Scottish writer, curator, and editor Evelyn Hollow is a former psychology lecturer and holds a Master of Research degree in Paranormal Psychology. She has been consulting on the BBC Radio 4 podcast The Battersea Poltergeist, and in the immediate aftermath of the live tweetalong with the penultimate episode, she chatted with Paul Simpson.

It really does seem to be that people just can’t make their minds up about this case.

Yes, a lot of people keep swapping back and forth, and the twists and turns in this case are insane. I think there’s a lot of people with one theory, then the next episode it gets obliterated and they’ve got to change to another theory. It just gets progressively more wild as the episodes go on.

How much did you know about the case before this all kicked off.

I didn’t; the only Battersea Poltergeist case that I knew about was the earlier case from the 1920s I think, the Harry Price one. So when Danny got in contact with me and said “Battersea Poltergeist case” I just assumed it was that one. It wasn’t until they sent me over some more information that I thought ‘The 50s? That doesn’t sound right’. So I went away and dug into it and the only thing that was really available was the book, The Poltergeist Prince of London that James Clark wrote, so I ordered a copy of that and started digging through it. I couldn’t believe that I’d never heard of this case before, considering it went on for 12 years and is absolutely insane.

So they got in touch with me and said, ‘We’re doing a show, we’re looking to solve this poltergeist case’ and I’m always up for that. When I looked at it, the first thing that jumped out at me was how long it went on for. I had never heard of a poltergeist case going on for anywhere remotely near 12 years. Then also just the level of phenomena in it: it has your usual noises that escalate to objects moving but then you’ve also got fires, and the phenomena isn’t confined to the house, it happens outside of the house. You’ve got multiple reporters, you’ve got policemen, you’ve got the fire brigade. The poltergeist case was talked about in the House of Commons which is absolutely incredible.

I would say the duration of the case and also just the level of phenomena and the number of different people who were all witness to it as well, is really what drew me into it.

Do you think witnesses are an important facet in order to establish whether there is something or not?

Yes, I would say so. Most poltergeist cases it’ll centre around a house or a family or a couple of people, and sometimes as the case gets bigger you get maybe a couple of reporters involved, or maybe an investigation or someone coming to the house. In terms of things like confirmation bias and witnesses feeding off of each other and getting information leaked back to them, and also what Ciaran talks about a lot with the impact of fear on what people think they’re experiencing – the main thing that determines how people react to fear, like in the helmet experiments is personality type, it’s variations within people. So to have a pool of witnesses that are all different ages, all different socioeconomic backgrounds, all different races, whether they believe, so sceptics, different religious beliefs. It’s incredibly varied so to have all those different types of people from all different backgrounds, some of which have absolutely nothing to do with the case at all, like the fire brigade or the insurance investigator. Also people who were staunch sceptics, who really went in wanting to ignore phenomena, all witnessing things is really key to the case.

Being able to trick a family? Yes sure, they could be sleep deprived, they could be terrified, they could be feeding off of each other, maybe even a couple of journalists [affected as well], but for 12 years with a massive pool of people from such different variety? The statistical likelihood of that would have to be even greater than a paranormal explanation, it would be absolutely impossible to endorse that you could fool that many people over that amount of time

I saw lots of people on the live discussion saying, ‘Oh, I think the family are in on it, it’s the brother or it’s Shirley and they’ve roped in the other family members. And that Shirley really wants to leave and they’re all in cahoots with each other’ and I’m like ‘Have you ever tried doing a group project? Even with just four people, trying to get them all on the same page and get them working? It’s virtually impossible. And you’re telling me that they manage to get maybe a dozen people – if not more – completely in on the same thing, they were all coordinated all at the same time, in a tiny house, for 12 years? That would be more interesting than it being a ghost, that’s even more extreme to me.

I think my favourite one from the tweetalong was the person who wondered whether the grandmother had sedated them all. I just burst out laughing.

Yes, I was reading it out to my colleague who I live with. We were listening to it live and we had a good laugh about that one.

Ahh yes, the grandmother, who’s maybe in her 70s, maybe even her 80s, who is like 6 foot odd tall, her bones are really damaged, she’s got a walking stick, she’s extremely frail – and she somehow developed PTSD from the war, has developed a split personality and is sleepwalking and has drugged them all every night for 12 years with them experiencing no side effects of being medically drugged every night for 12 years! She is getting up and smashing up the house and painting things and somehow creating Blitz level noise in the house despite others being present, and is able to do it at Shirley’s work! She’s gone full Nurse Ratched with super powers. That to them is more believable than maybe we don’t understand what we think we understand?!

People always say that believers are ignorant and it’s fantastical. I think Ciaran pointed out that the non-believer theories are more nuanced and complex and difficult. He believes that there’s multiple people at play here – maybe Shirley’s doing one thing, maybe the brother’s doing something else and there’s lots of things happening, lots of different phenomena and that the believers’ theories are more straightforward because we just go ‘OK, it’s a ghost’.

To me it’s more complex to get so much phenomena and information and still go “OK, well it’s actually a natural cause and here’s how” and do incredible amounts of mental gymnastics, like saying the grandmother is a schizophrenic, post PTSD Nurse Ratched psychopath that’s wrecking the house, than it is to go “Maybe we don’t understand what we think we understand about spirits.” Is that not more mental?

Let’s step back a moment. What makes you a believer? I know that sounds like a simple question but I suspect it’s not a simple answer.

I think the origins of that is growing up, we had paranormal beliefs in my family, my mum in particular.

My mum never stayed away from the house ever – my parents don’t go on holiday or anything like that – so it was really odd the very few times in my life that she ever did. When I was very young she had to go down south to a funeral, so it’s quite distinct that she wasn’t in the house. When she came back she was having a hushed conversation in the kitchen with my dad about being in the house of the person that died and having contact with a spirit basically. It came to speak to her to pass on a message.

That kept happening. As I grew up, anytime somebody died, even pets, Mum would have some sort of visitation, multiple times before the person even died.

I grew up around that and I became curious as to what that is. I was very interested in science from a very young age and started looking into quantum physics when I was about twelve. I begged my dad to teach me physics because I believed there was a scientific explanation for what was happening, for paranormal experiences.

I ended up going to Queen Margaret University to do psychology. I initially trained as a forensic psychologist and then swapped to paranormal psychology because I realised I was going to lie awake in bed every night for the rest of my life and want to know how we explain what paranormal experiences are.

I went on to do my masters and the more I dug into it, the more questions came up. I found that other professors, other fields as well – everything from engineering to aeronautics to physics to cognitive sciences – all had this underlying belief that if we understood what consciousness was, that that would have an interaction with quantum physics. A lot of paranormal phenomena that seem really wild, borderline magic basically, suddenly become very explicable and make a lot more sense when you look at those interactions.

I started digging into that and as the years have gone by I’ve consulted on cases that yes, are hoaxes and people are desperate to believe, but there’s also so many things that I absolutely cannot explain in any way, through any physical or environmental causes. They have been verified in a laboratory, got multiple witnesses, got huge amounts of proof – therefore, I don’t want to stick my head in the sand and say “No no no, it must be physical.” I’d rather go, ‘OK, in terms of science, that requires a paradigm shift’ so we need to be looking at expanding our knowledge of science and investigating.

I do believe that there are paranormal experiences but I do also believe that we can explain them in terms of science. Not magic – magic is just the word that we use to describe something because we don’t understand the mechanism of what causes it yet.

It’s the Arthur C. Clarke line isn’t it: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Near enough, yes.

Certainly it seems to be people who are open to it tend to have had some sort of brush with it, whether it’s through family or outside.

I used to be a psychology lecturer for several years at the University of Queen Margaret and when I was teaching first year students, the very first thing I always taught them was that science is not about proving things, it’s about disproving things. So, to me, when we discover something in science, it should allow us to pick something off the list and say, “Well, it’s not that” and we narrow it down to what it is that we’re trying to discover.

I find it really odd that staunch sceptics will often find a small bit of information and go, ‘OK, well that just proves that the whole case is garbage’ or ‘That just disproves that ghosts can possibly be real’. That’s bad science to me. All you’ve done is eliminate that the case cannot be explained by whatever that is, and so we narrow it down.

I find it really weird to take a single bit of information and try to use it to justify why paranormal things cannot possibly happen. It creates the assumption that we know everything there is to know, and therefore if we can’t use every single scientific idea and piece of knowledge that we have at the moment to 100% show that paranormal things happen, then it can never happen. We’ll never move forward in science, we’ll never discover another particle… I just find it really odd and bad science. I think having an open mind, or at least an inquiring mind, is a core principle that every scientist should have.

I find it odd when people [react] vehemently; to me it feels like they’re scared. People say that paranormal believers are just people who desperately want to believe so they can be comforted in the thought of an afterlife, but to me, people who are really militant sceptics seem frightened. Have you ever considered that there are things outside of your understanding or maybe there’s more out there than we currently know? I think they’re frightened and they want to be able to explain everything with the science that we know so they can feel safe and small in their little sandbox of knowledge.

It’s been mentioned a few times in the podcast that there are elements of this that are reminiscent of previous cases. What’s the case it most resembles?

I think the parallel that gets drawn the most is probably with the Enfield case, probably because it’s a similar location and Janet Hodgson being the main focus of that case and her being quite young – I think she was a wee bit younger than Shirley. The parallels with some of the phenomena and the reporters – in previous episodes they talk about being in the house at Enfield and being hit with things and witnessing really extreme phenomena.

Also neighbours seeing things as well – like the lollipop lady at Enfield who saw Janet Hodgson basically levitate at her bedroom window – that has a similarity with this case. There were neighbours who were just out doing things, didn’t even know about the house. You’ve got multiple investigators going to the house and having really extreme experiences on multiple occasions.

With the focus of the case I think Ciaran and I both agree that there’s definitely embellishment. We know that Janet embellished a little bit in the Enfield case and we both believe that Shirley probably, consciously or unconsciously – we’re not trying to blame anybody – was possibly doing stuff in this case.

But to me, as ridiculous at it sounds, it’ll almost make the case more credible because somehow they went twelve years without misattributing something. Especially when they’re teenagers, that would be deeply unusual to me. It seems more normal that over twelve years a teenager played up to something or embellished on it a couple of times to get what they wanted. That makes the case more real world to me.

One aspect being fake does not invalidate everything involved with it.

Absolutely, especially with the length of the case as well. So yes, I think it makes it more valid, to me.

Ciaran mentioned when he and I spoke that the light phenomena present at Wycliffe Road was an area of this there wasn’t time to go into; is that a common phenomenon in poltergeist cases?

Orbs and lights are one of the most commonly reported paranormal phenomena, to me they are the weakest paranormal phenomena because unless it behaves in a certain way.

We have this thing up in Scotland called Will o’ the Wisp. The physical world explanation is that basically above swamps and things you would get methane gas that would catch fire. People saw these lights and followed them believing that they were spirits leading them to their fate.

If you saw a light and you followed it and it seemed to come back for you, or move up and down or side to side, or try to speak to you… unless it did something like that – almost has a consciousness, an agenda – then I don’t have any interest in them. Light refractions and orbs and stuff in photographs, I can 99.9 times out of 100 say it’s light refraction in cameras.

But they do come up in other poltergeist cases; the one that jumps to the top of my mind was the Alma Fielding case.

Chances are, there’s so many other things happening at the house with people being terrified and stuff moving and whatnot, it’s just a piece of normal phenomena that’s been lumped in with everything else.

Are there any similarities to cases that you yourself have personally investigated?

No, not off the top of my head.

I’m not a ghost hunter. Scotland is one of the paranormal capitals of the world. I live in Edinburgh, which is literally the most haunted city on Earth. I host private tours of Edinburgh where I take people round and tell them paranormal history. I think every single building I ever lived in or worked in in Edinburgh has a ghost story. But I don’t go on ghost hunts and investigate them.

I get asked to consult as a scientist on lots of things so normally I’m given information and then I go through and say, ‘OK, the psychological explanations are this and the potential paranormal science explanations are that’. Most of the things I get asked to consult on are single incidents or are more historical cases. Definitely nothing like this in terms of just the type of case and the longevity of it.

I’ve never had a case that I’ve been asked to consult on or give information about where the actual core person who’s the focus of the phenomena is still alive. I think a couple of times a grandchild or a distant relative or possibly a journalist or someone was still able to be asked questions about an estate or a house. It’s been absolutely incredible to be able to speak to Shirley.

When we were doing a slot on This Morning Shirley was on just before me and the things that people were saying on Twitter… They forget that Shirley’s still alive, she’s in her eighties. Imagine saying some of the horrible things that I read on Twitter that people accused Shirley of without any bloody information at all to your grandmother! She lived through this, she thought she was going to die, she had her childhood basically stolen. Her dad had to leave his job and lost loads of weight because of stress; her grandmother died, I reckon pretty much directly, because of the stress of this case. It destroyed Harold Chibbet’s life – he hung his entire career on the hook of chasing this thing about France, about it being the lost Dauphin. It obliterated Shirley’s life and everything around her and still to this day there are randoms on the internet saying that she faked the entire thing. That would make her a psychopath.

I don’t think people appreciate that there’s a real person who is still alive at the centre of this case. They’re literally talking absolute nonsense on the internet, these armchair detectives.

I think one of the interesting things about this is that this is a totally different sort of investigation because of the public input.

Yes, I would agree, possibly ever, yes.

What are the disadvantages for you from your perspective of the focus of the case still being alive?

Hard to say. I guess the disadvantages are that when you consult on historical cases, it’s really easy to look at the information that you’re given and make an assessment based on your own work, beliefs, knowledge then put forward a conclusion. People read it and they take it or leave it. In this case, we’re sort of debating back and forth with the public and trying to keep them entertained at the same time because of the format that it’s in.

But then we also have problems where the public sometimes forget that the show is a drama so obviously the book that Danny has used to help him, James Clarke’s The Poltergeist Prince of London is very very detailed, and has been written with Shirley, so it’s very accurate, but it is still a dramatization. Sometimes people hear bits of the dramatization and then take that as fact and go from there. They’re using the bias of the way something is said or the way in which it happened and I’m like ‘This is just us recreating it, that’s not necessarily what actually happened at the time’. With Shirley still being alive they’re hearing Shirley as Dafne; to them Shirley is Dafne Keen. She does a phenomenal job but they’ve forgotten that that’s not Shirley. Shirley is in her eighties.

I’m not able to just consult and put something forward and you can take it or leave it. I’m having to deal with the drama versus the real life, how the public are interpreting it. The amount of people [during the tweetalong] who tried to ‘mansplain’ things to me, unqualified randoms on the internet trying to ‘mansplain’ to me things which I have multiple first class degrees in, has been hilarious. People take bits of the case and say, ‘Oh well it’s definitely fake; that’s cognitive bias and that’s to do with magical thinking’ and I’m thinking, ‘You’re not qualified to be administering a psychometric to anybody and none of the family were administered psychometrics, it didn’t exist back then.’

They’re just shouting things at me as fact. A lot of unqualified people are just yelling things because they’re listening to a radio drama version and taking it as fact.

The thing that made me feel there had to be something in it, even if there are elements of it that don’t all add up, is that moment in the interview with Danny in episode 2, where Shirley says that she’s worried it’ll bring Donald back. That scared the shit out of me.

Yes, she’s in her eighties, this is forever ago and still now you can hear in her voice that she is terrified and she is saying, ‘Yes, if we talk about this, will it bring Donald back?’ As in literally, will it conjure a spirit back or will it bring Donald back in the sense of having her life destroyed and the press outside her door and her family members injured or threatened?

Danny said in the last episode that going into this case he unleashed Donald – we haven’t necessarily conjured back a poltergeist but we have certainly unleashed Donald back into the world again.

Ciaran was talking about tulpas on Twitter during the tweetalong. Tulpas are historically beings that are manifested through psychokinetic conjuration, by being talked about, so they’re almost given metaphysical power — in that it conjures them into existence. In a way Donald feels like a tulpa.

In Neil Gaiman’s American Gods one of the new modern gods is called Media, a cracking character. When something goes viral or becomes a trending topic, like we were [with the tweetalong], so many people are talking about it, or using the word or the hashtag, it’s given power. It then goes on a board where it’s ranked against other things, so viral things almost become gods. Social media is almost a form or prayer or worship; these things go viral and they take on legs. They become memes or they change culture so they do become, in a way, like digital gods. And that is like a tulpa. Everyone is talking about Donald and giving it attention and giving the case attention whether they believe or not.

But in the level of discussion, it almost creates a digital tulpa effect, where they bring him back, he takes on legs, he’s become an entity, he is out there digitally moving. He’s in people’s minds.

People that said they were scared when they were listening to the show and things were happening in their house. They’re going to bed scared.  He’s still scaring people, without even having to move a single mug across the room.

The Battersea Poltergeist is a Radio 4 podcast produced by Bafflegab Productions, available on BBC Sounds

Click here to read our other coverage, including interviews with Danny Robins, Ciaran O’Keeffe and Alice Lowe.