The Thornton Heath Poltergeist | Marks Unexplained World Podcast Extra In the 1970s, in Thornton Heath, England, a family was tormented by Poltergeist Phenomena that started one August night when they were woken in the middle of the night by a blaring bedside radio that had somehow turned itself on, tuned into a foreign language station. This was the beginning of a string of events that lasted nearly four years.