POLTERGEISTS AND PORTALS
MOVE OVER, ENFIELD
In this issue’s cover story, parapsychologist Dr Ciaran O’Keeffe tackles one of the best documented, but perhaps least known, poltergeist events on record. Starting in 1956 with a steadily escalating series of fairly typical phenomena, the Battersea Poltergeist case proved unusual in a number of ways. Firstly, its duration – 12 years in all – marks it out as unique; in addition, the sheer range of phenomena on display – bangings, tappings, levitations, vanishings, apports, written messages, drawings on walls, mysterious fires and even Christmas greetings and gifts for the unfortunate family at the centre of it all – is astonishing (see the detailed timeline on pp32-36 to have your mind truly boggled). Then there are the multiple personæ adopted by the polt – he started out as ‘Donald’, but changed into ‘The Dauphin’ – and the other entities that flit in and out of the story (such as the frankly rather scary ‘Shagy Roots’).
Donald is quite a character; he wheedles and cajoles, issues demands and then makes threats when these are not met, taps along to the wireless, takes photographs and smokes cigarettes. While at times reminiscent of the celebrated Enfield case, what is striking about Battersea is that, here, we seem to be in the company of an arch trickster, reminiscent at times of that sometimes jolly, sometimes tormenting, ‘man-weasel’, Gef the talking mongoose ( FT269:32-39).
It’s fascinating stuff, and we make no apology for allowing Ciaran to investigate it at considerable length; we found it was impossible to even scrape the surface within the scope of a standard article. What with James Clark’s excellent 2013 book on the subject, co-written with Shirley Hitchings, the then 15-year-old girl on whom the phenomena centred, and the recent BBC podcast, it appears the Battersea Poltergeist is finally receiving the reassessment it deserves.
Elsewhere, you’ll find a rather different theme running through this issue: the relationship between art and strange phenomena. Clive Prince takes a tour of Madrid’s Prado museum to learn about its hidden side with the city’s ‘occulture’ expert (p38); Dean Ballinger examines Salvador Dalí’s obsession with Perpignan’s railway station and its cosmic portal (p56); and Jenny Randles looks back at how alien encounters have been portrayed over a 50year period (p23).
Speaking of extraterrestrial visitors, we’d also like to welcome Nigel Watson back on board the FT mothership in a new regular spot. With this issue, he’ll be acting as Jenny Randles’s UFO Files co-pilot and bringing us ‘Saucers of the Damned’, a monthly round-up of ufological news, sightings and strangeness.
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ERRATA
FT399:17: Andy Asp, of Oakland, California, wrote in with a correction to this issue’s ‘Ghostwatch’ column: “Alan Murdie writes that Jurgenson recorded what he believed were voices of ‘Hitler, Goering and the US murderer Caryl Chessman, executed in 1960’. Chessman was never tried or convicted of murder, but was executed for a brief crime spree in January 1948, which included robbery, kidnapping and rape; his was one of the last executions in the US for non-lethal crimes under the ‘Little Lindbergh’ law, which was repealed prior to his execution but was in effect at the times the crimes were committed.”
FT399:72: In Owen Whiteoak’s letter ‘Fanzine History’, Rob Hansen’s 2016 book should have been given as THEN – Science Fiction Fandom in the UK 1930-1980 (not ‘Science Faction Fandom’, which we are pretty sure is not a thing).