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The Mackie Poltergeist

I realise people will consider that it's all down to interpretation, but that's not what I meant.
It's not dissimilar to children believing in Santa and goblins etc... They only do so through innocence, which could be also considered ignorance. We don't because we realise they are creations and traditions and we know their origins.
Poltegeist occurences could be (If they aren't all bollocks!)...akin to mundanity before knowledge, like lightning and "Jack o lantern" were to our frightened ancestors.....and that.
Personally, I don't believe anything unless it's been proven and has a reasonable explanation.
I bet a million quid someone posts something on the lines of *(After quote) so...you don't believe in ****** or ******? etc....*:p
 
I think Spillage is right, in that there's a cultural bias at work. We're brought up with one set of stories that get ingrained into us from an early age. Stories from elsewhere don't have the same weight and resonance - they're 'just stories'.
 
i have always wondered with paranormal events how much of the explaination is due to cultural conditioning?
 
My knee-jerk reaction to that is "probably quite a bit".

When things happen that are within our experience, we dip into what we know to deal with them. If something happens that's outside that experience, we're going to try applying whatever else we know to explain the situation and that fund of knowledge is going to include folk tales, or religion, or childhood stories. Look at the number of earthworks and oddities in the UK that are attributed to 'The Devil' as an example.
 
It's over a decade since we heard anything about the Mackie Poltergeist of 1695. This was a Scots Poltergeist case of unusual violence.

I'm bumping it now because this page seems to contain a complete transcription of the pamphlet on the case by Telfair, published the following year.

There is one imperfect passage, where italic fonts? have caused glitches in the OCR but it is a remarkable case, attested by a number of ministers of the church. Maybe the religious aspect renders it suspect now but I don't recall it being treated at length in the usual literature on polts. :)
 
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