It would be an interesting exercise to sit down and compile all a list of all major events which occurred during a given period in history but were later forgotten, despite their impact at the moment. Almost assuredly better minds have attempted such an effort, categorizing incidents which caused a stir in their time yet totally overlooked by subsequent generations.

One such event--of gargantuan proportions, but tamped down by the triple factors of time, space and language barrier--occurred during the 1930's in Spain. The mention of those two coordinates will prompt thoughts of Ernest Hemingway and the international effort to participate in that country's bloody civil war, yet the event in question is by no means political. It specifically took place in the Basque Country, the industrial backbone of the Iberian Peninsula, with its coal mines and factories; Euskadi, in the mystifying Basque language, unrelated to any other on the continent and fancifully assumed by some to be the parlance of lost Atlantis.

A Forgotten Apparition

In a small, nigh well unreachable town in the Cantabrian mountains known as Ezkioga, there occurred a religious phenomenon far greater than Fátima and Garabandal, and perhaps more troubling. The agitation and the civil strife that marked those times aided religious authorities in stifling the situation ; the Second World War would succeed in obliterating any memory of it.

Ezkioga was rescued from oblivion recently through the diligent efforts of two journalists--Carmen Porter and Iker Jiménez--the first of whom published a book entitled Misterios de la Iglesia in 2002 and included her research in the text. Porter had the incredible luck to find, against all odds, one of the only copies of a limited print book regarding the mystery of Ezkioga...a book which church authorities had condemned to the flames in a tradition that dated back to the Inquisition.

On June 30, 1931, a brother and sister from Ezkioga -- Antonia, 11, and Andrés, 7 -- engaged in their daily routine of walking to a nearby dairy for milk and returning over the slopes of Mount Anduaga. On this particular day, the children noticed a bright light hovering above the treetops; forgetting their errand, they approached the light in awe and quickly dropped to their knees and prayed fervently, after seeing an image within the light source which they identified with the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The youngsters ran home to tell their elders of their religious experience; as in other Marian apparitions, they were scolded and warned not to lie about "things having to do with heaven." But such was their nervous excitement that they were later taken to see the parish priest, who was unable to detect any guile in their eyes and advised their father to be patient with the children. The priest apparently had reason for such a gentle approach: only days before, one of the communities most important landowners had had a much more dramatic encounter.

The landowner and his son had been dragging a fallen tree trunk across the steep terrain using a team of oxen when the tree unexpectedly rolled, dragging the beasts and his son with it over the edge of a precipice. Fearing his son dead, the landowner ran toward the edge of the defile and proceeded to descend. To his great surprise, he saw "a lady" holding one of the oxen by its horn; the son stood to one side, in shock but otherwise alive. The "lady" was covered by a long black veil and had a five starred crown which "glowed like a sun". The landowner "knew her to be the Blessed Mother". His friends, however, ridiculed him when the story was told.

But their clumsy jests would soon come to an end when reports of "a very beautiful lady in black" who would appear and cause children to kneel and pray with their arms outstretched began to surface. The children were none other than Antonia and Andrés, who continued to visit the location on Mount Anduaga where the initial contact had taken place.

Unlike Fátima, the miraculous visitations would not be restricted to the young. Less than a week later, a man known as Patxi, a carpenter who scoffed at the notion of apparitions and decried the foolishness of his fellow townsmen, claimed to have seen the woman in black himself: she had appeared to him wielding a bloody sword, addressing him in his native Euskera instead of Spanish. Her warnings were dire--there would be a civil war between Catholics and Non-Catholics in the Basque Country, but the Catholics would prevail in the end despite the death toll. A married woman named Maria Recalde had visited Mount Anduaga to pray the Rosary and was engulfed by a brightness she described as being "greater than that of the sun." She too saw a beautiful young woman, clad in black and holding a rosary, with her heart pierced by swords. María was shown horrific visions of desolation, rains of fire and poisonous gases killing thousands.

The sword motif would appear in a vision experienced by nine year old Benita Aguirre. She would tell clergyman Juan Bautista Altisent that she "could see the Holy Virgin...with two swords, on piercing her heart and another in her left hand, its point bloodied." The girl asked the apparition if she was bleeding for mortal sins, and the reply was affirmative.

So far we have a list of elements that are common to any Marian apparition, but there are details to Ezkioga, according to Carmen Porter, which suggest phenomena other than divine: some of the worshippers present at the Basque peak thought to have seen "a witch" rather than a beautiful woman; others saw a headless figure of the type reported in paranormal chronicles worldwide. Still another claimed to have seen the devil himself, describing the fearsome apparition as tall, red-headed and black, with fangs like those of a wolf. The man wanted to scream out of sheer terror, but managed to make the sign of the Cross and the apparition vanished.

Salvador Freixedo has the following to say about this part of the his native country: "There are in Spain two regions which have distinguished themselves throughout history for being the centers of witchcraft of the entire Peninsula. One of them is the region of the Basque Country and Navarre (Zugarramurdi, Berroscoberro)..." Church authorities in the 16th century believed that at least thirty thousand witches existed in the Basque country. Could there have been other forces at play here?

Summer had turned into harsh fall over Ezkioga, but the inner fire that inspired the believers did not waver. On October 15, another visionary named Ramona Olazábal informed the congregation that they should bring handkerchiefs with them, because the Virgin was about to induce stigmata in her. At five o'clock, Ramona raised her hands, standing at the site of the apparitions, and blood began to stream from the backs of her hands. The cry of "Blood!" rent the air as the faithful swooned and others hurried forward to dip their napkins in the seeress's vital fluid. A church hearing soon followed and Ramona's stigmata were questioned, especially when witnesses claimed having seen a razor blade on the ground beside her.

Even though this new aspect of the Marian phenomenon was called into question, the number of visionaries now soared past one hundred and fifty and up to eighty thousand people had visited Ezkioga to partake of the holy event. Church authorities were beginning to look into the event to ascertain that the events occurring in the remote Cantabrian mountains were other than natural, such as the healing of a stomach cancer patient whose recovery amazed physicians, or a paraplegic woman who felt better after praying the Rosary at site of the apparitions, and walked downhill to the echoed cries of "Milagro!" ringing in her ears. Even as eminent a physician as Gregorio Marañón visited Ezkioga and unequivocally stated that the phenomena were beyond the realm of the pathological sciences. "They belong to other disciplines that are beyond my competence."

The Church was not quite so sanguine. Religious authorities like Jose Antonio Laburu, a fiery preacher of the times, stood foursquare against the miracles, saying that the predictions had been false, that fraud was prevalent throughout the sightings, and that gift-giving had stimulated many of the seers "to keep having visions". Other religious, like Amado Bruguera, struggled to separate the wheat from the chaff (the true visionaries from the impostors, in this case) and to ferret out the impostors with inquisitorial zeal, firmly believing that Satan had also played a role on Mount Anduaga, deceiving the unworthy with false visions. His misplaced zeal would later win him a jail sentence and ecclesiastical censure.

By 1933, even as the political situation within Spain grew more precarious, Bishop Múgica of city of Vitoria wrote the Vatican, denying the presence of any paranormal phenomena and forbidding Catholics from keeping "any photographs, images, hymns" or other material regarding the apparitions. This decision was approved by Rome in a letter by Cardinal Sbarreti in which the "alleged apparitions and revelations of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Ezkioga are shorn of any supernatural character." The ruling also banned three books discussing the events.

The government was also finding the events in the village of Ezkioga tiresome. Pedro del Pozo, governor of Guipúzcoa, was given the order to put an end to the commotion over the Marian apparition. The governor ordered that the image of the Virgin be removed along with the souvenir stands which had cropped up at the site; if this was not done voluntarily, he cautioned, he would order workmen to demolish the chapel with dynamite. Although workmen had refused to manhandle the statue--being cautioned by the visionaries that to do so would mean their deaths--the image was removed to a cluster of houses for safekeeping. The authorities cut down the large cross which had been erected at the site, and the premises were fenced off to keep any further multitudes from congregating. Even more medieval-sounding was the decree issued by the mayor of Ezkioga under pressure from his superiors: the punishment prescribed for anyone having visions in public would range from heavy fines to prison, internment in an insane asylum, or deportation. Many of the visionaries indeed wound up institutionalized while others served jail time.

Was Father Laburu right about all of the prophecies being fraudulent? Apparently not. Most of the revelations concerning "a war in which much blood would be spilled within Spain" would come true, and which would begin with the closing of churches in Catalonia -- the event which would unleash the Spanish Civil War.

In 2001, Spanish film filmmaker Gutiérrez Aragón directed Visionarios: La Virgen de Ezkioga, starring Ingrid Rubio as one of the visionaries involved in the actual events. Although the production was not well received by contemporary audiences despite having been shot on location, it nonetheless served to rekindle interest in this all but forgotten paranormal event.

Headless at the Holy Sites

Strange creatures, some of them far from having a divine or holy aspect to them, are often reported at the sites of Marian apparitions. In the early 1990s, for instance, a "Bigfoot"-like creature was reported at the Marian shrine of Montaña Santa on the island of Puerto Rico. Believers like Ezkioga's Amado Bruguera shared the conviction that the devil's minions were at work at some of these locales, trying to frighten the faithful away from holy ground.

Most prevalent among these apparitions are the "headless" ones: the headless woman at Ezkioga had been preceded by a similarly decapitated figure--also female--which sent Lucía, Francisco and Jacinta, the young shepherds of Fátima, running for cover in 1915. The girl returned to her house and told her mother that she had seen "a white thing hovering over the trees which looked like a headless woman, having neither hands nor eyes." This presence was seen on two more occasions during the Fátima apparitions and became known as the "angel".

Journalist J.J. Benítez, writing in his landmark La Quinta Columna (Plaza y Janés, 1985), makes the curious note that strange headless entities form part of the lore of Spain's Las Hurdes region -- at one time so inaccessible and poor that it became the source of countless legends -- which is scarcely one hundred kilometers away from Fátima and Leira, across the Portuguese border. A mere coincidence or a fact filled with hidden significance?

Not to belabor the point about disturbing, seemingly non-angelic entities seen at Marian apparitions, but it is curious to note that the rituals of the ancient Coptic church (one of the oldest branches of the Christian faith) contain explicit prayers against the presence of "headless demons", such as the one appearing in the Zereteli-Tiflis collection, described as "a text containing a spell to provide protection against headless demons and powers that are bothering the person invoking angels and archangels". To make the link between Marian apparitions even more confusing, another such amulet invokes the virgin Mary's protection against a headless dog: "because I am having a clash with a headless dog, seize him when he comes and release me..." (Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power, Princeton: 1999). One wonders if this orison would have worked against the bat-winged, headless "Mothman" of West Virginia or a similar entity seen landing on a field in Britain in 1965.

Beatings from Beyond?

Salvador Freixedo has also made note of another strange negative feature that seems to afflict many of these Marian apparitions--the appearance of "persons unknown" who inflict bodily harm upon the seers or other involved with the miraculous phenomenon taking place at the site.

In October 1980, Amparo Cuevas, a fifty year-old mother of seven, became known as la vidente de El Escorial (the seeress of El Escorial) for her part in the Marian apparitions which occurred in said location. Cuevas was first visited by undescribable pain and voices which told her the suffering "was that of Christ on the Cross." From that moment on, Cuevas displayed the full range of manifestations that accompany the phenomenon: stigmata--including a curious image of a heart pierced by a sword on her chest--bilocation, levitation,speaking in tongues. She was able to take on the maladies of others, exhibiting the symptoms in her own body. Upon the onset of the pain, Cuevas supposedly "saw a beam of light heading straight toward her" which signalled the start of the mystical communion: during these ecstatic periods she would see the Virgin as a figure swathed from head to toe in a black mantle (with the detail of a white, gauzy veil included) as well as the crucified Christ.

While looking into the controversial El Escorial apparitions, Salvador Freixedo discovered that a gang of unidentified men--their faces conveniently covered by hoods--had inflicted a severe beating on Cuevas. The authorities considered the culprits to be members of some right-wing clique heavily opposed to any deviation of the Catholic doctrine, but the paranormalist drew an interesting conclusion of his own--based on his research into another, little-known Marian phenomenon of the 1970s.

Ladeira do Pinheiro, a small farming community not far from Fátima, became the focus of miraculous activity centered around visionary Maria da Conceicao Mendes. Mendes had startled members of the community and visitors with sixteen separate levitations, being transported--on one occasion--high into the air and losing herself among the clouds; three thousand communion wafers rained out of the heavens during one of the outdoor manifestations (their provenance was later determined to be the churches in the immediate vicinity) while other manifested in her very hands; the UFO phenomenon was also partial to Ladeira and its surroundings during the events, and some of these unknown lights outshone the full moon in their brilliance.

But one particular evening, while Maria da Conceicao Mendes held a nocturnal vigil with other worshippers, a group of men with clubs showed up out of nowhere to kick and batter the congregation. One of the worshippers died of a savage kick to the chest; Mendes lost her front teeth to another. The official explanation was that local roughs from Fátima -- incensed at the thought that Ladeira was "muscling in on the sweet deal" of the miracle business -- took matters into their own hands, possibly abetted by the clergy, who had declared the Ladeira incidents "demonic" from the onset.

"The resemblance between these incidents," writes Freixedo in Las Apariciones del Escorial (Quintá, 1991) "and what occurred at El Escorial is undeniable. Forces, whether human or non-human, appear to be always alert and active. These were not right-wing fanatics [...] but rather entities created by the apparition itself. In other words, they belong to the non-human montage behind the phenomenon. Absurd though it may seem, I suspect that the very entity that appears is the one responsible for the beatings."

The Devil at Garabandal?

So much has been written about the utterly inexplicable events at Garabandal--another town lost in the mountains of the Basque country-- that nothing can be added to it that will either make matters clearer or keep devotees of these apparitions, which ran from 1961 to 1970, from becoming enraged. For readers interested in delving fully into the matter, number of books and journals on the miracle are available in English and Conchita González, the principal seer, lives in the USA. Black and white footage of the girls walking backward and enduring some brutal testing by skeptics has been shown countless times on television.

But the bare bones of the event are as follows: four girls from the small town of Garabandal, near Santander, had repeated visions of both the Virgin and St. Michael and were given prophecies to disclose to the rest of the faithful. On June 18, 1961, while picking apples at a local orchard, the girls heard a "thunderclap" and saw a beautiful figure enveloped in light which they thought was an angel sent to punish them for stealing fruit. Over the course of the following twelve days, the girls would have visions of the same angel, dressed in blue and with pinkish wings, whom they took to be St. Michael the Archangel. The angel told them that they would soon be seeing the Virgin, and they did so after the eight visitation. The Blessed Mother appeared in garb that would be immediately recognizable to any school-age child in a Catholic country: a white dress with a blue mantle, a starry crown, and a scapular at her waist. The heavenly patroness told the girls to inform their elders that sacrifice and penance were in order to avert imminent punishment.

The thousands gathered in Garabandal to see the miracle were hoping for something more substantial, however, and in the wee hours of October 19, 1961 those present saw the famous miracle of the communion wafers manifesting itself on Conchita's opened mouth (and of which photographs have been reproduced in countless journals and religious tracts).

Garabandal's "dark side" -- if it can indeed be said to have one -- came about a few months earlier when theologian Luis Andreu lost his life in a car crash. Andreu had seen the four girls in their ecstatic trances and had been forced to proclaim aloud the miraculous nature of what he was seeing. When asked exactly what the miracle was, he told his friends that he was overwhelmed with joy at what the Virgin had shown him and that it was the happiest day in his life. Shortly after, he fell silent, much to the concern of those around him. The priest had died.

When news of Father Andreu's death reached the young visionaries, they claimed that they had seen the Virgin looking at him at one point, as though saying: "you shall soon be with me".

The death of this respected religious caused the bishopric of Santander to forbid members of the clergy from visiting Garabandal without permission from Church authorities. Worshippers were advised that they too must cease their visits, and the tide of pilgrims to the mountain village was stemmed for a while. But there was another death in the works...

In 1965, Monsignor Puchol assumed the bishop's crook at Santander and was even more stringent in his prohibitions against any veneration of Garabandal, issuing a terse pronouncement: "there has never been any apparition of the Blessed Virgin, nor of the Archangel Michael, nor of any other heavenly personage. There has been no message, and all of the events which have transpired at said location have a natural explanation."

It was this rejection of the miracle of Garabandal that many believed cost the bishop his life: he died while driving his car, allegedly screaming "God, what's wrong with me?!" before the collision. The car crash occurred on the same day as the feast of St. Michael the Archangel.

Another Jesuit father, José Warzawski, wrote a comprehensive study on the phenomenon entitled El Mito de Garabandal (Madrid: Ed. Studium) accepting the reality of the events which occurred at the site but ascribing them all to demonic forces. Does the Church know something else it isn't sharing?

(A version of this article appeared in Paranoia Magazine in 2003)

Source: Inexplicata
http://inexplicata.blogspot.com/2011/04/dark-holiness-forgotten-apparitions.html

A family has been forced to flee their home after they became terrified by a poltergeist.

Even paranormal investigators were 'freaked out' by the activities that included the discovery of the word 'move' written onto a window at the house in Hull, East Yorkshire.

For Emma Keeitch, 31, and her family, the writing in condensation was the final straw and they left the house soon after.

The poltergeist echoes a case last week when the mother of 11-year-old Ellie Manning videoed a poltergeist opening a wardrobe door and moving a chair across a room.

Experts were called in to see what could be done at Miss Keeitch's house, but one of them became so scared that he was going to be attacked by a spirit that he also bolted from the house.

Now the family has been told that they will need to employ the services of an exorcist to rid the house of its spooks.

Paranormal psychic Steve Kneeshaw said: 'I have done many investigations but this is the worst one yet - it even freaked me out.

'It was a very intense evening and some of what happened was totally bizarre.'

Emma and her boyfriend, Jamie Owen, 25, left their home with their four-month-old daughter Pheobie after waking up and seeing the message on their bedroom window.

She claimed that poltergeists had switched on stereos, spun pictures that were hung on walls and even threw a plank of wood into a bin.

She said: 'I've never believed in ghosts and always been very skeptical. But what has happened to us is too much - we just can't stay here any longer.

'We have tried to explain it away. You can blame the electrics or a draft for some things but not everything.'

One of the investigators, Kellie Taylor, said that she was slapped across the face by one of the spirits causing her to flee.

As they continued to look around the house a television remote was thrown across the room and bedding moved by itself.

In his report on the events Elliot Ainley said: 'The house is definitely haunted and has poltergeist activity. There are two spirits haunting the house - that of a mother and that of a baby.

'The mother spirit seems particularly angry, probably at the way she died, which is why objects are being thrown about.

'We decided to do some glass divination, during which Kellie had her face seemingly lightly slapped by a spirit hand.

'Through this we determined that there were two spirits - a mother and baby and the names "Rachel" and "Sarah" also became apparent.

'They appear to have both died quickly and tragically. The master bedroom proved to be a very active area. All three of us were in this room calling out for the spirit when I had a TV remote control thrown across the room at me.'

A retired Church of England clergyman, Reverend Tom Willis, has now been called in and is expected to carry out an exorcism next week.

He said: 'The first thing you need to do is diagnose what is causing it then I simply bless the house and pray what is there is removed.

'Hauntings are usually lonely spirits that have refused to move on.

'I don't get scared by this as I'm not actually that psychic and haven't seen an apparition in 50 years.

'What I do brings relief to both the spirit and those bothered by it.'

Source: The Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1377249/Poltergeist-forces-family-home.html

From unexplained noises to flying objects to attacks on people, this is some of the strangest, scariest poltergeist activity ever documented.

Picture the Earth in the blackness of space, spinning on its axis, orbiting the sun, with the moon following its orbit around the Earth - all in accordance with the predictable laws of physics. All is as it should be. But look more carefully at that bright blue planet. Go in closer... move toward that land mass, down to that town, into that house at the end of the block. All is not as it should be there. Something is not right. There - and in many other houses around that planet throughout history and even today - things don't always seem to be operating by the laws of physics as we know them. Dishes fly out of cupboards; loud crashes are heard with no apparent cause; stones rain down from nowhere; covers are yanked off beds; people are pushed, poked and even slapped -- all by some mysterious, invisible force.

There is no scientific accounting for these occurrences. Yet they happen. They have been seen, experienced and documented since ancient times. Hundreds upon hundreds of cases; perhaps even thousands. We call them poltergeists and we have no idea what causes them. Some believe they are psychokinetic manifestations of our own subconscious, while others think they are caused by ghosts (or a combination of the two); yet others believe they are the work of demons.

No one knows for sure. The activity usually begins with unexplained knocks, raps or rolling noises. Then it sometimes escalates into lights and other mechanical or electric appliances working on their own. Occasionally small objects and even furniture are moved about; objects are thrown and clothing is torn. Bedcovers whipped off sleeping people are a favorite poltergeist prank. If it gets really bad, in rare cases, people are physically assaulted by the mysterious energy. Then after several days or weeks the phenomena simply fades away and disappears as mysteriously as it began.

...All while our planet, solar system and galaxy revolve just as our science and mathematics predict. How can we reconcile it all? What is going on here?

Poltergeist activity is one of the most fascinating and baffling areas of paranormal investigation. It's especially enticing because there are physical phenomena taking place. We aren't talking about mere hazy sightings or strange feelings. Things move! Bangs rattle the walls! Objects appear out of thin air! There's no room in science for this nonsense. Yet they happen.

Consider the following, a tiny sample of some of the strangest, unexplainable physical manifestations from a few well-known poltergeist cases.

THINGS SMASHED, THROWN AND MOVED

Unexplained noises - banging, knocking, pounding, footsteps - are by far the most common type of poltergeist phenomena (poltergeist means "noisy spirit), and perhaps the most benign. There are extreme cases, however.

In 1962, Harper's Magazine carried an article about a couple in Cape Cod who were experiencing a whole host of poltergeist noises, including tapping and clicking noises, and the sound of a man walking around on an upstairs floor when no one was there. Such sounds might be explained away as house settling noises, but one summer night they were startled by what the homeowner called "the grand piano smash" - a crash so loud from the garage that is sounded like a huge piano dropped to the floor. They even worried that the ceiling had collapsed. Upon inspection, of course, the garage was empty and intact.

More unsettling than noise is when objects we usually consider inanimate begin to move or fly around.

One of the earliest accounts of poltergeist activity comes from Annales Fuldenses describing an event that occurred in 858 A.D.! On a farm near the town of Bingen along the Rhine river, a farmer was the victim of stones being thrown at himself and his house by some unknown source. When holymen came to help rid the farm of the evil force, they too were pelted with stones. The Bingens were also the victims of spontaneous fires that destroyed much of their just-harvested crops. (Spontaneous fires are also not uncommon.)

The Golding household of Stockwell, England was tormented by a number of things thrown in 1772:

Stacks of dishes flew off the kitchen shelves, smashing on the floor - bottles of wine and rum that were about to be served to guests, shattered -     joints of ham that were curing on hooks on the ceiling thumped to the floor - the coal scuttle was overturned - candlesticks flew across the room -     a bucket of cold water suddenly began to boil.

If you're thinking this could all be explained by an earthquake, the events did not all happen at once, but over a period of time. The disturbances ended when the young maid was fired.

The Phelps family of Stratford, Connecticut, was likewise plagued with very similar poltergeist antics in 1850, which included a candlestick that leapt off the fireplace mantle and repeatedly smashed itself against the floor until it broke.

In 1658, the house occupied by Mrs. Stiff, her two daughters and her mother, Mrs. Cowley in Northamptonshire, England became the target of a prankster poltergeist:

Furniture was stacked in front of a doorway - flax was continually taken out of its box and thrown about, even when the box had been closed and locked -
a loaf of bread was seen "dancing" around the kitchen - Mrs. Stiff's shoes floated around the upstairs - stones flew through the windows - in both directions - a carving knife went hurling toward a servant, point first, but at the last instant it rotated in midair to harmlessly strike the man with the handle.

PUSHES, PULLS AND POKES

Violence against our person is disturbing enough when inflicted by other people. Think how much more disconcerting it is when you cannot even see your assailant!

Eleven-year-old Dinah McLean, the adopted daughter of the Dagg family of Quebec, Canada, was the focus of a severe case of poltergeist activity in September, 1889. The disturbance began when the family noticed money inexplicably being moved around the house. And when Mrs. Dagg began finding what appeared to be feces smeared on walls, a boy who did chores for them was blamed and promptly dismissed. But then the poltergeist attacked Dinah, pulling her braids so violently that some of the hair was broken and the braids had to be cut off. Stones were also thrown in this case.

In the famous 1817 Bell Witch case, in which daughter Betsy Bell appeared to be the catalyst for the activity, both she and her father, John Bell, had their hair pulled with great force. Betsy and other Bell children received sharp slaps across the face. The Bells also experienced stones and sticks being thrown, furniture moved about, covers pulled off beds and fires started.

The Reverend Phelps, whose family was mentioned above, became a personal target of the poltergeist on several occasions: He was lifted into the air to a height that nearly crashed his head into the ceiling; was pushed into a water cistern; was tied up and suspended from a tree; in the presence of other clergymen, both legs of his pants were ripped apart from cuff to knee.

APORTS

An aport is an object that materializes from nowhere, as if by magic, and it may be the most mysterious and rarest of all poltergeist phenomena. I remember reading about the Beaird case, described below, in a Hans Holzer book when I was a teenager, and it has stayed with me my entire life and is one of the astonishing cases that led me to study this field.

Whether the objects literally materialize out of thin air or are gathered and carried some impossible distance by the unseen force, here are a few remarkable apart cases:

In the Bell Witch case, when mother Lucy Bell fell ill, the poltergeist expressed sympathy for her, then showered her with hazel nuts. Later, again seemingly from nowhere, a basket of fresh fruit materialized, which included oranges and bananas.

It was also observed that Lucy Bell, in her illness, would vomit, but at least on one occasion the vomit contained dozens of pins and needles! Very strange, but not unique. In a poltergeist case recorded in the book Sadducismus Triumphatus in 1682, Mary Longdon was afflicted with showers of stones, even while indoors, and also would vomit pins and needles. She blamed the weirdness on a curse placed on her by a witch.

In a case investigated by the late, great Hans Holzer, the Beaird house of Tyler, Texas documented strange aports in the early 1960s. The various manifestations might have been psychokinetic phenomena brought about by Mrs. Baeird - named Johnnie, but called John - who was mentally ill and either confined to her room or away from the house when these events occurred:

Hundreds of dead June bugs were thrown into the faces of Mr. Baeird and his son Andy at night - "dead so long that they were crisp and would crumble between our fingers," Baeird said they were later similarly pelted with wood lice (what are commonly called pill bugs, the kind that roll up into a ball when touched), which do not fly, but that struck the Beairds "as if they were shot out of a gun" - then slimy slugs were thrown around the house -     handwritten notes from John materialized out of thin air, sometimes in response to questions; dozens upon dozens of notes materialized "from right out of nowhere, simply materializing out of midair, some folding themselves as they came toward us."

This is just a small sampling of the number, variety and severity of poltergeist cases. If you want more detailed information about the above cases and many, many others, I highly recommend the following books.

Poltergeist: A Study in Destructive Haunting by Colin Wilson - Poltergeists and Other Hauntings by Rupert Matthews - Ghosts: True Encounters with the World Beyond by Hans Holzer - Ghosts, Apparitions and Poltergeists by Brian Righi

Source: paranormal.about.com
http://paranormal.about.com/od/poltergeists/a/Scariest-Poltergeist-Activity.htm

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Source: The Sheboygan Press
http://www.wisinfo.com/sheboyganpress/news/archive/local_20494839.shtml