Ghosts of Wales by Mark Rees

Author:Mark Rees
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780750986076
Publisher: The History Press

5

POLTERGEIST ACTIVITY

The sounds were harrowing as they rose fitfully and at intervals, breaking the silence of the night, and the stoutest nerves among the listeners were shaken.

Poltergeist activity, said to be produced by a disruptive spirit who can cause chaos in the form of noises, damage and levitation, has been reported in different cultures around the world for centuries. But it wasn’t until the Victorian era that the word ‘poltergeist’ itself, derived from the German words poltern (to create a disturbance) and Geist (ghost), was introduced into the English language to describe a ‘noisy spirit’ by novelist Catherine Crowe in her influential collection of ghost stories, The Night Side of Nature (1848).

Accounts of such activity were reported across Wales at the time, and this example from Holyhead in 1858 details some of the ruin caused by their antics:

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