Twists: The Rochdale Poltergeist (Part 2)

 

This clipping shows the photo accompanying the first newspaper article about the 'Rochdale Poltergeist' case.  The Manchester Evening News article headline is "Spooky spills scare family from home."  Data of the case has been chronicled by MAPIT (Manchester's Association of Paranormal Investigation & Training)

While writing the preceding blog article, I learned that last month a 120-page paperback was published with the title The Rochdale Poltergeist by Jenny Ashford and Steve Mera.  Twenty years have passed since Mera and other members of the paranormal investigation group MAPIT observed anomalous phenomena in a Rochdale house in 1995.  Last week, I described parallels between this case with occurrences in what is now called the Centrahoma Poltergeist case, a topic of many recent blog articles.  The Rochdale Poltergeist also chronicles incidents that show correlations with the Centrahoma case.

The newspaper article refers to the name of the family as Garner with variations found in the Fortean Times article ("Gardener") as well as the new book ("Gardner").  The newspaper article identifies the 'prefab' house as being in Foxholes Close, described in the book as a cul-de-sac in the market town of Rochdale that is around ten miles north-northeast of the Manchester City Center.  Approximately a dozen bungalows on the street were built after World War II, constructed of aluminum and measuring less than 700 square feet.
 

The first manifestation, Vera explained, had been the spontaneous appearance of water dripping from the ceiling.  She had been in the kitchen making sandwiches, when suddenly large droplets of water began falling, as though it was raining indoors.

 
Vera contacted the council, who had duly come to the property to check it out.
 

Council representatives, however, had found the loft space dry and dusty, with no sign of water there or anywhere else in the home.  They further informed Vera that these types of pre-fabricated properties actually contained no water pipes in the loft or ceiling at all, as the water was all drawn up from pipes underground and entered the home through smaller pipes in the skirting boards near the floor.

 

A damp patch was found on the wall in the back bedroom and there were more occasions of falling droplets.  Water would also appear suddenly on doors and walls.  "In every one of these 'indoor rain' events, the water droplets had disappeared after a few scant minutes, leaving the surfaces they had emerged from dry as a bone."

Several anomalous occurrences typically associated with poltergeist phenomena (anomalous footsteps and whistling, missing objects that are found in odd places, crockery smashed) are described in the book that are not previously mentioned in the 1996 Fortean Times article (the topic of the preceding blog article) or investigation notes presented at the MAPIT website.  The audible coughing of an unseen person is again reported, this time as a recurring sound emanating from the unused back bedroom.  There is an assertion that when MAPIT went public with this case "Media attention was immediate, intense and worldwide" with the main reason identified as "the simple fact of the water analysis" that constituted evidence verified by a disinterested third party (North West Water Limited) reporting higher conductivity in the ceiling water sample in comparison to the tap water control sample.
 

Some new details are provided about Vera and her daughter Jeanette, a 34-year-old woman whom the mother said had a mental age similar to that of a young child.  Vera is reported to be a septuagenarian with a part-time job working as a cleaner at the church behind the house.  It is revealed that Jeanette gave up a child for adoption yet often visited the daughter at the foster home. 

Reverend Michael Jones in the initial newspaper article was revealed to have carried out a blessing at the home.  Following this, "the phenomenon was back as bad as ever."  It is reported in the book: "Rev. Jones had actually witnessed phenomena in the Gardner home with his own eyes.  On one visit, he claimed, he'd been sitting with Vera in the lounge when a large painting of a tiger that had been hanging over the fireplace . . . suddenly flew off the wall, sailed across the room and hit him on the side of the leg."  According to the book, Jones contacted the head diocese to ask about a possible exorcism but the determination was made "that the phenomena was likely poltergeist-related, and therefore didn't warrant church intervention."

The information in the book that I find to be especially noteworthy is found in the concluding chapters.  After the council moved the family to a new house, Steve made follow-up phone calls to Jim.  When moving objects were reported with Jeanette present on each occasion, Steve arranged to set up a few hidden cameras in strategic locations at a time when she wasn't in the house.  He retrieved them a few days later.

 

The footage on the cameras confirmed what Steve had suspected: Jeanette had been throwing the objects herself.  In one instance, Jeanette had very clearly picked up a small knick-knack off the windowsill while her mother's back was turned, then thrown it forcefully against a wall, all while making an enormous fuss.  "Oh no, it's back again!" she shrieked.  "It's back for me!"

 

She was obviously missing all the activity, and acted out in the only way she knew how.

 

A correlation with the Enfield case (a topic of previous articles 1, 2, 3) is offered yet that was a very different set of circumstances.  During a lengthy period of in-home investigation by Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair, the children had occasionally attempted to tease the researchers but were caught during these few occasions.

The circumstances involving Jeanette instigating phony manifestations are reminiscent of a reported 2011 incident that became the subject of Internet articles.  (1, 2, 3)  During an overnight investigation of paranormal phenomena at the Mc Wethy house by a local TV news crew, there was an unexpected occurrence at 2:20am involving pennies falling out of the air in the kitchen.  In the second KTEN.com article about "Texoma Spirits: 'McWethy House,'" the circumstances involving an Oklahoma ghost hunting group are stated.

 

We wrapped up our investigation some time around 4am and headed back thinking that we had caught the unexplained in action.  However, when Texoma G. H. O. S. T. reviewed their evidence through infrared cameras placed strategically through the house you can clearly see someone, a living family member, in the other room throwing the pennies into the kitchen area.

While during this evening we did not encounter anything that could be construed as paranormal, Maxine and her family do still believe they have encountered unexplained events.  Maxine did apologize for the actions of one of her family members.

 

Beyond this unfortunate incident, hundreds or even thousands of people have witnessed phenomena in Centrahoma.  In addition to the anomalous photographs and the audio cassettes with EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena), video footage documenting the phenomena was first broadcast in the 1995 ABC TV special "Ghosts, Mediums, Psychics: Put To The Test." 

Centrahoma family members amiably participated in the 1995 interviews that became the basis for the beginning portion of the case study Testament published in early 1997.  Neither they nor I had any idea where my attempts to document the case would lead.  I've lost touch with Maxine and her family over the years and would like to know more about their lives today.  Some of the unfortunate experiences of family life mentioned in transcripts reflect the predicaments that may arise in the sometimes complicated fabric of human relationships.  As I previously mentioned: "Considering the questions arising from the first Bell Family poltergeist haunting still widely known as the 'Bell Witch' case, it became essential to let everything divulged in the interviews become known in Testament without redaction."

The Rochdale Poltergeist also reports about the unnamed woman psychic first mentioned in the Fortean Times article.  She informed the case investigators about her "impression of a box, a small box, buried in the garden, behind the shed."  The psychic woman is described in the book as having contacted Steve at his office, resulting with him, Peter Hough and Vic Sleigh (as identified in the magazine) having "spent the entire day plowing up the back garden" without finding anything.  This turn of events makes possible an analogy with the 19th Century Bell Witch 'talking poltergeist' case as well as with the contemporary Centrahoma Bell / Mc Wethy case, as mentioned in the blog article last week.

 

Here again is a Centrahoma photo presented in a previous blog article this summer as I turned my attention to recalling my unexpected path of spiritual discovery that commenced with my trip to Oklahoma twenty years ago.

In the Afterword of The Rochdale Poltergeist book, Jenny Ashford described herself witnessing an instance of apparent unexplained phenomena.  She was with friends and family in the living room "attempting to purchase a movie with our notoriously finicky satellite system" when:

 

. . . the satellite remote, which had been sitting in the middle of the glass coffee table along with three other remotes, quite suddenly flew off the table and landed face down on the carpet about three feet away from its point of origin.  It did not bounce as it landed, and made a decisive thud, as though the floor was magnetic and had attracted the object to it.

 

As the five of us were discussing the event and trying to rationalize how it could have happened, we noticed that a quarter had appeared on the carpet, roughly in the spot where Tom had been staring when the remote left the table.  Though this was a rather ambiguous incident, all present insisted that there had not been a quarter there before, and no one could determine where the coin could have come from.

 

The Rochdale Poltergeist is the second nonfiction book by Jenny Ashford, following The Mammoth Mountain Poltergeist (2015) written with Tom Ross.