Poltergeists: We love a scary story and it doesn’t get much scarier than these three crazy ghost stories, all set in London, all about to scare the tits off ya!
So, we start off with the weird tale of Alma Fielding and the Thornton Heath Poltergeist… it’s from 1930 and we dug up the front page of the newspaper from the time that covered the story and it was a crazy tale even back then! Kudos to journo Kate Summescale for great investigative work!!
The Thornton Heath Poltergeist
It starts off with a bored housewife who contacted her local police station to tell them that weird things were happening at her home. They told her to all back after the pubs had shut because they thought she was off her nut… So she called back and eventually they took her seriously and came round. They were stumped – what the actual F was going on??? It was too weird for them and they told her they couldn’t do anything… so they went to the papers and that’s when Alma’s story hit the headlines. This story is super interesting to us because there are several layers here… First of all, according to reports the 1930s was a time when the world was still reeling from the loss of loved ones from WW1 and also the flu pandemic from just after the war broke out. These things apparently led to a rise in the supernatural and people wanting to make contact with loved ones they’d lost and Alma’s story struck a chord at just the right time. Then there was speculation as to the source of Alma’s spooky happenings – was Alma’s house really haunted or was she simply projecting repressed memories… Listen to the episode to hear more about it!
The Enfield Haunting
We then look at the super famous case of The Enfield Haunting… Specifically, the BBC show The Reunion and how the people who were involved in the case during the 1970s – and who were still alive – came together to talk about one of the most bizarre chapters of their lives! We hear all about the two Peggys, 11 year old Janet Hodgson and a foul mouthed entity called Bill Wilkins who seems to be in love with Janet and how he haunted their lives for 18 months…
The Battersea Poltergeist
So… another super famous case where Donald the poltergeist haunted Shirley Hitchings and her family for more than 12 YEARS!!!! Tapping, hammer toes, flying objects and media skepticism all kept the case alive for more than a decade, but at the end of it all, who really knows whether Donald was real or not. I’d like to thing he was real. I’d love to think ALL poltergeists are real. And I’d especially like to think that one day I’ll meet a friendly one who makes me laugh and tells me the lottery numbers.
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