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could find no reason for the horses’ struggle. Suddenly a metallic voice rang out from behind some bushes, “‘All right, General, let the wagon move,” and the horses were able to pull it again. This sounds like our first electromagnetic case—even though no motors or electrical circuits were involved! Another witness, one William Porter, claimed that he tussled with an invisible entity in the Bell home. He was awakened in his bedroom when someone or something hauled the covers off him. He grappled in the dark and managed to roll the entity up in the quilt. Then he picked the struggling shape up and headed for the smoldering fireplace, intending to throw the cover, ‘‘witch’’ and all, into the fire. ‘I discovered that it was very weighty,” he wrote later, ‘‘and smelled awful. I had not got halfway across the room before the luggage got so heavy and became so offensive that I was compelled to drop it on the floor and rush outside for a breath of fresh air. The odor emitted from the roll was the most offensive stench A detached, derisive voice frequently spoke to the Bells and the various people who visited them to witness the manifestations. It actually succeeded in breaking up the marriage plans of young Betsy Bell, saying “so many things to Betsy and Joshua [Joshua Gardner, her fiance] in the presence of their friends of a highly embarrassing nature that the girl in time became quite hysterical and worn out in despair.” This is a common factor in many poltergeist cases. The invisible entities loudly reveal and discuss the intimate secrets of the victims in the presence of outsiders, indicating that they, like the UFO entities, know everything about our life histories. This type of behavior is reported in case after case, extending far back into history. An English poltergeist back in A.D. 1190, for example, ‘‘used to talk with people and... it would reveal publicly deeds done from the time of their birth, which least of all they wished others either to hear or know.” (In many modern UFO contact cases, the visible and apparently physical entities nearly always establish at the outset their complete knowledge of the contactee’s past, often coming up with information about distant relatives unknown to the contactee which, when checked out, proves to be valid.) Another common factor in poltergeist cases is the sudden materiali- zation or disappearance of physical objects. Stones have often fallen from the ceilings of rooms in such quantities that they had to be shoveled out every morning. This has even reportedly happened in tents on the desert. Ordinary objects, such as ashtrays, suddenly vanish and are later found The Cosmic Jokers / 211 I ever smelled.”