Poltergeist: A Classic Study in Destructive Haunting

by Colin Wilson

  It was about ten years after “Fred” had departed that Tom Cunniff, a young man with an interest in local history, heard of the Pontefract poltergeist, and found himself wondering whether it had any connection with the local priory, which had existed from 1090 until 1539. He went along to see the Pritchards, and wrote down their story. He was particularly excited by one piece of information. Jean Pritchard mentioned that a neighbor had found a book in the Pontefract public library which mentioned that a Cluniac monk had been hanged for the rape of a young girl in the time of Henry the Eighth (that is, not long before the destruction of the priory). A little more research showed him that the gallows had been on the top of the hill where the Pritchards’ house now stood, and that their house stood on the site of an old bridge called “Priest’s Bridge.”

  Tom’s theory, which he incorporated into a typescript called Mea Culpa, was that the monk had committed a rape followed by murder (Mrs. Pritchard also seemed to remember that the girl had been strangled), had been executed for his crime, and now haunted the spot where he was hanged. The attack on Diane, he thought, was basically sexual in nature.

  Unfortunately for this fascinating theory, there is no evidence whatever that a monk of Pontefract was ever hanged for rape. Pontefract is a small town, and there are a few local histories. They are to be found in the reference section of the library, where I spent a morning in August 1980. My search revealed that the local monks were involved in a great deal of litigation and a certain amount of violence—their virtues were war-like rather than contemplative—but there was undoubtedly no rape and murder. Perhaps the neighbor had read the story of the hanging of a vicar called George Beaumont in the time of the Civil War, when the Parliamentarians were besieging the Royalists in Pontefract Castle; he was accused of carrying on a correspondence with the Royalists. He, as far as I can see, is the only priest to have been hanged in the area.

  But is it necessary to assume that the Pritchards were haunted by a Cluniac monk? We must bear in mind that the poltergeist seemed prone to take up suggestions that it heard. On its first visit, it slashed the small picture—but only after Mr. O’Donald had remarked that poltergeists often destroy photographs. The grandmother clock was destroyed one evening after a group of local councilors had been to the house and listened to the banging sounds. (Joe Pritchard’s mother was Pontefract’s first Lady Mayor at the time.) Before leaving, the Mayor remarked that she was surprised that the grandmother clock on the landing was still intact; half an hour later, it hurtled downstairs and shattered.

  Unfortunately, Jean Pritchard kept no diary of the sequence of events. So we do not know whether the “monk’s” first appearance—in their bedroom—was before or after the neighbor had borrowed the book from the library. My own guess is that it was after, and that it was inspired by what it had heard. In the same way, the upside-down crosses appeared on the walls and doors after Vic Kelly’s attempt at exorcism. During the course of that evening, someone probably made a remark about evil spirits and their propensity to invert the cross.

  Why was the Pritchards’ home chosen? I believe that Mrs. Holden came close to the truth when she suggested that the underground stream may have some thing to do with it. If Lethbridge is correct, then the “field” of running, water—and of dampness in general—records “psychic impressions.” When “Fred” first made his appearance in 1966, Phillip had just passed the age of puberty, and was therefore an ideal “focus.” Poltergeists only seem to manifest in unhappy households, and in the Pritchards’ home there was a certain amount of tension between Joe Pritchard and his son. Joe Pritchard had been a sporting enthusiast, and he found it incomprehensible that his son should prefer books and music. Presumably it was because of this tension between father and son that Phillip stayed at home when the rest of the family went to Devon. Tom Cunniff’s theory—incorporated into his manuscript—is that “Fred’s” first appearance was an unconscious expression of Phillip’s resentment toward his father; but this is at odds with his view that the “ghost” was a Cluniac monk. It seems to me altogether more probable that “Fred” was simply an ordinary poltergeist—some kind of “elemental” (we shall look more closely into the meaning of that term in the next chapter)—who found the kind of energy he needed in the Pritchards home, and proceeded to make use of it. He was certainly one of the most inventive poltergeists on record; I can find nothing like him in the annals of this type of haunting. The sounds, the smells, the animal noises, the heavy breathing, the bites on sandwiches, and, finally, the appearances, make him almost unique. It is a pity that no trained investigator came on the scene while the disturbances were at their height. The Doncaster Psychical Research Group (now dissolved) became interested in the case in the spring of 1969, and their own conclusions were cautiously skeptical—as seems to be the case with such groups the world over; but most of the phenomena had become infrequent by that time. An investigator who noticed “Fred’s” propensity to imitate phenomena he heard discussed might have conducted a fascinating series of experiments, trying to find out just what Fred was capable of. Would he, for example, have made “human dummies,” like the Phelps poltergeists, if someone had mentioned this within his hearing?

  I drove up to Pontefract in late August of 1980 to interview as many witnesses as possible. At this time, I was inclined to accept the usual view of poltergeists as “RSPK”—recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis. But on the way to Yorkshire, I spent the night at a conference in Derbyshire, and had the opportunity to meet Guy Playfair, with whom I had been corresponding for some time. We discussed the view—expressed in The Flying Cow—that a poltergeist is basically a mischievous disembodied spirit. I was inclined to be skeptical. Guy explained his own notion of the nature of the poltergeist: “It’s a kind of football.” “Football!” “A football of energy. It somehow gets exuded from disturbed teenagers at puberty. Along come two or three spirits or elementals, look through this window, and see the football lying around. And they do what any group of schoolboys would do—they go and kick it around, smashing windows and generally creating havoc. Then, as often as not, they get tired and leave it. In fact, the football usually explodes. Oddly enough, it turns into water . . .”

  The more I thought about this view, the more it struck me as interesting and plausible. There are, in fact, a large number of poltergeist cases in which the phenomena occur just once. In fact, I am relatively certain that one such occurred in my own house. It was in 1960, and my family—my father, mother and thirteen-year-old sister—had moved to Cornwall to live with us. One bright, sunny morning, I was awakened by a loud, repeated banging sound. It sounded just like someone hammering on something made of metal, with slow, steady blows.

  It so happened that two friends were sleeping up in the attic. My first thought was that one of their beds had collapsed, and someone was hammering at the bed-frame to try and get it apart, in order to reassemble it. I got out of bed, went to the foot of the stairs and called: “What’s going on up there?” All was silence. I went upstairs, and saw both friends were fast asleep. I peeped into my sister’s bedroom; she was asleep. But the sounds now seemed to be coming from outside the house—perhaps on the roof.

  I went downstairs and outside. It was a very still, sunny morning—about five a.m.—and the sounds were undoubtedly coming from our house (which stands alone in the middle of a field), and not from some neighboring house. I walked all the way round the house, but could not locate the noise. It seemed to be coming from overhead. The obvious suspicion—that it was something to do with the hot water system (which sometimes “knocks” as it heats up)—was dismissed when I saw that the sounds were not coming from any of the hot water pipes.

  During all this time, the sounds went on—loud, clear, metallic bangs, exactly like someone hammering on an iron bedstead with a hammer. My father was awake by this time, and we both walked around the house again. Then, as it was impossible to locate it, we went back to bed. Ten minutes later, the noise stopped. About an ho
ur later, it started up again briefly, for perhaps a dozen bangs. Then it stopped. And we have not heard it since. I assume that the sounds were somehow connected with my sister, who was not particularly happy at being dragged away from her home town (Leicester) to live in the country.

  I went to see Tom Cunniff in Pontefract, and he told me about the Doncaster Research Group. They had, apparently, fixed upon Phillip as the culprit. They had analyzed the tape recording, and decided that it could have been faked. And they had searched the house, and found in the attic a circle free of dust, which—they decided—might have been made by a loudspeaker, lying face downwards. This, then, “explained” the banging noises.

  As soon as I went into the Pritchards’ home, I became convinced that this theory was absurd. They had brought in a number of neighbors—like Mrs. Mountain—and Diane and Phillip were also present. They played us the tape, and then answered questions. What struck me most strongly was the spontaneity of the whole thing. They might contradict one another “No, it wasn’t that day, it was the day when Alan Williams came because, you remember, he put his hat down on that chair and it disappeared . . .” but they were obviously discussing something they had all lived through. And every one of them remembered some slightly different aspect of what had taken place. No group of conspirators could have made up such a story, and then told it so convincingly. These were simply a crowd of ordinary people who had been through a strange experience, and who would never forget it.

  Diane intrigued me when she told me that she had “seen things” at other times. When she was six years old, she came out of her bedroom one day, and saw an old lady dressed in grey outside her mother’s bedroom door. Jean Pritchard assumed that she had been dreaming. Diane also told me how, in her teens, she was walking past the grounds of a nearby hospital, which was being partly demolished for rebuilding, and was surprised to see two women in crinolines walking among the trees. She said they seemed to be “floating” over the grass. She stood watching them for about a quarter of an hour before they vanished into the trees.

  What I find even more interesting is that the whole area is permeated with stories of hauntings. At the present time, there is another house in the Chequerfields area where a “ghost” has appeared to a number of tenants. Tom Cunniff has noted a number of other stories—for example, poltergeist occurrences at a pub called the Golden Lion, kept at the time by Mrs. Pritchard’s sister-in-law, Christine.

  When I left the Pritchards’ house that afternoon, I had become a convert to Guy Playfair’s theory of the poltergeist. The first thing that struck me was Phillip’s description of the water appearing on the kitchen floor on that August day in 1966. That certainly seemed to fit amazingly well with Guy’s statement that the “electrical energy” used by the poltergeist turns into water. Admittedly, the “spontaneous psychokinesis” view might explain the water equally well—except that it hardly seems to make sense for the disturbed unconscious mind of a teenager to create large quantities of water on the kitchen floor. Banging and rapping noises, yes. Objects flying through the air, yes. But why circular pools of water?

  But what really changed my mind about the psychokinesis theory was Diane’s description of being dragged up the stairs by the entity. Nobody in the house on that evening had any doubt about her terror and confusion. It is just conceivable that Diane’s unconscious mind might throw her out of bed—by way of demanding attention. But by no stretch of the imagination can I imagine it grabbing her by the throat and dragging her up the stairs.

  The subsequent research for this book—the study of hundreds of accounts of poltergeist hauntings—has only strengthened my view that the RSKP theory leaves half the phenomena unexplained.

  Monasteries and churches are often built on older religious sites, as we have already noted. The reason seems to be that the ground has some kind of “power,” perhaps a purely magnetic force. My wife, who is an excellent dowser, said that she felt almost dizzy when she first tried dowsing on Glastonbury Tor, one of England’s oldest “sacred sites.” And she also obtained a powerful response when dowsing the area of Pontefract’s ruined priory, and of the nearby castle. On the site of an old chapel in the castle grounds there is a stone sarcophagus that seems to date to the Roman period. When it was found in the eighteenth century, it contained the bones of a man who had been beheaded—the skull had been placed between his legs. It is believed that this is the skeleton of Thomas of Lancaster, the man who headed the opposition against Edward II, a homosexual who poured favors on his friend Piers Gaveston. In 1312, Gaveston was seized and executed in the presence of Thomas of Lancaster. The king had Thomas ambushed and beheaded. As I watched my wife walking around the stone sarcophagus, I saw the dowsing rod twisting violently in her hands—once at the foot and once at the head of the coffin. It had been placed where the altar would stand if the chapel still existed. Why should the sarcophagus be placed precisely upon this spot? Could it be to counteract some unpleasant influence associated with the sarcophagus?

  I am suggesting, then, that the solution to the mystery of the Black Monk of Pontefract may lie in the ground itself. It is “haunted ground,” land that retains impressions for a long time. Only a few days before I arrived in Pontefract, a nursing sister in the Pontefract Royal Infirmary—where Phillip was then working—came into the television room. There were two other members of staff there, and she noticed, as she sat down, that there was also a man in a dressing gown. Patients were not allowed in that room, and after a moment she turned her head to look at the man. He was no longer there—yet he could not have left the room without walking past her; he had been sitting in the corner.

  This, then, is my own theory about the Black Monk case. The ground itself contains some peculiar force that favors “manifestations.” The early haunting was triggered by Phillip and by his psychological tension. The “entity” remained in the area until Diane—who herself seems to possess undeveloped mediumistic powers—could provide the energy it needed to manifest itself. When that energy ceased to be available, it again became inactive; perhaps waiting for another provider-of-energy to offer it the chance to erupt into the space-and-time world of humanity . . .

  five

  Fairies, Elementals,

  and Dead Monks

  Some thirty miles to the northwest of the Pritchards’ home, there is another piece of “haunted ground” known as Fairy Dell. The events that took place there in July 1917 are still the subject of controversy.

  On a Saturday afternoon in that month, Arthur Wright, an engineer, went into his darkroom to develop a photograph taken earlier in the day by his sixteen-year-old daughter Elsie. As the plate began to develop, Wright saw vague white shapes appearing—-he took them for birds. But when the picture became clear, he was startled to see that they were fairies. The picture showed a serious-faced little girl—Elsie’s cousin Frances Griffiths, aged eleven, standing behind a bush, her chin propped on her hand. And in front of her, dancing on top of the bush, were four neat little female figures with wings and diaphanous garments, one of them playing a pan-pipe. “What on earth are they?” said Arthur Wright to his daughter, who was standing behind him. “Fairies,” she said, matter-of-factly.

  Now, working-class Yorkshiremen tend to be phlegmatic and down-to-earth. Arthur Wright did not press his daughter for explanations; he merely grunted, and awaited further developments. They came a month later, when the girls again borrowed his camera. Elsie and Frances scrambled across the deep stream—or “beck”—that ran at the bottom of the garden, and went to the old oaks in the dell beyond. And when Arthur Wright later developed the plate, it showed Elsie sitting on the grass, holding her hand out to a gnome who was apparently about to step up on to her dress.

  This time, Arthur and his wife Polly looked through the bedroom of the girls, hoping to find cut-out pictures that would explain the photographs. They found nothing. Arthur Wright became mildly exasperated when both girls insisted there had been no trickery—that there really were
fairies at the bottom of their garden. He told Elsie she couldn’t use the camera again until she told him the truth.

  In November 1917, Frances wrote a letter to a friend in South Africa enclosing one of the photographs, and remarking casually that it “is me with some fairies up the beck . . .”

  These events took place in the village of Cottingley, in Yorkshire, on the road from Bradford to Bingley. It has long since ceased to be a separate village, and has become a part of the urban sprawl; but the Fairy Dell still exists.

  In the summer of 1919, Polly Wright, Elsie’s mother, went to a meeting of the Theosophical Society in Bradford. She was interested in “the occult,” having had experiences of astral projection and memories of past lives. The lecture that evening was on fairies—for it is the position of the Theosophical Society that fairies are simply a type of “elemental spirit”—nature spirits—that can manifest themselves to people with second sight or “clairvoyance.” Naturally, Mrs. Wright could not resist mentioning her daughter’s “fairy photographs” to the person sitting next to her. As a result, Arthur Wright made prints of the two photographs, and they were passed from hand to hand at the Theosophists’ conference at Harrogate a few weeks later, and finally made their way to London, and into the hands of Edward Gardner, who was the president of the London branch of the Theosophical Society. Gardner was familiar with faked photographs of ghosts and spirits, and decided that these looked doubtful. He asked his correspondent if he could let him see the negatives. When these arrived a few days later, Gardner was surprised to find no evidence of double exposure or other cheating. He took the negatives to a photography expert named Snelling, who examined them carefully under a powerful lens, and announced that it was undoubtedly not a double exposure. Nor were the dancing fairies made of paper, or painted on to a sheet of glass. They had moved during the exposure. A week later, after enlarging the photographs, Snelling announced that, in his opinion, they were not faked. They were ordinary open-air shots.