By James Donahue

As long-time readers know, my family usually manages to live in older and very haunted houses. We also have owned a few haunted buildings that we did not live in.

Where ever we have lived we have heard strange footsteps on creaking floors but nobody is there. We have heard hauntingly strange sounds of bells, and voices of both men and women; once even a cat coming from dark empty rooms, attics and basements. And we have had objects go missing, only to be returned a day or two later.

About two years ago my wife and I were awakened in the early morning hours by a loud rapping on the wall of our room. It sounded like someone standing over us, striking the plastered wall with the knuckles of a hand. The rapping continued, with brief lapses between each strike, and moved along the wall for the length of the wall. Then it moved back over us before it quit.

A check with the other members of the household revealed that everyone was asleep at that hour. It was not a practical joke. This appeared to be further poltergeist activity.

The definition of a poltergeist is a mischievous or malevolent spirit that manifests its presence by noise, moving objects and occasionally bringing physical assault on people and animals. Other than scaring our cat half out of his wits on occasion, the visitor to our bedroom merely resigns itself to moving things and most recently, rapping on our wall.

If the cat can see it, then we must have a spirit. If this is not the spirit of a dead person, we must be dealing with another entity from the astral. Since I have learned to leave my body and visit the astral, I had discovered that a lot of different life forms appear to exist in that invisible parallel universe surrounding us, but unseen my most humans. They include the angels and demons. And there are many others that seem to have no classification. They range from odd shaped little creatures that usually scamper like rodents when discovered, to large shadowy figures. Sometimes they roll in like fog and surround us with energy from other sources.

Thus we have a mystery.

While poltergeist activity has been known and recognized for centuries, it was only in the last century that serious scientific investigation was made. In the 1930s, psychologist and parapsychologist Nador Fodor theorized that some poltergeist disturbances were caused by human agents rather than spirits.

Fodor’s theory, which has shown up in various Hollywood films, was that the human agent, often a female child under the age of 20, could somehow express anger, hostility or even sexual tension by causing things to move around in the room or noises to occur.

Thus we are introduced to the concept called psychokinesis, or the ability to use the mind to move objects without physically touching them. And there we are presented with a dilemma. Like extra-sensory perception, psychokinesis has been the subject of paranormal and even scientific debate for years. Most critics say it cannot be done.

And from this point we complete the circle, returning once again to our bedroom where things have had a way of moving off while they are in use, and relocated in strange places across the room, or disappearing altogether for a few days. And there was that odd rapping on our wall.

I have made no secret of the fact that my wife is unusually psychic. She can talk to entities in the other world, has communicated with the dead, and she occasionally has disturbing images of future events that usually come true within days and sometimes years. She has been known to pick up the telephone before it rings.

I might suggest that she also has the power of psychokinesis without knowing that she has it. This might explain why she is forever searching for things that she just put down and then lost. It might explain why tools other people in the house are using get strangely moved to other parts of the house while the back is turned. It might even explain the rapping noises on our wall.

Some years ago, while we were in Arizona and on the road, Doris and I talked one night about the power of the mind to move things. We decided to conduct an experiment. There was a light hanging on a long chain from the ceiling in our bedroom. As we lay in bed, we concentrated our thoughts on making that light swing. The windows and doors were closed, there were no fans or movements of the air. We looked at that light and tried with all of our mental power to make it move. Suddenly, after a few minutes of concentrated thought, the light began to swing.

We are convinced to this day that we caused that movement with our mind. Or at least someone in the room did it. Was it she alone and I merely the witness?

All that I can say is that Doris and I have lived or been present in all of the haunted buildings we have known. Were the noises, sensations and glimpses of shadowy figures manifestations from our own minds?

This question appears to have been answered since we moved into a relatively new house with our daughters. We are told that we are only about the third family to enjoy this home, and that the original occupant still lives. As you should know we are a psychic family and we are frequently visited by people like ourselves, including artists, intellectuals and magickians.

The house is occasionally visited by unwanted entities, but they are quickly found out and banished. The poltergeist activity and ghostly visitations have stopped.