Three years after the Vachendorf Case, the Freiburg Institute was asked by a Catholic priest from the village of Neusatz in Baden to investigate a poltergeist case. An old mother lived with her 30-year-old, weak-minded son in a farmhouse in which the strange phenomena were said to occur. Linen was continually cut up into shreds, clothes were torn and food was thrown in the latrine. Curtains hung in the living room continued to disappear and were never seen again. In the stable, the tails of the cows were braided in tresses.
This was the first case of alleged poltergeist phenomena which we were able to investigate while the phenomena were still occurring. In search of a high level of evidence, we tried an objective documentation of the disappearance of the curtains. We hung new curtains and attached an electrical device which, when triggered, set lamps and film cameras in motion. We asked the police to seal the room and waited a fortnight. Nothing happened. The inhabitants asked us to leave our device in the room because it seemed to drive away the poltergeist. Later on, when we opened the room in the presence of the criminal police and touched the curtains, the mechanism was activated. This showed that all was in good working order, but nonetheless, our strategy was not successful. If these curtains had disappeared – they had been photographed before – the highest level of evidence might have been reached. However, a cinematographic document does not make a case any more evidential as it can easily be faked. The value of this kind of document is never greater than the known integrity of the investigator and his assistants. However, the improbability of a conspiracy between the criminal police and the investigators would have given the documents reliability and left little room for reasonable doubt.
From “New Developments in Poltergeist Research” by Hans Bender, in the Proceedings of the Parapsychological Association, no. 6, 1969.