Weird People

Alleged psychic and healer, Matthew Manning was born in 1955, and, according to his autobiography, found himself at the centre of inexplicable events from an early age. In February 1967, when Matthew was eleven, the family – his father and mother, sister and brother, were living in a relatively modern detached house in Cambridge. One Saturday morning Matthew’s father discovered a silver tankard, which was usually kept on a shelf above a cupboard, lying on its side on the floor.

Though the object was curiously undamaged by the ‘fall’ nothing much was thought of it at the time. However, on the following Wednesday morning the tankard was again found in the same position on the floor. This time the family was a little puzzled and decided to test whether something was causing the object to slide horizontally off the shelf. That night Matthew’s parents surrounded the tankard with a ring of talcum powder. Next morning the tankard was again found on the floor, but the powder ring was undisturbed.

It must therefore have risen vertically off the shelf. Soon other objects began to mysteriously move around the house, and the family began to get seriously worried about what they should do.

After contacting the doctor and the police they were put in touch with the Cambridge Psychical Research Society and their expert on poltergeist activity (and author of the book ‘Can We Explain the Poltergeist?’) Dr. George Owen. Though Owen could offer no ‘cure’ for the phenomena, he suggested that, due to his age, Matthew was probably the centre of the activity and that such manifestations rarely lasted more than a month or two. Later, he came to visit the family and was of much help in dealing with the situation.

Meanwhile, according to Manning, the phenomena increased in number and intensity. Various items were moved or disappeared, there were loud knocking and creaking sounds and objects flew violently around the house. As is often the case with poltergeists, no objects moved while the rooms were being watched. As Matthew’s father put it: ‘This poltergeist was a silent operator and not to be caught red-handed. It was teasingly just that much faster and far-seeing than humans.’

In autumn 1968 the Mannings moved to an 18th century house in the village of Linton, about eight miles away from their former home. All was quiet for a while, but in July 1970 the doors on an antique wardrobe in Matthew’s room began opening of their own accord, heralding the return of the poltergeist with a vengeance. Heavy ornaments were moved around, tables and chairs were piled on top of each other, objects disappeared to be found later hidden or in a different place. There were various electrical problems and, in August 1971, apports (objects appearing seemingly from nowhere) began to appear on the landings and staircases, an old bee’s wax candle, fossils, an ancient loaf of rock hard bread and a string of beads were some of the items found. Child-like scribbles materialized on the walls in the house written in pencil, though no one saw them appear – they seemed rather to grow from the walls themselves.

Early Psychic Abilities

There were also poltergeist outbreaks and other strange happenings at Matthew’s school – chairs and heavy bunk beds in the dormitory were moved around, there were apports such as broken glass, nails and pebbles, table knives were propelled against a wall, pools of water materialized, and odd lights appeared on the walls. The headmaster was at his wit’s end and twice almost expelled Matthew, only relenting at the last minute.

At school Matthew had an out–of-the-body experience where he apparently managed to astrally project himself back into his home; his mother felt his presence and he saw the inside of his house, though physically he was lying on his bunk bed in his school. If he could do this, Matthew reasoned, why not try and astrally project himself into the past? Back at home one weekend he lapsed into a trance-like state. After half an hour he could hear a woman’s soft voice – she identified herself as Henrietta Webb, who had died in 1673 and had lived in the house. Other ‘spirits’ that had lived in the house came through and eventually Matthew found himself witnessing a scene from 1731 when the house had just been built.

Automatic Writing

Shortly after this while Matthew was writing an essay for school, he became stuck for something to write. Suddenly his pen hand went down onto the paper and begun to write incomprehensible sentences in a strange scrawled handwriting, definitely not his own. He later tried this again in the company of six school friends and was soon getting messages from ‘someone’, albeit very confused and unintelligible ones. After this particular experiment in what is known as ‘automatic writing’ there was no poltergeist activity for over thirty-six hours. In fact, every time he practiced automatic writing the poltergeist phenomena would temporarily cease.

Matthew continued to write these messages, the communications becoming more coherent as time went on. Most of them seemed to be from ‘spirits’ who had either died unpleasantly or who did not know they were dead. Matthew also began producing automatic writing in languages completely unknown to him, such as Greek and Arabic.

Another development was the appearance of signatures on the walls in many different types of handwriting, again seemingly from departed spirits. When pencils were left in a locked room, scratching noises were heard suggesting the action of writing. But this would never take place when anyone was actually in the room watching. In one particular week in 1971 more than five hundred signatures – some dated – appeared on the walls of Matthew’s bedroom. The room had been locked and some of the signatures appeared in extremely inaccessible places such as on the ceiling and even on the lampshade. The signatures apparently represented people from the village that had lived from the 14thth to the 19th centuries, and some of them were subsequently traced through parish registers.

It is not uncommon for writing to be reported in connection with alleged poltergeist hauntings. In Stratford, Connecticut in 1850-51, a Dr. Phelps found the message ‘Very nice paper and very nice ink for the devil’ written on a piece of paper in his study, and in a case in southern India in the 1920s, writing appeared on walls inside the house.

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