Although the German word "poltergeist" is translated as "noisy ghost" this does not seem to be the case. Research seems to indicate that the moving furniture, the pots and pans clanking together, the knick-knacks crashing to the floor is not the work of a rambunctious spirit with a yen for weinerschnitzel, but the psychokinetic temper tantrums of pre-teen and teenage girls. This is because the activity is usually centered around a tween/teenage girl or within the same household of the girl, as this amazing (if its real) video illustrates. I say "if it's real" because I cannot confirm the source and in many of the shots, you can't see the entire table and chair, which makes me very suspicious. Either way, it illustrates my point. It's just not very good evidence.
The feeling is that the unique mix of hormonal surges and intense emotion of girls of this age somehow manifests unconcious psychokinetic abilities. How this happens is unknown. But the girls don't even realize that they are doing it , nor do they want to be doing it. Once the hormones calm down and the girls have their MySpace page all set up, the activity tends to subside.
While in college in the early eighties my roommates (2 other girls) and I shared a an old apartment in Astoria, Queens. We were forewarned that it was haunted and thought nothing much of it. Nonetheless we experienced similar unnatural occurences regularly, and even had one bonafide sighting of whatever the hell this thing was. It defied explanation. We were completely freaked out at the time but much too broke to move elsewhere. Whether this video is a hoax or not the phenomenon is definitely real.
Posted by: DSW | November 29, 2007 at 12:10 PM