New Jersey

The energy behind hauntings is something most of us take very much for granted, and that's our emotions. And nowhere are the effects of emotional energy on physical reality more evident than in the hundreds of poltergeist cases on record. One of the most documented cases lasted only two weeks in a low income housing project in Newark. It all began in the apartment of Mabelle Clark, when her 13-year-old grandson, Ernest Rivers, was doing his homework on the kitchen table. To his amazement, a pepper shaker floated over from the stove and landed beside him. For the next two weeks, plates, cups, bowls, glasses, ashtrays, and other fragile objects sailed across their tiny apartment and smashed to the floor. Mrs. Clark tried to keep the unexplainable events secret, because she did not want to be evicted from the apartment where she had lived for 20 years. But neighbors started complaining about all the noise, and before long, representatives from the Newark Housing Authority were knocking at her door. When the officials beheld the unseen force wrecking havoc on the apartment, they brought in a team of parapsychologists. Word of the case spread, and hordes of reporters and curiosity-seekers descended on the building. There were so many people around that over 50 paranormal events were observed by multiple witnesses. A heavy steam iron floated from the linen closet into Mrs. Clark's bedroom, in full view of several people. A table lamp levitated across the living room and a drinking glass rose in mid-air, broke to pieces, then fell to the floor in slow motion. That same evening, Ernest's uncle was attacked by a sudden barrage of small objects. The phenomena stopped when young Ernest was removed from the apartment. He was a deeply troubled youth, whose mother had murdered his abusive prizefighter father five years earlier. Just before the poltergeist activity began, Ernest's mother escaped from a woman's reformatory and was not apprehended until a month later.

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