mr.
O’Donald explained to them the distinction between ghosts and poltergeists—that the poltergeist was supposed to be a manifestation of someone’s unconscious mind—in this case, probably Phillip’s.

“In that case,” said Vic Kelly, “we’re wasting our time sitting here.
He’s in our house.”

At 1:45, Mr.
O’Donald yawned, and said he agreed they were wasting their time.
If it
was
a poltergeist, it would no doubt signal its presence on the morrow.
“They do funny things.
They’re very fond of tearing up photographs, I believe.” He said goodnight and left.
But as Marie and Vic Kelly were about to lock the door behind them, they heard a crash.
They switched on the lights.
On the floor of the lounge there were two small oil paintings, lying face downward.
Glass was shattered, and a print in a frame—the wedding photograph of Jean and Joe Pritchard had been slashed from end to end, as if with a sharp knife.
The poltergeist had apparently overheard Mr.
O’Donald.

When Phillip and Mrs.
Scholes returned to the house the next afternoon, all was quiet.
It was still quiet when Joe and Jean Pritchard returned on Saturday afternoon.
Between them, Phillip and Mrs.
Scholes related the events of two days before, and Joe Pritchard listened with astonishment, and clearly suspected that they were exaggerating.
“What kind of knocks?” And as if in reply, there came three loud, distinct bangs, followed by a rattling of the window frames as a cold wind blew through the house.
Then there was silence again, and the temperature returned to normal.
The poltergeist had said goodbye for the time being.

Two years passed.
Phillip left school and went to work in his father’s pet shop in the town.
Diane had turned into a pretty teenager with blond hair and a good complexion.
Mrs.
Scholes, now seventy-two, spent most weekends with the Pritchards.
Perhaps the approach of the August Bank Holiday reminded her of the events of two years ago; at all events, she began to talk again about the “haunting.” Joe Pritchard found the subject tiresome, and was discouraging.

Jean Pritchard had decided to redecorate Diane’s bedroom.
One afternoon, she broke off to go and make tea.
She and her mother drank it in the kitchen.
Mrs.
Scholes reverted to the topic that was obviously troubling her.
“I keep hearing noises.” Jean Pritchard said: “Well I haven’t, and I’m in the house practically all the time.”

“Didn’t you hear something then?”

“No,” said Jean Pritchard, and went out into the hall.
She stopped and stared.
At the foot of the stairs, there was the counterpane from her bed.
It had not been there ten minutes earlier, when she came down to make tea.
And no one had been out into the hall.
She took it back upstairs and put it on her bed.
Then she went back to her decorating.
A few moments later, there was a loud crash.
When she looked down the stairs, she saw that another counterpane was lying in the hall, this time the one from Phillip’s bed.
And the crash had been made by the fall of a number of plant pots, which were upended on the carpet.
There was soil everywhere.
In the kitchen, Mrs.
Scholes was in tears.
She said: “I told you.
It’s starting again.”

When Joe Pritchard came hack, his mother-in-law had gone home.
In bed, later, Jean Pritchard was unable to sleep.
Even with both windows open, the room was too warm.
She slipped out of bed and went on to the landing.
She had moved the painting materials out from Diane’s bedroom.
Everything was silent.
She felt in the atmosphere the typical chill that she would later come to know so well.
In the half-light that came from the street lamp outside, she could see something moving in the corner of the landing, something that swayed and rustled.
She switched on the landing light.
As she did so, something flew past her face, missing it by a fraction of an inch; she identified it later as a paint brush.
It was followed by the paste bucket which hit the opposite wall of the landing and scattered paste on the carpet.
In the dim light, she could now see what was moving.
It was a long strip of wallpaper, which had been lying in a roll against the wall.
Now it was standing on end, and swaying like a cobra.
Because there was obviously no one holding it, she took courage and made a grab for it.
The paper fluttered gently to the floor.
At the same moment, the carpet sweeper flew up into the air, and began to swing around as if being used as a club by an invisible giant.
Too breathless to scream, Jean Pritchard fell on all fours, and scrambled back into her own bedroom.
A roll of wallpaper followed her, and hit the door.
At last, she managed to scream.
Joe sat up in bed shouting, “What’s happening?” Phillip and Diane appeared from their bedrooms in their nightclothes.
As they stood there, paint brushes and other materials began to fly around.
One of them missed Diane’s head by a fraction of an inch.
Another struck her on the shoulder.
Her father shouted, “Don’t stand there!” And Diane said with astonishment: “It didn’t hurt.” Her surprise was understandable; the brush looked as if it had been moving fast enough to knock her over; yet it had merely given her a tap.

Then they realized the invisible intruder had moved into Diane’s bedroom.
Phillip, staring in astonishment through the doorway, watched the wooden pelmet above the bedroom window be torn out of the wall—although it was held in by two-inch screws—and fly out of the window.
They heard it hit the path below.
With a burst of anger Joe Pritchard slammed Diane’s bedroom door.
From inside the bedroom, they could hear bangs and thumps.
As Diane reached out to touch the door handle, Joe Pritchard shouted: “Don’t touch it.” Diane withdrew her hand and, as if in response, there was a loud thump on the other side of the door.

Diane spent the night in her parent’s room.
They locked their doors.
It was a pointless measure, but it gave them some feeling of security.

The poltergeist is basically a mad practical joker; the mentality seems to be that of an idiot child.
What they seem to want is attention; but it is difficult to see why.
In a few cases they have communicated—either by raps or direct voice—but as often as not their statements lack coherence.

Yet even an absurd practical joke conveys something of the essence of the personality of its perpetrator—something as indefinable yet as definite as a tone of voice.
And the Pritchards soon began to develop this sense of their unseen lodger as a definite individual.
No doubt this also explains why, throughout nine months of chaos, they stuck grimly to their home, and declined all suggestions that they ought to think about moving.
Their sense of territoriality was outraged by this intruder, and they had no intention of leaving him in possession of the field.

So in spite of the nerve-wracking nature of the disturbances, life with the ghost—“Mr.
Nobody,” they called him (Jean Pritchard later christened him “Fred”)—settled into a kind of routine.
He seldom paid a visit during the day—possibly because Diane was at school.
The racket would usually start up around bedtime—a series of loud bangs, not unlike a child beating on a big drum.
Ornaments would levitate and fly across the room.
The lights would go out, and when they looked in the cupboard under the stairs the main switch would be turned off.
On one occasion, Mrs.
Pritchard carefully taped it in the “on” position with insulating tape; half an hour later, the lights were off again, and the tape had simply vanished.

At a fairly early stage in the proceedings, Phillip made the suggestion that the spirit might be exorcised.
That struck them all as an inspired idea, and Vic Kelly contacted a local vicar, the Reverend Davy.
Mr.
Davy explained that exorcism was not something that could be done at a moment’s notice.
He would need permission from the bishop.
And since there had been a number of cases in which exorcists had been strongly criticized for making things worse, the bishop might well refuse.
At all events, he agreed to call around on the following Thursday evening at seven o’clock.
The family felt relieved; it was a comfort to think that they would be receiving professional advice, so to speak.

Jean Pritchard had prepared sandwiches and tea, and Marie and Vic Kelly had been invited over.
They sat talking, describing what had been happening, and Mr.
Davy told them something about the service of exorcism.
Neither he nor they were aware that poltergeists cannot be exorcised—one of Allan Kardec’s ghostly informants told him they treated exorcism with contempt.
But at least the vicar’s presence seemed to restrain Mr.
Nobody.
After an hour and a half, there had been no kind of disturbance, not even a rap.
For the first time, Jean Pritchard began to wish the poltergeist would oblige with one of his jokes.
Mr.
Davy finally looked at his watch and said he ought to be getting home.
Jean Pritchard said: “I’m sorry we’ve dragged you all this way for nothing.”

And as she spoke, the house resounded to loud thumps that came from overhead.
And a small brass candlestick jumped off the mantelpiece on to the floor.

“There,” said Jean Pritchard.

Mr.
Davy looked thoughtfully at the candlestick.
“I think I know what your problem is.
Subsidence.”

“But subsidence,” said Marie, “can only make things fall.
And—”

The other candlestick rose up from the shelf, floated across in front of the vicar’s nose, then dropped to the floor.

“Do you think
that’s
subsidence?”

There was a tremendous crash from the next room, one of those spectacular sounds like a piece of heavy furniture falling through the ceiling.
They all rushed into the lounge.

Scattered all over the carpet was every cup, saucer and plate from the china cupboard.
Yet not a single one was broken, or even cracked.

Mr.
Davy was convinced.
He gave it as his opinion that there was “something evil” in the house, and advised them to move.
Jean Pritchard said she wouldn’t dream of moving—why should she be driven out of her home by a ghost?
The vicar warned her that it might cause real damage—not just to property, but to people.
His comment revealed an ignorance of the habits of the poltergeist: in no case on record have they been known to cause grievous bodily harm, although their bites, slaps and blows have occasionally driven their victims to despair—as in the case of John Bell.