We like to think we know the difference between fantasy and reality. Perhaps one evening we might find ourselves alone at home. Then we hear a noise or see something odd. Maybe it's a cupboard door left slightly ajar, a door that we could have sworn was closed before. Slowly we might begin to feel the creeping sense of fear that perhaps someone somewhere is watching us, that we aren't alone after all. Fear, it would seem, is a powerful primal emotion, so potent that it can even make us afraid of
something that may not exist. But then again, just because we can't see something doesn't mean it isn't there. In a physiological sense, at least, most people would feel confident if asked to locate and identify the human heart, or indeed the brain. But if someone were to ask where exactly does consciousness preside, we might find the answer a little harder to come by. It is a question that has profound consequences, particularly if you're inclined to believe that
the mind might also exist outside the body. You're listening to Unexplained And I'm Richard McClain Smith on one cold January evening in nineteen twenty four, a young woman named Doris was giving birth at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, London. The attending obstatrician, Lady Florence Barrett, had made a successful to live free when things took a turn for the worse. Just as the baby was being born, Doris suffered a sudden heart attack from which she would not recover. As
she lay dying, she grabbed Lady Barrett's hand. Don't let it get dark, she said, It's getting darker and darker. But then something extraordinary happened. An ecstatic smile played across Doris's face. What is it, inquired Lady Barrett. Father is here, she said, and so too my sister Vida. The sudden appearance of Vida was especially remarkable, considering she had died two weeks earlier and Doris had not yet been informed
of her death. For the next hour, Doris continued to talk to Lady Barrett, but also with the spirits of her father and sister, who she believed had come to take her to the other side. A short time later, Doris passed away. When Lady Barrett returned home, she relayed
the incredible story to her husband, Sir William Barrett. For Sir William, an eminent physicist and fellow of the Royal Society, it was an astonishing revelation, a revelation that was to mark a significant turning point in the research he had been conducting for the last fifty years, research into the possible existence of poltergeist's. The word poltergeist is derived from the German for a ghost that knocks. For some, they are believed to be malevolent spirits that can interact and
communicate with our physical world. Sir William, however, had a different theory. Rather than being the mechanations of an evil spirit, he believed the reported effects of poltergeists were actually caused by as yet unknown powers of the mind. He believed this right up until Lady Barrett told him the tragic story about her patient Doris. Suddenly it had become clear. Could it be he thought that the poltergeist was a spirit?
After all, that, unlike the spirit of Lady Barrett's patient had, for reasons perhaps linked to the manner of their death, not being collected by loved ones while waiting at death's door. Instead, they had become trapped forever, destined to exist in the horror of a disembodied limbo. For author and paranormal enthusiast Colin Wilson, his feet were firmly in the former camp.
He believed the habit caused by so called poltergeists was in fact linked to the chemically charged process of puberty and adolescence, or at least he believed that until something extraordinary occurred that would change his mind as well. Just what exactly took place in a small West Yorkshire town between nineteen sixty six and nineteen seventy has never been fully accounted for. Often described as the most violent haunting in Europe, it is a mystery that remains to this
day unexplained. Located on a Roman road part way between Leeds and Doncaster, the town of Pontefract has a rich and bloody history. For John Betchaman, it was home to the licorice fields, where his love and he did meet. For Shakespeare, the town's castle was the place of Richard the Second's brutal murder, hacked to death within the guilty closure of its walls, and some have even claimed Pontefract as the death place of Robin Hood. But for the
Pritchard family of number thirty East drive. It will forever be associated with the terrifying events that began one swelteringly hot day in August nineteen sixty six. For Jeane and Joe Pritchard and their twelve year old daughter, Diane, the August Bank holiday weekend was a chance to relax after the recent move into their new home. For Jean and Joe's son, Philip, however, it was a chance to have
some time to himself. Having fallen out with his father, Philip had elected to stay behind, but since he was only fifteen, it was arranged that his grandmother, Sarah would stay to look after him. After seeing the rest of the family off, Philip went to the garden to read, leaving his grandmother knitting inside the house. A few hours later, a large gust of wind tore through the living room, slamming the back door shut. A surprised Philip ran into
the house to see if everything was all right. Sarah had assumed it to be the wind, but as Philip remarked, it couldn't have been more calm outside. Shortly after, Philip went to put the kettle on. When he returned ten minutes later, something strange had occurred. His grandmother still knitting on the sofa, had been too engrossed to notice the peculiar cloud of fine white dust floating around the room. Instinctively, they looked to the ceiling, thinking it might be some
whitewash that had fallen from above. But then Philip noticed something incredibly strange. The dust seemed to be falling from waist height, as if it had materialized out of a Sarah noticed it too when she stood up from the sofa, it was as if she had poked her head above the clouds. Puzzled by the strange appearance of the dust, Sarah called on her other daughter, Marie Kelly, who lived
in the house opposite. They returned to find the dust still falling in the living room, the furnishings now completely covered in a thick layer of the chalk like substance. Marie went to the kitchen to begin cleaning the mess, when she suddenly skidded across the floor. She looked down to find little pools of water all over the linoleum, but when she tried to mop one up, another puddle
would seem to instantly appear in its place. Assuming it to be a leak coming up from under the house, Marie pulled up the lino, only to find the concrete underneath completely dry. A plumber was called to the house, but he too was unable to locate the cause of the flood. An hour later, the puddles mysteriously disappeared. What they didn't know at the time was that those strange, reoccurring puddles are considered a classic sign of a poltergeist.
At about seven o'clock that evening, Philip came through from the kitchen. It's happening again, he said. When Sarah followed Philip into the kitchen, she found the counter covered in sugar and tea leaves. The dispenser was switching itself on and off as boiling water cascaded onto the surface top. Suddenly, an almighty crash came from out in the hallway. Clearly somebody was in the house. Philip and Sarah cautiously approached the door and slowly pulled it open, but the hallway
was empty. Then the light was inexplicably turned on, revealing the sauce of the crash. At the bottom of the stairs was a plant pot that had been smashed on the floor. Then another banging started, this time coming from the kitchen. In terror, they ran back to find one of the cupboards shaking violently, as if somebody was trapped inside. In a fit of panic, Philip yanked it open, but
it was empty. They ran again to get Marie. When they returned, all the cupboard doors were now shaking, the cutlery and plates rattling violently inside, and then it stopped. Marie's husband, Vic, although skeptical, suggested they speak to their neighbor, mister o'donald, who was thought to have experience dealing with such things. Despite the lateness of the hour, mister o'donald was more than happy to oblige. On returning to number thirty,
they found the place to be exceptionally cold. However, after waiting for almost two hours, they found no sign of anything else untoward. But as three were exiting the house, a loud crash was heard from inside. Marie sweeched on the light to find that two paintings had been thrown to the floor, their glass frames completely shattered, and further down the hall lay another a broken frame. Marie turned it over and gasped it was a photo of Jean and Joe Pritchard on their wedding day. It had been
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get started. That's teladoc dot com slash Unexplained Podcast. When the rest of the family returned two days later, they struggled to believe the accounts of Marie, Sarah, and Philip, and that appeared to be the end of the incident. Two years later, as the August Bank holiday came round again, Jean's mother, Sarah, couldn't help but be reminded of the events of nineteen sixty six. She started to hear noises again, a low thud at first, shortly followed by a familiar
loud bang. She asked her daughter if she'd heard them too. Jean, who had spent most of the day redecorating, had little patience for her mother's nonsense and told her so in no uncertain terms. Seconds later, however, there was a tremendous crash. At the bottom of the stairs was Jean's bed pane. She picked it up and started carrying it back to her bedroom when they heard a second crash. Racing back to the landing, they found that three plants had been
thrown and smashed from their pots. It would appear the poltergeist was back. That evening, Jean, unable to sleep, headed to the kitchen to get a drink, but when she walked into the hall, she froze in fear. A strip of wallpaper was moving on its own accord, and then the brushes she had been decorating with earlier were pulled into the air, and one after the other launched at her head. She scrambled back to the room, screaming for
Joe to wake up. Joe and Jean rushed back to the hall, where Diana and Philip now stood, woken by Jean's screens. All around, more objects were pulled into the air and flung at the terrified family. Together, they fled to the safety of Joe and Jean's bedroom and the door shut. At this point, it might be reasonable to ask why the Pritchards didn't move, but they argued the event had brought out an innate territorial nature. This was their home and they weren't about to allow themselves to
be bullied out of it. For the next few years, they endured a number of strange events, from loud bangs to severe drops in temperature, as well as the intermittent battles with flying objects. They had even given the poltergeist a name, calling him Fred. At one point, a local reverend was consulted, which seemed to act as a catalyst to a sinister turn of events. The reverend, mister Davy, was convinced there was something evil inside the house, something
that later seemed to fix its attention on Diane. One night, after getting into bed, Diane felt a presence in her room. Suddenly, the covers were yanked from the bed and the mattress wrenched up from underneath, throwing her violently to the floor. Another time, a crucifix was flung across the room that stuck to Diane's back like a magnet. When it was finally pulled off, a red cross shaped mark could be
seen on her back for the next few days. Perhaps the most terrifying event happened one night when Diane was making coffee. As the kettle boiled, the power was suddenly cut off. As Jean stumbled to find a torch, Diane let out a blood curdling screen. When Jean ran into the hall, she found Diane being dragged up the stairs by an unknown force, her cardigan stretched out behind her as if being pulled, and an invisible hand seemingly at her throat. When Diane was finally released, her neck was
covered in finger marks. The events finally came to an end after a family friend alerted them to an old Scottish tradition many years ago. Superstitious crofters would hang garlic to ward off evil spirits. The Pritchards gave it a go, and sure enough it did the trick Fred had gone. Ten years later, local historian Tom Cuniff began to wander if the haunting might have something to do with the
Pontefract Priory. The priory had been built to house a number of Cluniac monks before being dissolved by Henry the Eighth in fifteen thirty nine. The story gained credence when a neighbor of the family found a book in the town's library detailing the case of an unsavory Cluniac monk. The monk had been sentenced to hang for the rape and murder of a young girl during the time of Henry the Eighth. It was also believed that the monk had strangled his victim. After a little more research, Tom
made an unnerving discovery. The Pritchard's house was built almost directly on top of where the old gallows would have stood. In truth, we will never know exactly what happened in those four years, but after a careful study of the records, it would appear that no monk had been executed in the area after all. Certainly, the debate as to what might explain the strange series of events remains wide open.
A few years after the Pontefract haunting came to an end, a group of Canadian scientists, intrigued by poltergeist phenomena, carried out an extraordinary experiment that they hoped might settle the debate once and for all. The experiment, created by Canadian mathematician doctor George Owen and overseen by psychologist Joel Witten of the University of Toronto, took place in nineteen seventy
two and has become known as the Philip Experiment. Together with the test group of individuals of extremely high IQ, including doctor Owen's wife, Iris Owen, a former chair person of MENSA Canada, the scientists claimed, under test conditions to have contacted a spirit known as Philip. The spirit was even captured on video, seemingly conversing with the group through knox on a table and at one point even moving the table around the room. The only thing was Philip
didn't exist. A few months earlier, the group had been tasked with creating a fictitious individual with whom they might later try to contact. The group settled on a character that they named Philip Aylesford born in sixteen twenty four. Philip was given an entire backstory, including links to a young Charles the Second. It was also decided that Philip's life had come to a tragic end, committing suicide at the age of thirty after his girlfriend was accused of
witchcraft and later burnt at the stake. Having sufficiently plotted out the story of Philip's life, the group began trying to contact his spirit. After a number of months, the experiment failed to yield any meaningful results. However, when they adopted a different approach, this time recreating the atmospheric setting
of as seance, the results were staggering. Almost instantly, they experienced that the familiar knocking noises associated with poltergeist hauntings, followed by the table being rocked and pulled across the room. The group was utterly convinced. They believed that the sound and the movement of the table was the result of their collective minds trained in such a way as to effect the physical world around them. What they claimed to
have discovered was nothing less than telekinesis. Unsurprisingly, their results met with skepticism from the scientific community. And despite claims to have replicated the results in studies across the world, an absolute proof has remained elusive. But perhaps it is something else entirely that is taking place, something unrelated to
the spirits of the dead, real or otherwise. In his essay Mind and Matter, the celebrated Austrian physicist Erwin Schroedinger considered the relationship between our conscious minds and the physical world. He believed it was merely a convenience to imagine the world existing objectively on its own, that one way or another, it does not become manifest without a conscious mind to
observe it. The inference being not that the material world might only exist as a figment of our imagination, but rather that our conscious minds might somehow create the physical world around us. As improbable as this may sound, the truth may be even stranger, as demonstrated by what is known as the double Slit experiment. Physicists have come to accept an extraordinary peculiarity in the way that subatomic particles behave.
Thanks to the work of physicist Max Bourne, it is widely thought, in the mathematical sense, at least, that rather than occupying determined positions and outcomes. All particles exist merely as a collection of probabilities. The principle is known as superposition, and its implications are unfathomably profound. In short, it would seem that only when a particle is observed by the external world does it become fixed in any meaningful way,
Perhaps like the eponymous planet of Stanislavlem's Solaris. We might imagine the universe as merely a giant mass of energy drawn into shape and form when witnessed by our conscious minds. The world we create an experience, seamlessly assembled before us,
as if molded from some kind of subatomic putty. Is it inconceivable that, rather than being the disembodied energy of a malevolent spirit or the as yet untapped power of telekinesis, the Poltergeist phenomena is nothing less than our imaginations becoming manifest, a phenomena powered by the heightened sense of collective fear. With this in mind, you might start to wander just what terrors could we create next? As it might seem, it is not fear itself that we should be afraid of,
but rather ourselves that we should fear. All elements have unexplained are produced by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes. Feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or on Twitter at Unexplained Pod. Now. It's time to take care of yourself.
To make time for you, Tell a doc gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you get back to feeling your best. Speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video anytime between seven am to nine pm local time, seven days a week. Teledoc Therapy is available through most insurance or employers. Download the app or visit teledoc dot com Forward slash Unexplained Podcast today to get started. That's teladoc dot com slash Unexplained Podcast