The Playful Type of Ghost

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23767, 21 September 1940, Page 4 (Supplement)

The Playful Type of Ghost

F takes all sorts of ghosts ti make a spirit world, writes Mr. Harry Price, the well-known London authority 011 such matters. From apparitions to astrals, and from ectoplasms to elementals, the investigator—especially the armchair investigator —has a lively assortment to choose from. But it is those mischievous, gamesome, and rather lovable stone-throwing, furniture-moving, window-smash-ing, china-breaking, and nosetweaking ghosts that are, to me, the most intriguing. The Nazis , have a word for them: They call them 1 oltergeister, from the Germai noltern to racket or rattle, and the name fits them like a glove. If Mr. Price finds these playful little fellows the most amusing—and certainly the most convincing—of "spirits," so apparently, does Mr. Sacheverell Sitwell. In his latest book, "Poltergeists, he has devoted some 400 pages to the recording and examination of many of the poltergeist cases kno llr to SitweH' 1 s St novel and delightful book is a veritable epitome of poller ccist activitv in various parts of the world and is so entertaining that the general reader, no less than the student of the occult, will bo thrilled by its strange contents. "Poltergeists." by Sacheverell Sitwell. (Faber and Faber.)