DONALD LIVES: EVELYN HOLLOW ON SHIRLEY AND THE MEDIA
They got in touch with me and said: “We’re doing a show. We’re looking to solve this poltergeist case.” When I looked at it, the first thing that jumped out at me was how long it went on for. I had never heard of a poltergeist case going on for anywhere remotely near 12 years. Then also the level of phenomena: it has your usual noises that escalate to objects moving, but then you’ve also got fires, and the phenomenon isn’t confined to the house, it happens outside of the house. You’ve got multiple reporters, you’ve got policemen, you’ve got the fire brigade. The poltergeist case was talked about in the House of Commons, which is absolutely incredible.
When we were doing a slot on This Morning, Shirley (pictured at right) was on just before me and the things that people were saying on Twitter… They forget that Shirley’s still alive, she’s in her eighties. Imagine saying some of the horrible things that people accused Shirley of, without any bloody information at all, to your grandmother! She lived through this, she thought she was going to die, and she had her childhood basically stolen. Her dad had to leave his job and lost loads of weight because of stress; her grandmother died, I reckon pretty much directly, because of the stress of this case. It destroyed Harold Chibbet’s life – he hung his entire career on chasing this thing about France, about it being the lost Dauphin. It obliterated Shirley’s life and everything around her, and to this day there are randoms on the Internet saying that she faked the entire thing.
I don’t think people appreciate that there’s a real person who is still alive at the centre of this case. I saw lots of people on the live discussion saying: “Oh, I think the family are in on it,” or it’s the brother, or it’s Shirley and they’ve roped in the other family members. And that Shirley really wants to leave and they’re all in cahoots with each other. And I’m like: ‘Have you ever tried doing a group project? Even with just four people, trying to get them all on the same page and get them working? It’s virtually impossible. And you’re telling me that they managed to get a dozen people or more completely in on the same thing, they were all coordinated all at the same time, in a tiny house, for 12 years? That would be more interesting than it being a ghost; that’s even more extreme to me.
In Neil Gaiman’s American Gods one of the new modern gods is called Media.
When something goes viral or becomes a trending topic, like we were [with the This Morning tweetalong], so many people are talking about it, or using the word or the hashtag, it’s given power... so viral things almost become gods. Social media is almost a form of prayer or worship; these things go viral... They become memes or they change culture, so they do become, in a way, like digital gods. And that is like a tulpa. Everyone is talking about Donald and giving it attention and giving the case attention, whether they believe or not. But at the level of discussion, it almost creates a digital ‘tulpa effect’, where they bring him back, he’s become an entity, he is out there digitally moving. He’s in people’s minds.
People who said they were scared when they were listening to the show and things were happening in their house. They’re going to bed scared. He’s still scaring people, without even having to move a single mug across the room.” Courtesy Paul Simpson of Sci-Fi Bulletin: https://scifibulletin.com/
crash. In the later years there were different frictions as the Hitchings family struggled to attract lodgers to the upstairs rooms given the continued “presence” of Donald. Prospective tenants quickly declined on hearing about the case, about which Wally felt obliged to inform them.
CONCLUSIONS
Jacques in Shakespeare’s AsYou Like It, famously said: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…” This is true of the Battersea Poltergeist – there are so many players it is difficult to entangle who or what is responsible. Let me try.
Normally, I’d say the paranormal explanations for poltergeist activity are simple to understand: it’s either a spirit or some form of PK. The complexity of this case lies in deciphering the reasons for the spirit’s return – but the sheer number of spirit suspects means there is no clear answer. We have Donald (a nearby neighbour); Shagy Roots; the Dauphin; Miky and Dopy; James Dean; even Spooky Willie and Charlie Boy, although these two were names proposed by the family. There’s debate about who ‘Donald’ actually was, but there’s no doubt he takes the lead in the majority of the communications and in professing responsibility for the physical phenomena. If Donald is not a spirit, then he could be evidence of RSPK: some sort of subconscious manifestation of anger or psychological trauma. Any investigation, then, would focus on how this is caused and what the psychological triggers are. Certainly, there are turning points in the case where Donald’s involvement prevented Shirley from going to work or impacted on her starting art school, and one could argue that much of Donald’s retaliatory and threatening behaviour feels reflective of teenage tantrums. It’s clear that Shirley is the focus: if the explanation for the poltergeist is not paranormal, does she remain the focus?
The rabbit hole of non-paranormal explanations is equally fascinating. There could be a “human hand” involved and, again, there could be many players involved. Shirley is a prime candidate, but there are instances where others could be involved. They all have their exits and their entrances, and a number of witnesses report phenomena without Shirley being present. One theory is that, in similar cases, some sort of dissociative state would obscure the protagonist’s memory of being responsible for knocking, tapping or other physical phenomena. With multiple witnesses, however, you’d expect there to be countless incidents where the protagonist would be caught faking the phenomena. There are suspicions at various points, but there are also incidents where the phenomena are experienced first-hand by journalists or investigators without them finding any potential origin for the tapping. If you are comfortable with pointing the finger at an initial human protagonist, then how can you explain the witnessing of hundreds of incidents of physical phenomena that occur in that first year?
Could fear play a role here? In haunting and poltergeist cases I say: “Never underestimate the power of fear.” The mysterious phenomena, unwanted intruder and increasingly violent outbursts and ongoing intimidation would have fed the fear in this case. The constant danger and anxiety around imagined responses increases the family’s physiological arousal (heart rate, blood pressure), constantly gearing them up for fight or flight. This will have played havoc with their physical health, including exacerbating fatigue (they were suffering chronic sleep disruption), but it will also have affected their memory and perception. Recent studies have also shown prolonged fear can reduce tactile sensitivity and also weaken the creation of long-term memories.
Shirley’s emphatic insistence on the reality of the unseen Donald and his responsibility for the incidents could take us into the territory of an imaginary friend acting as a guide in the process of individuation and differentiation and her transition between two major life phases: childhood and motherhood. But then imagination and fallibility of witnessing can only go so far when some of the physical phenomena are scrutinised.
Perhaps one of the key players at various points is the environment. Infrasound could play a role in exacerbating already existing experiences and intensifying the acceptance of an unseen presence in the house, or at least in the misinterpretation of mundane occurrences as paranormal ones. Similarly, some researchers have argued that proximity to water and resultant seepage could have an unsettling effect on nearby buildings, or that seismic activity could cause poltergeist events. But the environment or psychology only go some way to explaining all the phenomena in this case. Environmental or psychological variables do not write letters or scrawl messages on walls.
Should we be considering the case in two parts? Firstly, the initial three to five months (as with typical poltergeist cases) in which the phenomena build to a damaging and violent frenzy. Secondly, the subsequent months and years where the family, and others, receive around 4,000 letters and the investigation turns into Chib’s obsession with establishing the identity of the Dauphin?
There is so much to report on a case of this magnitude, both in length and phenomena, that I encourage you to conduct your own reinvestigation while temporarily suspending judgment, even if only for sufficient time to examine the case in full. You could then approach it being aware of all the possible parapsychological theories for the cause of the activity or examine what I feel is an incredibly complex, multi-layered mix of possible natural explanations.
I have attempted here merely to provide a summary of this rich case and I hope I have persuaded you of its merit – perhaps it should replace Enfield as the most famous British poltergeist case. Today, it also remains Shirley’s story, a recollection of a particularly traumatic period which ultimately resulted in her losing her teenage years.
With thanks to James Clark, co-author of The Poltergeist Prince of London
The Battersea Poltergeist is a BBC Radio 4 podcast produced by Bafflegab Productions, written and presented by Danny Robins, and is available on BBC Sounds.
DR CIARAN O’KEEFFE is a parapsychologist and investigative psychologist who regularly provides a sceptical voice on paranormal shows. He is Associate Head of the School of Human & Social Sciences at Bucks New University, where he runs various programmes. His research has focused on testing mediums and psychics in the lab and fieldwork on ghostly experiences.