Полтергейст: призраки, вызывающие физические явления.

Ghost that causes physical disturbance

In German folklore and ghostlore, a poltergeist ('/p//oʊ//l//t//ər/,/g//aɪ//s//t/ or '/p//ɒ//l//t//ər/,/g//aɪ//s//t/; ; or ) is a type of ghost or spirit that is responsible for physical disturbances, such as loud noises and objects being moved or destroyed. Most claims or fictional descriptions of poltergeists show them as being capable of pinching, biting, hitting, and tripping people. They are also depicted as capable of the movement or levitation of objects such as furniture and cutlery, or noises such as knocking on doors. Foul smells are also associated with poltergeist occurrences, as well as spontaneous fires and different electrical issues such as flickering lights. These manifestations have been recorded in many cultures and countries, including Brazil, Australia, the United States, Japan and most European nations. The first recorded cases date back to the 1st century.

The word poltergeist comes from the German language words poltern and Geist and the term itself translates as , or a A synonym coined by René Sudre is thorybism, from the Ancient Greek θορυβείν (thorubeín) .

A claim of activity at Caledonia Mills (1899–1922) was investigated by Walter Franklin Prince, research officer for the American Society for Psychical Research in 1922. Prince concluded that the mysterious fires and alleged poltergeist phenomena were because of a psychological state of dissociation. Nandor Fodor investigated the Thornton Heath poltergeist claim (1938). His conclusion of the case were a psychoanalytical explanation and in a subsequent publication: "The poltergeist is not a ghost. It is a bundle of projected repressions,". According to research in anomalistic psychology, claims of poltergeist activity can be explained by psychological factors such as illusion, memory lapses, and wishful thinking. A study (Lange and Houran, 1998) wrote that poltergeist experiences are delusions "resulting from the affective and cognitive dynamics of percipients' interpretation of ambiguous stimuli". Psychologist Donovan Rawcliffe has written that almost all poltergeist cases that have been investigated turned out to be based on trickery, whilst the rest are attributable to psychological factors such as hallucinations. Psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung was interested in the concept of poltergeists and the occult in general. Jung believed that a female cousin's trance states were responsible for a dining table splitting in two and his later discovery of a broken bread knife. Jung also believed that when a bookcase gave an explosive cracking sound during a meeting with Sigmund Freud in 1909, he correctly predicted there would be a second sound, speculating that such phenomena were caused by 'exteriorization' of his subconscious mind. Freud disagreed, and concluded there was some natural cause. Freud biographers maintain the sounds were likely caused by the wood of the bookcase contracting as it dried out.

Parapsychologists Nandor Fodor and William G. Roll suggested that poltergeist activity can be explained by psychokinesis. Historically, actual malicious spirits were blamed for apparent poltergeist type activity, such as objects moving seemingly of their own accord. According to Allan Kardec, the founder of Spiritism, poltergeists are manifestations of disembodied spirits of low level, belonging to the sixth class of the third order. Under this explanation, they are believed to be closely associated with the elements (fire, air, water, earth). In Finland, somewhat famous are the case of the "Mäkkylä Ghost" in 1946, which received attention in the press at the time, and the "Devils of Martin" in Ylöjärvi in the late 19th century, for which affidavits were obtained in court. Samuli Paulaharju has also recorded a memoir of a typical the case of "Salkko from the south of Lake Inari in his book Memoirs of Lapland (Lapin muisteluksia). The story has also been published in the collection of Mythical Stories (Myytillisiä tarinoita) edited by Lauri Simonsuuri.