The Pearisburg Poltergeist
In December 1975 or 1976 a foster boy's arrival in Pearisburg, Virginia, set off flying objects. J. Gaither Pratt of UVA investigated. It was not a 1938 case.
The Pearisburg poltergeist was a case in Giles County, Virginia, in the mid-1970s. A nine-year-old foster boy was placed with a widow, Mrs Beulah Wilson. From 19 December, objects in her house were reported to fly, fall and tip over. On Christmas Eve the police took the boy away, and the trouble stopped. The parapsychologist J. Gaither Pratt of the University of Virginia investigated and wrote the case up as “The Pearisburg poltergeist” in 1978. Earlier versions of this page dated it to 1938. That is wrong. Pratt was a young researcher at Duke in 1938, and the case belongs to his last years at Virginia.
What happened
The boy was a ward of the state. According to the summary of Pratt’s report in the SPR’s Psi Encyclopedia, his parents were alcoholics who could not care for him. He was placed with Mrs Wilson, a widow in Pearisburg, a few weeks before Christmas.
The disturbances began on 19 December. Objects were said to fly, fall or tip over while the boy was with Mrs Wilson. Stacy Horn, who wrote about Pratt’s work in her book Unbelievable, says a neighbour came over while it was going on and confirmed what was happening. Mrs Wilson told people she thought “the hand of the Lord” was behind it.
One later account goes further. Victor Zammit writes that police came to the house on 19 December 1976, at first doubted the complaint, and then saw dishes and wooden chairs being smashed. He says they saw a 200-pound kitchen cabinet floating in the air. Zammit gives no source for this. We could not find it in any account tied to Pratt, and it should be treated with caution.
On Christmas Eve the activity broke out again. The police were called to take the boy away. He spent Christmas Eve at the police station until a social worker collected him. Pratt noted that about a dozen presents for him were left unopened under Mrs Wilson’s tree. Two days after Christmas he was placed in another foster home. The reports say the disturbances at the house ended when he left.
The investigation
Pratt had spent nearly thirty years at J. B. Rhine’s laboratory at Duke University. In 1963 he moved to the University of Virginia to work with Ian Stevenson, and he retired in 1976. With William Roll he had already studied two of the best known American poltergeist cases, Seaford in 1958 and Miami in 1967.
Pratt came to Pearisburg after the events, so his report rests on interviews. Horn quotes his conclusion. “I personally have no doubt that this case was paranormal in nature.” Earlier versions of this page also gave a quote saying “no normal explanation could be given”. Horn attaches those words to a different Virginia case Pratt studied, at Powhatan in 1974, not to Pearisburg.
How to read it
The case fits the pattern Pratt and Roll called recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis. The activity centred on one child under stress, began soon after a big change in his life, and stopped when he was moved. Sceptics read the same pattern a different way. A child who is the focus of every incident is also the most likely person to be causing them, whether in play, in distress or to get attention. Pratt’s investigation came after the fact, so no one was in the house watching under controlled conditions. His report is the main source, and the details that circulate online come from retellings of it.
The boy was never named. A reader comment on Horn’s blog says the Roanoke Times later profiled the case and that he grew up and stayed in Giles County. We have not found that article.