Poltergeists (2 page)

The purpose these physical activities is always to get the attention of living persons or perhaps to annoy them for personal reasons. The mentality behind this phenomenon is somewhere between the psychotic and the infantile, but at all times far from emotionally and mentally normal. But it can still be dealt with on the same basis as I deal with ordinary hauntings. That is to say, the cause of the activities must be understood before a cure for them can be found. Making contact with the troubled entity in the non-physical world is, of course, the best way. When that is not possible, a shielding device has to be created for the living to protect them from the unwanted poltergeist activities. In the well-publicized Seaford, Long Island, case a few years ago, a young boy in the household was held responsible for the movement of objects in plain daylight. Even so astute an investigator as Dr. Karlis Osis of the American Society of Psychical Research, who was then working for Parapsychology Foundation of New York City, could not discern the link between the boy’s unconscious thought and the unseen, but very real, psychic entities beyond the world of the flesh. In his report he intimates that the activities were due to the unconscious desires of the youngster to be noticed and to get the sort of attention his unconscious self craved. I was not involved in the Seaford case personally although I was familiar with it, having discussed the matter with Mr. Herman, the boy’s father. I did not enter the case because certain aspects of it suggested publicity-seeking on the part of the family, and at any rate others in my field had already entered the case. I saw no reason to crowd the scene, but I did go into the background of the house with the help of medium Ethel Johnson Meyers independently of the investigation conducted by Dr. Osis. For what it may be worth at this late date, my sitting with Mrs. Meyers disclosed that a burial ground had existed on the very site of the Seaford house and that the disturbances were due to the fact that the house had been erected on the spot. They had not occurred earlier since no physical medium lived in the house. When the young man reached the age of puberty, or nearly so, his energies were available to those wishing to manifest, and it was then that the well-publicized movement of objects occurred.

Similarly, two years ago a case attracted public attention in the city of Rosenheim, Bavaria. A young lady working for an attorney in that city was somehow able to move solid objects by her very presence. A long list of paranormal phenomena was recorded by reputable witnesses, including the attorney himself. Eventually Dr. Hans Bender of the University of Freiburg entered the case and after investigation pronounced it a classical poltergeist situation. He too did not link the activity with any outside entity that might have been present on the premises from either this house or a previous one standing on the spot. It seems to me that at the time great haste was taken to make sure that a physical or temporal solution could be put forward, making it unnecessary to link the phenomena with any kind of spirit activity.

But perhaps the most famous of all poltergeist cases, the classical American case, is the so-called Bell Witch of Tennessee. This case goes back to the 1820s and even so illustrious a witness as Andrew Jackson figures in the proceedings. Much has been written and published about the Bell Witch of Tennessee. Suffice it to say here that it involved the hatred of a certain woman for a farmer named
John Bell. This relationship resulted in a post-mortem campaign of hatred and destructiveness ultimately costing the lives of two people. In the Bell Witch of Tennessee case the entire range of physical phenomena usually associated with poltergeistic activities was observed.

Included were such astounding happening as the appearance or disappearance of solid objects into and out of thin air; strange smells and fires of unknown origin; slow deliberate movement of objects in plain sight without seeming physical source; and voices being heard out of the air when no one present was speaking. Anyone studying the proceedings of this case would notice that the phenomena were clearly the work of a demented individual. Even though a certain degree of cunning and cleverness is necessary to produce them, the reasoning behind or, rather, the lack of reasoning, clearly indicates a disturbed mind. All poltergeist activities must therefore be related to the psychotic, or, at the very least, schizophrenic state of mind of the one causing them. As yet we do not clearly understand the relationship between insanity and free energies capable of performing acts seemingly in contradiction of physical laws, but there seems to be a very close relationship between these two aspects of the human personality. When insanity exists certain energies become free and are capable of roaming at will at times and of performing feats in contradiction to physical laws. When the state of insanity in the mind under discussion is reduced to normalcy these powers cease abruptly.

I have, on occasion, reported cases of hauntings and ghostly activities bordering upon or including some poltergeist activities. Generally we speak of them as physical phenomena. A case in point is the haunted house belonging to Mr. and Mrs. John Smythe of Rye, New York. The phenomena in this house included such physical activities as doors opening by themselves, footsteps, the sound of chains rattling, ashtrays flying off the table by themselves, and, most frightening of all, a carving knife taking off by itself on a Sunday morning in full view of two adult, sane people and flinging itself at their feet, not to hurt them but to call attention to an existing unseen entity in the house. These are, of course, the kind of activities present in poltergeist cases, but they are merely a fringe activity underlining the need for communication. They are not the entire case, nor are they as disorganized and wanton as the true poltergeist cases. In the case of Rye, New York, the physical activities followed long-time mental activities such as apparitions and impressions of a presence. The physical phenomena were primarily used here to make the message more urgent. Not so with the true poltergeist case, where there is no possibility of mental communication simply because the causing person in incapable of actual thinking. In such a case all energies are channeled toward destructive physical activity and there is neither the will nor the ability to give mental impressions to those capable of receiving them, since the prime mover of these activities is so filled with hatred and the desire to manifest in the physical world that he or she will not bother with so rational an activity as a thought message.

It is therefore difficult to cope with cases of this kind since there is no access to reasoning, as there is in true ghost cases when a trance medium can frequently make contact with the disturbed and disturbing entity in the house and slowly, but surely, bring it back to the realm of reason. With the true poltergeist case nothing of the sort can be established and other means to solve it have to be found. It is therefore quite natural that anyone who becomes the victim of such activities and is not familiar with them or with what causes them will be in a state of panic, even to the point of wanting to abandon his property and run for his life.

On September 1, 1968, I was contacted by a gentleman by the name of L. H. Beaird. He wrote to me from Tyler, Texas, requesting that I help him understand some of the extraordinary happenings that had made his life hell on earth during the period of three years between 1965 and 1968. Through his daughter who was married in Austin he learned of my work with ghosts and finally concluded that only someone as familiar with the subject as I could shed light on the mysterious happenings in his home. He had purchased their home in 1964, but after three years of living with a poltergeist and fighting a losing battle for survival he decided that his sanity and survival were more important, and in 1968 he sold it again, losing everything he had put into it. The move, however, was a fortuitous one, for the new home turned out to be quiet and peaceful. Once Mr. Beaird got his bearings again and learned to relax once more he decided to investigate what had occurred during the previous three years and find some sort of answer to this extraordinary problem.

I had never heard of Tyler before and decided to look it up on the map. It turned out to be a city of about 60,000 inhabitants also known as the “rose capital” because of the large number of horticultural activities in the area. Tyler is connected with Dallas and Houston by a local airline and lies about halfway between Dallas and Shreveport, Louisiana. It has one television station, one newspaper and some pleasant ordinary citizens going about their various businesses. The people of Tyler whom I got to know a little after my visit later on are not concerned with such things as the occult. In fact, anyone trying to lecture on the subject would do so in empty halls.

Howard Beaird works in a nearby hospital and also runs a rubber stamp shop in which he has the company of his wife and more orders than he can possibly fill. Their son, Andy, was enrolled in barber school at the time of my visit and presumably is now cutting people’s hair to everyone’s satisfaction somewhere in Texas. The big local hotel is called the Blackstone and it is about the same as other big hotels in small towns. Everything is very quiet in Tyler, Texas, and you can really sleep at night. There is a
spirit of not wanting to change things, of letting sleeping dogs lie as much as possible, pervading the town, and I have the distinct impression that cases such as the poltergeist case were not exactly welcome subjects for discussion over a drink at the local bar.

It must be held to Mr. Beaird’s credit that despite the indications of small-town life he felt compelled to make inquiries into the extraordinary happenings in his life, to look into them without fear and with great compassion for those involved—his wife and son. Others in his position might have buried the matter and tried to forget it. This is particularly important since Mr. Beaird is reasonably prosperous, does business with his neighbors and has no intention of leaving Tyler. To ask me for an investigation was tantamount to stirring things up, but Beaird took this calculated risk because he could not live with the knowledge of what he had observed and not know what caused it.

At the time of our correspondence in September 1968 the phenomena had already ended, as abruptly as they had come. This too is typical of genuine poltergeist activities, since they depend solely on the available free energies of living people. As will be seen in the course of my investigation, that energy became no longer available when the principals were removed from the house. There are other factors involved, of course. It is not as simple as plugging in on a power line, but in essence poltergeist activities depend not only the desire of the disturbing entity to manifest but also on the physical condition of the unconscious part of those whom they wish to use as power supplies.

The house which the Beairds had to leave under pressure from their poltergeists is on Elizabeth Street. It is a one-story ranch-type dwelling, pleasant enough to look at and about fourteen or fifteen years old. The new owners are not particularly keen on the history of their house, and it is for that reason that I am keeping confidential the actual location, but the house has not been altered in any way since it has been sold to Mr. M. and his family. One enters the house through a porch that is located somewhat above the road. There is a garage and a steep driveway to the right of the porch. Once one is inside the house one is in the living room with a den to the left and a dining area to the right. Beyond the living room are the kitchen and a rather long room leading directly to a breakfast room. On the extreme left are two bedrooms. To the right of the house behind the garage is the workshop, which, in the period when Mr. Beaird owned the house, was used as such. There is also a concrete slab separating the shop from the garage proper, and the garage contains a ladder leading up to the attic.

Howard Beaird, sixty-five years of age, is a pleasant man with a soft Texas accent, polite, firm, and obliging in his manner. He was overjoyed when I expressed an interest in his case and promised to cooperate in every way. In order to get a better understanding of the extraordinary happenings at Tyler I asked that he dictate in his own words the story of those three years in the house that had come to be three years of unrelenting terror. The principals in this true account besides Howard Beaird are his wife, Johnnie, whom he has always called John; a daughter named Amy who lives in another city and was in no way involved in the strange experiences at Tyler; and a son, Andy, now nineteen, who shared all of the unspeakable horror of the experiences between 1965 and the early part of 1968 with his parents. Most of the others mentioned in his account have been dead for several years. A few are still alive, and there are some names in this account Mr. Beaird has never heard of. Here then is his own account of what occurred in the little house on Elizabeth Street in Tyler, Texas:

My story begins late in 1962, which marked the end of nearly thirty-nine years of employment with the same company. During the last twenty years of that time John worked in the same office with me; in fact her desk was only a few feet from mine. We were both retired during September of 1962.

John had always been an excellent employee, but devoted much more time to her work than the company required for any one person. She would never take a vacation, and was rarely away from her job for more than an occasional half-day at a time, mainly, I think, because she would trust no one with her work. I cannot say when her mind began to show signs of being disturbed, although as I think back on it today, she had acted a little strangely for several years prior to the time of our retirement. This, however, did not affect her work in any way; in fact she was even more precise in it than ever, and I suppose I just could not bring myself to admit that there was anything wrong with her mind. At any rate, during the next twelve months she began to act more abnormally than ever, especially when at home, until finally it was necessary that she enter a mental institution. Although the doctors there were reluctant to release her, they did not seem to be having any success in whatever treatment they were giving her, so I asked for her release after about three months. Being of very modest means I naturally had to obtain employment as soon as possible, but after working about three months in another city I felt that it was most urgent that I move my family from Grand Saline, Texas, to some other place, believing that the mere change of environment would play a big part in helping John to get well. So about the middle of 1964 we moved to Tyler, Texas, a place where John had always said she would like to live. We bought a house, and after about a month I obtained employment which, in addition to a sideline business I had begun a few years before, gave us a satisfactory, if not affluent, living. For almost a year John did seem to be better; she would go places with Andy and me, to the Little League baseball games in which Andy played, to the movies occasionally, sometimes to bowling alleys and a miniature golf course, but all of a sudden she stopped.

She had not actually kept house since we made the
move and had not cooked a single meal for Andy or me. About this time she started walking to a drugstore in a nearby shopping center for breakfast, and then in the late afternoon just before I would get home she would walk to a restaurant a few blocks away for the evening meal, usually by herself. A little later she began calling a taxi nearly every morning to go to a different place for breakfast: once to a downtown hotel; once way out on the other side of town to a roadside restaurant on the Mineola Highway, and to many other places within the course of a few weeks. Always in the evenings though she would go to the restaurant near our home. She would come home usually just after I arrived, and would change clothes and stay in her room from then on. She would get up very early in the morning, about 5 o’clock, something
she had never done
during our entire married life. For the past few years she insisted that people were spying on her, and finally, when I did not agree with her, she accused me of being at the head of this group set out to torment her, and even said that I had television cameras set up in the house to spy on her.

John smoked almost incessantly, every kind of cigarette made, but later began to smoke little cigars the size of a cigarette, and still later started on the big regular ones that men smoke. Once she bought a small can of snuff. She had never used snuff before. This was a little while after she had begun to lay cigarettes down just anywhere, although there were plenty of ashtrays throughout the house. She also began putting lighted cigarettes on table tops, the arms of a divan, or even on the bed, and if Andy or I had not been there to put them out, no doubt the house would have eventually been burned down. She did burn holes in several sheets and in the mattress on her bed. When that happened I told her that she simply could not smoke any more. She did not protest. Andy and I searched the house and found cigarettes and matches everywhere. John had hidden them everywhere, inside a little table radio by removing the back, inside a flashlight where the batteries are supposed to be, in those little shoe pockets she had hanging in her closet, in a little opening at the end of the bathtub where a trap door in the closet exposes the pipes for repairs, under the mattress, inside pillow covers, and even in the dog house outdoors. We gathered up cigarettes, matches, and cigarette lighters every day when I got home and there is no telling how many we finally found and destroyed. Of course she would get more every day at the shopping center, and once we even found one of those little automatic rollers that a person can use to make his own cigarettes.

Exactly what part John played in the frightening events that took place at our house I cannot say. I am convinced though, as is Amy, that there was some connection. The three years from late 1962 to the summer of 1965 preceded the most awesome, fantastic chain of events that the human mind can imagine. In fact, as these unbelievable episodes began to unfold before us I was beginning to doubt my own sanity. Andy, who was 13 at the time this began, shared with me every one of the horrible experiences, which started in midsummer 1965 and lasted without interruption until near the end of 1966, when we were “told” that they were over with, only to find that during the next fifteen months we were in for even worse things. If Andy had not been with me to substantiate these awful experiences I would have indeed considered myself hopelessly insane.

The frightening events began to take place near the middle of 1965, about the time John quit going places with Andy and me. When at home she would stay in her bedroom and close the door and leave it closed after she went to bed. Andy and I slept in the same bed in another room.

During our first year at this house we were not bothered by the usual summertime insects, so I did not bother to repair the screens needing fixing at that time. However, during July of 1965, Andy and I would go to bed, and as soon as we turned out the light we were plagued by hordes of June bugs of all sizes, which would hit us on our heads and faces, some glancing off on the floor, others landing on the bed, and some missing us entirely and smashing themselves against the metal window blinds. Night after night we fought these bugs in the dark, grabbing those that landed on the bed and throwing them against the blinds as hard as we could.

Then we discovered that at least half of the bugs that hit us were
already dead
, in fact had been dead so long that they were crisp and would crumble between our fingers when we picked them up! I would get up and turn on the lights, and the raids would cease immediately; we could see no sign of them in the air … only those hundreds that littered the floor and bed. The instant I turned off the light, though, the air would be filled with bugs again, just as if someone were standing there ready to throw handfuls at us
as soon as it was dark
. One night I got up and swept and vacuumed the entire room, moved every piece of furniture away from the walls, dusted the backs of the dresser, chest and tables, and vacuumed the floor again. When I was through I could swear that there was not a living creature in that room other than Andy and me. I got some rags and stuffed them in the cracks beneath the closet door and the one leading from the room into the hall. The windows were closed. The room was
absolutely clean
. Andy was in bed, awake. I turned off the light. At that exact instant hundreds of bugs hit us!

About this time John began to act more strangely than ever, doing things she would not dream of doing under ordinary circumstances. For example, I might look in my closet to get a shirt or a pair of trousers, and there would not be any there. I do not know what prompted me to do it, but I would go to John’s closet, and there would be my clothes hanging alongside some of hers.

At this time I had a rubber stamp shop in a room behind the garage, which was a part of the house, and I worked out there every night. There was no direct connection from the house. One had to go out the kitchen door into the garage and then through another door into the shop. On many occasions I would hear the kitchen door being opened, and would rush to the shop door to see who it was. No matter how hard I tried, though, I could never get there fast enough to see
anybody
…only my clothes, suits, shirts, etc., on hangers
just as they
landed in the middle of the garage floor
.

It was during the hottest part of summer while we had the air-conditioners running that other strange things took place for which we assumed John was responsible. Andy or I would suddenly find the bathroom wall heater lighted and the flames running out the top, with the door closed. The room would be hot enough to burst into flames. John insisted that she had not lit the heater … that one of
us
had. After this had happened several times, I removed the handle that turns on the gas. A short time later, while I was out in the shop, Andy came running out and called me in. There was a bunch of paper towels stuffed into the heater where the burners are and they were on fire, some of them on the floor, burning. I then decided to turn off all the pilot lights in the house. This was on the weekend before Labor Day, and I did not know how I could possibly go to work on Tuesday following the holiday and leave John at home alone, since Andy would be in school. I had talked with Dr.——until I could determine what I would eventually be able to do with her, but the psychiatric wards were already running over, and he did not want to admit her as a patient. I decided to tell John that if she did “any of those things” again I would have to put her in jail. Monday night she started waving a pistol around, so I called the police station and told them the predicament I was in. They said they would keep her until things could be settled and told me to bring her on down. She went without protest. When my lawyer returned he made appointments for her to be examined by two psychiatrists, after which I thought there would be no further question about the need for commitment, and she stayed at home that week. However, on the Monday following Labor Day she called her sister-in-law Mack in Daingerfield, Texas, about a hundred miles from Tyler, and asked if she could visit her at once. I was at work and knew nothing of this until Mack got to Tyler and asked it if would be all right for John to go with her. I objected, but my lawyer advised me that I should let her go, as she could be brought back for the commitment hearing, so they left that day for Daingerfield.

A few days later John’s lawyer had her examined by a psychiatrist again, and he finally said that she might benefit somewhat from getting a job, although she would have to undergo psychiatric treatment at various times in the future. It would be almost impossible to have her committed voluntarily, so we decided to just let things stand as they were. For the record, John’s attorney insisted that I be examined by the same doctors who had examined her. The reports on me were favorable.

Shortly after John had gone off to stay with Mack, Andy and I were lying in bed with the lights off, talking about the terrible things we had gone through.
Suddenly I heard a voice calling my name
… a high-pitched, falsetto voice that seemed to be coming from out in space. The voice said it was John, and although it sounded nothing at all like her, I am convinced it was, since she talked about several things that only she and I knew of.... One was about some disagreeable words she had had with one of my sisters at the time of my father’s death in 1950. She said that although my other sister had insulted her, she was good, and that she had forgiven her. Andy did not hear any part of this conversation. Apparently John, or the voice, could talk to either of us without the other listening to the voice. I even suspected that Andy was doing the talking, and I held my fingers to his lips while listening to the voice. I knew then it could not have been coming from his lips.

One night while I was lying in bed and Andy was in the bathroom I heard his voice say “good-bye,” though, just before he came to bed, and
he told me he had been talking with his mother
. During the following weeks we heard six other voices
from right out of nowhere
, all from people
who had been dead for some time
. I knew all but one of them while they were living. Two of them had always been friendly toward me, and both were old enough to be my mother. Andy also knew these who women and one of the men named George Swinney. This latter person was killed in an accident some time
after
he visited us “by voice.” The other two women were mothers of friends of mine and both had died some time before we moved to Tyler. One was Mrs. Snow and the other was Mrs. Elliott, and theirs were the next two voices we heard after John had left, and they came to us about the time the visits by Henry Anglin started. He was the only one of the lot who gave us trouble to start with; in fact I am convinced that he is the one responsible for the bug raids and other awful things that happened to us.

One of the work benches in my shop was against the wall dividing the shop and the kitchen, and at the bottom of the wall was an opening with a grill over it to handle the return air from the central heating system. For some reason the grill on the shop side had been removed, and by stooping down near the floor under the bench I could see much of what was going on in the kitchen. I worked in the shop every night, and when these “ghosts” first began visiting us they would call my name, the voices seeming to come from the opening into the kitchen. I would stoop down and answer. At that time I would carry on lengthy conversations with all of them. Mrs. Snow and Mrs. Elliott were very friendly and seemed to want to give me all kinds of good advice. Henry Anglin was just the opposite. He was extremely mean and demanded that I do all sorts of things I would not do. When I refused, he would be very nasty. Once he got a can of insect spray we kept on the kitchen cabinet top and held it down at the opening to my shop. He would start spraying through the hole. He used a whole can of spray and in that little room I nearly suffocated. One cannot imagine what a feeling it is
to see a can of insect spray suspended in midair with apparently nothing holding it and to have it sprayed right in one’s face!
When I went inside I could see the dents made by the edge of the can where he had banged it against the wall.