Inside the Supernatural. Jean Ritchie

rectitude confounded them. The book and its sequel became popular with mass-circulation newspapers and magazines and national radio stations queuing to interview Rhine. The orthodox psychologists (themselves still pioneering a new discipline) gave grudging approval to Rhine’s work.

      He was not entirely above criticism although (luckily for the growing band of parapsychologists encouraged by the acceptance of his work) none of the research with which he was associated was seriously discredited until 1978. Even then, it was not Rhine himself who was accused of distorting statistics, but a British mathematician, S.G. Soal, who had tested a great deal of people with a card-guessing experiment in the 1940s. Only when he looked at their results for ‘temporal displacement’ did he find two of them were scoring well above chance. Temporal displacement means that although they were not necessarily getting the right card each time, they were accurately predicting the following card or a preceding card. (In the case of Soal’s examples they were both guessing the card to come, but that need not have been the case.)

      Soal was accused of falsifying his results, and Rhine was implicated because his Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University checked and approved some of Soal’s research. Thirty years later a computer expert scrutinized Soal’s research and confirmed that ‘the sad and inescapable conclusion remains that all the experimental series in card-guessing carried out by Dr Soal must, as the evidence stands, be discredited’. Rhine, though not colluding, had been economical with the truth when publishing conclusions that seemed to authenticate Soal’s work.

      The Soal scandal is one of relatively few accusations of straightforward cheating that have been levelled at psychical researchers and parapsychologists, although they have regularly been accused of being duped or of misinterpreting data (see chapter 7). In general, the early members of the Society for Psychical Research and the pioneers of laboratory work inspired by Rhine set high standards for those who came after them.

2

       Things That Go Bump in the Night

      Pete the Polt is an obliging sort of ghost who believes in paying his way: he materializes five-pound notes for the people he is haunting. Crumpled fivers arrive out of thin air. They turn up pinned to the ceiling; wedged between the blades of machinery; one even appeared in the open air and fluttered to the ground at the feet of the man of whom Pete seems to be particularly fond. This man also found a ten-pound note on the window of his car. Altogether, about ninety pounds have appeared, as well as several one-pound coins and handfuls of pennies.

      Pete the Poltergeist has been making his presence felt for the last six years – not always in such a benign way. His ‘home’ is a small lawnmower repair workshop, with a hardware shop in front, in the Cathays district of Cardiff.

      The business is owned by John Matthews and his wife, Pat. They are helped out by Pat’s brother, Fred Cook, and his wife, Gerry. Fred seems to be Pete’s particular favourite, but all four of them have seen plenty of evidence of Pete’s existence. So, too, have several other people: neighbouring shopkeepers, salesmen visiting the business, customers and other staff who have worked there over the years.

      Most impressively, Dr David Fontana, a lecturer in educational psychology at Cardiff University, who was deputed by the Society for Psychical Research to investigate Pete, has been able to witness phenomena occurring. On one occasion, he was accompanied by a colleague from the university when Pete was demonstrating his prowess as a stone thrower.

      It was stone throwing that first alerted John Matthews to his uninvited guest. The business was then being run from a single-storey building in the yard at the back of the shop and workshop. At that time, John had a partner, Graham, and both men were constantly irritated by the sound of stones hitting the corrugated roof. They assumed it was vandals and reported it to the police more than once. The police investigated and found nothing.

      When the business transferred to the bigger premises, the stone throwing increased – but this time it was inside. As John, Graham and a young lad who worked for them, Richard, were busy repairing lawnmowers, they would hear small stones striking the walls all around them and dropping to the workbenches and the floor. Originally, they suspected each other.

      ‘So one afternoon after we’d locked the shop and there was nobody else around, we all put our hands on the counter so that none of us could cheat. And the stone throwing continued,’ said John, a down-to-earth Welshman in his fifties who had never even heard the word poltergeist at this stage.

      ‘After a bit, Richard said we ought to write down what was happening. As soon as he spoke a pen plopped down on the counter. So then he started asking for things. He said, “Bring us a plug. Bring us the big end off a mower.” All sorts of things. As he asked for them, they arrived. I couldn’t have found them that fast myself in the workshop. That’s when we knew it was something intelligent.’

      Since then, both Graham and Richard have left, though not because of Pete. Pat has started to work more in the shop and her brother and sister-in-law, Fred and Gerry, are also both there most days. There have been other part-time employees, all of whom have seen and heard Pete.

      ‘At first Richard seemed to be his favourite, but now it is Fred,’ said John. ‘It does more for Fred than anyone. It was when Fred said, “Why don’t you bring us something useful, Pete,” that the money started coming.’

      But the money is a relatively recent development, and has coincided with Pete getting altogether quieter. For a long time, John, his colleagues, and anyone else who was there – including Dr Fontana – were able to have throwing games with Pete, aiming small stones into the most active corner of the workshop (the area where most of Pete’s phenomena occurred) and having stones thrown back instantaneously. By marking the ones they threw they could check that they were not getting the same ones back and, after experimenting with rebounds and different trajectories, David Fontana was satisfied that there was no natural explanation for the stones.

      Other phenomena have included bolts materializing in mid air, cutlery being taken out of drawers and spread on the table (almost as though Pete was trying to lay the table), cutlery being bent, paper and paperclips materializing to order (the paper often seemed to have come from the offices above the shop, where an accountant has his business). Distinctive teaspoons from a restaurant a few doors away have also turned up on the staircase at Fred and Gerry’s home. On one occasion, Pat challenged Pete to produce a dirty paintbrush and one which was not one of their own arrived at her feet.

      Pete seems to be fascinated by the carburettor floats which John uses in his business. These are small rubber floats pierced by a sharp metal pin, which allows them to be stuck into different surfaces. They have been found sticking from the ceiling of the workshop. When Pat asked for money, she found a float holding a crumpled five-pound note on to the ceiling. They have appeared in all sorts of odd places in the workshop and, most surprising of all to John and Fred, they have turned up away from the business premises, usually at Fred and Gerry’s house.

      ‘On one occasion we left one on top of the heater in the workshop when we locked up at night, challenging it to move. As we drove home, Fred went to buy some fags and when he scooped up his change off the shop counter, there was a float with it,’ said John.

      On another occasion, Fred thought he had been stung by a wasp because he felt a sharp prick under his shirt but, when he undid his buttons, he found a carburettor float pinned to him. And once, when Fred, Pat and Gerry were sitting under a sun umbrella in Fred and Gerry’s garden, all three of them saw the pin from a float pierce the canvas umbrella. John and his family are a pragmatic, easy-going group, none of whom have had any previous interest in or experience of psychic matters. Both couples, John and Pat, and Fred and Gerry, are in their fifties, with grown-up families. They have accepted the presence of Pete the Polt in much the same way that they accept any new arrivals in the business – everyone is made to feel welcome. They have even become fond of Pete, and Fred described the experience of encountering such an active poltergeist as ‘a privilege’. But not everything