The Pursruck Case 1970-71.
The changed attitude towards poltergeist phenomena became symptomatically manifest in the behaviour of the catholic priest, Rev. Jakob Wolfsteiner, who is in charge of the pastoral duties in the small village of Pursruck, 40 miles east of Nuremberg. In November 1970 two girls, Helga, 13, and Anna R., 11, were living for some time with their grandmother in a former old schoolhouse. After a resident of the ground floor of this building had died, tappings and bumpings were heard. Disturbing noises continued for about three weeks. Each resident of the house accused the others of producing the noise.
At the end of May, 1971, the tappings began again. In addition scrapes and sawings were heard when the two girls went to bed, about 8 p.m. The noise seemed to come from the beds, but also from cupboards and doors. It was like the hammering of a machine gun interrupted by intense bangs. The same phenomena showed in the house of the girls’ parents, and the knocking was even heard in the street. The family felt terribly disturbed. As the noises seemed to come from the beds, hammocks were arranged for the girls in a special room in the hope that the tapping would now come to an end. But the noise continued, now in the form of a scratching.
Everyone in the region knew about the phenomena and people got more and more excited. Some spoke of ‘witchcraft’ and nailed twigs against the door in order to drive away the evil spirits, others thought of practical jokes, scolding the two girls for their cheeky tricks. Newspapers were full of suppositions, water diviners pretended to discover underground water-courses which they declared to be the answer to the riddle. In this phase a student from Freiburg registered the tappings on a tape recorder. He found that they were strongest when the two girls were together in bed, less strong when Helga was alone, and quite low, when only Anna lay down.
As the excitement about the phenomena kept growing, Rev. Wolfsteiner took the two girls with their parents to his parsonage in Lintach, a place next to Pursruck. The two girls lay down on a wooden table, and the tappings immediately began. Knockings were also heard when they stretched themselves out on the carpet in the parsonage, as many witnesses testify. All these phenomena were tape recorded. From the pulpit Rev. Wolfsteiner declared that there was no reason to believe in demonic influences. He declared that a new science, parapsychology, examined such phenomena called ‘psychokinesis’ and explained that they can unconsciously be produced by certain persons. Scientific investigation, he continued, had to exclude fraud. He announced experimental research into this case and proceeded to personal observations. He presented a report of his research to the Freiburg Institute. The following extract shows that he worked like a well trained parapsychologist:
“In the evening of June 19th, 1971, I went to Pursruck with the agreement of the parents and the children of the family R. I took along my Contaflex camera with long distance objective, an electric flashlight, and a tape recorder. The girls were in their beds. In the first minutes, they were covered with their blankets, holding their hands folded on their foreheads. Later on, the girls’ father took away the blankets so that their feet and their whole body could be seen. Tappings were to be heard. I took about 16 flashlight photographs which can be controlled on the tape, as the closure of the camera can clearly be recognised with each photograph. At first I took the flashlight snapshots in the dark. Then I observed the girls in the light of an electric torch. Tappings appeared when the girls lay completely quiet in their beds and went on when I spoke to them. After these observations I was definitely convinced that the girls could not possibly have caused the phenomena with their hands or other parts of their bodies.”
Rev. Wolfsteiner had, previous to this experiment, called Father Dr A. Heimler, psychotherapist, for help in observation and therapy. Father Heimler made the children execute rhythmical dances in order to relax them and succeeded in calming their anxiety. His report, too, is a document of the changed attitude towards poltergeist phenomena. I want to cite a few passages:
“It seems that the poltergeist (the unconscious) reacts directly to hot rhythms and answers, at least partially, according to the beat music of the “Manhattan” and clapping of the “Spare-Hully-Gully.”
“The noises cannot be exactly localised. They mostly seem to come from the beds in which the girls are lying. It is obvious that the kind of support determines the type of noise. When the support is smooth and elastic – i.e. when the girls are sleeping in the hammocks – there is only a scratching to be heard. When a board is put into the hammocks, a tapping appears. However, these noises can also come from a distant cupboard door. Once, the cupboard door opened with a loud bang and glasses in the cupboard fell to the ground from the vibration and broke into pieces.”
The phenomena, Dr Heimler points out in his report, appeared for the first time on the day following the death of a resident of the old school house. Helga, who looked from her window directly over the cemetery and the mortuary where the corpse had been taken, was frightened and could not fall asleep. She was thinking of a ghost story which her teacher had told months ago. When she first heard the tappings, she thought that the dead man was announcing himself in this way. Then she discarded this interpretation and thought, just like her sister Anna and her grandmother, that the dead man’s wife was beating out her blankets in the night. The second poltergeist period at the end of May 1971 was preceded by anxiety dreams which clearly showed puberty problems (a man standing in her bed is threatening her with vipers). Father H. concludes his report with the remarks:
“The phenomena are certainly not sufficiently explained by puberty crises… It remains a riddle, why these tensions could discharge themselves in paranormal effects and not in another way… In the Pursruck case they ought to be regarded as a public appeal to humanitarian understanding as well as a challenge for considering the reality of the paranormal.”
The pioneer work of the two priests had perfectly prepared the investigation of the case by the Freiburg Institute. When we arrived on the spot, the phenomena were still going on. We succeeded in making videotape recordings while the girls were in bed and the tappings appeared in different intensity. Rapid knockings, raps and heavy bangs could be registered. One heard Helga saying ‘I am so frightened.’ The father reported an observation which frightened him in his turn: alarmed by the tapping phenomena, the girls came to their parents’ beds. Mr R. rose and saw that suddenly the bedside rug rolled up ‘all by itself.’ We rearranged this situation and filmed it.
Once the paranormal origin of the tapping phenomena was established, we lifted for a while our controlling measures in order to get a more detached climate. We suggested asking questions to the ‘tapping spirit’ – as the phenomenon was jokingly called. The girls should begin to ask for the number of persons present and slowly proceed to easy arithmetical tasks. Our interest in this experiment was therapeutic as well as scientific: the girls should assume an active determined attitude towards the phenomenon in order to overcome their anxiety. They accepted this idea with enthusiasm, but when we, again, applied more strict controls, it became obvious that they cheated by knocking with toes or fingers against the bedstead. Questioned, they first looked for excuses, but then admitted their fraud. Our measure had its therapeutic success. The frightening side of the phenomena was somewhat banished for them, but for the investigation of the paranormal aspect it meant a short circuit. We invited the children for a recreation holiday in the Black Forest; they were taken care of by clinical psychologists. ESP tests brought a slightly positive result. In August, the parents informed us about new phenomena, but it could not be cleared if they were genuine or fraudulent. A new experimental supervision yielded no positive results.
From ‘Modern Poltergeist Research – a plea for an unprejudiced approach’, by Hans Bender. Chapter six in ‘New Directions in Parapsychology’, edited by J. Beloff (1974).