the Scottish Society for Psychical Research

....investigating the paranormal in Scotland

How else can you get attention?          

by Daphne Plowman

A recent case, like so many reports that the SSPR receives, involved the inexplicable ringing of a door-bell and a telephone, which drove the occupants of this flat to seek our help. Variations on this theme in some other cases include banging on the door or persistent use of the door-knocker.

The door-bell in question was an electronic chime, set off by pressing a push button. The occupants became irritated by hearing the same tune, lasting for several seconds, which had been installed by the previous owners. The complaint from the occupants was that they would answer the door, having heard the bell, but no-one would be there. They would turn to go back up the hallway and it would ring again. This would be repeated several times, with no-one being seen at the door or in the area of the entrance.

When we inspected the bell, we realised that the button had to be held for about a second before the chimes sounded. Casual knocks or a light tap would not activate the chimes. We could not see how anyone could escape without being seen by whoever answered the door. Then the telephone would ring, but no-one seemed to be on the line, on many occasions. Eventually they got an ex-directory number, which they only gave to selected friends and family, but it persisted. We later learned from a neighbour, who had lived in the flats for 30 years, that the previous owners had suffered the same problems, from the door-bell and the phone!

In another recent case, a young couple claimed to have been kept awake most nights by continual knocking on their bedroom door. One night the man was so distressed that he rang me up in the middle of the night, because he couldn't get any sleep.

We were recently looking at reports of cases from the pre-Spiritualism era and before the founding of the Society for Psychical Research. In a fascinating book "Nineteenth Century Miracles" by Emma Hardinge Britten, we found the report of a persistent ringing of bells in the residence of a Major Moore, which commenced on 2 February 1834. The phenomena consisted of incessant ringing, of two or three or up to a whole row of nine bells at the same time. (Such rows, named for each room in a big house, were usually in the kitchen, and were rung to summon servants) The bells in this house rang day and night, at times when Major Moore, his servants and friends were facing them, and when the doors were locked within, and the house was guarded outside; when the wires of communication were cut, and nothing but the bells remained!

A case, which my husband John and I investigated in 1991, had a burglar alarm that went off at 2 am. on Boxing Day morning, as the local population was sleeping off their Christmas celebrations. Nothing would stop it, and eventually some wag called out the Fire Brigade. The resourceful firemen cut the connecting wires, but it still went on and on; now sounding like "Donald Duck with a loud hailer", as the lady in the house told us. It eventually quietened, after several embarrassing hours for the owners.

The author of “Nineteenth Century Miracles,” gives a few interesting extracts from the records of a spirit circle, which met in the early 1880's, and which give a possible clue to the reason for such phenomena. Some of the people present were commenting on the 'unmeaning character of such manifestations as bell-ringing and knocking.' At this juncture one of the manifesting spirits interrupted the conversation with the following pertinent questions:

Spirit:      Pray sir, what do you do when you want to enter a house and find the door closed?

Mortal:  Well! If we really want to get in, we knock or ring.

Spirit:      Then don't you suppose it probable that those who have been knocking and ringing in your houses for the past half century are trying to get in too?

Mortal:  Why, what can spirits want to get into our houses for? Having left the earth, it seems strange that they should want to get back to it again.

Spirit:      Most of those who knock and ring in your houses, have never left the earth, and would far rather get away from it than remain in it, but higher and wiser spirits wish to call the world's attention to the actual facts of spiritual existence and the real conditions under which life beyond the grave is continued. Spirits of a very ethereal nature cannot affect material substances, and yet in order to call the world's attention, and waken humanity up to what they have to say, they use methods so familiar to yourselves. They knock and ring; and those who cannot do this for themselves influence the earth-bound spirits, who are magnetically chained to the scenes of their earthly misdeeds, to do this for them.

Mortal:  May we regard these hauntings, then, as transpiring under the direction of super-intending spiritual wisdom?

Spirit:     Everything in the universe outworks the conditions of the being that belong to its state, and providential wisdom avails itself of different states to convert evil into good, and evolves uses out of the worst abuses. Ten thousand preachers on the human plane of existence could not demonstrate the fact of spiritual existence so conclusively, as a spirit who rings a bell in response to a human voice, or answers questions by knocks, when no mortal is near to produce the sounds heard.

In the autobiography of the well-known medium, Ena Twigg, we read of an attention-seeking spirit. Bishop Pike rang her one morning and told her he had the most frightful things going on in his house. Ena did not know at that time that the bishop's son had committed suicide ten days before, in New York, while under the influence of LSD. The bishop said that books were moving about, the secretary's hair badly burned, closets tumbled about, safety pins scattered, milk turning sour. Ena at first thought it sounded like a poltergeist case, but what came through her mediumship was: I came to your room and moved books; you dreamt about me and spoke to me. The son went on to describe the last two weeks in the bishop's house. He then went on to say that there would be no more disturbances in the house. He hadn't meant to die and he was frustrated by his lack of a voice and was trying to get his parent's attention. He wanted to say he loved them, and that he knew about some of his father's problems with his fellow churchmen. (More of the later communications of Bishop James Pike and his son, can be found in his 1966 book, The Other Side.)

As investigators, it is very easy to dismiss the spirit hypothesis in cases where bells ring, where there are knocks, bangs, and telephones malfunction. Many people prefer to think of such poltergeist cases, as most likely to be linked to a living teenager, full of repressed hostility. Put yourself in the shoes of an earthbound entity; what would you do to draw attention to yourself?