Case file · Haunting
The Thornton Heath poltergeist
In 1938 the house of Alma Fielding in Thornton Heath, south London, saw flying crockery and 'apports'. Nandor Fodor of the International Institute for Psychical Research investigated.
1938 CE · 51.40, -0.10 · status: disputed
The account
Fodor concluded the phenomena were tied to Fielding's past trauma, and that the poltergeist was 'a bundle of projected repressions'.
The sceptical view
Fodor caught her cheating in tests; his psychoanalytic view still suggested a human source.