evidence about any sort of events, remote by nine or ten years. Thus, in 1726, Mrs Wesley mentioned a visionary badger seen by her. She did not write about it to her son Samuel in 1717, but her husband and her daughter did then describe it to Samuel, as an experience of his mother at that date. The whole family, in 1717, became familiar with the phenomena, and were tired of them and of Samuel's questions. (Mr Podmore's arguments are to be found in the Journal of the Studies of Psychical Research, ix. 40-45. Some dates are misprinted.) The theory of hallucination cannot account for the uniformity of statements, in many countries and at many dates, to the effect that the objects mysteriously set in motion moved in soft curves and swerves, or “wobbled.” Suppose that an adroit impostor is throwing them, suppose that the spectators are excited, why should their excitement everywhere produce a uniform hallucination as to the mode of motion? It is better to confess ignorance, and remain in doubt, than to invent such theories.
A modern instance may be analysed, as the evidence was given contemporaneously with the events (Podmore, Proc. Soc. Psychical Research, xii. 45-58: “Poltergeists”). On the 20th or 21st of February 1883 a Mrs White, in a cottage at Worksop, was “washing up the tea-things at the table,” with two of her children in the room, when “the table tilted up at a considerable angle,” to her amazement. On the 26th of February, Mr White being from home, Mrs White extended hospitality to a girl, Eliza Rose, “the child of an imbecile mother.” Eliza is later described as “half-witted,” but no proof of this is given. On the 1st of March, White being from home, at about 11.30 p.m. a number of things “which had been in the kitchen a few minutes before” came tumbling down the kitchen stairs. Only Mrs White and Eliza Rose were then in the kitchen. Later some hot coals made an invasion. On the following night, White being at home in the kitchen, with his wife and Eliza, a miscellaneous throng of objects came in, Mr White made vain research upstairs, where was his brother Tom. On his return to the kitchen “a little china woman left the mantelpiece and flew into the corner.” Being replaced, it repeated its flight, and was broken. White sent his brother to fetch a doctor; there also came a policeman, named Higgs; and the doctor and policeman saw, among other things, a basin and cream jug rise up automatically, fall on the floor and break. Next morning, a clock which had been silent for eighteen months struck; a crash was heard, and the clock was found to have leapt over a bed and fallen on the floor. All day many things kept flying about and breaking themselves, and Mr White sent Miss Rose about her business. Peace ensued.
Mr Podmore, who visited the scene on the 7th and 8th of April and collected depositions, says (writing in 1883): “It may be stated generally that there was no possibility, in most cases, of the objects having been thrown by hand . . . Moreover it is hard to conceive by what mechanical appliances, under the circumstances described, the movements could have been effected. . . . To suppose that these various objects were all moved by mechanical contrivances argues incredible stupidity, amounting almost to imbecility, on the part of all the persons present who were not in the plot,” whereas Higgs, Dr Lloyd and a miner named Curass, all “certainly not wanting in intelligence,” examined the objects and could find no explanation. White attested that fresh invasions of the kitchen by inanimate objects occurred as Eliza was picking up the earlier arrivals; and he saw a salt-cellar fly from the table while Eliza was in another part of the room. The amount of things broken was valued by White at £9. No one was in the room when the clock struck and fell. Higgs saw White shut the cupboard doors, they instantly burst open, and a large glass jar flew into the yard and broke. “The jar could not go in a straight line from the cupboard out of the door; but it certainly did go” (Higgs). The depositions were signed by the witnesses (April 1883).
In 1896, Mr Podmore, after thirteen years of experience in examining reports of the poltergeist, produced his explanations. (1) The witnesses, though “honest and fairly intelligent,” were “imperfectly educated, not skilled in accurate observation of any kind.” (They described, like many others, in many lands, the “wobbling” movement of objects in flight.) (2) Mr Podmore took the evidence five weeks after date; there was time for exaggerated memories. (Mr Podmore did not consult, it seems, the contemporary evidence of Higgs in the Retford and Gainsborough Times, 9th of March 1883. On examination it proves to tally as precisely, as possible with the testimonies which he gave to Mr Podmore, except that in March he mentioned one or two miracles which he omitted five weeks later! The evidence is published in Lang's The Making of Religion, 1898, p. 356.) (3) In the evidence given to Mr Podmore five weeks after date, there are discrepancies between Higgs and White as to the sequence of some events, and as to whether one Coulter was present when the clock fell: he asserts, Higgs and White deny it. (There is never evidence of several witnesses, five weeks after an event, without such discrepancies. If there were, the evidence would be suspected as “cooked.” Higgs in April gave the same version as in March.) (4) As there are discrepancies, the statements that Eliza was not always present at the abnormal occurrences may be erroneous. “It is perhaps not unreasonable to conjecture that Eliza Rose herself, as the instrument of mysterious agencies, or simply as a half-witted girl gifted with abnormal cunning and love of mischief, may have been directly responsible for all that took place.” (How, if, as we have seen, the theory of mechanical appliances is abandoned, “under the circumstances described”? We need to assume that all the circumstances are wrongly described. Yet events did occur, the breakages were lamentable, and we ask how could the most half-withed of girls damage so much property undetected, under the eyes of the owner, a policeman, a medical practitioner and others? How could she throw things from above into the room where she was picking up the things as they arrived? Or is that a misdescription? No evidence of Eliza's half-wittedness and abnormal cunning is adduced. If we call her “the instrument of mysterious agencies,” the name of these agencies is—poltergeist! No later attempt to find and examine the abnormal girl is recorded.)
The explanations are not ideally satisfactory, but they are the result, in Mr Podmore's mind, of examination of several later cases of poltergeist.[1] In one a girl, carefully observed, was detected throwing things, and evidence that the phenomena occurred, in her absence, at another place and time, is discounted. In several other cases, exaggerations of memory, malobservation and trickery combined, are the explanations, and the conclusion is that there is “strong ground” for believing in trickery as the true explanation of all these, eleven cases, including the Worksop affair. Mr Podmore asserts that, at Worksop, “the witnesses did not give their testimony until some weeks after the event.” That is an erroneous statement as far as Higgs goes, the result apparently of malobservation of the local newspaper. More or less of the evidence was printed in the week when the events occurred. Something more than unconscious exaggeration, or malobservation, seems needed to explain the amazing statements made by Mr Newman, a gamekeeper of Lord Portman, on the 23rd of January 1895, at Durmeston in another case. Among other things, he said that on the 18th of December 1894, a boot flew out of a door. “I went and put my foot on the boot and said ‘I defy anything to move this boot.’ Just as I stepped off, it rose up behind me and knocked my hat off. There was nobody behind me.” Gamekeepers are acute observers, and if the narrative be untrue, malobservation or defect of memory does not explain the fact. In this case, at Durmeston, the rector, Mr Anderson, gave an account of
- ↑ The present writer criticized Mr Podmore's explanation in The Making of Religion. Mr Podmore replied (Proc. Soc. Psychical Research, xiv. 133, 136), pointing out an error in the critic's presentation of his meaning. He, in turn, said that the writer “champions the supernormal interpretation,” which is not exact, as the writer has no theory on the subject, though he is not satisfied that “a naughty little girl” is a uniformly successful solution of the poltergeist problem.
