Ordeal of haunted girl may soon end.
The ordeal of an eleven-year-old Irish girl who has been haunted by abnormal phenomena may soon be over – that was the verdict of two doctors and a priest who signed a statement issued in Edinburgh last night by the Church of Scotland. They have been investigating the strange things which have happened to Virginia Campbell since she and her mother arrived at the village of Sauchie, Clackmannanshire, from Moville, Co. Donegal, two months ago.
During two weeks in November the three men and other observers – taking as elaborate precautions as could be devised in the circumstances – kept watch on Virginia at night. They heard knocking and scraping. They saw pillows moving, bedclothes rippling and the violent opening and shutting of a linen basket which moved.
“We concluded that the happenings could not be accounted for in the normal sense of cause and effect,” they said. “When the observances did not quickly disappear we attempted to help the child by changing her environment and to deal by means of sedatives with her hysteria, which we all agreed was a secondary emotional effect. We realised the need not only for medical care for the child, but also to spiritual help for the whole family, and we consulted certain ministers who have had experience of abnormal phenomena of a similar nature. All along we have recognised the possible importance of restoring the child to her previous environment in Ireland. In our opinon the phenomena are rapidly diminishing and it is our belief that they may soon disappear altogether. We believe that the method of treatment adopted has been justified, and that the child will soon find her life to be as normal as any other girl of her age.”
The statement was signed by Dr. W. H. Nisbet, the family’s doctor, the Rev. T.W. Lund, the parish minister, and Dr. W. Logan.
Liverpool Daily Post, 3rd December 1960.
Poltergeist Terror.
An Eminent Scientist’s Award-winning Report On The Astonishing Case of Young Virginia Campbell.
A poltergeist? That’s the name for an invisible spirit which thumps and bumps, usually in the night. Ghosts haunt houses. But poltergeists haunt people. For example: A family at Plymouth called in a bishop when a poltergeist bombarded them with coal. A secretary, of Eltham, Kent, gets shivers down the spine when she talks about the poltergeist who uses her typewriter. Four workmen at Leamington, Warwickshire, claim that they were pelted with bricks by a spirit.
But all the reported incidents – there are about four a year in Britain – none is quite as intriguing as the haunting of Virginia Campbell, now aged 15 and living in the Midlands. A poltergeist stripped off her bedclothes, slammed doors, knocked on the wall and shifted cupboards and flower vases. It lifted her school desk in the air. It flung oranges and bananas at people around her.
Some will think that these accounts are fanciful and far-fetched. They may dismiss them as fraud, trickery, bad observation or, more probably, hallucination. They may well be forgiven. For until recently no one had delved deeply enough into the mysterious activities of these disembodied spirits to come up with cold material facts and smooth away our fears about the unknown. But for the past five years, Dr George Owen, a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, the world’s foremost expert on poltergeists, has been probing scientifically into some of the most puzzling cases. He has assembled charts of spooky statistics, and carried out on-the-spot investigations into some very uncanny situations.
Now Dr Owen has disclosed his fascinating findings in a book (Can We Explain The Poltergeist?) which has won him the joint award for research at the Duke University in North Carolina. For his distinguished work in uncovering these weird happenings he has also been awarded first prize by the Parapsychology Foundation of New York. (Parapsychology is the study of ghosts, thought transference, clairvoyance, and all kinds of such phenomena).
Out of 200 “hauntings” he has examined in great detail, Dr Owen reckons that about 30 are genuine. And of these, one case – that of Virginia Campbell – is the most convincing of all. If you consider what happened to her – and the evidence of the reliable people who were witnesses – there can surely no longer be any doubt that poltergeists really do exist.
To find out how and why Virginia became a haunted girl let us first go back to a white-washed cottage perched on the wild, wind-whipped coastline of County Donegal, at Moville.In this quaint, isolated part of Eire, banshees are said to wail before death and tiny leprechauns prance at the bottom of the garden. This was the home of the Campbell family – five boys and four girls, of whom Virginia was the youngest. Today, it stands padlocked and deserted. She was a normal, happy and healthy child of eleven when, in the autumn of 1960, her father James Campbell decided to dispose of his croft holding and settle in Scotland. While he stayed behind in Donegal to complete business, Virginia moved to the home of her brother, Thomas, a coal-miner, at No. 19, Park-crescent, Sauchie, near Alloa in Clackmannanshire. Her mother got a job not far away at a boarding house attached to the well-known school, Dollar Academy, and took the bus every weekend to see her daughter.
The move from a remote spot in Eire to a bustling community is Scotland did not, at first, seem to bring any mental or emotional upset in the girl. Then, on a night soon after she arrived, Virginia went upstairs to the double bed which she shared with her nine-year-old niece, Margaret. And this is what happened: A “thunking” noise, like a bouncing ball, came from under the bed. Curious, the two girls slipped out of bed, and switched on the light. Seeing nothing, they went downstairs to report the strange incident. But the invisible bumping ball chased after them, down the stairs and into the living room. It refused to stop bouncing and hounding Virginia until she fell asleep, rather frightened, but exhausted. So strained was the little girl next morning that her aunt kept her home from school.
At tea-time she rested in an arm-chair next to a sideboard. Suddenly, the sideboard moved out five inches from the wall – then moved back again. Virginia was not touching it.
That evening, when Virginia was in bed, but not asleep, loud knocks, audible all over the house, were heard by the family – even the neighbours. At midnight, a worried aunt and uncle called a local clergyman from his bed. He found the constant loud banging noises to come from the bed-head, though it was not being touched by anyone. He gripped the bed head and found it vibrating during the knocking. The clergyman also saw a large linen chest twenty-seven inches long, seventeen inches high, fourteen inches wide and full of bed linen, rock and raise itself slightly, travel eighteen inches over the linoleum, and then move back.
Next day Virginia stayed home again from school, and the clergyman called at bedtime. He watched in amazement as the pillow on which her head was resting began to rotate, slide from under her, and fall to the floor. A doctor who was called heard knockings and a sawing noise in the linen basket – then saw a peculiar rippling pass over the pillow. But he saw no way in which she could have produced this effect.
On the Friday – November 25, 1960, to be precise – the bewildered little girl stayed home again in the morning, but was taken to school in the afternoon. It was during a period of silent reading that her teacher spotted Virginia struggling to hold down the lid of her desk. Two or three times it beat her strength and forced itself steeply up on its hinges. A few minutes later, an unoccupied desk behind her was seen by the teacher, Miss Margaret Stewart, to rise slowly until it was about an inch off the floor. It then settled down gently, a little out of its original position. Hardly able to believe what she had seen, Miss Stewart went over and examined it. There were no strings. No levers. The desk had suspended itself.
In the days that followed a situation that could have amounted to panic reigned among the 300 [sic] children at the tiny red-bricked schoolhouse in Sauchie. The teacher’s heavy wooden desk which only a strong man could carry, lifted like a helicopter and hovered before landing in a spin. While she was sketching the solution to a problem for the class, a blackboard pointer lying on top of the desk started to vibrate, then rolled off the edge. When Virginia placed a bowl of hyacinth bulbs on her teacher’s desk, it began to slide along. Almost in tears, Virginia stood in front of the teacher, hands firmly clenched behind her. “Please, Miss,” she pleaded, “I didn’t touch anything…”
Meanwhile, the poltergeist continued to persecute the little schoolgirl in her aunt’s council house. As she took off her ankle socks they floated in mid-air. An invisible hand peeled off her pyjama trousers, and when she wore a nightdress it was rolled up. Every time she tried to cover herself, the bedclothes were pulled back. Footsteps sounded plainly across the bedroom floor. An apple jumped out of a fruit bowl and was suspended aloft like a celluloid ball on a fountain, and the household was startled to see a shaving brush float around the bathroom.
As if this were not enough, the unseen spirit nipped and pinched her (as well as a visitor to the house), the stopper of her hot water bottle wouldn’t stay in, coloured writing appeared on her face, and three times her lips turned bright red.
After her initial fright, Virginia gradually became used to the tricks of her poltergeist shadow. She nicknamed him “Wee Hughie.”
But so strange – and so frequent – were the manifestations, that curiosity about the child filled the town. A stream of prominent local people began to call at the house. Was something beyond the power of understanding happening to Virginia? Could someone be playing a cruel trick? Or was she really haunted? Four callers – a headmaster, a minister, and two doctors – decided to find out for themselves. They set up a film camera and a tape-recorder, then kept all-night vigils for six weeks to record the weird things that happened. Their astonishing account will make those who scoff at the supernatural think again. You will be able to read it next Sunday.
Sunday Mirror, 13th June 1965.
A Scientist’s Verdict on the Haunted Schoolgirl
Hallucination, imagination, trickery – the activities of poltergeists have been called all these things. Yet the haunting of young Virginia Campbell could be nothing but fact. A renowned expert on psychic phenomena investigated the strange happenings that plagued the little girl. He suggests some answers to a mystery that has always baffled science.
Virginia was possessed by a wild and unknown force.
by Victor Sims.
Eleven-year-old Virginia Campbell tossed and turned in her bed, trying desperately to sleep. But repeatedly an unseen hand tugged her pillow from under her and threw it to the floor. “Why can’t you leave us alone?” her mother pleaded. But the poltergeist that was tormenting the child paid no attention. It went on shifting objects and making strange noises until everyone in the small Scottish mining town of Sauchie was talking about the haunting of Virginia. Even when the girl and her mother moved to another house, the poltergeist followed. For nearly six months, until March, 1961, the disturbances continued. Then they slackened and died out just as mysteriously as they had arrived.
Many profound thinkers have tried to find how, when and why a poltergeist creates mischief, alarm and confusion. But no one has ever carried out such a thorough scientific investigation as Dr George Owen, of Trinity College, Cambridge, the world’s leading authority on poltergeists. Dr. Owen, quiet-spoken, authoritative, has delved into many inexplicable cases to find a solution. But it was the strange case of Virginia Campbell which nagged at his inquiring mind. He visited the scene of the happenings and interrogated five responsible eye-witnesses until there was no shadow of doubt what they had seen or heard. For his detailed account and the findings published in his book, Can We Explain The Poltergeist? (Garrett Publications, New York), Dr Owen won two major US awards.
How do you begin to investigate an invisible spirit which throws oranges, lifts a desk, or takes off your clothes? Dr Owen had to make sure the eye-witnesses were sound, sensible people of high reputation. “It is just possible, ” he says, “to suppose one could be the victim of illusion or hallucination. However, it is beyond all possibility that EVERY one could be deceived over a long period.” So he was able to satisfy himself that the witnesses heard actual noises and saw action motions of real objects – and that none of this was due to trickery or deception by Virginia. “As it turns out,” says Dr Owen, “her physical and mental health are splendid. She is placid, unemotional, obedient, and has a mature outlook for her age.”
Why should a poltergeist choose Virginia Campbell as its target? “It may be of significance,” says the Cambridge don, “that Virginia had been going through a period of rapid physical development and maturation. When girls are approaching puberty, they often seem to attract poltergeist phenomena. There are many cases which suggest that such activity is more likely to arise in that age group.” If there happens to be any emotional upset during this difficult stage, he points out, there is even more likelihood of poltergeist phenomena.
Was Virginia in the throes of an emotional upheaval when curious things began to happen? Her parents were moving home from Eire to Scotland, and she was living with her brother in Sauchie. “There is good reason to suppose,” says Dr Owen, “that she was in a state of some tension at being parted from her parents and dog. These circumstances may well have triggered off a physical force around her which is not yet known to science.” If there is yet another hidden force could it come from a disembodied spirit striving to make its presence felt? Dr Owen answers: “On balance, the happenings seem to be more consistent with a force originating in Virginia’s body, rather than with an entity outside her. All the available evidence seems to suggest that as a result of a peculiar condition at the relevant times in her body or mind, certain unidentified physical forces operated on objects in the vicinity.”
In simple terms, this means that if a girl is emotionally upset during her twenty-eight-day cycle she can acquire an unexplained power strong enough to move things without touching them. Dr Owen then admits: “We are ignorant of the nature of this force, and have no idea how it is applied.” Assuming that there IS an unknown force, is it just minor energy or does it conceal a power greater than all the forces of nature? Here Dr Owen is even more than normally cautious and reserved than in his published findings: “We cannot even begin to understand its potential. But one thing seems fairly certain. The hidden force is wild and uncontrollable at the moment. There is nothing we can compare it with except perhaps a blind man stumbling around a darkened room. It may take centuries to discover what it really represents. Only then will scientists be able to say with certainty what happened to Virginia Campbell.”
What about Virginia herself? Where is she now? Has the poltergeist left its mark? She is no longer at the council house where the noise spirit came to “haunt” her. Today, aged fifteen, and untroubled by the whole affair, she lives with her parents in a small Midlands town. She works in a factory. She has a boy-friend, goes dancing, and is keen on the Kinks. And the poltergeist? “It never really worried me,” says Virginia. “But for the sake of others, I hope it never returns.”
Sunday Mirror, 27th June 1965.
Of the top three poltergeists in recent years, two have occurred in Scotland. In the first case, at Sauchie in Clackmannanshire 18 years ago, a 13-year-old Irish girl, Virginia Campbell, was not settling into her new home. She became the focus of knocking and sawing noises when she went to bed. The bedclothes rippled and in one case turned a blood red colour while under observation. The two local G.P.s and the minister, the Rev. T.W. Lund, invited the REv. Murdo Ewan McDonald to perform a blessing service. As the Bible was read, the k nockings reached such a peak that the minister could not be heard.
The phenomena followed Virginia to school where desks opened and pointers rapped. She is now married and wishes to forget the experience.
The Scotsman, 25th September 1979.