Psychokinetic effects have been shown to be a real, but rare, and usually weak attribute of living persons. Children, especially adolescent children, however, have a great deal of psycho-sexual energy, and this fact, especially in combination with natural psychic tendencies and damaged aural defenses due to abuse may exhibit relatively strong subconscious psychokinetic abilities. Therefore, it is possible that in a minority of cases, the parapsychologists are correct and the “poltergeist” phenomena are actually caused by psychokinetic effects attributable exclusively to a living adolescent without an attendant spiritual infection. In these cases, the physical disturbances are usually relatively mild, but may be mistaken for spiritual activity by religious parents.
If there is no spirit to exorcise, an amateur exorcism may do a great deal more harm than good. If the phenomena are solely the result of a psychic child agent, the exorcism ritual simply rewards a naughty child. It produces a high energy, frenzied emotional environment and releases large amounts of psychic energy into the environment. It rewards the living agent and the psychic energy released allows the child to produce even more phenomena. The more the phenomena, the greater the exorcist’s efforts and more energy is released in a feedback frenzy which exhausts everyone and accomplishes nothing. To a “snarky” little kid, this sort of attention is more like a roller coaster ride than punishment!
So the diagnosis of poltergeist activity in an adolescent is a bit complicated. Most of the time, the paranormal effects are caused by a human ghost which makes use of the child’s energy and native psychokinetic attributes. In such cases the paranormal effects might be scary, but relatively mild. In these cases, there will be no levitation of any object over one pound in weight, and if you ignore the phenomena for a month or two, it will go away by itself. On the other hand, if heavy bureaus and refrigerators start getting flung around, or anyone is seriously injured, you may well be dealing with a demonic entity, so call religious authorities!