Pilkington consistently uses the term Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis (RSPK) rather than the popular term “poltergeist” (German: “noisy ghost”). The terminological preference reflects a theoretical stance: RSPK frames the phenomena as originating in the psychokinetic capacity of a living agent, typically a person under emotional stress, rather than in the agency of a discarnate spirit. This framing aligns with the research tradition associated with William Roll, whose work on RSPK Pilkington cites approvingly. The distinction matters for investigation methodology: a spirit-agency hypothesis directs attention toward communication attempts and survival evidence, while a living-agent PK hypothesis directs attention toward the psychological profile, emotional state, and physiological characteristics of the central figure.¹

Pilkington’s review catalogs the phenomena reported at Enfield as including: furniture disruption, objects flying through the air, rapping and other anomalous sounds, levitation of objects and persons, pools of water appearing without apparent source, stones falling from ceilings and thrown from multiple directions simultaneously, written messages (including one written in excrement on a wall), apparent dematerialization and rematerialization of objects, spontaneous fires, and direct voices, voices that appeared to originate in various parts of the room rather than from the vocal cords of any person present. Objects ranged from LEGOs to a heavy gas fire iron frame cemented into brickwork, which was reportedly wrenched from the wall. The primary investigator was Maurice Grosse, an inventor and design engineer who had recently lost his daughter in an accident; Playfair joined as co-investigator. Pilkington notes that the phenomena appeared responsive to the thoughts and interests of investigators, when a student physicist working on metal-bending visited, metal objects began bending; when Grosse mentally wondered what the force would do next, a framed certificate was immediately dislodged.¹ The central figures were initially suspected to be Janet Harper (age 11) but phenomena later appeared associated with her sister Rose (age 13) and their mother as well.

Pilkington documents several instances across cases where the character of RSPK phenomena appeared to shift in response to the interests or emotional states of those present. At Enfield, the arrival of a physicist interested in metal-bending was followed by metal objects bending; news of fires at a nearby RSPK site was followed by fires at Enfield. In the Joasia Gajewski case, Pilkington notes that the girl’s emotional state, humiliation following a failed television appearance and awareness of a rival claimant, preceded a dramatic intensification of phenomena at the sanatorium where she was being studied and cared for.² These patterns are consistent with the RSPK hypothesis that the central figure’s psychological state is a causal variable, but they also raise the methodological concern that investigator expectation and suggestion may shape what phenomena are reported or perceived.

The book is organized in three parts. Part One reconstructs the Bindelof case itself, a group of adolescent sitters in a home setting who produced phenomena including raps, object movements, and apparent communications attributed to a discarnate entity called “Dr. Bindelof.” Part Two provides a historical survey of physical phenomena from the nineteenth century onward, covering D. D. Home, Sir William Crookes, Eusapia Palladino, ectoplasm research, Franek Kluski, and Indridi Indridason. Part Three covers twentieth-century mediumship and PK, including Nina Kulagina, Felicia Parise (“A Mini-Kulagina”), Ted Serios and thoughtography, and the influence of Kenneth Batcheldor’s group-sitter methodology.³ The book also includes an appendix offering practical guidance for those wishing to conduct their own sitter-group experiments. Pilkington’s stated position is that neither wholesale skepticism nor uncritical spiritualist belief adequately accounts for the evidence: fraud explains some cases but collapses under scrutiny in others.

Pilkington’s survey in The Spirit of Dr. Bindelof includes a chapter on Kenneth Batcheldor, whose work on group-sitter methodology proposed that belief inhibition, the psychological resistance to accepting that one is genuinely producing PK, is a primary obstacle to macro-PK production, and that group settings reduce this inhibition by distributing responsibility among participants.³ This framework is relevant to the Bindelof case, where adolescent sitters in an informal home setting may have been less subject to belief inhibition than adult subjects in formal laboratory conditions. The Batcheldor model also provides a non-paranormal alternative explanation for some group-sitter phenomena: if participants unconsciously produce small movements that are then amplified by group expectation, apparent macro-PK effects could emerge without any anomalous force. Pilkington does not dismiss this alternative but regards it as insufficient to account for the full range of documented phenomena.

Pilkington’s review of the Joasia case documents several categories of phenomena. Electrical anomalies included crackling sounds around the girl, her body becoming electrically charged in a manner that could not be discharged by grounding contact, and the malfunction of watch batteries, tape recorders, and film (film taken of her reportedly remained unexposed). Object movements included plates and glasses flying at high speed during sleep, shards of glass flying toward rather than away from the girl (cutting her), and a blanket emitting sparks. Most remarkably, objects were reported to pass through solid walls, a phenomenon also reported in the Enfield case. The sanatorium setting provided medical personnel as witnesses, including the head nurse and ward attendant, who were present in the hall outside a closed door when phenomena occurred.² Pilkington draws explicit parallels to the Ohio RSPK case of Tina Resch (eggs flying from a closed refrigerator) and to the Enfield case, situating Joasia within a cross-cultural pattern. The proposed mechanism, some form of anomalous psychokinetic force originating in the subject, remains the researcher’s preferred interpretation; alternative explanations including unconscious fraud by the subject or witnesses, and investigator confirmation bias, are not formally tested in the case documentation as reviewed.

According to Pilkington’s interview, Parise decided to attempt to move small objects after viewing Ullman’s film of Kulagina, a decision that most of those present at the film screening regarded skeptically, believing Kulagina to be performing tricks. Parise, by contrast, believed Kulagina to be genuine and undertook a sustained, effortful practice to develop similar ability, which she eventually achieved after considerable time. She subsequently participated in multiple PK experiments, described as successful, before ceasing her activities, officially attributed to the physical toll the activity exacted, though Pilkington suggests Parise’s private nature and discomfort with the skepticism of those who could not accept the evidence also played a role.⁴ The interview does not provide quantitative data from the laboratory experiments; it is a first-person oral-historical account. The specific artifact-mitigation procedures used in the laboratory experiments Parise participated in are not detailed in the interview text as extracted. Pilkington had previously written about Parise in The Spirit of Dr. Bindelof (2006) under the heading “A Mini-Kulagina” without having met her; the 2013 interview was the first direct contact.⁴

Pilkington’s review of the Haraldsson and Gissurarson volume on Indridi Indridason (born 1883, Iceland) notes that his phenomena began in 1905 when, at age approximately 21, he participated in table-turning experiments at the home of a relative. Phenomena escalated rapidly to include object movements and levitations, raps, gusts of air, odors, apparent playing of musical instruments by invisible agency, light phenomena including luminous clouds and fire-balls, materializations of human figures and body parts, and direct voice, including the simultaneous production of two distinct voices (a trained female voice and a deep male voice) heard at the same time. Pilkington explicitly compares some of his phenomena to RSPK: chairs pulled from beneath sitters, furniture tossed and broken, and the medium himself being dragged bodily across the floor or pulled into the air by forces his helpers struggled to counteract.⁶ This comparison is analytically significant: it suggests that the boundary between “poltergeist” phenomena and physical mediumship phenomena may be less clear than the categorical distinction implies, with both potentially involving the same underlying capacity operating under different social and psychological conditions.