“It appeared that in a single day Janet had levitated, traveled out of her physical body, made a book go through the wall from one room to another and caused a heavy cushion to travel from a closed room onto the roof. It did not sound possible, but five different people were certain it had all happened.” – Guy Lyon Playfair, This House Is Haunted
 
How can a thing be true and false at the same time?  Frightening and funny?  Scary and dull?   Real and unreal?  How can something be itself -- and its own opposite?  Easy: it’s a poltergeist.
 
For over two years the Hodgson family in Enfield, England were plagued with a poltergeist that simultaneously played by – and broke – all the rules of poltergeistery.  As usual, there were cries of fraud from the very beginning.  And as usual, there were dozens of witnesses to phenomena that could have no earthly explanation.  Psychic investigators Guy Lyon Playfair and Maurice Grosse spent hundreds of hours living with the Hodgson’s and documented everything that went on in their house.  But what happens when an avalanche of evidence breeds nothing but more skepticism?  And what do you do when the very word “poltergeist” seems suddenly too small to describe a display of supernatural effects so vast that the case has been called the greatest haunting in history?
 
In 2009, Richard, his wife Susan, and their three children moved into a house in Pasadena, California that promises to be the culmination of all of Richard’s dreams.  But that’s not exactly how it works out.  They say haunted houses are fueled by the stress and anxiety of the families who live inside them.  But if that’s true, isn’t every house a haunted house?  For Richard, beyond the dark charm of the bookshelf lined office, the eternal glow of the private wet-bar – and the strange melancholy allure of the swimming pool hidden behind the black, vine-covered fence… lies the truth of every house, every family and every dream that stays hauntingly just out of reach.

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