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The McKweon Poltergeist, Part I
By Dr. Peter Moscow
FATE :: October 2003

In 1973, while living in my hometown of Dublin, Ireland, I was exposed to a paranormal case of extraordinary proportions that was instrumental in reshaping my world view permanently. I have designated the case as the McKweon Poltergeist. Initially, it seemed as if the problem affecting a young, newly married Irish couple was definable as a poltergeist, but as will be seen, the original idea of a noisy spirit is not adequate to explain the full range of remarkable phenomena which manifested from 1973 onward.

In early 1973, I was writing a regular monthly Irish column for the English journal, The Psychic Researcher and Spiritualist Gazette. This journal was published and edited by Peter Bander and Colin Smythe, who had previously published the English version of Dr. Konstantine Raudive’s magnum opus The Inaudible Becomes Audible (titled Breakthrough in England, 1971) dealing with the electronic voice phenomenon (EVP).

Early in the month of July, I received a package of newspaper clippings from the Dublin newspapers. There were two stories featured, the first of which appeared to be a relatively solid and perhaps credible story of psychic events taking place in Dublin. The second case featured the story of a young couple who were desperately seeking help to rid themselves of an unseen force that was effectively destroying their daily lives. The enumeration of the incredible activity which they claimed was persecuting them seemed far beyond the boundary lines of consensus reality, even allowing for the fact that on rare occasions low-level psychic phenomena are observable to “the man in the street.”

My editors requested that I look into both cases with a view to producing a couple of articles for the next edition.

From the information contained in the clippings, I was able to discern that all the available media had been contacted by this couple in what appeared to be a very serious attempt to find help. This included an interview with the English paper News of the World, one of the most notorious rags anywhere in the Western world—which might easily have been construed as a good reason to disbelieve anything the couple said. But other elements of the story appearing in more respectable papers did prompt me to make contact with them.

I was able to contact Tony McKweon’s mother and met with her outside her council house in one of Dublin’s large suburban projects. She was a short, physically and emotionally strong person, who was very determined not to let me near the couple. She assumed that I was merely going to write yet another story for a newspaper and that this could produce no further benefit for her family. She was very clear about the fact that no good had come to them as a result of newspaper and other media coverage. Finding myself intrigued and compromised, I finally agreed that I would not write any article but would rather investigate the case with a view to helping them resolve the problem.

My agreement, albeit produced under duress, was highly presumptuous in that I assumed that I knew enough to be able to deal with whatever I found. Little did I realize that I was about to enter a reality which, at best, I had read about and seen glimpses of on television and perhaps the occasional movie. It is always easy to be brave from a position of safety. I was about to lose my safety net altogether ...

Read the rest of this article in the October 2003 issue of FATE

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