Apparitions, Hauntings & Poltergeists Text Resources Thread

EsoterX has a post on a bizarre occurrence in the Jewel House of the Tower of London around the year 1817, which suggests to the author that the "impossibilities are endless":
https://esoterx.com/2019/01/31/some-phan...ing-it-in/

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page, here's an article published in the Historical Journal by Laura Sangha, entitled "The Social, Personal, and Spiritual Dynamics of Ghost Stories in Early Modern England." It's based on a collection of accounts of sightings of apparitions collected by the Yorkshire antiquary Ralph Thoresby (d. 1725):
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/...65c2a815cd

There also a short introductory blog post by the author here:
http://blog.journals.cambridge.org/2019/...-dynamics/

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page, here's an article published in the Historical Journal by Laura Sangha, entitled "The Social, Personal, and Spiritual Dynamics of Ghost Stories in Early Modern England." It's based on a collection of accounts of sightings of apparitions collected by the Yorkshire antiquary Ralph Thoresby (d. 1725):
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/...65c2a815cd

There also a short introductory blog post by the author here:
http://blog.journals.cambridge.org/2019/...-dynamics/

Sadly the interesting material here is pretty well smothered by the horribly jargony style that makes so much academic writing in the arts nearly unreadable.

Apparently ghosts were important "as cultural resources that were used to articulate a range of contemporary concerns about daily life or new fictional spaces where memory, identity, and landscape could be explored." What a shame.

The SPR website has a review by Robert Charman of Louis Proud's book entitled "Borderland Phenomena Volume One: Spontaneous Combustion, Poltergeistry and Anomalous Lights":
https://www.spr.ac.uk/book-review/border...-anomalous

Charman's verdict is that Proud writes interestingly but doesn't take us any nearer an understanding of psi. He wonders whether Volume Two will deal directly with psi.

The SPR website has a review by Robert Charman of Louis Proud's book entitled "Borderland Phenomena Volume One: Spontaneous Combustion, Poltergeistry and Anomalous Lights":
https://www.spr.ac.uk/book-review/border...-anomalous

Charman's verdict is that Proud writes interestingly but doesn't take us any nearer an understanding of psi. He wonders whether Volume Two will deal directly with psi.

There's a long interview with the author on the Mysterious Universe website:
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/03/s...uis-proud/

He discusses outstanding examples of the first two phenomena: Mary Hardy Reeser for spontaneous human combustion, and the Great Amherst Mystery for "poltergeistry."

His previous book, "Dark Intrusions," about sleep paralysis, is mentioned, and there's a sneak preview of the topics to be dealt with in "Borderland Phenomena Volume Two" - the idea that there are exploitative beings above us in the cosmic hierarchy, and also mysterious disappearances.

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page, here's a podcast interview with Louis Proud by Whitley Strieber on his Unknown Country website:
http://www.unknowncountry.com/dreamland/latest

Hayley Stevens is sceptical about a recent article in the Daily Mirror suggesting that household mould can cause hauntings:
https://hayleyisaghost.co.uk/no-mold-is-...-haunting/

Here is the original Mirror article, which ends with sceptical comments from John Fraser of the SPR:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bl...n-14125218

The SPR has a review by Nemo C. Morck of Sergio A. Rueda's book "Diabolical Possession and the Case Behind The Exorcist" (2018). It deals with the case of :
https://www.spr.ac.uk/book-review/diabol...rgio-rueda

The review includes a fairly detailed outline of the case, and the verdict is:
"Although the book is repetitive, not particularly well written, and necessarily rather speculative it must be acknowledged that it is informative."

Morck notes that the author appears to be unaware of a previous article and book written on the case by Mark Opsasnick. This does seem odd, particularly as Opsasnick's conclusions are featured prominently in the Wikipedia article on the case:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorcism_of_Roland_Doe

The SPR has a review by Chris Jensen Romer of "The Bothell Hell House: Poltergeist of Washington State" (2nd edition) by Keith Linder, which was published early last year:
https://www.spr.ac.uk/book-review/bothel...ith-linder

Evidently many people consider this case to be a hoax, and the book was written by one of the two people who lived in the house and allegedly experienced the phenomena. Romer writes that while he was assessing the book "I was repeatedly approached by very different individuals who encouraged me to give up, to protect my reputation, to not further a ‘known hoax’ and to avoid the case." But he continued to read the book, and in fact was contacted by the author and discussed the case (though not the book or the review) with him at length.
 
Essentially, Romer's conclusion seems to be that psychical researchers are prejudiced against the case and have been remiss in not investigating it. He writes that "it would be entirely possible for a dedicated team to track down perhaps a score of people named in this book, and ask them to confirm or deny what is said about their experiences at the house." In fact, given that he himself is in contact with the author, who has already sent him "voluminous quantities of information," I doubt that it would even require a dedicated team to do that. But it does make it sound as though he is dependent almost entirely on the author's own claims (though he does mention a positive report by Steve Mera and Don Phillips [Philips]).

I can't help thinking it's a bit unfair to criticise other people for not devoting time to investigating something they find unbelievable, given the limited resources available. I suppose we all have different "boggle thresholds," and it's a decision everyone has to make for him/herself.

Courtesy of the SPR website - here's a new book entitled "N equals 1: Single Case Studies in Anomalistics," edited by Gerhard Mayer, in the Perspektiven der Anomalistik series published by the Gesellschaft für Anomalistik:
https://www.anomalistik.de/en/books/pers...n-equals-1

Most of the contributions deal with poltergeists and apparitions, but some other phenomena are covered. Here is the list of contents:
https://www.anomalistik.de/images/pdf/sc...ntents.pdf