Read the following text and answer the questions about it:

POLTERGEIST

1 When hearing Steven Spielberg talk on Poltergeist, the film he produced, you might think he made a
drama documentary. He has obviously studied poltergeists: he has even had a close encounter with one,
though he does not care to talk about it.

What you can expect to watch, if you go, is rather different. Whatever else the film does, it brings up a
5 problem which ought to be faced. If poltergeists are real, scientists will have to do some hard and
uncomfortable thinking about the nature of the forces in the world around us; and so will we all.

"Poltergeist" is a term lifted from the German centuries ago. It means a boisterous, noisy spirit; and
although there is no clear-cut distinction from other types of haunting, it is mainly differentiated from
common or country-house ghosts by the physical nature of the manifestations.

10 There are unaccountable bangings and rappings. Objects move when nobody is near them, sometimes
sailing through the air defying gravity; or disappear, to be found later in another room. Showers of
pebbles, or water, fall in empty rooms. Fires start, and then put themselves out again.

This is disconcerting enough to anyone taught to believe that there are laws of nature which cannot be
arbitrarily broken. But worse: often it is as if a discarnate intelligence is behind the effects. Occasionally
15 he — it? — communicates; sometimes verbally, but more commonly through rappings, in a primitive
code: one rap for "yes", two for "no", three for "don't know" — or "to hell with you" —, for the
poltergeist is a malicious practical joker.

Again and again, attempts to capture poltergeists for posterity have foundered on their ability to mess
things up. Electric circuits fuse; film and videotape cloud over; sound tapes are wiped — or disappear.

20 Inevitably sceptics take this to be evidence that the investigators have been tricked. But enough good
evidence remains to confirm the reality of poltergeists; notably from the haunting in a lawyer's office in
the Bavarian town of Rosenheim in 1968. It was energetically investigated by detectives, engineers,
electricians and, eventually, two physicists. They were compelled to admit that "the phenomena are not
explicable by the available means of theoretical physics". Only then was the experienced parapsychologist
25 Professor Hans Bender called in, and he laid the ghost.

"The events only occurred (the physicists' report continued) in the presence of a certain human being" — a
secretary who worked in the office. This being so, "a case unforeseen in physics arises, in which the
investigations of the human being can initiate new fundamental physical discoveries".

30 Assuming the hauntings, or most of them, are genuine, the implications are surely obvious; that forces
can be unleashed which are not understood, and ought to be understood.

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Questions

1. Give a synonym for:

a) lifted (line 7):
b) boisterous (line 7):
c) unaccountable (line 10):
d) rappings (line 10):
e) disconcerting (line 13):
f) foundered (line 18):

2. Answer these questions:

a) What do you understand by the expression "discarnate intelligence"? (line 13)
b) What is the significance of the author's adding the words "to hell with you". (line 14)
c) Give an example of a "practical joke".
d) If a ghost "haunts" a house, it lives in the house and occasionally appears to the residents or to
visitors. Give other examples of the use of the verb "to haunt".
e) Explain the difference between a "psychologist" and a "parapsychologist". (line 24)

3. Analyse the word-formation processes involved in the formation of the term UNFORESEEN. Define
and give examples of CONVERSION and EPONYMY.

4. Translate into Spanish the first two paragraphs (To read... we all).

5. Phonetically transcribe the final paragraph (Assuming... understood).