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The Link – Matthew Manning

After the poltergeist activities had been going on for two weeks, it became clear that a certain pattern was emerging. The phenomenon was basically divisible into three categories: the first was purely disruptive and annoying, the second was concerned with symmetry and balance, and the third was a demonstration of noisy and boisterous movement, designed it seemed, to attract spectators.

I have already described the first category, which was chiefly movement of furniture and domestic disruption; the second category included the balancing tricks, and events such as the table mats.

The third type was probably the most interesting, as we could actually witness the happening in progress. Objects would be hurled up the stairs, with great force and noise, from the bottom and could be watched in flight if one stood at the top of the stairs. Often I could sit in the dining room and watch as objects passed me by, flying through the room and up the stairs. Occasionally these articles came from the dining room where I sat but usually appeared from the kitchen. They would first vibrate, then shake violently until they rose up into the air to move away. Bends or obstacles presented no hindrance and were carefully negotiated. The objects once in flight, gained speed as they approached the stairs until they struck a wall, falling onto the stairs with great noise.

Particularly heavy items caused a lot of commotion when they crashed, such as hammers, mallets, wooden coat-hangers, blocks of wood, gallon cans of paint-stripper and carpentry tools. Those who watched these objects from the landing-on the first floor noted that they were capable of turning the two right-angles on the staircase, and sometimes lobbing themselves over the handrail at the top of the stairs, onto the landing.

This always happened either during the middle of the morning, or early in the evening.

My sister had in her bedroom a table about twenty-nine inches high by thirty-six inches long by eighteen inches wide; it also held a drawer under the top of it.- Her bedroom was at the front of the house, on the first floor. On the table she kept a pile of books and papers, a mug of pencils and other ornaments.

This table with everything on it vanished one afternoon.  We searched the house for it, but in vain. On a second search a little later, it was discovered standing in our cellar, with all the papers and ornaments still exactly in place on it. In fact it appeared that none of the objects on it had been disturbed. It had travelled no less than 105 feet, descended three flights of stairs, passed through five doorways, some of less than 30 inches wide, and made no less than ten complete right-angled changes of direction.