The Aberfeldy Poltergeist

An SPI Case File

© Brian Allan 2002

Word count: 2,215

Introduction

During the preliminary investigation into an apparent poltergeist case, it soon became apparent that there were several distinct threads involved. In addition to the alleged poltergeist manifestations, not only was there the added dimension of a series of apparitions, but perhaps some of the failings of human beings.

Background

The popular and picturesque Perthshire tourist village of Aberfeldy is an unlikely setting for an alleged case of poltergeist activity, but according to 78-year-old widower, Colin Grant, this is exactly what had occurred. Colin and his wife Janet, who have five adult children, moved to his present home, a pleasant, new, bungalow in a quiet part of Aberfeldy approximately five years ago. The unusual events did not begin until six months after his wife died in 1998 just a year after they moved into the house. According to Colin, six months after the death of his wife, she 'visited' him in the living room of their home; during the course of our recorded chat he made several references to this fact. The first visit lasted no more then two or three minutes when she appeared at around four-thirty p.m. in the living room of the house. Understandably, Colin was taken aback but not afraid, he was by his own admission, 'Dumbfounded'. Then, as he describes it, 'She collapsed like a house of cards' and vanished. Following her initial appearance she came to him on two other occasions, appearing at his bedside for varying periods of time.

Dave recalled that he told his daughter, Fiona, (pseudonym) about her mothers' initial visit, but she did not appear to believe him, however, this soon changed when her mother 'visited' Fiona's home which is also in Aberfeldy. According to Colin's daughter, her mother appeared to her husband, Steven, (pseudonym) in her house in the early hours of the morning when he awoke to see his late mother-in-law standing beside the bed. After exchanging a few words, she asked him to tell her daughter that she was well and she should not worry, then she vanished. It was after his wife's third visit that Colin, while sitting one evening watching television, first noticed discs of light moving across the living room ceiling. Immediately prior to the appearance of the lights he heard a sharp knock and then a light instantly appeared on the ceiling, a few moments later this was followed by another knock and a second light appeared.

This continued until there were seven lights in all moving around the living room ceiling. At first he sat bemused observing the display of lights, then he looked out of the windows seeking a source for the anomaly but he could see nothing unusual. He quickly looked around the room for any unusual light source, but again there was nothing to be seen. As he sat and watched, the lights gradually began to fade over a period of half an hour until there was no sign of them. Although puzzled, he put the bizarre display out of his mind and went to bed. Once again the following evening, again whilst watching television, he heard a sharp knock and the display of lights returned, the appearance of each circle of light announced by the now familiar knock. The lights persisted for around 30 minutes and as with the previous evening, gradually faded from view. As Colin soon discovered, the lights varied in number from six or seven to twenty or more. However, these events presaged rather more dramatic manifestations that occurred shortly afterwards.

By this time Colin wanted some answers and he contacted the Scottish Society for Psychic Research (SSPR) who sent two investigators to spend the night in the house, but as is often the case nothing happened. Colin readily admits that the phenomena rarely occur when he has guests, which, although disheartening for the investigators is not necessarily unusual, because it often transpires that during vigils nothing is seen. It certainly does not mean that there is not a genuine phenomenon present. It was around this time that the apparitions began to manifest, the first apparition was a man dressed in tweed keeping pace with him as he walked around the back of his house. This was followed by the images of, once again a man, a tall one this time, standing in his bedroom watching him. He has also seen two women standing at his bedroom door, they were both talking but he could hear no sound. He then saw the figure of a coloured woman walk across his bedroom floor and vanish through the bedroom door. None of the figures were in the least hazy; they were quite solid and clear, and it was at this time that the poltergeist element in the case began to manifest.

A few weeks after the lights first appeared in the house, Colin witnessed a small, amorphous shape flying around his bedroom, although startled, at first he assumed it was a bat or a bird that had somehow become trapped in the house. He tried to trap the creature but was unable to do so, and then it vanished. It reappeared the following night and again he watched it flying rapidly around his bedroom when it suddenly appeared to dive behind a dressing table and vanish into the electrical socket there. Colin explained that late one evening when he opened a drawer to remove a shirt to wear the following day, the creature shot out of the drawer and once again flapped and swooped around the room. The more he saw the thing the more convinced he became that this was no ordinary creature and it was certainly not a bat or a bird

The Evaluation

The evaluation took place in April 2003 with Ian Shanes, a psychic medium, assessing whether was any psychic activity in the dwelling. On arriving in the early afternoon, we discovered that Colin had a visitor and we were not certain whether he wished us to carry out the evaluation, but fortunately, the guest was curious and Dave was keen for us to go ahead. After chatting to Colin, Ian began walking around the house, pausing in each room to assess the situation. After a short while he was aware that although there were presences in the house, none of them were malevolent and he could not detect any trace of the small creature that Colin had repeatedly observed flying around his bedroom. When Ian ended his tour of the house he confided that he did not think was a haunting in the accepted sense of the word, but rather whatever was present was merely letting it be known that it was there. If Colin and his son-in-law had indeed seen his late wife, then there was nothing to fear from the vision, it was only an expression of love and proof that life does continue in a non-physical manner after death

Conclusion

In many ways this was a particularly enigmatic case that had several possible explanations and we shall look at these in turn. First, the anomalous knocking noises and displays of light on Colin's living room ceiling can be explained away in purely physical although unusual terms. The knocking noises may have been due to magneto-constriction or restriction caused by subterranean magnetic fields affecting the structure of his house. The lights may have been caused by the optical cortex in his brain being stimulated by the same external magnetic fields leading to a purely subjective light display. The figures moving around his bedroom could also have been produced by electrical stimulation of the temporal lobes in his brain. I had checked around his home using a TriField meter twice during out visits and had only detected any raised electromagnetic (EM) fields around two domestic plugs and close to his central heating boiler; there were no sign of any other increased background EM fields. This however does not mean that they are not present at various times during the day or night due the nature of how they are produced, i.e. by the seismic movements releasing electrical charges. It has been demonstrated by Dr Michael Persinger, a professor of neurology at the Laurentian University in Ontario, Canada, that some people are extremely sensitive to this and occasionally experience a range of tactile, auditory and visual hallucinations.

Second, Colin and his family really did experience some psychic phenomena concerning manifestations of his dead wife, not forgetting of course his encounters with other entities in his home. It is possible that the original appearance of his wife acted as focus for other energies in the area that used her point of entry to this reality for their own purposes. It is also possible of course that they were the residual energy fields people who had perhaps lived on the site of Dave's house long before it had been built. The small, flying creature is the only real anomaly here because it is not immediately clear what it was, nor where it came from and it cannot be ruled out that it was indeed some sort of small animal or even a large flying insect trapped in the house. It is unfortunate that Ian was unable to obtain any psychic information about this creature because this might have removed any uncertainty about its real nature. It is likely that its abrupt appearance in Colin's bedroom, especially late at night, may have caused him to misinterpret its identity. It's further abrupt appearance from within a clothes drawer may indicate that it is indeed an animal rather than a spirit entity, and his initial suspicion that is was a bat or something similar, might have some validity. Ian Shanes's assertion that the entities in Colin's house were only trying to attract his attention is one of the most common reasons for the appearance of 'ghosts' and apparitions at any given site, it is also possible that their presence was not connected to the encounters with his deceased wife. The fact that his son-in-law saw her in his own home, totally devoid of any accompanying manifestations, helps to corroborate this idea.

Another point to remember is that following the death of a loved one; it is quite common for close relatives to see images of them in ordinary situations in and around their homes. Leaving aside purely wishful thinking, this may be due in part to the presence of residual energy from the deceased person being sensed and converted by the witness into a recognisable form. Conversely, the ability to materialise soon after death may initially be stronger due to necessity when either out of concern or sympathy, the person who has passed over feels the need to comfort or reassure those left behind; in short, one of the most powerful emotions known to humanity; love and compassion. Yet another possibility and one that may explain various associated phenomena, is the still as yet unrecognised ability of the human mind to create external images having all the characteristics of a living person or thing; effectively projections from the unconscious mind of the living person. This explanation may also account for existence of a host of mythological creatures and entities that have been associated with humanity since the dawn of time.

However, one cannot rule out the possibility of confabulation, where someone takes apparently unrelated but factual incidents and along with imaginary happenings moulds them into a completely different scenario that is only partly based in reality. This does not mean that the person concerned is not subjectively telling the truth as they see it, but this does not mean that what they say is real. In this case, Dave's much loved, but sadly deceased wife's appearance to him and other members of his family may have been an isolated incident that caused him some unrecognised trauma and he subconsciously built upon it. Unlike other cases we have attended this one was slightly different, because as we have seen, it contained the seeds for a range of possibilities, each of them feasible but only one of them true. At the end of the day we were not able to achieve a clear outcome, but perhaps we were able to bring some comfort to an elderly man who had lost his lifetime companion. It is also fair to say that none of the above mentioned theories to explain the phenomenon may be correct, there may yet be a little of some of all of them in the truth of the matter. It is during cases like this that one discovers that investigating the paranormal is not solely about paranormal events, ghosts and poltergeists, but also about people and perceptions, it also helps the investigator understand a little more about the human condition.

Epilogue

I called Dave a few months after our final visit asking if there was any change is his circumstances, evidently shortly after we had visited, the sightings diminished until they finally petered out and stopped and there had been nothing for the few weeks prior to my phone call. Hopefully the activity, whatever it was, is now at an end.