the youngest girl (I think her name is Elizabeth) started seeing strange things happening. Like she saw stones floating around, saw a chair moving by itself and floating in the air. And she told her family about it and no one believed it
then they were talking about it more and someone suggested it was a poltergeist. And because the girl was entering puberty and was scared about growing up. In the finale it was how she was afraid of growing up but she eventually accepted it and then her angst stopped manifesting as making things move about on their own
That was the strangest episode of The Waltons I had ever seen. Seriously what the heck was going on with that? Has any other episode literally portrayed supernatural events like that? I thought it was very out of place with the other episodes
I don’t remember that or the ouija board one. The scariest Waltons I remember is when the one woman lost her baby and went crazy and tried to kidnap Mary Ellen’s baby
The Ouija board one was great! They had a little boy visiting who was the daughter of Olivia’s oldest friend, who had died. He was supposed to take the train to travel to his dad, who set up housekeeping in a new town. The children got hold of a Ouija board and kept getting strange answers suggesting the little boy shouldn’t take the train. Weird things happened around the house, like his train ticket going missing.
This may have been the same episode as the OP, but maybe not. It also involved Elizabeth, and it had something to do with her falling out of a fast ferris wheel. She’s also sleep-walking and having flashbacks about someone getting killed on a ferris wheel when she was younger, and some jewelry that had been stolen. So Elizabeth sleep-walks to the ferris wheel and climbs into the top car. Then she remembers the guy who’d been killed, hiding the jewels in a nearby cave.
People forget how weird the program really was. It was as if the producers were slipping in all kinds of occult and sci fi themes into what supposed to be “family friendly” television. The two sister and their “Recipe machine” ( aka moonshine still ) was another strange element of the program.
Anyone else remember that weird episode of The Night Stalker where Kolchak and the other employees at the news office got together on a weekend and built a barn? What was that about?
My sister used to make us watch it, knowing we boys (her little brothers) couldn’t stand it. I remember the Ouija board episode and the one where John Boy is covering the Hindenburg disaster, but not the OP’s.
But the two old women - weren’t they just spinster sisters who inherited half the county and had their own still? They used to have entire episodes based around them and it would drive me crazy. Nowadays my backstory is that, as spinsters, they had sexual frustrations that only got relieved in that special Appalachian way… with the resulting guilt driving them to drink.
“I can’t make it on a coupla high-altitude f***s once or twice a year! You are too much for me Miss Mamie Baldwin, you sonofawhoreson bitch! I wish I knew how to quit you.”
It would’ve been a very special episode: Brokeback Walton’s Mountain.
Much of the Waltons is based on Earl Hamner’s memories of his family and neighbors from his hometown of Schuyler, Virginia. I vaguely remember reading or hearing that the poltergeist episode was something that happened to a sister or friend of Earl’s. I wish I could remember where I read it. Possibly it was in Goodnight, John-Boy, a book Hamner wrote about the series a few years ago.
“Poltergeist” activity is not all that rare. But there is no need to blame supernatural forces as the TV episode seemed to do. It’s usually a form of attention-seeking in adolescent girls or more rarely boys who throw and break things when other people are present or nearby but not looking directly at the perpetrator. Credulous adults then blame the supernatural. The activity stops when the perp gets caught red-handed or when she matures enough to stop enjoying it.
