First off all, my forum nickname is not intended to ridicule the subject of poltergeists. I just thought it was funny how these words from my mother tongue have become "technical terms" in English.
Secondly, thank you for agreeing to be interviewed on The Paracast and for the time, effort and thorough research you put into the book. The witness reports you made available are absolutely astounding. Although I was a little suspicious at first, because the book title reminded me of sensational TV entertainment shows with little to no valuable information, I now think the book is a valuable resource for serious research into poltergeists.
In another interview, I have heard you say that you started out as a skeptic. So, were you convinced by the original "explanation", that the girl had been hoaxing it?
- At what point did you decide there was no way this could be the full picture?
I guess it's obvious that the "talking cat" was a collaboration of Marcia fooling around and the press making fun of the whole subject. What else do you think can be reduced to the girl actually hoaxing events, and why?
Of the original witnesses, who were you able to speak to personally?
- How did they react to your "digging up" the old story after so many years?
- Did you get to talk to any of the policemen who actually saw things seemingly move and lift off the ground on their own?
Between the Warren's "demon" explanation, Paul Eno's "multiverse parasites" and the parapsychologists' "RSPK by the focus person", which theory do you think has the most potential to really explain what was going on?
- Do you have a theory of your own as to what might cause genuine poltergeist events?
Although I understand why the parents especially wouldn't want to talk about it, I'm kind of surprised that the "ghost" theory isn't discussed in the book and seems to have been eliminated by everyone right from the start. While I was reading your book, I asked myself if it simply might have been the elephant in the room which everybody was tiptoing around.
- Was it maybe an unspoken fear of the Goodins that it might be their deceased son causing the events? That his discarnate consciousness was still around, had not "gone into the light", as psychic mediums often claim, and was angry at Marcia seemingly taking his place? For example, could the unexplained knocking sounds always starting in november have something to do with the boy's birthday on Halloween day?
- Do you think these kind of questions shouldn't be asked even after so many years?
In an interview with Paul Eno, you mentioned that at least one psychic medium had looked into the case and said that it was the dead son causing the outbreak.
- Do you know how credible this person would have been?
- Had other psychics been involved and come to different conclusions?
- Were they actually in the house or just writing in to give their "psychic impressions"?
- Could they have known about the son?
- In the light of the work of people like Prof. Gary Schwartz and Julie Beischel, who have conducted very thorough multiple blind studies with psychic mediums, and come to the conclusion that many of them at least some of the time objectively "gain access" to veridical information they can't know about by normal means, and of the theories of parapsychologists like Lloyd Auerbach, who thinks that discarnate consciousness is a reality, do you still think that the "discarnate consciousness" hypothesis is not to be considered?
Were the
"poltergeist sound recordings" on your website (which unfortunately don't seem to play in my Firefox browser) part of the "poltergeist sound study" conducted by Dr Barrie Colvin of the SPR a few years ago? If not, maybe they could be submitted to the SPR and be analyzed accordingly?
(the study was conducted to see if these sounds, often recorded by the SPR researchers themselves, might be different from normal rapping or knocking sounds and concluded that there was a difference in that there seemed to be a sort of build-up in the material they emanated from)
Scientific evidence of poltergeist knocking? | Society for Psychical Research
Why do you think Marcia left the Goodins as soon as she turned 18, never to be heard of again?
Do you intend to do similar books on other Poltergeist cases or alleged paranormal cases (like UFOs) in general?
With witness reports like those you present in the book, and affidavits like that of the policewoman in the Enfield Poltergeist case, why is it that most people still seem to think that "there's nothing to be seen here"?