Haunted Stories Shouldn’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance

From the number of hit movies about ghosts and poltergeists, nobody can doubt the popularity of those phenomena.

Whether most people actually believe in ghosts and poltergeists, or merely find them entertaining frauds, is hard to say.

According to the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), many people believe such things are real because newspapers report them as real, without qualification.

As CSICOP points out, most newspapers report such phenomena in feature stories, as entertainment, and do not feel obliged to question their veracity. Such reports, CSICOP says in its official journal, the Skeptical Inquirer, foster superstitious beliefs.

My wife and I spent a couple of days on the Orange Coast last week and I found such a story in the Orange Coast Daily Pilot under the headline: “Haunted HB (Huntington Beach) homeowners say that now ‘the ghost is clear.’ ”

True, that head has a facetious tone, suggesting that the story is all in fun. However, numerous incidents are described, without question or explanation, and we are told that they ceased after a priest was called in to “bless each room.”

Thus, we are left not only with the impression that “things go bump in the night,” but also that such phenomena can be exorcised by priestly intervention.

Curiously, the residents of the haunted house are not named, nor is the address given. We know only that they are “the resident and his wife,” and “their adolescent son.”

What happened, according to the story, was that furniture was overturned, small appliances turned on or self-destructed by themselves, locks and doors opened and closed, and household items flew inexplicably about rooms.

On the worst day, the residents said, “things were flying everywhere and we kept feeling someone spraying our backs with water . . . but when we turned no one was there.”

Much of the haunting appeared to center on the son, his mother said. A Roman Catholic friend gave the boy a crucifix pin to wear, but it kept falling from his shirt. When he fixed it to a cord to wear around his neck the necklace kept falling off. When the boy took off his shoes they flew from the floor toward his face.

The disturbances had begun with thumping noises in the walls. The family reported this to the police, fearing prowlers. That is the only mention of the police. Evidently the police found no prowlers, and withdrew from the case. Police, after all, are not expected to catch poltergeists.

A Catholic neighbor sat with the family and was convinced when a French door unlocked and opened by itself, the story said. He persuaded them to call the priest, who asked them to pray with him and told the poltergeist to leave the house. The woman said, “He used a very firm voice and told it to leave.”

Then, the story said, “The priest told the family if they have faith in God, the spirit will stay away.”

The reporter evidently accepted the residents’ reports at face value, perhaps not wanting to ruin a good story.

However, I doubt that anything happened in the household for which there is not some natural explanation. Objects do not fly from one place to another by themselves. Locks do not come unlocked and doors do not open by themselves. Shoes do not rise from the floor by themselves.

If I were investigating this story I would subject the adolescent son to exacting scrutiny. In one celebrated investigation into a poltergeist’s activities, a small girl was found to be the culprit. Surreptitious photographs showed her causing lamps and other objects to fly when no one was looking.

Writing for the Skeptical Inquirer, Paul Kurtz, professor of philosophy at New York University, Buffalo, examines a notorious case involving the haunting of a West Pittston, Pa., house by demons. The residents, Jack and Janet Smurl and their four daughters (two of them teen-agers), reported rappings on the walls, moving objects, bloodcurdling screams, opening doors, and a “foul stench.” Smurl said that “at least a dozen times” he had been raped in his bed by a ghastly female ghost.

Associated Press first reported the story and it soon became a media extravaganza. In the end it was revealed that Smurl had signed a contract with a publisher and a film company for a hardcover book and a movie about the haunting.

Though the Smurls had given many sensational stories to the media, they later refused to admit any “skeptical” reporters, and refused interviews to a team of investigators from CSICOP. They were guided in this by a pair of “demonology advisers” who had their ears.

If the Daily Pilot runs true to form, however, there will be no follow-up story. No explanation will be forthcoming, and the paper’s readers will be left to believe that such things really happen.

I don’t mean to suggest that the Daily Pilot is alone. The Times, I’m sure, has printed its share of “things that go bump in the night” stories. And never proved one.