In a partly visible, or semi-substantial, state

The London Times of June 24, 1880, relates that at High Easter, Essex, England, the home of the Brewster family was plagued by poltergeist disturbances. Brewster thought he saw a shadowy figure that he “recognized as that of his neighbor, Susan Sharpe.” The man and his son went to the woman’s house, dragged her to a nearby pond, and threw her in to see if she would float or sink. As Fort records, “though once upon a time, this was the scientific thing to do, fashions in science had changed. Brewster and his son were arrest, and were bound over to keep the peace.”

–Charles Fort, Wild Talents, p. 995-996 (The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover, c1974).

As reasonable as trees

Fort writes, on the subject of stone-throwing: “I don’t care to deny poltergeists, because I suspect that later, when we’re more enlightened, or when we widen the range of our credulities, or take on more of that increase of ignorance that is called knowledge, poltergeists may become assimilable. Then they’ll be as reasonable as trees. By reasonableness I mean that which assimilates with a dominant force, or system, or a major body of thought–which is, itself, of course, hypnosis and delusion–developing, however, in our acceptance, to higher and higher approximations to realness. The poltergeists are now evil or absurd to me, proportionately to their present unassimilableness, compounded, however, with the factor of their possible future assimilableness.”

–Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned, p175 (The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover, c1974).