‘Really? You can tell them to do that?’
Yes, he said. The practice did no harm. People sucked of their vitality might just feel a bit tired.
Had he had any bad experiences?
‘For some reason,’ said my driver, ‘I keep attracting demons. I did have a demon stuck to the side of my face. I could feel it clawing constantly and it took me about three months to get rid of it.’ I thought of the claws on Alma’s back, the jabs in her pelvis, the teeth in her neck.
The taxi driver lifted his right hand from the wheel and pressed it hard against his cheek.
Les and Alma’s sons Peter (left) and Don (right) with another child in the summer of 1926
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
hereAlma Fielding in Croydon, 1948. Courtesy of Barry Fielding.
hereIllustration by John Farleigh originally published in Christina Hole’s Haunted England: A Survey of English Ghost-Lore (1940).
hereNandor Fodor in 1934. Courtesy of Shutterstock.
hereIllustration by John Farleigh, as above.
hereAlma and Les Fielding on Eastbourne beach, 1920, and Alma, Les and Don at Ramsgate, 1929, courtesy of Barry Fielding. Photograph of George Saunders, Don Fielding and Alma Fielding published in the Sunday Pictorial of 21 February 1938, courtesy of Mirrorpix/Reach PLC.
hereIllustration by John Farleigh, as above.
hereStudio portrait of Jessie Bannister, Alma Smith, Doris Smith, Alice Smith, circa 1912; Charles and Charlie Smith in a garden in Thornton Heath, 1925; and Les Fielding in uniform, circa 1916. All courtesy of Barry Fielding.
hereCourtesy of Barry Fielding.
NOTE ON SOURCES
The main sources for this book are ‘The Fielding (Forbes) Poltergeist Diary’, in the Eileen J. Garrett Library at the Parapsychology Foundation, New York; the Mediums and Research files in the archive of the Society for Psychical Research at Cambridge University Library; and Nandor Fodor’s publications, especially On the Trail of the Poltergeist. These sources are detailed below, along with the other books, journals, newspapers and manuscripts I have used. I have also drawn on conversations with Andrea Fodor Litkei, Barry Fielding and Leslie Fielding, as well as papers and photographs in their private collections.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
MANUSCRIPTS
Society for Psychical Research Archive, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, Cambridge University Library
MS SPR/19 [papers relating to Eileen Garrett]
MS SPR/31 [papers relating to the International Institute for Psychical Research]
MS SPR/Mediums: Abbott, Mr & Mrs
MS SPR/Mediums: Agustsdotter, Fru Lara [Lára Agústsdóttir]
MS SPR/Mediums: Brown, Harry
MS SPR/Mediums: Bullock, Mrs
MS SPR/Mediums: Cockersell, R.
MS SPR/Mediums: Dickson, Mrs J.
MS SPR/Mediums: Fielding, Mr A. [Alma Fielding]
MS SPR/Mediums: Garrett, Mrs Eileen
MS SPR/Mediums: Harrison, Mrs
MS SPR/Mediums: Kolb, Theodore
MS SPR/Mediums: Leaf, Horace
MS SPR/Mediums: Lewis, Miss Hylda
MS SPR/Mediums: Pap, Lajos
MS SPR/Mediums: Richardson, Mr & Mrs
MS SPR/Mediums: Rasmussen, A.
MS SPR/Mediums: Roberts, Estelle
MS SPR/Mediums: Schermann, Raphael
MS SPR/Mediums: Singleton, Mr [Louisa Bolt, aka Mrs Singleton]
MS SPR/Mediums: Woodward, D. A. [Richard Woodward]
MS SPR/Mediums: Zugun, Mme [Eleonore Zugun]
MS SPR/Research/ Cloud Chamber Experiments
MS SPR/Research/ H66 [Bethnal Green & Barkingside hauntings]
MS SPR/Research/ H149 [Ash Manor haunting]
MS SPR/Research/ H276 [Aldborough Manor haunting]
MS SPR/Research/ P15 [Thornton Heath poltergeist]
MS SPR/Research/ Psychic Photography
Eileen J. Garrett Library, Parapsychology Foundation, New York, NY
‘The Fielding (Forbes) Poltergeist Diary’
National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey
J54/2351 [documents from Fodor’s libel suit at the High Court of Justice, March 1939]
Hoover Institution, Stanford, California
Nandor Fodor papers, 1921-1945, 80031
Firestone Library, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
Hereward Carrington papers C1159, Box 1, Folder 46
College of Psychic Studies, London
IIPR members’ advice cards, seasonal programmes, income and expenditure accounts, and correspondence between Fodor and Mercy Phillimore
British Institute of Psychoanalysis, London
CFD/F12/01 [letter from Fodor to Ernest Jones, 23 Oct 1953]
Harry Price archive, Senate House Library, University of London
HPC/4B/295 [Nandor Fodor, 1936-1938]
HPC/7/19 [International Institute for Psychical Research Ltd 1934-38]
HPC/7/22 [Press cuttings concerning the International Institute for Psychical Research]
Eric John Dingwall papers, Senate House Library, University of London
MS912/1/244 [letters from Fodor]
MS912/1/22 [scrapbook including correspondence with Fodor]
MS912/1/10 [scrapbook including letters from Fodor]
General Records Office
Death certificates of James Stephen Bannister, Jessie Bannister (née Richardson), Alma Daisy Fielding (née Smith), Donald Richard Fielding, Laurence Peter Fielding, Leslie Edward Fielding, George Joseph Saunders, Alice Maud Smith (née Bannister), Charles Smith, Doris Smith, Arthur Gerald Wills
Private papers
Private papers of Barry Fielding, Axminster, Devon
Private papers of Andrea Fodor Litkei, New York, NY
BOOKS & ARTICLES
Addison, Adrian, Mail Men: The Unauthorised Story of the Daily Mail (London, 2017)
Angoff, Allan, Eileen Garrett and the World Beyond the Senses (New York, 2009)
Asquith, Cynthia, ed., The Ghost Book (London, 1926)
—The Second Ghost Book, with an introduction by Elizabeth Bowen (London, 1952)
—Shudders: A Collection of New Nightmare Tales (London, 1929)
Auden, W. H., Another Time (London & New York, 1940)
Bennett, Ernest, Apparitions and Haunted Houses: A Survey of Evidence (London, 1939)
Benson, E. F., Spook Stories (London, 1928)
Blackwood, Algernon, Shocks (London, 1935)
Blum, Deborah, Ghost Hunters: William James and the Scientific Search for Life After Death (New York, 2006) Bowen, Elizabeth, The Cat Jumps and Other Stories (London, 1934)
—The Demon Lover and Other Stories (London, 1945)
Brandon, Ruth, The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New York, 1983)
Briggs, Julia, Night Visitors: The Rise and Fall of the English Ghost Story (London, 1977)
Buse, Peter, and Stott, Andrew, ed., Ghosts: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, History (London, 1999)
Carrington, Hereward, Haunted People: The Story of the Poltergeist Down the Centuries, with Nandor Fodor (London, 1953)
—Historic Poltergeists and the Saragossa Ghost: International Institute for Psychical Research Bulletin I, with Nandor Fodor (London, 1935)
—Modern Psychical Phenomena (New York, 1919)
—A Primer of Psychical Research (New York, 1932)
—Psychical Phenomena & the War (New York, 1918)
Carter, Angela, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (London, 1979) Christie, Agatha, The Hound of Death and Other Stories (London, 1933)