On The Trail of the Poltergeist

By Nandor Fodor

A "phantom hammer" shattered cups and wineglasses with a sharp "ping”, ancient Roman lamps appeared from nowhere; mysterious scents—sometimes the sweet fragrance of violets, sometimes the pungent smell of wild animals—hung in the air; an elaborate Oriental necklace dropped as if by magic around the neck of Mrs. Pat Forbes, searing her with its heat; the claw marks of a tiger appeared on her body…This was a Poltergeist haunting, perhaps the most famous of modern times.

GHOST WRECKS HOME, FAMILY TERRORIZED, newspaper headlines proclaimed. Reporters sent to cover the case had to dodge flying crockery and eggs; two of them narrowly escaped being crushed under a toppling wardrobe. The scene was Thornton Heath, a middle-class suburb of London. The leading characters were vivacious Mrs. Forbes (around whom the furor seemed to center), her husband, her son, and, their crippled lodger.

Psychoanalyst Nandor Fodor, then Director of Research for the International Institute for Psychical Research, welcomed this opportunity to make an investigation in depth of a Poltergeist haunting. His first task was to record the disturbances and make sure they actually occurred—that is, that they were neither practical jokes nor the fantasies of hysterical observers. His second task was to analyze the phenomena on a psychological basis.

This book tells the suspenseful story of that investigation—the careful exposing of deliberate fraud by Mrs. Forbes and the isolating of instances that could not possibly be faked (both of equal interest from a psychiatric point of view), the probing deep into Mrs. Forbes's past in search of the sexual trauma that produced the Poltergeist psychosis.

No less an authority than Sigmund Freud read an early draft of this book and found himself "richly rewarded."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Braunfell Books
• Release date: Jan 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9781805230212

Nandor Fodor

Nandor Fodor was a British and American parapsychologist, psychoanalyst, author and journalist of Hungarian origin. Fodor was one of the leading authorities on poltergeists, haunting and paranormal phenomena usually associated with mediumship. Fodor, who was at one time Sigmund Freud's associate, wrote on subjects like prenatal development and dream interpretation, but is credited mostly for his magnum opus, Encyclopedia of Psychic Science, first published in 1934. Fodor was the London correspondent for the American Society for Psychical Research (1935-1939). He worked as an editor for the Psychoanalytic Review and was a member of the New York Academy of Sciences. Fodor in the 1930s embraced paranormal phenomena but by the 1940s took a break from his previous work and advocated a psychoanalytic approach to psychic phenomena. He published skeptical newspaper articles on mediumship, which caused an opposition from spiritualists.

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Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1

Introduction 4

I—The coming of the Poltergeist 8

HOW IT BEGAN 11

II—Mr. Evans’ investigation 14

III—Previous phenomena 18

IV—I meet the Poltergeist 20

V—The Poltergeist follows Mrs. Forbes 29

VI—Vanishing mysteries 33

VII—First apport evidence 40

TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 1938 42

FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 1938 44

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9, 1938 46

VIII—Psychic shoplifting 47

IX—Improved apports and new phantasies 51

THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 1938 54

TUESDAY, MARCH 22, 1938 57

X—Breaking new ground 59

XI—Self-projections 62

THE PERFECT CASE 69

THE TOO PERFECT CASE 73

SUMMARY 78

XII—The phantom hammer 80

XIII—Living apports 86

XIV—Roman lamps and an oriental necklace mystery 91

THE ORIENTAL NECKLACE 94

XV—Self-mutilation 97

THE COMING OF THE TIGER 101

SUICIDE COMPLEX 105

DEAD MAN’S NOOSE 106

XVI—First trance personalities 107

XVII—The violet mystery 116

XVIII—New test sittings 120

FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 1938 121

TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 1938 123

FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 1938 124

TUESDAY, MAY 3, 1938 126

MAY 5, 1938 130

MAY 9, 1938 133

FRIDAY, MAY 13, 1938 136

ANOTHER EXPOSURE 139

XIX—The case for and against apports 141

XX—Vampire visitations 147

XXI—Mevanwe 155

XXII—The original trauma 160

XXIII—Epilogue 170

Bibliography 172

ON THE TRAIL OF THE POLTERGEIST

BY

NANDOR FODOR

Introduction

THIS BOOK TELLS an unusual story. It is that of a Poltergeist{1} or racketing spirit that throws stones, breaks crockery, makes things vanish and drives people half crazy by its noises, aggressive, mischievous and frightening activities. It is not identical with the traditional ghost that haunts a house. It haunts a person and it operates in daylight. Its lifetime is a few weeks or a few months, then its energies are spent and the pandemonium ceases.

It has been long suspected in psychical research (today increasingly called parapsychology) that a biological mystery is behind such explosive manifestations. It has been noted that the outbreak often coincides with the onset of puberty; hence some sexual pathology might be the source. However, Poltergeist cases have been reported when very young children or persons well beyond puberty were the apparent focal centers of the disturbance. Something mare, in addition to sexual pathology, is needed to understand it.

It has taken me many years to arrive at the conclusion that the Poltergeist disturbance may represent an episodic mental aberration of a schizophrenic character, arising from a severe traumatisation and consequent dissociation. Poltergeist Psychosis would be its appropriate psychiatric description.

The first task, of course, is to record the disturbances and make sure that they actually occur: i.e. that they are not due to hysterical observations or to practical joking. The second task is to try to understand the phenomena, whether foolproof or a mixture of the genuine and of the false, on a psychological basis. The first has been done again and again by competent researchers before my time, but not the second. It was my good fortune, with the advent of the Thornton Heath Poltergeist, to blaze a new path—at a heavy cost to myself and at the price of a hue and cry that took many years to calm.

Had I only passed judgment on whether the occurrences were of a supernormal character or due to fraud, all would have been well. The International Institute for Psychical Research, of which I was then Director of Research, would have considered the tremendous effort that went into this investigation well spent. But I committed an unpardonable offense: I attempted to approach the problems that presented themselves on a semi-psychoanalytical basis and, in the eyes of my colleagues, soon found myself treading on dangerous ground.

I was warned when I started free association tests: It isn’t done, it is not Psychical Research. When it came to interpreting the results, my right to do so was challenged. I was not a psychoanalyst,{2} therefore my conclusion that the disturbances sprung from a basic sexual trauma that had produced dissociation, was disgraceful and outrageous. I was asked fen: my resignation and, during my absence on a holiday in France, the ms. that summed up and analyzed the results of the investigation was confiscated. I had to wage a stubborn fight for its recovery, as I knew that the least they would do to it was to suppress it.

This is that ms. It is in its original form, aiming to serve as a bridge between psychoanalysis and psychical research, tolerant to the super-normal, yet incisive enough where severe treatment was necessary. The Institute has long gone out of existence, most of the persons who participated in this investigation have died, and the principle for which I fought over twenty years ago now meets with general acceptance. It is that psychical research must not be kept sealed off from any psychological discipline and that whatever a psychoanalytic or psychiatric approach may reveal we must face without fear and reproach.

I did not know at the time when the storm clouds gathered around my head that a strange parallel existed between my position and that of the great founder of Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Only in the light of Ernest Jones’ revelations in the third volume of his biography of Freud is it dear that just as I tried to bring Psychoanalysis into Psychical Research, so did Freud try to incorporate the occult into Psychoanalysis. He had long accepted telepathy. That did not mean much to psychical researchers, who consider telepathy an elementary approach. But English periodicals made a sensation of it and psychoanalysts were terrified. Seeing the unhappiness of Ernest Jones, Freud issued a circular letter to his intimates saying that considerations of external policy held me back long enough, but finally one must show one’s colors and need bother about the scandal this time as little as on earlier, perhaps still more important, occasions.

How far Freud’s interest extended beyond telepathy, I did not have the slightest idea. Nor did the majority of his followers. It was in fear and trembling as a desperate step, as an appeal to a court of last resort that, through my wife’s mediation, I submitted my Poltergeist ms. to Freud’s criticism. His reaction is now psychoanalytic history, but up to the recent last volume of Jones’ biography I was under the impression that as far as the Poltergeist was concerned, Freud never deigned to consider this matter at all in the course of his long career.

I was wrong. Freud had been introduced to the Poltergeist by no less a person than Carl Jung. To quote Jones:

On one of his first visits to Vienna, on March 25, 1909, he [Jung] regaled Freud one evening with astonishing stories of his experiences, and also displayed his powers as a poltergeist by making various articles in the room rattle on the furniture. Freud admitted having been very much impressed by this feat and tried to imitate it after Jung’s departure. He then found, however, obvious physical reasons for any faint noises to be observed, and he remarked that his credulousness had vanished together with the magic of Jung’s personality. He wrote at once to warn his friend to keep a cool head in the matter.

It is difficult to know what to make of this sensational revelation of Jones. But there is a good deal mom to say about Freud and the occult.

In 1921 Hereward Carrington invited Freud to join the advisory council of the American Psychical Institute of which he was the Director. Freud refused, but stated in his reply:

If I had my life to live over again, I should devote myself to psychical research rather than to psychoanalysis.

This letter remained dormant in Carrington’s files until Dr. George Lawton, having heard of it, wrote to Freud expressing his disbelief in any such commitment Freud’s answer, dated December 20, 1929, was:

I deplore the fact that you yourself did not read my letter to Carrington. You would have easily convinced yourself that I said nothing to justify his assertion. I gladly confirm the fact that you have correctly judged my relationship to psychical research.

But, adds Ernest Jones, Freud was wrong in his denial. In the eight years that had passed he had blotted out the memory of that very astonishing and unexpected passage. Dr. Nandor Fodor kindly produced from Mr. Carrington a photostat of Freud’s letter, and the passage in question certainly occurs in it.

It is only now, in the light of all this, that I can understand why Freud, old and tired as he was at the end of a long life, was so painstaking and sympathetic to my approach. He was not only being magnanimous to a trail blazer, but he was also genuinely and sincerely interested when he appraised my ms. in the following letter, which I reproduce in Jones’s own translation:

22, XI. 1938

20 Maresfield Gardens,

London, N.W. 3.

Dear Sir:

Perhaps you cannot imagine how vexatious the reading of such documents of experiments, precautions, evidence of witnesses and so on is for a reader to whom to start with the acceptance of supernormal happenings does not mean much, especially when they are concerned with such stupid tricks of a so-called Poltergeist.

I have held out, however, and have been richly rewarded.

The way you deflect your interest from the question of whether the phenomena observed are real or have been falsified and turn it to the psychological study of the medium, including the investigation of her previous history, seem to me to be the right steps to take in the planning of research which will lead to some explanation of the occurrences in question. It is greatly to be regretted that the International Institute for Psychical Research was not willing to follow you in this direction. Furthermore I regard as very probable the result you come to with the particular case. Naturally it would be desirable to confirm it through a real analysis of the person, but that evidently is not feasible.

Your manuscript is ready for you to fetch.

With many thanks for sending me the interesting material,

Yours truly,

SIGM. FREUD

This letter was my vindication. While I sent a photostatic copy of it to the International Institute without comment, I did not put it into print until the centenary of Freud. I could have used it to excellent advantage in March, 1939, when, in a libel action I brought against the London Psychic News, an attempt was made to exploit the investigation of the Thornton Heath Poltergeist against me. Freud has permitted me to use his letter as an introduction to my book but it would have been in bad taste to drag his name into the cheap sensationalism that developed around the proceedings in the King’s Bench Division before Justice Singleton.

I was accused of trying to make an experiment at the Tower of London, the purpose of which was to make the Poltergeist spirit the crown jewels out of their protective covering.

I still remember the stern look on the face of Justice Singleton and the shocked surprise and subsequent smile when I calmly stated:

Yes. I was willing to go to jail if the Poltergeist could accomplish the feat.

The attempt to make me the butt of ridicule misfired. Actually, I never made the experiment for the simple reason that some members of my council objected. They were afraid that the Poltergeist might succeed and the result would be a national scandal.

There is a certain parallelism between the proposed experiment at the Tower and the psychic shoplifting at Bognor Regis, the success of which, at first view, sent a shiver down my spine. The reader will judge for himself as the story unfolds.

NANDOR FODOR

I—The coming of the Poltergeist

ON A MID-FEBRUARY MORNING in 1938, readers of the Sunday Pictorial were startled by this breathtaking headline:

GHOST WRECKS HOME, FAMILY TERRORISED

According to the editorial introduction, "two Sunday Pictorial representatives yesterday spent the most amazing day in their lives in a house at Thornton Heath, where some malevolent, ghostly force is working miracles. They saw saucers—held in a woman’s hand—smashed into smithereens by an invisible force. Eggs, saucepans, fenders, rugs, wineglasses, coal, and a score of other objects, sailed through the air before them—and sometimes through doors!—propelled by no human force."

In the article Victor Thompson and Lionel Crane say that they were asked to call by Mrs. L. Forbes, as there were things going on in her house which she could not explain. When they arrived and the door was opened, they saw an egg sailing through the air towards them. It fell with a plop in the hall a yard from their feet.

In the living room they were introduced to Mr. L. Forbes, the husband, to their seven teen-year-old son David, and to Mr. George Simmons, a forty-year-old crippled bootmaker, who is a lodger of the family. As Mrs. Forbes was telling her story there was a heavy crash outside.

We rushed into the hall, the newspaper story says, and saw a bronze fender from her upstairs bedroom lying at the foot of the stairs. Nobody was upstairs at the time.

The reporters divided forces. Thompson and everybody else in the house remained in one room, Crane sat in the front parlour alone.

I was facing the parlour door, which was open, he writes. It led from the hall. Suddenly I saw something fly through the door and land with a plop on the sideboard—it was an egg!

Thompson saw a cup and saucer in Mrs. Forbes’s hand fly into a hundred pieces. This happened again in the presence of five people. A piece of china (a fragment of the saucer) gashed Mrs. Forbes’ hand so badly that it had to be bandaged. She claimed that something knocked it out of her hand.

A few minutes later came the sound of breaking glass from the kitchen. It was a wineglass which apparently came through the locked door from a heavy oak sideboard in the living room. The ring of dust where the glass had stood could be clearly seen.

Standing in the hail, the reporters continue, "we saw a pink china dog rattle down on to the floor of the kitchen. This dog came in some miraculous way from a cabinet in the kitchen, the door of which was shut tight the whole time.

While we were still standing in the hall, a sharp-edged can-opener lifted itself up from a table in the kitchen and sailed past Crane’s head.

During an impromptu séance with a local medium as we all sat round at the table in the dusk, a piece of coal weighing several pounds was suddenly lifted from the grate and hurled against a far wall with such force that it left a big hole. It missed Thompson’s head by two or three inches.

So far I have only quoted the writers’ personal experiences. Journalists are always out to make a good story, but they are careful not to make fools of themselves. Also, their profession demands good powers of observation. They are out to catch practical jokers. Had a member of the family just passed the door of the parlour in which Mr. Crane was sitting, to throw an egg, it is unlikely that Mr. Thompson in the next room would have failed to connect the sudden re-entrance of this person into the dining room with Mr. Crane’s outcry. The conditions in which the egg was thrown give the impression of a supernormal phenomenon.

The cup and saucer incident demands treatment at a later stage.

The reporters’ assumption that the wineglass which smashed in the scullery and the pink china dog which rattled down onto the scullery floor came, respectively, through the locked door of the heavy oak sideboard in the living room and through the door of the cabinet in the kitchen, is not justified. We do not know the interval of time that elapsed before and between these two happenings and have no record of the movements of people in the house. Both articles could have been removed from the sideboard and the cabinet at some previous time. The reporters’ testimony is apparently based on Mrs. Forbes’s statement, which they accepted in good faith. As we are not assured that no one was in a position to throw the wine glass and the china dog into the kitchen, we must consider the evidential value of both happenings as doubtful.

The flying of the can-opener past Mr. Crane’s head is more impressive. It lifted itself up from a table in the kitchen, while both reporters were still standing in the hall. We may safely assume that there was no one in the kitchen as, in that case, the incident could not have been described in the words quoted.

The flight of the coal in the dusk is of small evidential value. It seems only assumed that it was lifted from the grate at the moment that it started its flight It may have been lifted out some time before and held ready for throwing across the zoom at a moment of diversion.

Doubts as to such possibilities seem to have assailed the observers afterwards. The next report, published in the Daily Mirror on the following day, is unsigned, but is based on the observations of five reporters instead of the original two.

I was sceptical, writes the Special Correspondent, "when I arrived at the house about 11 P.M. on Saturday. At seven o’clock on Sunday morning I was bewildered.

An egg-cup had shattered in my hand as I held it. A glass ‘leapt’ from a table. A foot-square mirror hurtled from the wall. Another egg-cup shattered on the ceiling, and Mrs. Forbes ‘hurtled’ across the room. All five of us saw these things. It was uncanny, but each of us formed our own conclusions. Three of us cannot make up our minds whether or not a human agency is responsible. The other two are definite that there is nothing ‘spooky’ in this little villa. It was dawn when we left the house, bewildered, but all satisfied on one point...that whatever the force is, it is centred round frail, invalid Mrs. Forbes.

Of all these incidents, the shattering of an egg cup in the hand of the reporter is the most striking one. Mrs. Forbes was standing next to him when this took place. To assume from this that she had hit the glass in the reporter’s hand with something hard and that the reporter had failed to notice it is an insult to journalistic intelligence. The reporters had already noted that Mrs. Forbes was always near when something happened. They were watching her. They saw Mrs. Forbes leaning against the bookcase from which a book slithered across the room. They saw her near when cups and glasses crashed in the kitchen. These were their conclusions:

"First and most important...nothing happened when Mrs. Forbes was held.

"Second...the incidents only took place when we were off our guard.

‘Third...Mrs. Forbes was thrown from her chair when one of the investigators had asked, rather facetiously, for a better exhibition than book throwing."

The last lines of the article speak of a vase which struck Mr. Forbes as he went upstairs with his wife—the only time they were both out of sight.

It was a heavy vase...we heard the crash...Mr. Forbes looked dazed, but his head was not bruised.

It is far better to read a journalistic account based on suspicion than on enthusiasm for the supernormal. If between the five of them they failed to find proof that Mrs. Forbes was by normal means causing the phenomena observed, then the case is good for Psychical Research to step in.

HOW IT BEGAN

The disturbances in the Forbes home began on Friday, February 19th. I arrived on the scene on Thursday, February 24th. The day before, my research assistant, Mr. L. A. Evans, made important preliminary observations. We know what happened in the presence of the reporters of the Sunday Pictorial and the Daily Mirror. I shall now tell the story of Friday night and of the days that followed before my own investigation began, as I strung it together from Mrs. Forbes’s answers.

Mrs. Forbes bad an accident at the age of sixteen from which she developed internal trouble, which necessitated several operations for draining an abscess on the kidney. She told me it was nothing uncommon for her to be taken ill quite unexpectedly and to be laid up for several days, and on the recent occasion she was in bed for a week before the trouble began. Her husband, who was suffering from hemorrhage after having all his teeth extracted, was also laid up for three days.

On Friday night, February 19th, they were awakened by a sudden crash of glass. They put on the light and discovered that the glass which stood on Mr. Forbes’s side of the double bed lay shattered on the floor. As they were looking at it, another glass flew past their heads. This seemed very unusual, and Mr. Forbes suggested that they should put out the light and see what would happen. As soon as this was done the eiderdown flew up into their faces. In alarm, Mr. Forbes asked for the light. It would not go on and they thought that the bulb must have burnt out. Their son David brought in another bulb, followed by Mr. Simmons with the matches. It was then found that the bulb was missing from the socket, and they discovered it, still hot and unbroken, on the chair by Mr. Forbes’s bed. (The lamp is over Mrs. Forbes’s side of the bed.) A little later a pot of face cream jumped at David, and a shilling and a penny, from under Mrs. Forbes’s cushion, were thrown at Mr. Simmons.

For the remainder of the night nothing further happened. The time was 12:40 A.M. and the family went back to sleep. In the morning, however, there were several fresh incidents. An egg flew through the air, and ornaments, cups, and saucers were broken. They decided to notify the press and eventually reporters were called in.

The breakages were not followed by personal injury, except accidentally. Mrs. Forbes was hurt three times. Her hand was cut by an exploding saucer, and her head was bruised by a flying tin of polish and by a chair which is said to have come from the bedroom and knocked her unconscious as she was coming downstairs. Mr. Forbes was hurt by a vase which crashed on to his head and was smashed to pieces (but which left no bruises that the reporters could find), and Mr. Simmons fell as he was mounting the stairs on his crutches, claiming that someone pushed him down. He denied that this something had anything to do with the generous doses of whiskey to which he was treated.

The greatest damage to property took place on the following Tuesday. A reporter from the Croydon Advertiser stayed for the night, and as David was afraid to sleep in the house, he was given his bedroom. In the dining room below was another reporter who wanted a game of darts. The two reporters remained together and played.

I put the cat out, Mrs. Forbes told me, "went upstairs, undressed and just got into bed when there was