Names / Person

Frank Podmore

Person 10 stories, 1839 to 1908

A sceptic inside the Society for Psychical Research. Frank Podmore held that most poltergeists came down to one thing: a child at the centre, playing tricks. His paper "Poltergeists" gathered eleven cases, Durweston among them. In four he found fraud, in three confessions. There he pointed to Annie, ill with consumption. In 1899 Alfred Russel Wallace answered him over the Bishopwearmouth case, citing qualified witnesses and a sick girl. Podmore also doubted Goodrich-Freer at Ballechin House, calling her unusually prone to hallucinatory experience.

Stories10

Pro early
Mary Jobson and the Bishopwearmouth (Sunderland) poltergeist
c. 1839 · Bishopwearmouth, Sunderland, County Durham, England
United Kingdom
Paranormal · Other · 21 sources
29Thinly documented

Psychical researcher who held poltergeists were mostly trickery by the child at the centre

The Stratford Knockings: the Phelps poltergeist at Stratford, Connecticut
March 10, 1850 · Phelps Mansion, Elm Street, Stratford, Fairfield County, Connecticut
United States
Paranormal · Other · 33 sources
25Thinly documented
Pro early
The Cideville Poltergeist (Presbytère de Cideville)
November 26, 1850 · Presbytery of Curé Jean Tinel, Cideville, Pays de Caux, Seine-Maritime, Normandy
France
Paranormal · Other · 22 sources
34Partially documented
Pro early
The Worksop Poltergeist (Joe White's house, Worksop, Nottinghamshire, 1883)
March 1, 1883 · St John's Road, Worksop, Nottinghamshire
United Kingdom
Paranormal · Other · 14 sources
23Thinly documented

Society for Psychical Research investigator, visited 7 to 8 April 1883

Pro early
The St Boswells Roadside Apparition: the Scott Sisters' Man in Black
May 7, 1892 · Country road near Lessudden House, St Boswells (Lessudden), Roxburghshire, Scottish Borders
United Kingdom
Paranormal · Being / humanoid · 10 sources
19Thinly documented

SPR researcher who analysed the case in The Naturalisation of the Supernatural (1908)

Pro early
The Durweston Poltergeist
December 13, 1894 · Durweston, near Blandford Forum, Dorset, England
United Kingdom
Paranormal · Other · 16 sources
30Partially documented

Society for Psychical Research investigator who included the case in his 'Poltergeists' paper

Ballechin House haunting and the Society for Psychical Research inquiry
February 1897 · Ballechin House, near Grandtully, Strathtay, Perthshire, Scotland
United Kingdom
Paranormal · Being / humanoid · 23 sources
32Partially documented
Pro early
The Grottendieck stone-fall, Sumatra 1903
September 1903 · Oil-company camp in the Sumatran jungle, Dutch East Indies (probably the Palembang region)
Indonesia
Paranormal · Other · 15 sources
19Thinly documented

SPR writer who analysed the letters in The Naturalisation of the Supernatural (1908)

Pro early
The Weston Vicarage haunting: the Tweedale family's ghosts in Wharfedale
August 1905 · Weston Vicarage, Weston, near Otley, Wharfedale, North Yorkshire
United Kingdom
Paranormal · Being / humanoid · 13 sources
22Thinly documented

Society for Psychical Research, suggested some visions were hallucinations

Pro early
Eusapia Palladino's Naples sittings for the SPR committee of Feilding, Baggally and Carrington (1908)
November 21, 1908 · Hotel Victoria, Naples
Italy
Paranormal · Other · 29 sources
28Thinly documented

Critic, author of The Newer Spiritualism (1910)