A poltergeist ("noisy ghost," from the German poltern, to make noise, and geist, spirit) is a type of reported haunting phenomenon centred on physical disturbance rather than a visible apparition — objects thrown or moved, furniture displaced, unexplained noises, and electrical disturbances, rather than a seen or felt presence. Unlike most entries under Ghosts and Hauntings, poltergeist activity is not always attributed to a deceased spirit at all; a major strand of research instead attributes it to a living person within the household — see Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis for the full account of this hypothesis and the research behind it.
Notable cases
The Enfield Poltergeist
The best-documented poltergeist case in British history — see Enfield Poltergeist for the full account.
The Rosenheim Poltergeist
A 1967 case in Rosenheim, Germany, notable for occurring in an office environment rather than a private home, with reported electrical disturbances documented by physicists from the Max Planck Institute, and activity again linked to a young employee present at the time.
Scientific and sceptical perspective
Sceptics attribute poltergeist cases to a combination of deliberate fraud — often by the "agent" seeking attention — unconscious or conscious trickery, misperception of ordinary events, and investigator bias, and note that in several high-profile cases the agent was directly caught producing phenomena by normal means. As with other subjects gathered under Parapsychology, RSPK remains a fringe hypothesis rather than an accepted explanation, even among researchers who take poltergeist reports seriously as a subject worth investigating.
See also
- Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis
- Enfield Poltergeist
- Ghosts and Hauntings
- Society for Psychical Research
- Parapsychology