The pebble chuckers of Oz

The reports of suburbia’s Humpty Doo, the screaming Coalbaggie Bogey and other poltergeists of Australia are strangely similar to 600-year-old European tales

Australian Poltergeist The Stone-Throwing Spook of Humpty Doo and Many Other Cases

Strange Nation Publishers 2015

Pb, 304pp, illus, bib, ind, £24.99, ISBN 9781921134340

FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £24.99

Renaissance Europe was plagued by noisy ghosts, recorded in books by Ludwig Lavatar (1527–1586) and Girolamo Cardano (1501– 1576), which rapped and banged, upset objects and furniture, threw stones and lit fires. Reformation accounts of such manifestations featured in debates about the existence of Purgatory and the fate of the soul. (See Poltergeists: A History of Violent Ghostly Phenomena (2011) by P G Maxwell-Stuart and Ghost Stories in Late Renaissance France (2011) by Timothy Chesters).

What have these stories to do with poltergeist reports from Australia, a country then undiscovered by Europeans? Absolutely nothing, save that the phenomena they describe are identical to those that have been erupting in ghost-shattered homes across Australia since 1845.

Veteran researchers Tony Healy and Paul Cropper have delivered the most comprehensive review of Australian poltergeists yet, making for fascinating reading, though it is repetitious in places, solely because of the unchanging nature of the disturbances described. This encourages the authors to bring their own comments, arguments and sometimes wry observations to the cases. They are unafraid to share their perspectives and opinions, but admit that no theory explains all aspects of the data collected.

The book begins with their field investigation into the Humpty Doo poltergeist, which invaded a suburban home in 1998. Stones and gravel seemingly materialised from the air, inside and outside. Knives, broken glass, bottles and pistol cartridges were thrown around, though no one was injured. Some kind of intelligence appeared to be at work, with words being crudely spelled out with pebbles on the floor. Most interestingly, they obtained anomalous thermal signatures of a flying glass shard and a bullet cartridge by using infra-red equipment.

Chapter two looks at the Mayanup Poltergeist that began on a large homestead in 1955 and spread to three neighbouring farms. The authors believe that several hundred people witnessed the events – principally the throwing of stones, which were often hot and sometimes too hot to handle. Later stages involved falls of objects including potatoes, tin cans and coins, inside and outside.

Chapter three covers another farm-based poltergeist which attacked a milking machine in 1949. Chapter four examines a Canberra case of 1992–97; and chapter five, 1935’s fire-starting poltergeist of Cannibal Creek. Families troubled by poltergeists over a century apart in 1887–1990 are reviewed in chapters six to 10. Chapter 11 covers what the authors dub “Spookiest of all: the Coalbaggie Bogey”, one of the rare class of poltergeists that acquired the power of speech, including “strange voices, loud cooeyings and awful screamings”, as well as a mix of sensible and banal utterances. It is reminiscent of other claimed cases such as the Bell Witch of Tennessee (1817– 21), Gef the Talking Mongoose on the Isle of Man in the 1930s and the Enfield poltergeist of 1977–78. Chapter 12 provides a chronology and critique of other 52 Australian cases reported 1845–1998.

The final chapter focuses on the variables in poltergeist cases recorded across Australia. No one theoretical explanation can fit them all. Paul Cropper favours psychokinesis unwittingly generated by the subconscious minds of individuals; Tony Healy favours discarnate action, perhaps by spirits.

Finally, they add three appendices on recent fireraising poltergeists in Asia; three examples of ‘wild talent’ stories from archives involving individuals; and a brief survey of some of the more extraordinary theories about the causes of poltergeists.

The fortean challenge posed by these Australian poltergeist cases is two-fold. First, there is the remarkable uniformity in the nature of the disturbances, thousands of miles and hundreds of years apart, effectively ruling them out as some culturally specific hallucination.

Secondly, poltergeist phenomena involve physical events: they are defined by physical effects and produce solid evidence in the form of moved and damaged objects. Fires, the movements of large pieces of furniture and the repeated falls of stones observed by multiple witnesses are clearly objective occurrences leaving physical traces. It is these physical and public aspects which place poltergeist effects on a different level to many other claimed psychic experiences that occur on a subjective level (e.g. telepathy and clairvoyance).

Fires cannot be explained away as psychological misperception or individual mental aberrations. Such physical events are objectively real, whatever their cause.

Importantly, the authors are prepared to examine and weigh the totality of evidence in each case, to try and find the most probable solution. In a few cases a hoax is suggested but others defy any normal explanation when all the available facts are considered. Noting that “patterns of polt activity in Australia confirm very closely to those recorded throughout the centuries in Europe, Americas, Africa, Asia and the Middle East” they draw attention to certain striking similarities and matches in reports individual incidents from widely separated locations. The details may be small, seemingly

“Fires cannot be explained away as psychological misperceptions; they are objectively real”

insignificant when viewed alone, but when taken together the resemblance between cases is striking. As the authors state, “most readers will agree it is extremely improbable that different people, so separated by distance and time, would simply have imagined and invented the same crazy little details.”

The authors have unwittingly touched upon a working rule of law known as ‘similar fact evidence’, which has been used to prove the guilt of serial offenders in cases before the courts in England and Commonwealth countries for over a century.

With the poltergeist we do not have the guilt of an individual, but rather evidence in the form of potential hallmarks of an unexplained force or process manifesting across the Australian continent – and many other places around the globe – for which there is currently no explanation.

Thus, the authors have provided both a useful guide to Australian poltergeists and a valuable comparative resource for anyone seriously investigating such phenomena in other parts of the world.