The Herrmann House Poltergeist

I must have been around eight or nine years old when I first watched the movie Poltergeist. And though some might be too young to know what this movie is, maybe because it isn't scary enough for today's gore and jump scared loving audiences. It's the story of a family who moves into a house and begins to experience strange phenomena. Things were moving on their own, doors were opening and closing, objects were being thrown across the room. There's a famous scene in the movie where one of the characters, a young girl, says they're here, and it just kind of cast that dark message of what was about to come. It was actually how I started telling the difference between entities, and it really sparked that interest in ghosts and what happens after death and how much we don't know about this other world. And we see messages everywhere, objects moving, sudden gusts, sophear to worse things like tapping, tugging at our shirts, or even witnessing full on apparitions, and yet we still simply ignore them. But in this case with Poulter geists, which are a type of entity that slam doors and move objects, sometimes they're seen as an evil sign, something that can feed off fear or negative energy and become so unbearable that people actually move out of their homes. With that in mind, I want to invite you to come along with me as I tell you one of the most interesting Poulter Guys stories. It's one of the creepiest true stories of Poulter Guyst that I found during the year. And as you learn, just like Poulter Guyst, this episode is going to get a little bit creepier as we move along. And if you're worrying, headphones get ready so you might start hearing objects move. Today we're going to take a look at one of the most interesting cases of poultry activity, the Seaford poultry Geist of Long Island. My name is Edwin and here it's a dark memory. Before science got involved into the process of paranormal investigation, people were in the dark. Imagine something moving without an explanation and not understanding differences in pressure or magnetic anomalies. People blamed it on witchcraft. Today things are a little bit different, and this is a story that started opening the minds of non believers. It was early February nineteen fifty eight in Seaford Long Island at the Hermann family residence, and it was in the early afternoon. Two kids, Lucille and Jimmy, were coming home from school as missus Hermann stepped out to greet them, when suddenly they heard a strange sound. It was a pop followed by a tap, and then the sounds of dripping liquid, and then they heard them again and again all over the houves. These sounds had them surrounded. When missus Hermann stepped in to inspect everything, she noticed that bottles all over the house had their tops popped off and the liquid inside had spilled all over the place. Could have been pressure or a cork popping off, maybe changes in humidity. I mean, that's what seemed logical to one at first. But these bottles were those that you had to twist off. Some fours was twisting them open. First it was a bottle of holy water, then the shampoo bottle in the bathroom, and even a bottle of medicine. All of them make noise. And it wasn't An article on Time magazine published on March seventeenth, nineteen fifty eight, by journalist Robert Wallace, where we got a whole lot more of these details the incidents with the bottles were not something that the family was afraid of, but at first they were kind of amused by them. In fact, missus Herman was described as a quiet, practical, and intelligent woman of thirty eight. What would she be doing lying to everybody? First, what she did was she called her husband at his office in New York City. They talked about the situation in a calm manner, just you know, something strange that happened at home, and that was all. According to this article James Herman, her husband arrived at Seaford at seven pm because he didn't want to leave early for work. It just wasn't that big of a deal. But when he got there, he was ready to investigate a little bit, hoping to find out who the prankster was or what was happening. Why were the bottles popping or opening by themselves, But she discovered that there was nothing weird going on, so they let the incident go and went back to their normal lives. And nothing happened the following day, so they thought that maybe it was just the once in a lifetime type of thing. But when Thursday came along, since the first incident had occurred, on a Monday, February third actually, and around that same time three thirty ish in the afternoon, more bottles started popping. Caps were flying off and falling to the floor. The next day of Friday, now the same thing happened at the exact same time. During these occurrences, only the mother lull See Herman and her two children had been there. But it wasn't until Sunday, when mister Herman was home when he actually saw this for himself. Bottles of starch and others started popping. But here's when things started taking an even more unexpected turn. It was in the late morning, like eleven am, when mister Herman was standing in the hallway like by the doorway of the bathroom as his son, also named James, was brushing his teeth, and then by pure chance, mister Herman caught a glimpse of a medicine bottle that was moving about a foot and a half across the sink top and then smashing into the sink. Right at that exact time, a bottle of shampoo moved across that same sink, but instead it went off the edge into the floor. Nobody had touched them. In a bit of a minor panic. He called the police, which was answered by Officer James Hughes of the Nassau County Police, and he was weirded out by it, but thought that there must be a logical explanation to the occurrence. Plus, mister Herman was a reserve member of the police department, and so the policeman went to the house and then he just sat them all around the living room. But even as he spoke, they could all hear the bottles popping around the house. That had been enough for the officer, who went back to the police station with enough proof his own word, saying that something was going on at that house, and so they assigned a detective to the case. A man named Joseph Totzi was known to be a very good detective, an observer sharp, and he considered absolutely everything he looked at the direction of the moving bottles from mister Herman's account, nearby transmitters of radio or other frequency operators nearby. The whole thing was just strange. Things kept happening, with recorded cases on February eleventh and the thirteenth, and with the bottle of holy water being spilled several times, including on February fifteenth. That's when mister Herman figured out that the bottle itself had been warm to the touch. But later on that day, a little before eight pm, when they were all in the living room watching television, they actually saw a porcelain figurine rise from the table and moved about a yard through the air and then dropped to the rug just like that. A priest was called on February seventeenth, father William McLeod, and he went to the house to bless it. The whole time the family talked about having the house go through an exorcism, but there are specific requirements for it, plus the reserve for endue visuals and not possessed places according to the Catholic Church, so it was not authorized. And by the way, all of this time, the news is just spreading like wildfire. Newspapers have information on it. People were calling, letters were arriving, with some of these people actually suggesting useful things so try to genuinely help the family, but nothing was working. Along all of these occurrences, by the way, Detective Joseph Totsi was still hard at work looking at everything. Ideas of sonic booms, strange frequencies, just everything one time, even Detective Tatsi was able to see the porcelain figurine rise from the table and fly about twelve feet before smashed against a desk. And things kept happening even with Detective Tatsi around, like one time he saw a sugar bowl fly off the table and was able to say for a fact that it was not within the reach of anybody. Objects, heavy ones would fly across the room and smash against mirrors. It might have been growing violent. On the night of February twenty first, the family went to stay at a relative's house and the incidents appeared to stop. Also, their phone had become a hotline of advice on how to get rid of the ghost callers, up to seventy five of them a day, and dozens and dozens of letters arriving at their mailbox every single day. Imagine that it was all a craze. However, the calls were always answered and the letters were always read. Some people saw the opportunity for making money, like maybe charging visitors to come see the house, while others were offering genuine advice. There was the occasional caller that would yell or repent into the phone and then hang up. There's always been a few of those. But it was through these calls and by reading the letters that they started noticing a pattern that the house was being haunted by a noisy ghost, a poulter geist. And this is when the idea really set in they might be onto something. I went down the rabbit hole and trying to figure out how these entities act and what they're capable of, and I'll tell you all about it up next stay with me. From the German language, a poltern which means to make a sound and to rumble, and geist, which means ghost. Poultergeist comes together to mean noisy ghosts. Basically. One of the early famous documented cases of a poultry geist came from a man who lived in the sixteen hundreds named George Sinclair, a Scottish mathematician, engineer, and demonologist. His most famous work was actually on witchcraft, titled Satan's Invisible World Discovered. In it, he described a poultergeist incident known as the Devil of Glenn Luce. According to this legend, at the house of weaver Gilbert Campbell in Glenlows in October of sixteen fifty four, weird stuff started happening. Supposedly, a beggar of the name Alexander Agnew was ignored by Campbell, and he was angry enough to promise that he would harm the family, and over the next two years they started hearing demonic voices, hearing whistley and would have stones thrown at them. The story was told to George Sinclair by the son of Campbell, But after the story was being studied over and over and over again, they kept coming up to the same conclusion that it was faked, and in researching early tales of Poultry Guy's activities, this same thing kept popping up. The stories aren't real, but rather the cause of people, usually young ones, trying to get attention by faking these events. That hunger for attention can lead teenagers to do simple things like rebel against their parents. To pretend to be a ghost who knocks things over every once in a while is what was happening with the Hermann household. A psychical researcher Frank Podmore first proposed this idea, and an investigator named Joe Nickel claims that these incidents came from a quote an individual who was motivated to cost mischief that in the typical Aulter Guy's outbreak, small objects are hurled through the air by unseen forces, furniture is overturned, or other disturbances occur, usually just what could be accomplished by a juvenile trickster, one who is determined to plague credulous adults. Supposedly, a combination of illusion, lapses in memory and wishful thinking can explain Poulter Guy's activity. Other theories have a better explanation for these things. For example, Guy William Lambert in the nineteen fifties proposed that underground water streams can cause stress on houses and because of this, they could make sounds and even vibrate the structures, which could then move objects. This was kind of tested by researchers with their own simulation ideas and stuff, and even through that they determine that objects wouldn't move that much. Plus, if underground water was causing these things, then no houses would last as long as they did, so that idea was dismissed. Perhaps earthquakes or the strange phenomenon of ball lightning could be the cause, I don't know. Parapsychologists Nander Foder and William g Rohl said that the likely cause is psychokinesis, and it's not the first time I read about this word. When it comes to ghost stories and moving objects. Psychokinesis is being able to move things which your mind, and they say that young people have a particular ability when it comes to this. Through documentation of poultry Guy's activity, researchers have noticed that trend teenagers are usually living in the households where reported poultry guise's activity is happening. Some people say that certain children may at some point have psychokinetic power but are not aware of it. It's not like they're controlling the objects willingly, but it just seems to happen, so they get surprised by it as well. And historically being able to do things with your mind like Shakuni back in four hundred BC, which is one of the major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, you could do things like this or Jesus when he turned water into wine or healed the sick and multiplied food. Even from legends like Wizard Merlin from the legend of King Arthur. They could also use telekinesis. Anyway, my point is that Poulter guys have shown up a bunch of times throughout history, and still no case of poultry guys has been proven beyond reasonable doubt. Still there are scientists who believe that this is possible. The Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University, scientist doctor J. B Ran believes that under certain conditions, people can move objects without touching them. But it was doctor Ryan's assistant who made the trip to New York from North Carolina to investigate. He went to the house, arriving on February twenty fifth, where he was welcomed just like the hundreds of other people who had been there before, the ones who were trying to figure something out. The family was looking for answers, after all, and they kept their hopes up. But doctor Pratt had no answers. Nothing significant happened while he was there, with the exception of a lamp being knocked over and a plate falling from the table as soon as he arrived, but not much else. He assumed it was because there were way too many minds involved. The whole thing was still buzzing. After all. Journalists from Newsday, The New York Times, and the London Evening News had been there. In fact, Dave Kahn from Newsday actually spent several nights there and he witnessed some creepy things happening. A dresser fell over and it broke another bottle that was on top of it. A lamp flipped over in Lucille's room, which was heard by other witnesses, including police Sergeant B McConnell. When the guy from London Evening News was there on the fourth of March, he also witnessed some strange incidents. But doctor Pratt was not done. He went without making his visit known to the newspapers and got there on March seventh, and he stayed for about a week. He documented several things, including two loud thumps coming from James's room on March ninth. By this time doctor Pratt had called the longest call league, doctor William Roll, to join him in the investigtionation. So the scientists wrote a forty five page report that was published in the Journal of Parapsychology in June of nineteen fifty eight. They went through every detail and came up with several explanations, which are the following one. Physical aberrations, which are things like high frequency radio waves, ground movement, air circulations, structural problems or plumbing vibrations. Number two fraud. James Junior could have been faking the whole thing, especially after receiving so much attention for it. There were some incidents that seemed to occur only when he was around, and the third theory psychokinesis. When one of the scientists elaborated on the report in two thousand and three, he made an interesting observation. Most of the objects that move to belong to the parents or happened in their rooms. James Junior was observed to have strong feelings of anger toward his father. Based on psychological studies, he considered the theory proposed by another parapsychologist, Harold Puthoff, who said that an object may be freed from gravity or inertia if the recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis agent affects the universal proliferation of random electromagnetic fluctuations. So there you go. As you can tell, this was a big deal. Eventually, a stage magician named Milbourne Christopher contacted the family. He had somewhat been involved with the whole paranormal topic from a book he had written in nineteen seventy. He offered his help. He said he might be able to get to the bottom of the disturbances, but James Hermann was like, nope, he did not want a magician in the house, said that the family was not going to sit for a lie detector test. Eventually, the magician was contacted by reporters who made him demonstrate some of his theories. The bottles, for example, could be quote unquote opened by just having one of the family members make the popping sounds, and you could hide them somewhere right. They just make the sound, and the bottles were just knocked over and open beforehand. It seemed to work. The thread could easily knock over an object, so there was that. A ghost hunter named Joe Nichol, the one that I mentioned earlier, also talked about it being fake once he got a hold of the police file. He noted that James was nearby when incidents happened, but would stop when he wasn't there. Also, James did not like being observed, and when detectives dusted objects with the powder that would later show up under ultra violet line, they did not move. Other objects did, though he was convinced it was just simple trickery. Thanks to that, however, it seems like it played a role into making the movie Poltergeist in nineteen eighty two. Maybe, I mean all of the media coverage definitely got to Steven Spieldberg's ears to make that Academy Award winning movie. Still, I believe that even though everything has an explanation, we might be in need of tools or additional senses to be able to make a call regarding whether they are true or false. The family denying being observed could be seen as them lying about the whole thing, or simply as a family not wanting to be observed and talked about on national media. Both are perfectly valid. What do you think? In a blog called Living Library, the writer Shannon se shares with the public her favorite book about Poultrygeist, written by Rupert Matthews. In it, he describes the eight stages of poultrygeist activity. Stage one beginnings, which are faintly registered sounds, scratching, noises, or other things you might disregard as rodents or noises coming from outside. Stage two noises knuckles, knocking on wood or glass. Stage three moving objects, things disappearing or appearing somewhere else. Stage four a ports and disupports. Okay, this one's intense. But basically, when an object appears from out of nowhere. Disupport is when it just vanishes. A ports is when it appears from out of nowhere. Stage five communitytion when you can establish a line of communication, whether that's by its answering to your requests or communicating on its own. Stage six climax when several hours of movement or sounds happen. Stage seven decline the poultry guys generally loses its ability to move objects, and Stage eight endings when things just stop, no more sounds or movement. But as for the Hermans, they may have been approaching a stage eight. Right after doctor Pratt's visit. It was March tenth. The family was getting ready for bed, well everyone except for the father, mister Herman, who was away on business. Doctor Pratt and doctor Roll were staying along in the house as they continued their visit to get to the bottom of every and that night they got it unexpected as usual, the sound of something popping in the cellar. They ran downstairs to see what it was and found a bleach bottle and it was sitting inside of a cardboard box, but now without its plastic lid. In total, they were able to record sixty seven disturbances between February third and March tenth. The scientist at Duke University still had no idea about what happened. Mister Herman didn't care what it was. It was just happy that it stopped. Missus Herman told an Associated Press reporter, I don't think there is a definite solution. It was just one of those things with no rhyme or reason to it, but there was a definite physical force behind it. Everything in that house in Long Island has returned to normal. The phone call stopped, the letter stopped, So if nothing ever happened, just turned into a memory. This episode of Dark Memory was written by me Edwin Coharrubias. If you have an idea for me, send me a DM or an email. So next, search for my other podcast called Scary Mystery Surprise, where Michelle and I talked about creepy things that we find around the Internet. It's like a commentary show. You can find it by searching for Scary Mystery Surprise on your app right now. You can also find me over on Instagram, Twitter, Patreon, and Discord by going to Edwin dot Fm on your browser it'll be linked to the description of this episode. Thank you very much for listening, See you soon.