Minister Tells Parapsychologists Noisy ‘Ghost’ Plagued Family.
For about five months, Washington had a poltergeist right in its own backyard. It was on January 18, 1949, that “Mr and Mrs John Doe,” their 13-year-old son “Roland” and his grandmother, began to hear scratchings in the walls and attic of their one-and-one-half-storey home in a Washington suburb. That was the beginning of the strange story of Roland and his poltergeist.
A poltergeist is a “noisy ghost” in the parlance of the Society for Parapsychology, which investigates poltergeists, extra-sensory perception, mental telpathy and other occurrences which science and logic are unable to explain. About 40 members of the society last night heard a minister’s eye-witness account of Roland’s poltergeist at work. The society asked that both the minister and family remain anonymous.
The wall scratchings, the clergyman began, centralized around Roland. At first, the boy took it calmly. But when furniture began mysteriously to slither around the rooms, the family sought out the clergyman, he said. After hearing scracthings, which could have been caused by the boy, the pastor said, he asked permission to have Roland stay at his home overnight. It was here, the minister said, that two inexplicable phenomena occurred. The clergyman seated Roland on a large, firmly based armchair, his knees drawn up under his chin and his arms wrapped around his legs. The chair began to tip over with a slow, regular motion until it was completely off balance, then crashed to the floor, the clergyman continued.
Then the minister spread a blanket smoothly on the floor, told Roland to lie on it, and covered him evenly with another blanket. “I’d just got back into bed,” he said, “when the boy and the bedding moved as a unit slowly under the twin beds. The four sides of the blankets, which had no folds, remained perfectly straight, with no wrinkles.”
Roland, he said, made two trips to a mental hygiene clinic but didn’t return thereafter. On a trip to the Midwest early this summer, however, the pastor said the family had rites of exorcism performed by three different faiths – Episcopal, Lutheran and Roman Catholic.
The clergyman said he had no explanation for what he had seen. Richard C. Darnell, president of the society, said not enough is known about such phenomena to attempt explanations. Because this was classed as “poltergeist phenomena,” however, didn’t mean a ghost or any other outside force had to be responsible, he said. He added that Dr. J.B. Rhine, noted director of the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University, has called the “so-called haunting” the “most impressive” manifestation he has heard of in the poltergeist field. The clergyman said things have been quiet in the suburban household for about two months.
Evening Star (Washington D.C.), 10th August 1949.