#thornton heath poltergeist

[theparanormalperiodical]

Spook Of The Day #125 • The Poltergeist of Francisco Giner

It was the first official poltergeist in Spain - and it’s one of the most famous cases to date.

In 1935 a nightwatch guard left for his shift. Soon after he left the family home, his son began to notice a banging from within the walls.

It grew louder throughout the night until a drawer shot out of a dresser and the neighbours came round to investigate.

It stopped when the neighbours and when the police came round after a report was filed. The activity remained dormant for two days.

Then things escalated.

The banging was so loud neighbours came round of their own accord and witnessed an array of activity. Lights swinging, chairs moving, clocks stopped snd started, and it even rained small stones.

Would rather be in Spain right now? Then join me for a nightly tour of real ghost stories by hitting follow!

[its-spooky-bitch]

The Thornton Heath Poltergeist is a lesser known poltergeist case. It started when a radio started switching to a foreign station randomly in 1972. In the months following the activity increased,Christmas ornaments were thrown from the tree and lamps and curtains were tossed. The next year the activity became violent as the entity threw a resident of the house and he couldn’t get up. The Christmas tree began to violently shake and levitate. Shaking doors, footsteps and knocking occurred for years after the initial activity. The family decided to finally get help and a priest preformed a blessing on the house. The blessing made the haunting worse and after contacting a medium the ghost of an 18th century man who considered the family to be trespassing. After digging the family found out that a man named Mr Chatterton lived in the house with his wife. The spirits of Mr and Mrs Chatterton continued to harass the family and Mrs. Chatterton would appear behind the women who lived in the house. The family moved after four years of living in the house.

[theparanormalperiodical]

The Thornton Heath Poltergeist - The Most Haunted Places In The World That You NEED To Hear About #2

January.

A time of self doubt as you take on the latest fad diet. A time of personal struggle as you return to the 9-to-5 and question why in the hell you decided to work in this goddamn office. And a time of thirst as you realise Dry January does indeed include Echo Falls despite their Rosé being mostly sugar and aesthetic.

Is there any hope left in the world?

Oh, dear reader - you didn’t tap on this blog in the hope of reading some article about a cheerful, positive topic like little rabbits with big flopsy ears, did you?

You’re here for the dead. And the demonic. And all manner of terrible things. 

Goodbye, Patches - hello, Poltergeist.

Today, we are going to be discussing one of the most iconic paranormal cases from the UK that no one has ever heard of: the Thornton Heath Poltergeist. 

But it turns out that there’s not just one poltergeist in Thornton Heath. 

Oh, no. 

There’s two. 

And these two pesky spirits are far from alone:

Croydon might not sound like the setting for the next cult horror hit, but this London borough is actually known for its rather macabre history - and the legacy of its dark past.

Whilst your chowing down on a Gregg’s sausage roll you might hear rumours of one of Elizabeth I’s maids-in-waiting traipsing around a school, and perhaps you’ll even see a few children who were killed during the war skip past the local Chicken Cottage.

On top of that - like most areas of London - Croydon is actually a relatively ancient town, with the first settlements appearing in the 6th century. 

This place clearly has a lot of paranormal promise.

However, despite setting the scene for 2 key cases of poltergeist activity, though do appear to be unconnected. Nevertheless, together they provide a lot of insight into a specific form of supernatural activity that tends to get forgotten.

This is especially true since poltergeists have dominated the horror genre for many a year, inspiring iconic films such as Poltergeist (1982), and litter stories which involve any trace paranormal activity.

The thing is, although frequently mentioned, the actual concept of poltergeists is kind of ignored, particularly the debate surrounding them. These 2 cases, however, provide an overview of the different approaches to poltergeist activity:

One case looks into debunking the paranormal, whereas the other presents the typical haunted house case you clicked to see. 

So, today’s article is going to take us through the 2 poltergeists of Thornton Heath, and the paranormal theory behind poltergeists. 

Strap in folks, and let’s get spooky.

First, What Actually Is A Poltergeist?

Anyone speak German?

Poltergeist is a mashup of two German words, and it literally means “noisy spirit”.

Based on that translation, it is a type of spirit who has a thing for physical disturbances. Loud noises, objects moving, biting and pinching are the common symptoms of such a haunting. And despite sounding pretty minimal - well, maybe not the biting and the pinching - such poltergeist activity often represents the first traces of far greater hauntings. 

But unlike most paranormal theories, it turns out that poltergeist activity is pretty well investigated (as this post will demonstrate). 

Heck, poltergeist activity has been reported since the 1st century!

It is claimed that it lasts typically around 5 months, but some say it can stretch out to several years.

On top of our knowledge of the duration of such activity, poltergeists allegedly haunt people, not places - a bit like demons. This does contrast with the 1972 haunting, but we all know that supernatural theories lack the accuracy we expect of an exact science.

And so we come back to the debates and the debunking which always ends up stalking the supernatural. It’s for that reason that Poltergeists are such a valuable component of spiritualist theory because of the intense debate and study surrounding them, as the 1938 case will show. 

Indeed, the first of the scientific theories debunking poltergeists swap the paranormal for the patriarchy.

It's called the Naughty Little Girl theory.

Obviously, it suggests that young girls create activity to get attention because women can’t breathe without doing it for attention, right? The Conjuring 2 is one of the few films that picks up on this concept, showing its use by the media as it was utilised in the real life case.

A less misogynistic theory instead claims that the paranormal activity could be down to seismic activity or water stress, creating noises and physical disturbances often blamed on poltergeists.

Or, it could all come back to the theory of psychokinesis:

It claims that when we are stressed, our fucked-up brains can have a physical impact on the objects around us, making it look - and feel - like we are living in a perpetual Paranormal Activity film. 

Well, that or a rom-com; it turns out the poltergeist was really within us the whole time...

The 1972 Case - The Official Thornton Heath Poltergeist 

Welcome to the the era of the occult - the 1970s. 

The obsession with the paranormal experienced a revival in the late 20th century thanks to the affectionately named Satanic Panic and the rise of hippie-dom. And because so many reports of the paranormal crop up in this era, we have to be wary – blaming shit on the paranormal was nearly as common as institutionalised racism, ensuring that claims were often amped up by fear.

Got your pinch of salt to hand? Good. 

Our story begins in the heat of summer - it’s August 1972. 

A family are fast asleep after, well, I don’t know, what did people do in the 1970s? Listen to too much ABBA? 

Anyway - their peaceful slumber is interrupted in the middle of the night when a radio switches on all by itself and blasts out full-volume-raise-the-roof level musings from a foreign radio station.

This is where the activity begins. 

The following nights, lights turn on and off by themselves, mirroring the first hour of a Paranormal Activity film before Katie makes some off the cuff comment about being besties with a demon during puberty. 

Yet despite the suggestions of something supernatural, it suddenly just chills the fuck out. 

Well, that is until the most wonderful time of the year! Only for this famalam, this are about to get a little less wonderful, and a little more what the fuck. 

Probably in the midst of an ABBA jam-sesh, a small antique figurine is plucked off a shelf by an invisible hand, and flung across the room, hitting the patriarch of the family with such a force that it knocks him to the floor. 

If that wasn’t enough for one day, the Christmas tree then joins in the freaky festivities, and starts shaking.

And that only just scratches the surface of the supernatural events soon to haunt this family.

Cut to a few days later, and its New Year Eve.

Ok, right, let’s be honest here: any activity reported was at times when there would have been a couple of bevvies, a few late nights among friends and family… 

Who hasn’t seen a demon picking cashews out of the mixed nuts bowel when they’re a third of the way through that bottle of Echo Falls?

Regardless of my suspicions, they supposedly started to hear loud footsteps upstairs, and during that very night, a member of the family awoke to see a very tall and very angry man staring at him, giving off very threatening vibes.

But it wasn’t just the son of the family that saw these mysterious goings on.

Some visitors to the house reported similar activity:

At a dinner party (*sigh*) a door began to violently shake, nearly coming off its hinges. The living room door then followed suit, and swung open. Every single light in the house then began to follow the trend and turned on and off.

No matter how many bottles they were deep by then, there’s no doubt that shizz was getting weird. 

In response to this shizz getting weird, the family did the right thing: they called themselves a priest, and got him to check the shizz out. 

However, as a result of his holy presence, the activity worsened. A medium shortly followed, and on his visit deduced that this was a farmer of Chatterton. A quick visit to the library and a rifle through the odd archive later, and the story is confirmed:

This was the spirit of a farmer from the 18th century, and as the medium claimed, he was angry that these trespassers were on his land. So, like all landlords, he kept his cool and was trying to treat these people with the fairness and respect that all landlords hold dear.

Nah, who are we kidding - instead of charging them £60 for not pulling a weed out from underneath the wheelie bin, he manifested as a poltergeist.

The escalation then, uh, escalated.

Following the appearance of the ghost patriarch, his wife then turned up and made a point of targeting the matriarch of the family. 

Despite the coincidence of most claims of boozy nights on the heath, these hauntings that mirror the heads of the household really support the case as it sticks to this line of opposition to the “intruders”.

The ghostly matriarch’s favoured haunting was following people up the stairs; when you turned around, you would see wisps of a grey bun and the outlines of a faint figure which would then vanish into thin air. 

But on top of the wife getting involved, the farmer himself made a commitment to being spooky AF.

Its for that reason that the creepiest haunting of the year award goes to the farmer. 

Why?

Because he would turn up on their TV. 

Like, I don’t know if he was on bloody Blue Peter à la IT, or if the screen would go blank and this bitch would rock up and just be there…

But just like fuck that, no thanks, congratulations, and just take the award ugh.

So, like anyone would, this family were like nope screw this, packed up shop, and moved the fuck outta there. After they moved out the activity ceased - like all hauntings tend to do, confirming that it could be due to their trespassing. 

Well, or that it was all faked but as the gullible young woman I am, I’m going to deny all traces of this family’s excessive drinking and say that the farmer did indeed turn up on Blue Peter and take a badge with him to the afterlife.

For privacy reasons, the actual address is unknown to the public for the obvious reason that innocent families don’t want some Jake Paul wannabe pulling up in a jacked up Ford Fiesta and whipping out a GoPro to make a quick buck on YouTube.

Heck, I don’t know if anyone lives there now! But this is still recognised by paranormal fanatics are one of the greatest hauntings to come out of the UK. 

Well, I say the greatest…

It has to compete with the Thornton Heath poltergeist of an odd 40 years before.

The 1938 Case - Thornton Heath Poltergeist 2: The Prequel No One Asked For

Now we turn to the former haunting of Thornton heath in 1938.

But this poltergeist isn’t set against the scene of some cosy pre-war family home, nor are any long dead farmers getting involved. 

This story, on the other hand, follows the scientific study of the paranormal, and to this day is an unsolved mystery that has left both investigator and individual alike without answers.

And it starts with this bloke called Nandor Fodor.

Fodor lead the argument that poltergeists are manifestations from the subconscious mind, and to prove his claims, he investigated the tales of terror that had been experienced by one woman in a small corner of Croydon.

He followed his scientific studies all the way to a little place called Thornton Heath. 

Sure, this case could have been linked to the Chatterton farmer, but the focus of their investigation was on the nature of paranormal beliefs, so there was no study of what spirit could be behind it. 

All we know regarding the haunting is that the victim of this poltergeist was a woman only known to us as Mrs. Forbes. She was studied at an institute, and in an attempt to be sure she wasn’t creating the hauntings, she basically had to get undressed in front of them, and wear special clothes to prove she wasn’t concealing anything. 

Nevertheless, the weird shizz we saw in the 1970s still seemed to follow her.

Dishes would float in mid-air and then crash to the floor, glasses would suddenly appear in her hand (*insert middle aged facebook meme with a minion in the background*), and objects from her home would appear at the institute.

Her house was 10 miles away from the institute. 

But beyond her possessions appearing out of thin air,  Mrs. Forbes frequently described different entities that would appear and attack her.

These beings included a vampire which would on occasion bite her neck - and left her with two physical wounds in her neck, and a tiger which reached out and scratched deep gashes in her arm. Just like the vampire’s supposed attack, these markings were also found on her body.

However, one of her claims went too far, and was used to challenge every single incident she claimed was caused by a poltergeist:

Alongside the vampire bite and the tiger’s scratches, Mrs. Forbes also had several burn marks scarring her neck. Seemingly coming out of nowhere, Forbes believed it was due to the spirit of a man strangling her with a necklace. 

However, shortly after making this statement, she professed a deep desire to kill this man. 

Fodor drew from this that she thought the man was inside of her, and thus she tried to kill him by choking herself. That’s the burn marks explained - what about everything else? All it took was a quick check of her body and clothing to find small items concealed under her left breast.

That’s right; she has conjured up this “poltergeist” out of thin air.  

Having connected the dots, Fodor deduced that she was both schizophrenic, and burdened by repressed sexual trauma. 

Another day, another hoax.

Unsurprisingly, faked activity vis-a-vis this case is pretty common when it comes to the paranormal, and this label is pinned by non-believers onto, well, basically anything we just so happen to report. 

And despite how frustrating this can seem, it is a necessary disturbance in our research of the supernatural. In fact, the original Thornton Heath story brings this into play when we discuss poltergeists, particularly as their basis centres on physical disturbances which can be both faked or misinterpreted.

Croydon might seem yet another area of London Prince Andrew would pull out of the hat to defend his reputation, but it instead represents a much wider discussion of the paranormal.

From the fake to the unknown, from the mysterious to the mentally unstable:

How we investigate the supernatural starts in a little place called Thornton Heath.

What do you think?

Did the family really witness poltergeist activity first hand?

Or was it all just conjured up by women that purely wanted attention i dont know about you but i just love attention oh gimme attention look I WANT ATTENTION NOWSUFH[HB’[Egb’???????!1//1/1/1!//????

Ahem.

Wanna hear about more spooky shizz like this? Wanna hear about a new haunted location everyday? Then go ‘head and hit follow!