Charles Fort’s Poltergeist Girls (1932)
“We are certain that there is some connection between poltergeists and puberty and that the mysteries of sex enter largely into their doings. And all the available evidence points to the fact that poltergeists prefer girl adolescents to boys - the ratio is about 95% to 5% respectively.”
—Harry Price, “Can we Explain the Poltergeist?” (1945)
may one day be put to good
in time of war
a squad of poltergeist girls
could pick a fleet
out of the sea
or
sky
girls at the front!
“&
they are discussing their usual not very profound
↪ subjects
| like casual misogyny |
alarm! the enemy is
| the law of the father |
order: to the poltergeist girls
concentrate!
&
under
their chairs
they stick
- their wads
of chewing gum
- | his genito-oral fixation |
a regiment bursts
/
into flames
reinforcements are smashed
under cliffs
that are teleported
from the Rocky Mountains
the snatch
of Niagara Falls
| “She’s all states, and all princes I” |
pours upon
the battlefield
| vide. ‘The Mechanics of Fluids’ |
&
the poltergeist girls
reach
for their”
polysemic
wads
& take new aim ↘
{Fort, 1932}
Works cited
Fort, Charles. (1932). Wild Talents. New York: Claude Kendall.
Price, Harry. (1945). Poltergeist over England. London: Country Life.
Clay Thistleton has previously appeared at Unlikely Stories as a character in John Bryan's epic Love has been Liquidated. Clay has taught creative writing and literary studies in universities, community colleges and not-for-profit organisations for almost two decades. He is the author of Noisesome Ghosts (Blart Books, 2018): an Elgin Award nominated collection of found poetry that investigates the phenomenon of ghosts and poltergeists that have the ability to speak or write. His current project, Never Mind the Saucers (Stranger Press, forthcoming), examines documented instances of alien-human sexual contact. Along with his son Dylan, Clay lives in New South Wales, Australia with a fluctuating number of feral cats.
