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More Than We See is a grounded, practical conversation about intuition as a human sense and capacity.
Hosted by Natalie of Immersive Spirit, this podcast blends lived experience, nervous-system–informed insight, and real-world tools to help people better understand how perception, sensitivity, and intuition are experienced—and how to work with them in everyday life across kids, teens, families, and adults.
Episodes explore the many ways intuitive awareness is felt and understood—from curiosity and excitement, to subtle noticing, to moments that challenge what we thought we knew. Along the way, conversations offer practical perspectives, simple tools, and steady ways of relating to intuition so it supports daily life rather than overwhelms it. This is a place to land for people who are curious, overwhelmed, skeptical, sensitive, living intuitively, or simply paying attention in a new way.
No hype. No dramatizing. Just clear conversation, lived insight, and practical ways of working with what we sense—alongside the quiet truth that there is more than we see, and that understanding it can make life feel steadier, clearer, and more alive.
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We’re dedicated to empowering you, helping grow, and authentically connect with your highest self, helping you to Live Your Soul! Find out more at ImmersiveSpirit.com
…last time when I told you I had been researching a house that had a problem. Well I found an October story for us. Actually I found two But let's talk about the first one because I have spent an unreasonable amount of time thinking about a refrigerator. And if you are new here I'm Natalie and this is more than we see. And apparently today we're gonna be talking about haunted houses and flying refrigerators.
So get your coffee your tea or your hot chocolate get comfortable and maybe turn on an extra light if you're listening to this a night. We are going to Bridgeport Connecticut in nineteen seventy four There's a family living in a little bungalow and nine sixty six Lendly Street, Jared and Laura Gooden and their ten year old daughter Marsha. And apparently they had been hearing some things in the house for years. Knocking mostly You know sometimes you know like scratching or pounding. The kind of noises that you hear and think okay what's going on in the walls?
I mean we all hear stuff in our houses. Mine makes noises all the time Although I have a slightly different relationship with that than maybe most people do, but these noises kept happening And eventually the good ones started asking other people to come over and listen. So they were significant. One of those people was their neighbor Josh Holsworth, who happened to be a Bridgeport police officer. He later said that he had been called over numerous times had heard the banging himself and couldn't figure out exactly in the home where it was coming from.
And I can understand why they kept asking him to listen If something strange is happening in your house, having another person hear it makes a difference especially an officer. And it's somebody they trust who might be able to help you figure out what's actually going on. Now those early reports are a little harder to pin down Most of what we know comes from interviews after the big events of nineteen seventy four. And there's something in those interviews about activity possibly following Laura, which I'm curious about but I haven't found enough to feel confident saying what had actually happened. Want you to remember that detail though because Laura becomes a little overshadowed…
in the way that this story is usually told. Anyway, November nineteen seventy four things are getting considerably more interesting in this little home. Marsha has been having a difficult time according to police. Another student had injured her badly enough that she was out of school for about a month, and she was being tutored actually at home. And there's kind of another detail I didn't realize until I started reading the police documentation…Marsha was adopted but she wasn't adopted as a baby Gerard and Laura had adopted her six years later so she was around four when she was adopted.
So she'd already been part of this family for several years before the early knocking reports which I wasn't sure was accurate but it is So I don't know whether any of this is connected to what happened next but I just think it's worth knowing. Because the family is suddenly reporting a whole lot more than just knocking. Pictures are coming off the walls. Furniture is apparently moving There's a television that turns a reclining chair that seems to move on its own and religious objects…
continue to fall. And this seems to escalate over just a few days. Think about that for a minute You've had these odd noises in your house for years and then suddenly over one weekend. You are calling the police because your furniture is moving around. That is quite an quite an escalation and that is quite a weekend.
And Laura does call the police which is where the story starts getting particularly interesting to me. The first officers arrive on Sunday November twenty fourth, little after ten AM in the morning. And according to the reports the house is already in quite a state like furniture and belongings have been displaced and the family is describing things moving, without anybody touching them. Now I imagine those officers were wondering exactly what they had been called into Like it it seems to be just a mess. You know but if anybody's calling the police, and saying their furniture is moving around, what were they really supposed to do with that So you start looking for something ordinary Is there a problem with the floor?
Maybe there is something structural. Could vibrations be causing this shift If there's something in the house that the family just hasn't recognized. And one of the officers who becomes involved is George f Wilson Junior And Wilson is the one I want you to remember because his report describes some pretty extraordinary things But what interested me is…
the way he looked for the ordinary explanations he considered whether things might be wrong with the structure, if there was concerns of possibility of physical or environmental causes in the house. And the fire department came involved. That is exactly what I would want somebody to do And then Wilson reports something happening in the kitchen. According to his written report, He watched the refrigerator rise approximately six to eight inches off of the floor and move about two feet towards him. I have read that sentence more times than I care to admit because I keep picturing my refrigerator.
And I know that witnesses can misunderstand things particularly when they're unfamiliar environment and other people are frightened but that's a pretty specific observation to put in a police report. Wilson also reports the television turning and the Bureau bouncing religious objects moving, and the reclining chairs behaving strangely. And he's not the only officer who witnessed something Sergeant Bernard…
man giamelli…Reports seeking the Bureau turning He also describes Marsha sitting in a reclining chair when it suddenly threw backwards. Apparently other officers…tried operating that chair afterwards and found that it was really hard to move It took quite a bit of effort to move. Now that's the sort of detail I think is part of the investigation somebody see something unusual and then they try to figure out how that could have happened normally. I'd still wanna know more about the chair how it worked and exactly what they tested, But at least they're asking questions like…
you know really asking And then there's patrolman Lawson. And he reports a small picture falling a small desk moving, and the kitchen clock coming off the wall. And I have to tell you I love Lawson a little bit because according to his report, at one point he goes outside whites for his partner. Sarah I completely understand. Uh I tell you what as a paranormal investor igator I would remain calm and professionally assess the environment because you know that's your job.
And I probably, but if somebody's refrigerator starts coming towards me I might need a minute I might join him on the front lawn and ask if he has any thoughts about what we've just witnessed. So now the fire department is also investigating…whether there's something wrong with this building because lots is going on. Contemporary news coverage quotes fire chief John Gleason describing unusual events reported by his personnel, including dishes rattling and pictures falling and then heavy chairs moving. And here's where I went looking for original reports. I wanted to know whether these details came from people who were actually there or whether these were added later as the story grew Because you know what folks that happens all the time with paranormal cases something that starts as a strange noise.
And twenty years later it's something that the whole house had lifted off its foundation and is We've made movies about it. But in Bridgeport we actually have police officers documenting what they said and what they saw during the outbreak. Now that doesn't mean that every observation was accurate Police officers are human beings and their reports…
include eyewitness testimony But I find it interesting that multiple officers were willing to put these accounts in writing. And I also find it interesting that officers…didn't all have the same experience…because we're about to meet one who spent hours in that house and didn't witness anything at all that he couldn't explain. Of course once the police and fire department are involved, word's gonna get out Reporters start showing up. People gather outside clergy become involved and eventually paranormal investigators arrive too. Including Ed and Lorraine Warren.
And I kept thinking about what that must have been like for the good ones because whatever was happening inside that house, suddenly they had very little privacy. Everybody wanted to see something and that can change an investigation considerably. I've been in situations where one person hears something and before you know it, everybody in the room is listening for the same thing or hearing it. Somebody says it sounded like footsteps and now, that's what people are expecting to hear. It's one of the reasons I wanna know who was present for the event where they were standing and whether they described what happened before someone else offered them an explanation.
And I don't think that people have to be…
dishonest for this to happen Like they're not doing this on purpose but we're influenced by one another Investigators included I've had to catch myself doing that too. If I go into an investigation already expecting a particular kind of activity, I have to be aware of how that expectation might affect what I notice. And now the Warrens are part of the Lindsay Street story and I know people have strong opinions about them. Mine are probably a little more complicated. I think they may have started out genuinely wanting to help.
I also think some of their stories associated with their investigations have really become sensationalized over time. And I'm not gonna get into the entire Warren debate today because that would take us all afternoon. What matters for this particular case is that the police had already been responding to the house before the warrants actually became involved. The reports were being written while the events were unfolding, and somewhere in the middle of all of this attention is Marsha who is ten years old. She's been out of school after an injury Her parents are dealing with a frightening situation and suddenly the house is full of adults who wanna know what's happening.
I keep thinking about how many people must have been watching her just waiting for something to happen. And then the police investigation takes a turn. Sergeant Raymond…
Zawaki spends approximately eight hours over two nights in the house and he witnesses nothing that's inexplicable. Think about that Some officers are reporting furniture moving an object spelling and another officer spends hours watching, and nothing seems extraordinary. That doesn't tell us what happened during the earlier observations, but it is a significant difference. And Zawaki apparently becomes increasingly suspicious that Marsha…may be responsible. Eventually with parental permission and involvement, Marsha's questioned.
And according to Zawaki's police report she admits causing the disturbances. Banging knocking downing the crucifix, throwing pictures and other incidents. And then there's the talking cat I know we haven't even discussed the talking cat but apparently there had been reports of the family's cat making strange human like sounds. And according to Zawaki, Marsha demonstrated that she could make that voice herself. So when I got to this part I thought well okay Maybe that changes things because now we've got a police officer reporting that Marsha admitted causing at least some of the activity.
And so the police conclude it was a hoax…
Contemporary newspaper's report that conclusion as well and the story begins circulating nationally. I can understand how the police reach that decision Like if you're investigating a house and somebody admits they're creating some of the disturbances, That is pretty important information…
but I wanna know exactly what Marsha admitted to, and that's not noted anywhere because the report just concludes…Zawaki's account of the questioning We don't have an independently available signed statement from Marsha detail billing, the incidents. And the admission doesn't tell us precisely what Wilson experienced in the kitchen Like was he mistaken? Was there some ordinary explanation that wasn't identified It's in the atmosphere inside the house affect what people saw that they thought they were seeing. Those are all reasonable questions and I think the police had good reasons to suspect…that some of that activity was deliberately caused, but I also understand why other people who had been there It weren't entirely satisfied with that conclusion. If you sincerely believe you watched something move, being told that a child admitted throwing pictures does not necessarily resolve what you remember seeing.
It might make you question your memory, it might make you reconsider the circumstances that was surrounding the event, but you still have to work out what happened. And that's where the later research became interesting…After the main outbreak, researchers beatty and Sulphin and Harry became involved in examining this case. And I think I got their names right Let me look for. Yes. So this part's in Interests me because they're coming in after the police have already publicly concluded…
that the whole thing was a hoax. So they're trying to reconstruct events…that have already happened, like they're interviewing people and they are reviewing the police documentation and they are comparing accounts And that's difficult because even when people are completely sincere, your memory changes. People talk one another out of things and they read newspaper articles They hear what other people reported, and eventually it can become difficult to separate what somebody personally experienced…from what they've learned about the event afterward…
Hey Good pause before we keep going If you're listening to this show you're probably someone who thinks about this stuff even between episodes. You notice things You have questions maybe you don't always know who to ask. And maybe the people around you aren't quite in this conversation with you. That's what IS Town Square is for. It's the community space inside of a Mercer spirit where people like you grounded curious come to connect.
There are resources and tools, and just amazing people with the four to five live events every month, and people who get it without having to explain yourself first. If that sounds like what you've been looking for you can find us at w w w dot immersive dash spirit dot com. And the link is in the show notes too Alright Let's get back to it. But beatty was the one interested in something else too He examined where the incidents reportedly occurred and who was nearby. And much of that activity seemed to cluster around Marsha, which brings us to the word we haven't really talked about yet.
Poltergeist if you guessed it. Now you probably heard the word and it comes from German commonly translated into noisy ghost. And when I hear that kind of activity described at Lindsey Street, Lindley Street…
then knocking the banging the objects moving furniture being disturbed very physical activity. And if you spent time reading about Poltergeist cases you'll notice that a young person is often reported to be at the center Sometimes in adolescent, sometimes they can be younger child too but…researchers have referred to that person as the focus of the activity. And people spent a long time trying to explain why the pattern repeats in this literature. Some interpret poltergeist activity is involving an external spirit Others have proposed that the disturbances might originate with a living person. Possibly…without that person even realizing it And there's a term in that for parapsychology It's recurrent spontaneous…psychokinesis, our RSPK.
It's the idea that someone could unconsciously influence physical objects. And I wanna be careful with that because it's a hypothesis. I don't think we have any established scientific evidence or I couldn't find any demonstrating that people can unconsciously move furniture through psychokinase…But it was one of the explanations considered by researchers studying cases like bridgeport. And here's where it gets a little bit tricky because if Marsha was deliberately creating the disturbances, you'd expect many of them to happen when she was nearby…
If somebody believed Marsha was unconsciously producing the activity, they'd also expect the incidents to happen around her. So the pattern doesn't quite settle the question, and there's something else that interests me about that as well. People sometimes talk about poltergeist activity…as if there's one agreed upon explanation for it There really isn't Even among researchers who take these reports seriously, there have been substantial disagreements about what the active activity represents. And in this case the police conclusion and the later researcher's interpretation doesn't necessarily line up, which pulls me into another investigation which happened just three years later and it was across the Atlantic where another family starts to hear knocking. Nineteen seventy seven Paguey Hochins was raising her four children in Enfield North London.
And they were…just off of Green Street in Enfield. And at the end of August her children have started complaining about strange noises and things moving in their bedroom. And if you're a parent, maybe that raises the hair on the back of your neck a little because you've heard complaints I'm sure. But there's knocking And according to the family a chest of drawers has moved. So Peggy goes to investigate.
Eventually the family asks their neighbors the noninghams to come over. The neighbors here are then knocking too, and they can't figure out where it's coming from Sound familiar? So somebody calls the police. I know I was reading you know through these cases thinking well haven't we just done this? One of the officers who responds Carolyn Heaps later reports watching a chair move across the living room.
About three or four feet. And she says nobody was touching it And when I got to that part I actually went back and checked which case I was reading because now…
we've got another ordinary family home another police officer describing furniture moving. And children are at the center of both stories. This time it's at eleven year old Her name is Janet Hudson…Hodgson…
and it begins tracking attention. The daily daily mirror, sends over reporters and photographers. The photographer later describes being struck by flying legal pieces. Maurice Gross and the society for sec psychical research arrives in early September. Guy Lion from…
art guy Lion Playfair…joins the investigation afterwards. And the unfilled case becomes much longer investigation than that main bridge port case we talked about Remember the bridge port That was like activity really accelerated over a weekend. The case in Unfield actually spans months with the with the the family involvement So they make recordings They interview witnesses attempt to document disturbances so if you've seen the movie Poltergeist where people are coming in doing uh all of that investigation, that's kind of how I picture Enfield…for months long. And there are reports of objects flying across rooms furniture moving, knocking that seems to respond to questions So intelligence that's happening behind it. Normally when that happens I would think that's probably not a poltergeist, but let's continue on.
They also have doors that are opening and closing And increasingly…Janet becomes the person around whom much of the activity is seeming to occur So remember Janet is is our local. Then there's the voice. Janet reportedly begins speaking…in this deep, rough voice that sounds nothing like what you would expect of an eleven year old girl. The voice identifies itself as Bill Wilkins, a man who supposedly died in the house. And of course that becomes one of the most famous parts of the Unfield story.
There are recordings of that voice which I find interesting, but the recordings don't tell us who or what was producing it. Some investigators believed it was connected to the reported paranormal activity. Others thought it was Janet just producing it herself. And then there were the disagreements about whether the voice contained anything that couldn't be explained…
through ordinary vocal techniques like you know Janet lowering her own voice. But then there are the famous photographs of Janet appearing to levitate. If you've seen them you know the ones I mean. She's in the air above her bed but the photographs don't establish how she actually got there. Like critics have pointed out that the images could show Janet jumping.
And that's something I would have wanted to see in person preferably with a camera that was running continuously because I think a single photograph can be pretty misleading. Now there's another part of Enfield that I think is important. The investigators didn't all agree Even with the society of, um, citing. Psychical research, they all saw things differently. So there were people who interpreted it as evidence and people who thought the evidence wasn't evidence.
Anita Gregory was particularly critical of the investigation…and the reliability of some of the claims. And there was evidence that Janet and her sister Margaret, sometimes we're trying to fool the investigators so you can see how I got dragged into this case and researching the other case because it kept leading to one another. Let's get back to the investigators okay So gross and play fair. I acknowledged that some of the incidents…
were were deliberately staged, but they continued to believe that other events were genuine. And I think that's where Enfield becomes such an interesting comparison to Bridgeport because in both cases we've got children who are apparently involved in some of the deliberate trickery. We've also got police officer reporting that they saw furniture move and the investigators are trying to decide what weight to give each of those pieces of evidence. Like I can understand why somebody…would look at those cases and conclude that the children were responsible, kind of Cause I can also understand why the witnesses continue to insist that they had seen something that couldn't be explained…
What I find particularly interesting though is how similar the investigations became…once so many people were involved. There were reporters and researchers and neighbors and family members and people arriving with different expectations and the children were suddenly at the center of all of this attention. I wonder how that changed the situation…because I've seen how quickly expectations…can affect an investigation. You can have several people in a room all sincerely trying to understand what's happening. And they can come away with completely different interpretations of that same event.
And if somebody is deliberately creating disturbances…that makes everything even more complicated. Especially when the investigators already have strong ideas, about what they're looking for…
There's one more thing about the good ones that I found interesting back across the pond. After the events in November of nineteen seventy four they put the house up for sale which considering everything that happened that doesn't surprise me. Might have a sign in the yard as the refrigerator landed you know like, but the house didn't sell at the time, and they stayed. Laura died in nineteen ninety three and Gerardard died in nineteen ninety seven. They had remained on that property for years and we don't have another widely documented outbreak like the one in nineteen seventy four.
But there's something I hadn't realized when I first started reading about this case. There were still reports of unusual activity in early nineteen seventy five after police have publicly concluded that Marsha was responsible. A January newspaper article described claims that things were still happening on Lendly Street. Not. That doesn't really establish activity that was continuing.
But it does mean that the public story wasn't quite as neatly wrapped as the headline suggested. And I started wondering what happened to the good ones after all of the attention died there, like did the disturbances eventually stop. Did the family simply decide they were done talking about it Because look at what happened…
when they did report what was going on their home became a spectacle their daughter was publicly accused of perpetrating a hoax, People were gathering outside reporters were writing about them and strangers were showing up wanting to just see what's inside the house…
I can imagine reaching a point where you just want everybody to leave you alone…
And if something knocked again would you really want to tell anybody or pick up that telephone? I don't know. That's speculation on my part but it's something I think about when people say there weren't any later reports. And remember those early noises I mentioned in the beginning, the ones that apparently started years before that major outbreak…
Some later accounts suggest that Laura may have been associated with those earlier disturbances. That's a detail I wish we had more documentation for because so much of the investigation eventually focused on Marsha blaming her, and I understand why You know if she's the one that police had admitted to all the disturbances which I just I I can't quantify at her young age…that she picked up in through a refrigerator, but you get the point. But according to those earlier accounts the family had been dealing with strange noises for years. So I keep wondering what investigators might have learned…
if they'd done more documentation from an earlier period. Like was it kind of the same activity…
Was it something ordinary that just only seemed to connect to the story afterward? I wish there were more early records because that's a part of the story I'd really like to understand. So that's the house I told you had a problem and I've spent quite a bit of time over the last few weeks going through what happened at Lindley Street and then comparing it with Enfield. I keep coming back to the police reports especially Wilson's. I would have loved to have been standing in that kitchen, although preferably made me away from the refrigerator so it couldn't reach me…
And I would have loved to talk to Marsha too away from all the reporters and investigators and just hear what she thought was happening. I don't know how much of either case we can ever really reconstruct now. Some of the witnesses are gone the children's grown up, and the stories have been retold so many times that it's easy for the later versions to become familiar than the original record. But I had fun digging into this and I suspect…I'm gonna keep thinking about the refrigerator, which I have, because I can understand the knocking I can understand pictures falling. I could even understand a kid figure out how to make the cat talk maybe but a refrigerator.
I wanna know what Wilson saw, especially as an officer writing a report…
You know I think think that's an interesting case And all the officers who were involved all of those reports…
that they saw where Marsha wasn't sitting next to you know the object that moved or like how would that happen How do you describe what you saw? I think it's interesting. Anyway, if you hear something knocking into your house tonight…
well you know I'm probably the last person you should tell…
because you know I wouldn't tell you to ignore it I'd be investigating or Maybe I wait and tell you too I would investigate it for you But if the refrigerator moves, I might leave and at least for a breath of fresh air you know kind of regather my thoughts…anyway. Happy October. And until next time remember there is always more than we see
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