Paranormal Insights: Poltergeists
An Examination of Poltergeists: Meaning, History, Disturbances, and Documented Cases
It begins with noise. A knock on the wall, a crash in the kitchen, a door slamming without warning. Soon, objects fly across rooms, heavy furniture drags itself across the floor, and those who live there find themselves bruised, scratched, or pushed by unseen hands. Unlike most hauntings, poltergeists are not silent watchers. They make themselves known through chaos, disruption, and fear.
The Name and Its Origins
The word poltergeist is drawn from the German language, combining poltern, which means to make noise, to crash about, or to rumble, with geist, meaning spirit or ghost. Together the two words translate directly as “noisy ghost,” a term that captures perfectly the defining characteristic of the phenomenon. The earliest known use of the word in print dates back to the sixteenth century, appearing in both German chronicles and theological writings. These early texts described disruptive household spirits that hurled stones, rattled furniture, and terrified entire families. Unlike the souls of the dead, these were not thought of as lingering ancestors, but as malicious, mischievous forces bent on disturbance for its own sake.
During the Reformation period in Europe, poltergeist outbreaks were often interpreted within a religious framework. Lutheran and Catholic writers alike described them as evidence of demonic intrusion, signs of the Devil’s direct activity within a household. Martin Luther himself referred to such spirits in his writings, treating them as genuine manifestations of evil designed to test the faithful. In Germany, cases of stone-throwing poltergeists were frequently cited in pamphlets and sermons, which described the fear and destruction they caused as warnings of sin, divine punishment, or witchcraft. The word poltergeist thus gained traction not only through folk usage but through the literature of the period, where it carried both cultural and religious weight.
The idea travelled quickly across Europe. By the seventeenth century, English writers were aware of the German term, though local accounts often spoke of “noisy devils” or “rapping spirits.” One of the earliest English cases to capture public imagination, the Drummer of Tedworth in 1662, was described by contemporaries in language that closely echoed German reports. Though the term poltergeist was not yet common in English, the concept was firmly understood: an unseen, chaotic force that made itself known through noise and violence rather than silent apparitions.
The persistence of the German term owes much to the scholarly exchange of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As natural philosophers and theologians compiled accounts of hauntings, the word poltergeist became a convenient label for a distinct category of disturbance. By the nineteenth century it was well established in both German and English texts, appearing in collections of folklore, in reports of spiritualist phenomena, and in the emerging literature of psychical research. Unlike more general terms such as “ghost” or “spectre,” it carried a precise meaning that described not the appearance of a figure but the violent disruption of a household.
Thus the name itself embodies centuries of cultural perception. The poltergeist was never merely a ghost in the ordinary sense but a noisy, violent, and often terrifying presence that intruded on everyday life. From its origins in German villages plagued by stone-throwing spirits, to its adoption into English parlance through pamphlets and sermons, the word has survived because it names something distinct: a haunting defined not by vision, but by sound and upheaval.
The Characteristics of Poltergeists
Poltergeist outbreaks are marked by recurring patterns that have been recorded for centuries. They are best known for violent sounds that echo through walls, ceilings, and floors, ranging from sharp raps and bangs to long rolls of drumming that no ordinary cause could explain. Objects are displaced or hurled across rooms, sometimes small and fragile like teacups and glassware, other times heavy and immovable such as beds, wardrobes, or entire fireplaces. Victims report physical attacks: scratches that rise visibly on their skin, bites that leave marks, hair pulled sharply by invisible hands, and occasional shoves that knock them from chairs or stairs. In some cases fires break out spontaneously, or pools of water appear without source. More recent accounts note the failure or manipulation of modern technology, with lights that flicker uncontrollably, telephones that ring when unplugged, and radios that turn on without human touch. One of the most striking features is the way disturbances often centre on a particular person in the household, usually an adolescent, who appears to draw the activity like a lightning rod.
What They Are Believed to Be
The causes of poltergeist activity have long been debated, and here the phenomenon departs from the traditional idea of a haunting. While ghosts are often explained as the lingering souls of the dead, poltergeists appear inextricably linked to the living. Almost every detailed outbreak features a single focus or “agent” at the heart of the disturbance. The pattern is striking: again and again, the focus is an adolescent, most often a girl between the ages of eleven and sixteen. This connection has appeared so consistently that it forms one of the strongest threads in poltergeist research.
Parapsychologists in the twentieth century developed the theory of Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis (RSPK) to account for this. They argued that an adolescent undergoing the stress and hormonal upheaval of puberty could unconsciously project psychic energy outward. Bottled anger, fear, or trauma would then erupt into the environment, moving objects, knocking on walls, or even leaving marks on skin. In this view, the poltergeist is not an outside invader but a violent manifestation of inner turmoil. Cases such as the Rosenheim disturbances in Germany and the Enfield haunting in England are often cited as examples, since the activity ceased or greatly diminished once the adolescent grew older or was removed from the environment.
Historically, explanations were couched in religious and folkloric terms. In seventeenth-century Germany, households plagued by stone-throwing spirits almost always had daughters of adolescent age, and such girls were sometimes accused of being witches or of attracting demonic attention. In England, the “noisy devils” recorded in parish registers were likewise linked to families with children at a transformative age. Scandinavian traditions went further, suggesting that neglected household spirits might lash out in mischief, using a child as the point of entry into the domestic space. Even in these cultural variations, the adolescent remained the consistent centre.
It would be wrong to suggest that poltergeist agents are always girls. Boys have also been linked to disturbances, such as in the Seaford case in the United States in 1958, where a twelve-year-old boy appeared to attract moving bottles and burning phone wires. The Epworth Rectory haunting of 1716 involved both male and female members of the Wesley family. Still, the overwhelming majority of poltergeist cases remain focused on girls, leading some to argue that the phenomenon is shaped as much by social context as by any psychic force. Skeptics maintain that girls under stress may simply seek attention through trickery, and that this explains why they so frequently appear in the centre of accounts. Believers counter that the pattern is too consistent, across geography and centuries, to be explained away as coincidence.
Religious interpretations continue to describe poltergeists as demonic or malevolent spirits intent on torment. Folklorists sometimes frame them as trickster entities, mischievous beings closer to faeries or goblins than to human ghosts. Environmental theories have also been put forward, pointing to seismic tremors, carbon monoxide poisoning, or electromagnetic fields. And of course, in every age, accusations of fraud and deliberate hoax have been levelled at the afflicted. Yet, despite these alternatives, the adolescent connection remains at the core of poltergeist study, leaving the impression that whatever the force may be, it thrives in the turbulence of youth.
How to Get Rid of a Poltergeist
Attempts to rid a household of poltergeist disturbances vary widely, and much depends on what one believes the phenomenon truly is. In religious contexts, priests and ministers have conducted blessings, prayers, and full exorcisms, often with limited or temporary success. Families sometimes resort to charms, the burning of protective herbs, or sprinkling holy water in affected rooms, hoping to drive away what they take to be a malevolent spirit. Yet for those who accept the connection between poltergeist outbreaks and adolescents in puberty, the matter becomes far more complex.
When disturbances are centred on a child in the household, particularly a girl in her early teenage years, rituals aimed at cleansing the home rarely prove decisive. Parapsychologists who advanced the theory of Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis observed that the turmoil of puberty itself appeared to be the fuel. Hormonal change, emotional volatility, and unexpressed conflict all combined into a volatile storm that seemed to erupt outward. In such cases the only effective measures were those that lessened the strain upon the child or removed them from the environment altogether. Families sometimes reported that activity diminished when the child went to stay with relatives, or when they were placed in a calmer environment free from household stress. In other cases, the disturbances abated naturally as the adolescent matured, as though the phenomenon expired with the end of puberty itself.
This makes the poltergeist uniquely resistant to banishment. If the cause lies within the unconscious of a living person, no prayer, blessing, or incantation can dispel it. Instead, the only solution is patience, psychological support, and sometimes separation. Where clergy see a demonic presence and sceptics see fraud, parapsychologists see an outpouring of repressed energy that must be endured until it passes. In every interpretation, however, one fact is constant: households caught in the grip of a poltergeist find themselves waiting for the storm to end, for the focus to grow older, or for life to change enough that the violent eruptions lose their hold.
A Notable Case: The Enfield Poltergeist (1977–1979)
One of the most famous and well-documented outbreaks occurred in Enfield, North London, in 1977. Peggy Hodgson, a single mother of four, lived with her children in a modest council house on Green Street. In August, her daughters Janet, aged eleven, and Margaret, aged thirteen, complained that their beds were shaking violently at night. Soon after, knocking noises began to echo through the rooms, at first tentative, then so loud and forceful that they seemed to shake the walls themselves. Furniture moved without explanation, toys were thrown across the floor, and voices shouted from the darkness.
The disturbances escalated rapidly. Neighbours who were called to the house witnessed chairs sliding unaided across the floor. Police officers attending the scene later swore in statements that they saw furniture shift without human contact. Journalists from the Daily Mirror arrived, documenting events and publishing reports that brought the case into the national spotlight. Investigators from the Society for Psychical Research, most notably Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair, took up residence in the house for extended periods, recording hundreds of incidents over the course of eighteen months.
Among the most striking phenomena were the physical attacks and strange voices that centred on Janet. Heavy knocks resounded in answer to questions, suggesting an intelligence at work. Objects flew across rooms, and on more than one occasion Janet herself was reported to have been levitated from her bed. A deep, gravelly male voice emerged from her, identifying itself as “Bill” and claiming to be the spirit of a man who had died in the house years earlier. The voice was recorded and analysed, and while sceptics suggested ventriloquism, others pointed to the strain such vocalisations would have placed on the vocal cords of an eleven-year-old girl.
The case was not without controversy. Janet and her sister were caught at times bending spoons and throwing objects in an effort to fake activity, and Janet later admitted that a small fraction of incidents had been contrived. She maintained, however, that the majority of events were genuine and beyond her control. Even sceptics who accused the family of fabrication conceded that the sheer scale of witnesses, including journalists, neighbours, and police, made it difficult to dismiss entirely.
By 1979 the disturbances subsided, and the family attempted to return to a semblance of normal life. Yet the Enfield Poltergeist remains one of the most debated cases in paranormal history, inspiring documentaries, books, and even the film The Conjuring 2. It stands as a vivid illustration of the way poltergeist phenomena grip not just a household but the wider public imagination, blending fear, fascination, and enduring mystery.
Conclusion
The poltergeist is a reminder that the paranormal is not always quiet or subtle. For centuries, families across the world have faced outbreaks of noise, violence, and chaos, leaving behind stories of terror and disbelief. Whether the result of spirits, psychic forces, environmental anomalies, or deception, poltergeists stand apart as one of the most unnerving phenomena in paranormal lore. They break the barrier between the unseen and the physical, turning safe homes into battlefields and leaving behind questions that no explanation has yet resolved.