I’d like to recount to you a case that was told to me by a retired US serviceman now living in Thailand. He kindly answered a request I put out on social media for reports of poltergeist type phenomena, as that is a big area of interest for me, in fact, cases of this type have held my interest since I was a child and they continue to amaze me to this very day nearly 30 years later.
Tony, (I have changed his name for reasons of anonymity) was at the time of the disturbances living in the state of Arizona although his military career had taken him to many different parts of the world and it is because of these travels that he met his Taiwanese wife who plays a pivotal role in this case.
Sometime in 1985 his wife left their Arizona family home to take a trip back to northern Thailand to visit family and friends and enjoy the culture of her birth. It was whilst on this trip that she decided to take a day trip to a local Buddhist monastery where she was presented by an abbot of the monastery what Tony describes as a small glass vial, containing two carved wooden figurines of young boys said to have attached to them some sort of spirits or elementals. I, of course, asked why she was given the vial containing these paranormal entities and I was told that the Abbot felt that she was the right one to take charge of it given her kind and moral character. So accepting the gift and finishing her holiday she made the return trip home to her husband in Arizona.
On her returning home to the states the vial was placed in their basic Buddhist shrine that was housed in a small back room of the family home and the carvings became known affectionately as The Boys.
All was well in the household for a number of years after Tony’s wife’s returned from her trip and they lived a normal life with their family, and The Boys rested quietly on the house hold shrine. Then, at some point in the late 80’s things took a rather curious turn.
Tony and his wife were often visited by a few Asian women, who would come around to practice their beliefs at the shrine. They would perform small ceremonies, chanting and praying, asking The Boys to bestow luck and good fortune upon them. It was even mentioned that the women also asked for glimpses of the futures for themselves and their families, I was told that these glimpses would not occur right away, but at a seemingly random time after they had returned home. They would receive a vision of what was yet to come in their lives. But, rather chillingly the spirits would also appear to them in a way that reflected their personality and deeds. If the women were of good character then the apparitions would appear as what we in the west might describe as an angelic form. Whereas if the women were of a bad moral character then the spirits would show themselves as dark and demonic. It was during one of these sessions that something rather odd happened. The women had been performing their usual devotions and one woman, a Laotian, started to behave very oddly indeed. Instead of her normal voice, the issue from her mouth was multiple voices, both male and female at the same time, each over lapping one another. This naturally unnerved Terry and he told me that in his opinion no human could perform such a trick and went on to say that is was “amazing to see“. I am unsure how long this went on for but it was the start of a series of unexplained events that manifested in their household.
The next event that Terry listed again happened when the women were at worship. On the shrine were placed, as you might expect, two candlestick holders each able to hold multiple candles. Terry and several witnesses observed each candlestick to rise an inch or two from the altar and then crash to the floor, no doubt alarming all of those who had viewed it. Whilst talking to Tony he came across as a very logical and thoughtful man and with his background in engineering, communications and the military he has a logical and problem-solving mind. The phenomenon of the rising candles happen on more than one occasion and each time he would try his best to deduce what had caused them to move and each time he wasn’t able to come up with a satisfactory solution, stating that “it was just something that happened in silence“.
As time went on the events would take a wholly more audible turn. During the times of worship a loud banging would come from the roof sometimes a single bang and at other times a series of loud thumps would be heard reverberating their way throughout the home. Again this caused unease to the occupants and again Terry put on his detective hat and tried to get to the bottom of what was going on. He went out into his yard to see if he could find evidence of people being there and perhaps throwing things onto the roof of his single story house, he also got onto the roof to look for any evidence there but in all his searches yet once more failed to find an answer, at one point even his teenage son was sent on to the roof to look but he also found nothing. Then the thumps and bangs started to happen in the house when there was no ceremony or worship going on, they would develop at seemingly random times day and night. And during that time things took a rather personal turn for Terry on a few occasions after the ceremony was finished he told me he felt dirty and kind of soiled by the affair, so he took to taking a shower to refresh himself afterward. It was whilst showering that on a few occasions he experienced a touch or light poke of a finger, I neglected to ask him where on the body it would happen but I think we’ll assume it wasn’t anything to x-rated.
All in all the events became too much for this ex-serviceman and he asked his wife and her friends to no longer commune with The Boys during their devotions. They agreed to Tony’s request and the anomalous events ceased.
A few years after the events the couple moved to Thailand and the boys ended up with their son in Los Vegas, where they remain peacefully to this day.
So what can we make from this case? Well, firstly I spent 2 hours talking with Terry about the tale I just presented to you, as well as his military service and other parts of his life story. He came across as a sober and intelligent man and most of all honest. I believed firmly that these events happened to him. But what these events were is anybody’s guess. I suppose that theories could be proposed for the bangs, the levitating candle sticks and even the touching in the shower. But unless it was an elaborate technological prank I think most people would find it hard to find a logical explanation for the woman who exhibited multiple over lapping voices.
It seems to me that there are similarities with lots of other phenomena going on here. Firstly the multiple voices coming from the woman are very reminiscent of what Catholics would call demonic possession. Next, the banging on the roof and the levitation of the candle sticks strike me as poltergeist-like and even spirits or elemental house in a bottle is not dissimilar to stories of the Djinn. Maybe this is a brief but good example of the theory that a lot of anomalous phenomena aren’t the separate events or entities that we have pigeon hold them as maybe they are from the same source and their legends and stories only sound different due to cultural differences. I think we should perhaps stop putting these things in various neat little boxes separating them from each other and maybe start to look at the similarities. How different is demonic possession from some polt events? Why during polt events are shadow people seen? Isn’t it odd that there are similarities between stories of the Fae and UFO abductions and for that matter between the Fae and certain poltergeist events?