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The Enfield Poltergeist refers to a series of highly publicized supernatural events between 1977 and 1979 at a council house in Brimsdown, Enfield, London. It centered on the Hodgson family and 11-year-old daughter Janet, who experienced severe disturbances including flying furniture, spontaneous fires, and deep, guttural voices.
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00:00:04From August 1977 to September 1978, a series of events took place which stunned the nation
00:00:12and have subsequently become one of the world's most shockingly infamous poltergeist cases.
00:00:18Do you understand that you really shouldn't be in this house?
00:00:21That was a very strange house and something very strange was going on there.
00:00:27Everything that you know about poltergeists occurred in that house.
00:00:31They were scared out of their wits, they just didn't know what was going on.
00:00:34Reports of levitation.
00:00:36Floating around the room in mid-air and it frightened the life out of her.
00:00:41Possession.
00:00:42There was no doubt that the voice was coming from Janet herself.
00:00:46Come on, my name's Forrest, let me hear you say it.
00:00:49Nice.
00:00:51Furniture and objects being moved and thrown when nobody was around.
00:00:57A sofa would flip over or a chair would move across the room.
00:01:00I just couldn't document everything on this case.
00:01:02I mean, things happening absolutely all the time.
00:01:05This was unlike any case that had gone before and left a permanent mark on all those that were involved.
00:01:11This is the story of the Enfield poltergeist.
00:01:24In 1980, a book entitled This House Is Haunted was published and recounted the Enfield investigation in explicit detail.
00:01:33However, the book's author, Guy Lyon Playfair, got involved in the case quite by chance.
00:01:40I had the experience of a very long and lively poltergeist case in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
00:01:48I wasn't really hoping to do any more.
00:01:51We happened to have a lecture at the Society for Psychical Research, which I was a member of, on the
00:01:58subject of poltergeist, as it happened.
00:02:00And I was sitting right next to another new member called Maurice Gross, whom I hardly knew except to say
00:02:08hello to.
00:02:10And at the end of the lecture, Maurice jumped up and said,
00:02:12I'm investigating a very interesting case right now, and I need some help.
00:02:18And there was a resounding silence.
00:02:31Maurice Gross was investigating disturbances at the home of single mother Peggy Hodgson and her four children.
00:02:38It was a normal council house like a thousand others across North London.
00:02:44However, on the evening of the 30th of August, 1977, this normal family home bore witness to some decidedly abnormal
00:02:53activity.
00:02:55Well, the activity started on the 30th of August, 1977.
00:03:01Janet complained that her bed was wobbling and also her brother Peter's bed was also wobbling as well.
00:03:08And the mother just ignored them, just thought, you know, they're just getting up to stupid stuff.
00:03:13But the following night, things became even more bizarre.
00:03:17On the next night, the 31st of August, that's when other people started to experience what Janet and Peter were
00:03:23experiencing.
00:03:24And quite simply what happened, it was around about 9.30,
00:03:29Mrs Hodgson put the children to bed and then all of a sudden she heard, it was like a crash.
00:03:37Peggy Hodgson, the mother, went up to her daughter's room
00:03:41to chastise them for making a lot of noise and for actually staying up late at night.
00:03:46When she went to leave it, her chest of drawers by the door pulled itself out as of trying to
00:03:53obstruct her.
00:03:54And she pushed it back and then it pulled itself out again.
00:03:59Undeterred by that, she tried to push the chest of drawers back, back against the wall.
00:04:04And she successfully did that and then all of a sudden it started to move back out again.
00:04:08And this time when she tried to put her weight behind it, she couldn't move it at all.
00:04:12It was like something, some of the force was pushing it.
00:04:17Peggy and the children were terrified and not knowing what to do, turned to their neighbours, Vic and Peggy Nottingham,
00:04:24for help.
00:04:25But the Nottingham's didn't really know what to do for the best.
00:04:29They tried to calm down the Hodgson's but that was having no real effect because of the things that they
00:04:37experienced.
00:04:37Even on that first night, they consulted with the neighbours or they went over in terror to their neighbour's house,
00:04:44to Vic Nottingham.
00:04:45He went to investigate and he experienced things.
00:04:53Eventually, I think Mr Nottingham decided that the only people that could really call out was the police.
00:04:58On the evening of the 31st of August, 1977, the police came to Green Street and were able to convince
00:05:05Mrs Hodgson to re-enter her house.
00:05:08There's two police officers arrived and they did a tour inspection of the house.
00:05:13And at first nothing happened, nothing went to war.
00:05:16But it wasn't long before the activity started again.
00:05:20A large armchair apparently moved, unassisted, about four feet across the living room floor.
00:05:27PC heaps. We've got her recollection of the events on record as witnessing the levitation of a chair, the movement
00:05:35of a chair.
00:05:36I was impressed by the statement made by the woman police officer because she seemed to have seen something quite
00:05:43clearly,
00:05:43which was a chair that moved apparently without any propulsion.
00:05:48And she investigated to make sure it hadn't got something attached to it.
00:05:53I thought that was quite a clear, lucid report and also very courageous of her to speak out when probably
00:06:01she was the subject of a lot of mockery after that.
00:06:05The Enfield case was documented from day one when they called in the police.
00:06:11That's not bad, I mean, to get a testimony of a police constable on the first day.
00:06:16When people report seeing things like that to you, that's one thing.
00:06:21But when trained observers like police officers witness these things and then they actually sign written statements to the fact
00:06:29that, you know, that's exactly what they saw, it adds more weight to these sort of cases.
00:06:34On Thursday, 1st of September 1977, at approximately 1am, I was on duty in my capacity as a police woman
00:06:42when I received a radio message to Green Street, Enfield.
00:06:47I heard the sound of knocking on the wall that backs onto the next door neighbour's house.
00:06:52There were four distinct taps on the wall and then silence.
00:06:57The eldest son pointed to a chair which was standing next to the sofa.
00:07:02I looked at the chair and noticed that it was wobbling slightly from side to side.
00:07:07I then saw the chair slide across the floor towards a kitchen wall.
00:07:12It moved approximately three or four feet and then came to rest.
00:07:20But despite first-hand experience of this alleged supernatural phenomena, the police were powerless to help the family.
00:07:28They were very considerate, they were very nice to the family and said that this really wasn't a police matter.
00:07:34They couldn't find anybody breaking the law.
00:07:37They were anxious to help if they could and they really couldn't.
00:07:40Over the next three days, these strange events continued for Peggy and her children.
00:07:46Plastic toy bricks and marbles flew around, seemingly of their own accord.
00:07:52And when picked up, they were hot to touch.
00:07:55A vicar and a local medium visited the house, but were unable to help.
00:08:01They were scared out of their wits. They just didn't know what was going on.
00:08:05They'd never heard of the word poltergeist.
00:08:07In fact, the girl used to call it the polka dice.
00:08:10And they had absolutely no idea of the same thing happening to anybody else.
00:08:16These things are not amusing for the people who are having them.
00:08:19There were relations of the family who I met.
00:08:22And they said that if they sat on a chair, it got twisted around or a child got apparently thrown
00:08:30from a chair into the middle of the floor.
00:08:33They always come in the same order, which is interesting.
00:08:35It's as if the poltergeist was reading from a script.
00:08:38You know, you start with knocking, wrapping on the walls.
00:08:42And then you get small objects being thrown.
00:08:46And then you get larger objects being thrown.
00:08:48And then you get tables and chairs turning over.
00:08:51Sometimes completely flip and flop.
00:08:54The family felt confused, terrified and alone.
00:08:59More than anything else, they were asking, why us?
00:09:04It's very hard to tell why it should be any particular victim because the experts will all tell you that
00:09:12you've got to have a tension in the family and break up of the parents and so on.
00:09:19Poltergeist activities have been noted for occurring in places where there's a bit of tension in the atmosphere.
00:09:25You know, where there's a bit of unrest in the family or there's, you know, there's some sort of trauma
00:09:31that the whole family are experiencing at the time.
00:09:33And in this case, with the Hodgson's, you know, that was part of the course.
00:09:39It was quite turbulent, quite negative because of this early split between the parents.
00:09:48There had been a break up in the family, but then practically every other family is broken up nowadays, but
00:09:55you don't get every other family having a poltergeist.
00:09:57They are very rare.
00:10:03To most experts, there is a distinction between poltergeist activity and phenomena usually associated with a haunting.
00:10:10Parapsychologists like to differentiate between hauntings and poltergeist.
00:10:17Hauntings are traditionally location focused, whereas poltergeist is traditionally person focused.
00:10:25The other difference is hauntings can go on for years, for decades, for even centuries, whereas poltergeist are traditionally very,
00:10:34very short term.
00:10:36So they may be a few weeks, months, and in rare cases, leading up to a year or longer.
00:10:43And that's why the Enfield poltergeist is so special, because it's about 14 months in length.
00:10:49By the 4th of September and near breaking point, Mrs Hodgson again turned to the Nottinghams.
00:10:56Not knowing what else to do, they called in the press.
00:11:02No one would be able to convince me that there wasn't something very odd in that house.
00:11:06Things would just happen. You walk in the house, things would just take off, fly around, flip over, do this,
00:11:12do that.
00:11:20On the evening of the 4th of September, 1977, a call was taken at the Daily Mirror,
00:11:26recounting almost unbelievable activity at the home of Peggy Hodgson and her children in Enfield, North London.
00:11:34The night news editor was a great character called Tom Merrin.
00:11:41And the phone kept ringing with the Nottinghams, who were living next door to the Hodgsons.
00:11:49And Tom tried to get rid of it in the usual way, which is fairly short.
00:11:54But Vic, Nottingham, kept ringing back.
00:12:02Convinced by the Hodgson's plight, reporter Doug Bents and photographer Graham Morris were dispatched to the Hodgson home.
00:12:10We knew nothing about the story at all. We were just told that there was something going on in a
00:12:15house in Enfield.
00:12:16And I knew the area pretty well. I'd been at school there. So I knew all around there.
00:12:21And we found the street pretty easily. And we went into the Hodgson's, met them.
00:12:26And they were clearly in a right old state, the family.
00:12:29But newspaper people are very sceptical and they were clearly very distraught, but nothing happened at all.
00:12:36According to Playfair's book, This House Is Haunted, as the newspaper men were leaving, the activity picked up again.
00:12:44We came out of the house, got in the car, and then Vic came running out and we went back
00:12:50in.
00:12:52Yet photographer Graham Morris remembers things a little differently.
00:12:56The mother and young children had been taken into the neighbour's house and were being looked after there.
00:13:04The whole point was that we were to go in first and wait for the family to come in.
00:13:10And it was as the family were then brought in, the children were brought in, some of them still asleep.
00:13:15Then suddenly things started flying around the room and things were taking off.
00:13:20Funny little things, like children's toys, Lego bricks, stuff like that.
00:13:28Regardless of which testimony is correct, both newspaper men agree on the bizarre offence which followed.
00:13:35The two girls were screaming. I hesitate to use the word paranormal.
00:13:41Something was going on there. And Graham was hit by a brick and Lego bricks hit the wall.
00:13:48And I have no doubt that that happened.
00:14:00I'm just concentrating on photographing it. I wasn't really that worried.
00:14:04There were things that were just bouncing off walls or flying around.
00:14:07And then suddenly a Lego brick, you know, it was quite a sharp corner on a Lego brick,
00:14:14whacked me in the eyebrow and left a mark there for a few days.
00:14:20I'm lucky it hit me in the eye.
00:14:27These photographs were taken around the time of Morris being struck.
00:14:34It was quite weird. It was quite upsetting. It was disturbing to be in there.
00:14:41Because certainly if you've got no answer to anything, you've got no reason for any of it to have happened.
00:14:50It's not logical.
00:14:50They could have, of course, been flicked by somebody, but the position of the people and the force of the
00:14:59brick and the angles were wrong.
00:15:01I could see it as if it were yesterday. I could see the people in the room.
00:15:05And no one would be able to convince me that there wasn't something very odd in that house.
00:15:10A senior reporter at the time was so impressed with what Benz and Morris told him that he followed up
00:15:16the story himself the very next day.
00:15:19We couldn't offer the services to deal with this. We didn't have the facilities.
00:15:24Or we could get a story and we could get photographs, but we couldn't do anything else.
00:15:29There was growing concern amongst senior mirror reporters for Mrs Hodgson's wellbeing.
00:15:34In an attempt to aid the situation, they called the Society for Psychical Research, the SPR.
00:15:41The Society for Psychical Research was set up in 1882 to investigate those faculties of man, real or supposed,
00:15:51that are not explicable on any generally recognised hypothesis.
00:15:56It doesn't have any fixed ideas or opinions, and anyone can be a member whether they actually believe in paranormal
00:16:05phenomena or not.
00:16:06But, of course, obviously most of us do are convinced that there is some reality in these things.
00:16:13The SPR assigned the case to one of their members, Maurice Grose.
00:16:19Maurice, who unfortunately passed away summer 2007, was an inventor.
00:16:25When the Amalfield Poltergeist case started, Maurice Grose was kind of a fledgling investigator.
00:16:31But he went into the case actually with a very objective mind.
00:16:36He initially interviewed the entire family and was always thinking about alternative explanations and questioning everything.
00:16:45It's interesting to see a guy turn up with a handlebar moustache looking like a World War II fighter pilot
00:16:50and driving an E-Type Jag, and then being there for the Society for Psychical Research.
00:16:56You don't think that the two quite go together.
00:17:00He went out of his way to befriend the family.
00:17:03He was not after an easy, quick answer.
00:17:09Despite his level-headed approach, Grose was soon convinced the phenomena was genuinely paranormal.
00:17:16Not long after arriving at the house, he himself was witness to strange occurrences.
00:17:23Lego bricks were being thrown, marbles were being thrown.
00:17:25Maurice observed that the marbles, when they landed on the floor, they didn't actually bounce, they just stopped dead.
00:17:32But then things started to escalate a little bit more.
00:17:34It was things like, you know, the furniture was being hurled around.
00:17:37The three-piece suite, I think, was even overturned at one point.
00:17:56But each stage in the Enfield Poltergeist case, you've got witnesses from very different backgrounds being brought in.
00:18:04Initially, it's the neighbours, and then it's police officers, and then it's newspaper reporters, and then it's Society for Psychical
00:18:13Research Investigators.
00:18:15You understand that you really shouldn't be in this house.
00:18:19You do understand that you shouldn't be in this house.
00:18:22You do. That was, again, two knocks.
00:18:26There was knocking in the house.
00:18:28The kids weren't anywhere near it at the time, so it wasn't them.
00:18:31We knew that it wasn't them.
00:18:36If you'd taken it out of context, if that had happened in your own home, you wouldn't have worried about
00:18:42it at all.
00:18:43But the fact that it happened there, and you're surrounded by 16 people from the Society for Psychical Research,
00:18:50and there are cameras, and all the rest of it, you think, this knocking must be important.
00:18:56Now, I'm going to ask you a question. Are you having a game with me?
00:19:08It's through the cardboard box and the pillow right at my face.
00:19:16That was a very strange house, and something very strange was going on there.
00:19:22We're all standing this side of the room, and over that side of the room, that drawer has just opened
00:19:26on its own in that cabinet.
00:19:28Now, how do you explain that? You can't, so that was worrying as far as I was concerned.
00:19:34Working alongside Groose, journalist Doug Bents was more sceptical of the phenomena than the SPR investigator.
00:19:41I liked Morris and respected his knowledge on what he was doing.
00:19:45While there was an element of caution for me, we were on the landing, the girls were asleep, and there
00:19:57was a moaning.
00:19:59And Morris was really quite excited by this, and clearly thought that there was some kind of outside force trying
00:20:07to express themselves through one of the girls.
00:20:10But it was clear to me, with the screaming, that the girl was masturbating.
00:20:14Whether she realised that she was putting out false information to Morris or not, I have no idea.
00:20:21There's no doubt what she was doing.
00:20:24During his time at the house, photographer Graham Morris took photographs which alleged to show a variety of unexplainable activity.
00:20:34I didn't think I was going to spend the months that I spent up there photographing various things.
00:20:43This activity occurred most notably in the bedroom now occupied by 11-year-old Janet and 13-year-old Margaret.
00:20:52Photography was done remotely. I'd be setting up remote cameras.
00:20:58So a lot of it I didn't witness, but I was there just to record it, just to set up
00:21:02cameras and photograph it.
00:21:06You can actually see the bedclothes being lifted.
00:21:12But more importantly, in the corner of the photograph, there's the actual curtain is wrapping itself around the cover.
00:21:20And it looks like it's involved in pulling the cover off.
00:21:23And it's a small series of photographs, but I found them fascinating.
00:21:33Although the photographs are compelling, some argue that they are far from definitive evidence of paranormal activity.
00:21:41For me, the photograph is convincing because I was there and it brings that weird night back to me.
00:21:47But I can't see the picture would do it for someone who was looking at it objectively to prove anything.
00:21:53As the apparent phenomena went on, Grosch soon realised he would need help to document the sheer volume of activity
00:22:00and was soon joined by Guy Lyon Playfair following that chance meeting at the SPR.
00:22:07Guy was an SPR member with a little bit more experience in investigating cases.
00:22:15He was also a journalist, but somebody who had written a number of books on various paranormal phenomena, even at
00:22:21that early stage.
00:22:22He'd experienced it all before. He'd seen these things before.
00:22:25He even knew what was going to happen next, which is a fascinating thing.
00:22:29But he made a point never telling it, which is quite frustrating.
00:22:33As a photographer, it would be quite nice to know what's going to happen next so you can get ready
00:22:36for it.
00:22:38The atmosphere was one of absolute confusion, not knowing what on earth was going to happen next.
00:22:42The girls were aged then 12 and 13. They were losing a lot of sleep.
00:22:48It was affecting their schoolwork. It wasn't nice at all.
00:22:53However, as the strange events continued, questions started to be asked about Mrs Hodgson's motives.
00:23:00There were suggestions at the time that they may have fabricated this scenario in order to get themselves a better
00:23:08house.
00:23:08My first trick question was, would you like us to ask the council to rehouse you? And she said, no,
00:23:14no way.
00:23:15I don't think Peggy Hodgson had the ability to carry that off. And if she had the ability, I don't
00:23:23think she'd have done it.
00:23:24As bizarre occurrences continued to plague the Hodgson's, they were about to find themselves at the centre of a media
00:23:31sensation.
00:23:32And their reputations, along with that of Morris Gross, were about to be called even further into disrepute.
00:23:41The girls did play a few tricks. I'm sure they were under pressure to perform.
00:23:45I wouldn't have taken the girls' words for anything at all.
00:23:56Apparent paranormal activity was still consuming their home on Green Street in Enfield, North London.
00:24:02And things were about to become even more bizarre for the Hodgson family, as on the 10th of September 1977,
00:24:11their story became a national phenomena, making the front page of the Daily Mirror.
00:24:17The Mirror was a very respectable paper. You didn't get silly, nutty stories in the mirror.
00:24:25Normally, paranormal stories are usually tucked, you know, about page 16, 17 in a newspaper, a little tiny column.
00:24:31This is like a full page spread, basically saying that this house is haunted.
00:24:36For the newspaper staff at the centre of this tabloid sensation, this was a story unlike any they'd covered in
00:24:43the past.
00:24:45Stories fitted a pattern. But this one fits no pattern. You know, this is a one-off story.
00:24:52The story at the time was completely unique. You know, no-one had seen anything like this before.
00:24:59Each time a representative from the media actually visited the house, they each seemed to have their own personal experiences.
00:25:07And it gave it a more personal edge rather than just kind of a step back, objective reporting about what
00:25:13happened.
00:25:14Here were journalists who were reporting on their own experiences.
00:25:17The Enfield case was suddenly at the centre of a media frenzy.
00:25:22Yet there arose claims that some members of the press were intent on exposing the story as a hoax, and
00:25:28the Hodgsons as liars.
00:25:32Several newspapers sent people up there. We had the sort of clever ones who tried to bribe the children into
00:25:39confessing.
00:25:40Two papers did that. They were offered huge sums of money by the 70s standards, and it didn't work.
00:25:48However, to many, the motives for the press attempting to bribe the family weren't clear.
00:25:54An expose of fraud in a paranormal case is not so interesting as the real thing.
00:26:03That a story showing that there's a, you know, a teenage girl who's surrounded by poltergeist activity is a lot
00:26:11more of a seller than teenage girl fakes poltergeist activity.
00:26:15If you, if you step back and think about a generation ago with the media, you didn't get paranormal stories.
00:26:25So discredit it. Shoot it down. The mirrors, you know, what's up to the mirror? What are they doing running
00:26:29ghost stories?
00:26:30You know, let's take this apart.
00:26:33As the media continued to turn up on their doorstep, the Hodgsons struggled to cope.
00:26:40I just wouldn't have brought more trauma on that family. They had this bloody unexplained phenomenon, which we'll say, you
00:26:47know, which is now pretty well documented as a poltergeist.
00:26:49A mother who was not in good health. You don't want to bring, you don't want to bring a lot
00:26:54of bloody tabloid journalism banging on the door.
00:26:56You know, it's just awful. They're in a mess. You know, they need help.
00:27:02As the media presence continued, rumours persisted about the authenticity of some of the phenomena, and in particular, the part
00:27:11played in the events by Peggy's daughters, Margaret and Janet.
00:27:15I'm afraid at the time I wouldn't have taken the girls' words for anything at all, because it was clear
00:27:23that they were really having a good time, and it was very nice for them having Maurice there.
00:27:29He was like having a sort of substitute father.
00:27:33In terms of whether Janet and Margaret actually faked anything between themselves, there is no doubt that that's what they
00:27:40did.
00:27:40I think inevitably, with the continual media interest, you know, they were encouraged to perform.
00:27:47I don't think Mrs. Hodgson would have approved of that, but I'm sure they were under pressure to perform.
00:27:53And I think that both girls have admitted subsequently that they did.
00:27:59I think they said that whenever they faked anything that Maurice or Guy or both of them always knew about
00:28:07it.
00:28:07The girls did play a few tricks, as I would have expected.
00:28:11Children learn everything by imitation, so if they wanted to imitate the phenomena that were going on, that's quite normal.
00:28:18It doesn't avoid the fact that what they were imitating was genuine, which of course it was, because how would
00:28:26they know what to make up?
00:28:27I mean, they'd have to fake the right effect of something that had been recorded before, because a poltergeist has
00:28:33got a very limited repertoire.
00:28:35They've got about 18 to 20 tricks, and that's it.
00:28:38So much of the real stuff was happening, and how you distinguish is really quite easy.
00:28:43I mean, if you're sitting in front of me now, and I get up, and this chair suddenly follows me
00:28:50across the room and turns over,
00:28:52I don't think you're going to suspect trickery.
00:28:55Margaret and Janet's pranks were doing little to help legitimise the case.
00:29:00Skeptics were asking, if real paranormal phenomena is occurring, why should they feel the need to fake?
00:29:06Why would they bother to fake when some genuine things were happening?
00:29:11I think there's a lot of mediums, in fact, who do that to keep things going.
00:29:16But, and so therefore one mustn't always feel that if a medium is cheated, that's the end of the medium.
00:29:23I think sometimes it's a case of priming the pump, you fake something, and then something genuine happens.
00:29:29It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that evidence of fraud weakens the real evidence.
00:29:37Gross and Playfair, convinced the Hodgsons were genuine, continued to record an enormous amount of unusual occurrences.
00:29:46A lot of activity in the bedroom, the girls being sort of shaken and bounced up and down and thrown
00:29:52out of bed.
00:29:53We even had a box of matches caught fire while it was burned on the top, without the matches themselves
00:30:00igniting.
00:30:01The heavy leather armchair flipping over backwards was quite definitely the most impressive.
00:30:07It was broad daylight and it was right in front of my nose, and nobody was anywhere near it.
00:30:13However, as the investigators spent more and more time with the family, doubts concerning Gross' objectivity began to surface.
00:30:22Two investigators spent an extraordinary amount of time in the house, far more really than in most cases.
00:30:29Morris, as always, came out with instant reasons for everything happening and always attached to something to do with poltergeist.
00:30:40Morris certainly considered it the most fantastic thing that had ever happened.
00:30:45I was very wary of his initial observations, because he wanted to see things.
00:30:51After a while, maybe I'm cynical or whatever, I just find it was a bit too... wanting to read too
00:31:00much into it.
00:31:01Morris accepted as genuine a lot of phenomena that he did not personally see, and accepted the word of the
00:31:11family for a lot of things.
00:31:13If you are a member of something like the Psycho Research Society, and you believe in the paranormal, and you
00:31:19want to see paranormal manifestations, you'll find it.
00:31:25Gross had suffered a bereavement barely a year earlier, and some thought that this was causing him to place too
00:31:32much faith in the Hodgson's claims.
00:31:35The whole affair was a very big thing in Morris' life, because he'd lost his own daughter, also called Janet.
00:31:44This to him was really proof of the paranormal, and probably proof to him of survival too.
00:31:53I thought for Morris to have lost his daughter a year before, it's got to have been in the back
00:31:57of his mind, I would have thought.
00:31:59To try and speculate that he may have lost all objectivity, I don't think it's a very good explanation.
00:32:07Morris, from a very early point in the investigation, was looking at this very much as a poltergeist case.
00:32:13He was looking at it as possibly an occurrence of psychokinesis.
00:32:19At no point in the case was there any sort of confirmatory aspect for Morris that Janet was trying to
00:32:26communicate with him,
00:32:27or that in solving this case, it would help him deal with the loss of his daughter.
00:32:34The legitimacy of Gross' testimony is backed up by the fact that others were also witness to much of the
00:32:41strange phenomena,
00:32:42and this activity continued, including problems with Graham Morris' camera equipment.
00:32:49Graham Morris, the photographer, a very highly experienced professional, Fleet Street man,
00:32:55he charged up his flash guns one night, and when he started taking pictures,
00:33:00he just found they were all discharged at once, which is pretty unlikely, in fact it's not possible.
00:33:05I had a flash gun, or maybe even two flash guns, that were fully charged, always fully charged before getting
00:33:10there,
00:33:12and then trying to use not one, but two of them, and the power drained from them.
00:33:18And that was, I couldn't answer that, there was no reason for that, I'd never seen it happen before, it
00:33:26certainly never happened since.
00:33:28And it wasn't just the newspaper men who experienced problems with technical equipment.
00:33:35We had a video recorder with an infrared lens, where we were hoping to film something happening in the dark,
00:33:45and all that would happen was that when they switched the machine on, all the lights came on simultaneously.
00:33:52You know, fast forward, back, play, and so on, which they said was not possible, but there it was.
00:34:00Despite the investigators' best efforts, no video footage of any of the reported phenomena was captured.
00:34:07In the Enfield Poltergeist, we don't have any footage.
00:34:11All we have is some photographs, and the accounts of the people that were involved,
00:34:17either the family, or witnesses, or the investigators.
00:34:21If I could go back with the gear that you have now, the equipment, the technology there is now, you'd
00:34:26be laughing.
00:34:27You'd either photograph everything, or you'd show it all up completely to be fraud, if that were the case, which
00:34:34I doubt.
00:34:36But you'd have a lot more on film, digital, you'd have video running, all sorts of things.
00:34:45Despite no video evidence, more and more unexplainable phenomena continued to be reported.
00:34:51The knocking on the walls continued.
00:34:54There were outbreaks of fire that disappeared as quickly as they started.
00:34:58And the curtains in the bedroom are seen to blow in the wind, even when the windows are closed.
00:35:04But most disturbingly, the activity was seen to centre more specifically around 12-year-old Janet.
00:35:13Janet was sedated for her own safety.
00:35:16It was when she was there, but things happened.
00:35:19Janet was the epicenter of the whole thing, the common denominator of everything that happened.
00:35:32Following the extensive media coverage, by November 1977, the Enfield poltergeist was the most famous paranormal case in British history.
00:35:42And the family were now minor celebrities.
00:35:46You ended up getting more and more people coming to the house just to witness things.
00:35:52It ended up like a sort of Victorian sideshow, you know, the Elephant Man almost.
00:35:58It must have been awful for them.
00:36:00Life itself was difficult without having a poltergeist, you know, throwing its weight round the place, throwing its energy round
00:36:08the place.
00:36:10And it was becoming increasingly obvious that one member of the family in particular was at the centre of the
00:36:16activity.
00:36:18Janet was always the focal point.
00:36:20It was when she was there that things happened.
00:36:24So when she was there with her sister, her brother, her mother, the Nottingham's, it was always Janet when things
00:36:29happened.
00:36:30Janet was a very lively kid, very athletic.
00:36:33Pretty well behaved, I would say. She was always very polite with us.
00:36:37She was good at school. She was learning quite a few subjects and seemed to get on well with everybody.
00:36:45She was a very normal child, yeah. I mean, there was nothing, nothing odd about her in any way.
00:36:50She was good at school. I used to help her out with her homework. She was doing, I think, French
00:36:54and German.
00:36:55Sorry about the others, but I mean, she was the brightest of the family.
00:37:00Numerous small objects used to fly around near her, and on more than one occasion, heavy chairs and sofa would
00:37:09flip over when she was around.
00:37:13And, yeah, she saw it all.
00:37:16She'd come home from school with stories about how things were happening in the classroom.
00:37:20She'd go down the shops and cans would fly off the shelf in the local supermarket.
00:37:24Janet was the, you know, the epicenter of the whole thing, the common denominator of everything that happened.
00:37:31So why did these events apparently focus on a seemingly normal young girl?
00:37:37There's a popular belief that poltergeists are related to the age of puberty.
00:37:41It seems to me that it must have something to do with a sudden extra release of energy,
00:37:47which the onset of menses presumably releases, and I don't quite know why this should be significant,
00:37:57but it's been noted often enough to make it pretty well accepted.
00:38:02Usually you find the activity centers around prepubescent children,
00:38:06children just about to go into puberty.
00:38:08It seems to be centered around the hypothalamus in the brain.
00:38:12That seems to be the area of the brain that sort of lights up when paranormal phenomena is occurring.
00:38:18And so it's no real surprise to then say that, you know, there's a child going through an emotional change,
00:38:24a chemical change as well.
00:38:26Could this be the prime conditions, you know, this sort of chemical driving sort of thing
00:38:31that creates side effects, you know, PK effects in people?
00:38:35The focus of the poltergeist activity, in this particular case Janet,
00:38:40may be consciously or unconsciously causing the phenomena using psychokinesis.
00:38:48I'm sure it was a subconscious cry for help.
00:38:52It seemed to me like she's trying to communicate with dad who isn't there,
00:38:57mum who hasn't got time to talk back, brother who isn't there,
00:39:01other brother who can't really communicate with you,
00:39:05sister who cries at the drop of a hat, who does she talk to?
00:39:09In December 1977, the activity around Janet became even more pronounced.
00:39:17Well, the main event, without any doubt, was that day when Janet had her menarche for her first period.
00:39:27Our colleague, who was a student of physics,
00:39:30he was very interested in this idea of matter, passing through the matter.
00:39:35And he asked, he took this cushion into the bedroom, as I recall,
00:39:40and asked Janet to see if she could get it downstairs without opening the door,
00:39:45which would be very good evidence.
00:39:48The next thing we knew was that it was on the roof.
00:39:51Instead of going down through the floor, it went upwards,
00:39:55and the local baker was walking along the pavement towards the house,
00:40:02and suddenly saw it.
00:40:03He said there was nobody leaning out of the window, nobody threw it.
00:40:06One minute it wasn't there, and the next minute it was.
00:40:10According to eyewitness reports at the time,
00:40:12a large red cushion materialised out of thin air above the Hodgson house.
00:40:19You're suddenly confronted with something like that.
00:40:21It's a terrific shock to the system.
00:40:23I mean, you know it can't have happened, but you know it did.
00:40:27And I got it down with great difficulty, I may say.
00:40:30I nearly fell out of the window.
00:40:32And there's just no way that I could have got that cushion onto the roof normally.
00:40:37And if I couldn't, I don't think a 12-year-old girl could either.
00:40:41However, the day's strange events weren't over yet.
00:40:45On the same day, a colleague of ours asked Janet deliberately if she could make something go through the floor
00:40:54to the room below.
00:40:56And the next thing we knew was that Janet claimed to have floated into the house next door through the
00:41:04wall.
00:41:05And she described the neighbour's bedroom, where she'd certainly never been quite accurately, and said she'd left something behind in
00:41:17there.
00:41:19So we made arrangements when we could to go round, and sure enough, there was a book belonging to Janet
00:41:25in the neighbour's bedroom.
00:41:26I met Mrs. Nottingham from next door, and who I must say did talk about some pretty hair-raising things.
00:41:37Well, it sounded rather as if some book that ought to have been in the Hodson house ended up in
00:41:44her house, and things came through the wall.
00:41:47Well, suitably enough, the book was called Fun and Games for Children, which was quite appropriate.
00:41:54But there's just no way at all that she could have got in there normally.
00:41:57The house was locked, the neighbour was out, and you couldn't get through the window, you couldn't even get up
00:42:02the chimney.
00:42:02We checked that. It had been blocked off. And yet the book was found next door, so it had gone
00:42:08through the wall.
00:42:08It does stretch credibility, doesn't it? It sounds absolutely fantastic to think that a child can dematerialise or go through
00:42:17a wall and deposit something and come back.
00:42:20We have to rely on the people there at the time. We can do nothing more than just take their
00:42:26word for it.
00:42:27But with the weight of everything else that was reported by other people, then it doesn't surprise me the least
00:42:33that these sort of things were reported there.
00:42:36Just when things seemed they couldn't get more bizarre, they did.
00:42:42The levitation started off with the girls sort of just sliding out of bed.
00:42:48And then it got more and more impressive when we ended up with a sequence of pictures of them.
00:42:52What I'm told is levitating.
00:42:54Do these pictures, taken remotely by photographer Graham Morris, actually show Janet levitating?
00:43:02Pictures don't lie. Let's put it that way.
00:43:04The pictures that you see actually happened.
00:43:08Whatever it was happened.
00:43:10What caused it to happen, I'll leave everybody else to work that one out.
00:43:14I just know that when that camera went off, it photographed about five frames of a girl starting off coming
00:43:22out of bed and then ending up on the floor.
00:43:26The increasing unpredictability of the apparent phenomena surrounding Janet raised some serious concerns for her wellbeing.
00:43:34There had been incidents of levitation and bed clothes being pulled and the investigators at the time were concerned about
00:43:41her safety.
00:43:42The doctor came round and gave her a shot and he said something like this would put a horse or
00:43:45an elephant out.
00:43:46And she's still fighting and fighting.
00:43:49And it ended up with two or three of us trying to hold her down.
00:43:55And this was after the sedation.
00:43:58Later on that night, she was found, what, 10, 15 feet at the other end of the room, up on
00:44:05a dresser.
00:44:07That's quite a shocking thing in itself.
00:44:09We were all downstairs.
00:44:10Big bang.
00:44:12Everyone rushes upstairs.
00:44:13Her uncle goes in first, finds her on the radio.
00:44:16I walk in with a camera, banged.
00:44:18How did she get there?
00:44:20I'll leave that for all the others to try and work out.
00:44:24In spite of the best efforts of the investigators and medical professionals, this apparent levitation continued.
00:44:32She had that experience of levitation, which was witnessed from the street outside.
00:44:38Rather, as you saw in the exorcist, her head didn't go around in circles, but the lollipop lady right across
00:44:47the road saw her floating around the room in midair.
00:44:51And it frightened the life out of her.
00:44:54There were witnesses in the street that actually saw this.
00:44:56They were looking up through the bedroom windows and there was Janet floating past the window, you know, at some
00:45:00height.
00:45:01Very, very difficult, I would imagine, for a child to fake.
00:45:05We know from psychology research that there are problems with eyewitness account, and yet this might be the holy grail
00:45:12of eyewitness testimony,
00:45:14because you've got two independent witnesses, not aware of each other, providing a testimony that corroborates each other.
00:45:22Well, Guy and Morris, I think, were convinced that a lot of things happened that I would not be convinced
00:45:31by.
00:45:32I mean, there were two people in the road, I think, who said they saw things from the road.
00:45:38Well, you know, to my mind, you don't get a very good view of what goes on inside an upper
00:45:43bedroom window from the road.
00:45:47While I respect Morris Gross usually, I'm sure he wouldn't have made anything up.
00:45:50I'd have to be very sceptical about levitating.
00:45:53To repeat what Sir William Crookes said in about 1860, I never said it was possible, I said it was
00:46:01true.
00:46:02And the position is the same today. We've just got to redefine what we think is possible.
00:46:08With Janet having taken the first steps towards womanhood, the phenomenon surrounding her became even more dramatic and terrifying.
00:46:18Janet was being used. Janet started to speak with this odd voice.
00:46:24The discarnate entity was actually using Janet to speak.
00:46:42As the phenomena surrounding Janet increased in its severity, this voice was heard, seemingly coming from the 12-year-old
00:46:49girl.
00:46:52It became more shocking once Janet started to speak with this odd voice.
00:47:01This extraordinary bass male voice would come out of Janet at the age of 12.
00:47:09We did some quite careful study.
00:47:12The first thing we did was to get in a local speech therapist who heard it and said she had
00:47:18absolutely no explanation.
00:47:19She was totally freaked out and she just didn't know what to make of it.
00:47:23Why don't you go and give up where you belong and say,
00:47:27I don't believe in that.
00:47:29You don't believe in it? Why?
00:47:32I'm not an adult man.
00:47:35A very senior professor from Birkbeck College who specialised in laryngology, study of throats.
00:47:45He kindly lent us a very high-tech laryngograph where we managed to make a chart recording of this voice
00:47:53and show it to him.
00:47:54And he took one look at it and he said, oh yes, plico ventricularis.
00:47:59And in common language that means the false vocal folds.
00:48:04Folds of membrane which sit behind the true vocal cords, the false vocal cords, are of limited use in normal
00:48:11vocalisation.
00:48:11We got an enormous variety of stuff ranging from absolute rubbish to rather disgusting obscenity to what sounded very much
00:48:24like genuine messages from people who were lost and confused and didn't know where they were.
00:48:34There were claims from some that Janet was utilising a form of ventriloquism to create this voice.
00:48:40So a professional was called in, to the surprise of the Hodgsons, to test out this theory.
00:48:47Ray Allen, the TV ventriloquist, was brought along to sort of say, well, that sort of tone of voice couldn't
00:48:56come from a girl of her age.
00:48:57George came up to me and said that they've got a ventriloquist involved and I threw my hands up in
00:49:05horror.
00:49:05I was totally opposed to that and wouldn't have anything to do with it.
00:49:09You can completely rule ventriloquism out, mainly because that also involves our normal vocal cords.
00:49:15Ray Allen's visit threw little clarity on the situation and the strange voice continued.
00:49:22Most people really can't keep it up for very long because you get a desperately sore throat.
00:49:29But young Janet could chatter away like this for hour after hour without even clearing her throat.
00:49:34There was no doubt from some of the witnesses that the voice was coming from Janet herself.
00:49:39But it's interesting when you speak to experts about where that voice came from, that it came from the false
00:49:45vocal cord,
00:49:46that if you try and do that yourself, for even an hour or two at a time, you can start
00:49:52to lose your voice.
00:49:54And remember that she was doing this periodically over the course of several weeks for an hour straight.
00:50:01I've actually played with my false vocal cords on a number of occasions and yes, you do get very, very
00:50:06hoarse in a matter of seconds.
00:50:08I don't believe in that.
00:50:10I did witness the voice from Janet or wherever it came from.
00:50:15It just sounded like a girl putting on a gruff voice to me.
00:50:20Sorry, I just thought it was sort of, okay, well, everything else is gone now.
00:50:25You know, we've finished with the Lego bricks flying around, all the chairs have flipped up and we've done the
00:50:29levitation.
00:50:29We've had the knocking. So what are we doing now?
00:50:32Oh, I tell you what, we haven't had voices yet, have we? Let's give that a go.
00:50:36Boris was very impressed by the girl's voice and very few members of the SPR were.
00:50:42It's certainly unusual. It's even a bit extraordinary.
00:50:48But then, of course, there are extraordinary things that people do that are not paranormal.
00:50:54Boris rather gave the impression she would talk for an hour.
00:50:57Well, not really.
00:50:59She would talk in short bursts and then there'd be silence and then somebody else would say something.
00:51:04And then she'd start again.
00:51:08Why aren't you a hit on end?
00:51:10Why aren't you a hit on end?
00:51:10I feel.
00:51:12And I am sending you this other.
00:51:18While there was some scepticism about the authenticity of the voice, support for its legitimacy came from a surprising source.
00:51:26We got messages from one of the former inhabitants of the house who came up with an extraordinary statement that
00:51:36he said he died in the chair in the living room downstairs after going blind.
00:51:41And I have come here to this, my grandfather's life also is left.
00:51:51There's some substantial evidence to support the fact that there was a previous occupant of that house called Bill.
00:51:59And it did appear that his character was actually coming through Janet.
00:52:02At the time, nobody purported to identify this old Bill who would talk, but later I think someone came forward
00:52:12and said that someone like that had lived in the house.
00:52:16Maurice Gross was contacted by the son of the previous owner who'd read my book, This House Is Haunted, and
00:52:24said, hey, that sounds like Dad.
00:52:26So he got in touch with Maurice Gross and listened to the tape.
00:52:32And he said, that's absolutely true.
00:52:35He did go blind and he did die in the chair in the living room.
00:52:39And this was long before the Hodgson family moved in, so they'd never met him.
00:52:45And I found that pretty compelling.
00:52:46I think that was evidence for what, known in the trade as earthbound spirits,
00:52:51people who don't realise they're dead or that or else they don't want to leave the last place they were
00:52:58on earth.
00:53:07Could this actually be the voice of Bill, the former occupant of the house?
00:53:12If not, what are the other explanations?
00:53:16On Green Street, there could have been countless neighbours that may have been aware of Bill's passing in that house
00:53:22before the Hodgsons were there.
00:53:24And that information could have easily got to the Hodgson family.
00:53:28It's a long street. People lived there a long time. The police were there. The vicar was there.
00:53:33You know, it would be very easy for the girls to pick up bits and pieces and absorb that either
00:53:40knowingly or unknowingly.
00:53:41She didn't actually say anything particularly interesting. Most of it was just sort of gabble and verbal and bad language.
00:53:49And I think a lot of people just thought she was enjoying herself.
00:53:54So I've never been impressed really by anything to do with the voice.
00:54:01With the phenomena becoming more and more extreme, many started losing faith in the investigation.
00:54:08The family, a very basic family. Mother didn't really know what was going on.
00:54:15She would accept whatever anyone would say to her that this was for the good of the family.
00:54:20This is for trying to solve this problem.
00:54:22Or maybe it would just go away if we all left. We don't know.
00:54:26But by this time, it ceased to be, it became a laboratory. It ceased to be her home.
00:54:31It was becoming increasingly obvious that Gross and Playfair's enthusiasm for the case wasn't shared by others.
00:54:39And a gulf was growing between the Society for Psychical Research, the SPR, and the investigators.
00:54:46Well, the people who believed most firmly in Enfield were the people who actually had spent most of the time
00:54:52investigating,
00:54:53who were Maurice Gross and Guy Payfair.
00:54:56And there weren't many other very enthusiastic supporters among the members of the SPR.
00:55:03They actually, frankly, didn't believe a lot of the phenomena. And so what you might call a sort of anti
00:55:13-Enfield faction arose.
00:55:18It wasn't easy at all. We did get help from our own colleagues that we would have liked.
00:55:22And an awful lot of evidence went unrecorded because we simply couldn't get to it.
00:55:26The SPR thought that it wasn't really handled as properly as it could have been.
00:55:31You know, the press, radio, TV all got involved. I think they thought it ended up a bit like a
00:55:37circus.
00:55:38But the one thing that they didn't really take into account was that the media weren't invited via Maurice or
00:55:45Guy.
00:55:46The media were all invited by other people surrounding the case.
00:55:49So I think they were treated quite badly, actually, by the SPR in that case.
00:55:54The SPR set up the Enfield Poltergeist Investigation Committee to re-examine the case.
00:56:00One of the committee members was Mary Rose Barrington.
00:56:04I was a member of a small committee that was asked to make a report on all of the people
00:56:13who had investigated at Enfield.
00:56:16It's very unusual for the investigator himself to be investigated.
00:56:22Despite the SPR's scepticism, at the Hodgson home the alleged phenomena continued.
00:56:28In July 1978, ten months after the activity began, Janet was admitted to hospital for medical testing.
00:56:36A friendly psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Fenwick, who examined her absolutely exhaustively from head to toe and couldn't find anything wrong
00:56:46with her at all.
00:56:47That was very gratifying to know that because we weren't really quite sure.
00:56:52We didn't know what kind of history Janet might have had of mental disorder and so on.
00:56:57But she had absolutely nothing wrong with her mind at all. Very good shape.
00:57:04With a clean bill of health, Janet returned to Green Street, where things had quietened in her absence.
00:57:10The family now took a short holiday.
00:57:14In their absence, the Hodgson home was looked after by Mrs. Hodgson's brother, John Burkham, who made the assumption that
00:57:22in Janet's absence the phenomena would cease.
00:57:24However, he was about to be proved wrong and in spectacular fashion.
00:57:30I left the house like a rocket. I was scared.
00:57:33I came back and said to my wife, I said, I'm sorry, no way do I go in that house
00:57:37again on my own.
00:57:38The bleeding place is haunted.
00:57:48It was almost a year since the events had begun on Green Street in Enfield.
00:57:53And following a night of disturbances, the Hodgsons were staying down the road at the house of Peggy's brother, John
00:57:59Burkham.
00:58:00Burkham, as you are about to hear, returned to the Hodgson home on his own to fetch an alarm clock.
00:58:08I came down to the house. The house was in darkness. Nobody was present except me.
00:58:14I walked up the stairs to go into the bedroom to get the clock.
00:58:17As I got to the bedroom door, the door opened on its own.
00:58:21I saw the knob on the door twist like somebody was turning the doorknob from the other side.
00:58:27The door opened. As I walked in the room, the door closed behind me.
00:58:32How did it close?
00:58:33It just closed like the door closing and going bang. It wasn't slammed.
00:58:37It's just like a door closing on its own.
00:58:39I collected the alarm clock. I turned around, walked towards the door.
00:58:44The door handle turned on its own and opened wide enough for me to walk out normally.
00:58:52But having this happen a second time, I must be perfectly honest, under action from my house, that's it.
00:58:56And I trotted down the stairs and shot hard.
00:59:00Yeah.
00:59:01In these interviews, personally recorded by Maurice Gross,
00:59:05Berkham relives his experiences at the Hodgson home.
00:59:09And while the family holidays in Essex, Berkham had a particularly disturbing encounter.
00:59:16I saw, sitting at the living room table, a man. He was sitting with his back towards me, sitting on
00:59:25the chair at the table.
00:59:26He had a white, with a blue striped shirt on. Grey hair, not too thick.
00:59:34I looked at him, and it went through my mind to say,
00:59:39What's your bleeding game, mate? Where'd you come? What are you doing in here?
00:59:42You said nothing. You kept talking.
00:59:44I thought this was thoughts that went through my mind.
00:59:47I suppose in all honesty, I was about to say something, but I sort of then realised the house I
00:59:54was in.
00:59:55I closed my eyes like a blink for a couple of seconds, opened my eyes, gone.
01:00:01I left the house like a rocket.
01:00:03You didn't stay, were you?
01:00:05I did not stay at all.
01:00:07Were you very scared?
01:00:08I was...
01:00:09Well...
01:00:10You were very scared.
01:00:10I was scared. And quite honestly, I came back and said to my wife, I said,
01:00:15I'm sorry, no way do I go in that house again on my own. The bleeding place is haunted.
01:00:22Similar experiences of alleged apparitions were reported by the family throughout the summer of 1978.
01:00:29Yet these claims were unusual for a poltergeist investigation, and many were dubious of this later phenomena.
01:00:39After a while, it was almost as if something had to be produced.
01:00:44You know, there were so many people coming through the house, you can't let them down.
01:00:48I can't put my hand on my heart and say anything's right, because I wasn't there.
01:00:52And it's, you know, it's secondhand information.
01:00:56After over 12 months of activity, Grosome Playfair finally seemed to be making headway in bringing closure to the Hodgsons.
01:01:05We had visits from a Unitarian minister, who was a friend of mine, who was very, very nice and really
01:01:15just tried to calm the family down and so on.
01:01:18Maurice Gross used to do a prayer that she felt was helpful.
01:01:23I used to do kind of spiritist exhortations of the kind that I'd learned in Brazil, and I think they
01:01:33helped.
01:01:34I was contacted by a Dutch friend, a reporter for the Dutch paper De Telegraaf.
01:01:42And he said, I've got a friend who's a medium who says he can stop these things.
01:01:48Would you like me to bring him over here and stop it?
01:01:52And I said, yes. The medium, his name is Dono, he's quite well known in the Netherlands.
01:01:57He doesn't speak a word of English, unusually, for a Dutchman.
01:02:02He bought Janice an ice cream and chatted with her mother through the interpreter,
01:02:09and then went up alone to the bedroom, where he stayed not very long, I think about 20 minutes.
01:02:19And then he came down and said, that's it. I mean, I forget the exact words.
01:02:27I mean, they were in Dutch, but what they amounted to was, it's gone away.
01:02:32And sure enough, it had. I mean, that may have been a brilliant demonstration of the power of suggestion.
01:02:37But I don't care what you call it, it worked.
01:02:41So after 14 months, the events at the house on Green Street had ended.
01:02:46But what had caused these occurrences, and would the alleged poltergeist return?
01:02:51I'm pretty sure in this case it was the family and not the house.
01:02:56We didn't find any evidence that there was anything unusual about the house at all.
01:03:00No, there hadn't been any previous reports of trouble.
01:03:04And it was quite an old house, I think it was built in about the 20s.
01:03:06I don't think anybody's in control except the poltergeist.
01:03:10I mean, they do things their own way.
01:03:12You ask them to do something, they do just the opposite.
01:03:15I mean, they're not there to enlighten you.
01:03:19They're there to cause problems, which they certainly do.
01:03:29Well, to be honest, nobody can quite explain why they come and nobody can quite explain why they go.
01:03:34There are various theories about this, about some kind of human frustrations or some kind of energy that one hardly
01:03:43knows about.
01:03:44There was a very, very minor outbreak about six months later, which only lasted a very short time, a day
01:03:50or two, I think.
01:03:52And since then, nothing.
01:03:54While things were returning to something approaching normality for the Hodgsons, they were just getting started for Barrington.
01:04:01In compiling the Enfield Poltergeist Investigation Committee report, she spoke at length to all those involved in the investigation.
01:04:11I personally, like most other members of the society, got involved at a rather late date.
01:04:18So my personal involvement was really just interviewing the family and some of the other witnesses
01:04:25and making my own report on my assessment of whether I thought they were telling the truth or whether I
01:04:32thought they were really creditworthy.
01:04:35So what did Barrington make of the testimonies of those who had experienced the events firsthand?
01:04:42I was impressed by Mrs. Hodgson. I thought she was a very worried woman.
01:04:47I never thought for a moment that she was inventing anything.
01:04:51But were the children's statements as reliable?
01:04:55The two girls, well, they were very different. Janet seemed to be rather very tomboyish and jumping around all the
01:05:01time.
01:05:02And Margaret, much more sedate.
01:05:06No, I couldn't. I really could not tell whether I thought they were fooling around.
01:05:12I'm quite impressed by the fact that now grown up, they both insist that it was genuine.
01:05:20I think that is quite impressive because when you're no longer the centre of attention as a poltergeist focus,
01:05:28you can make yourself the centre of attention again by saying that it was all your playing around and fraud.
01:05:36So what did the report conclude? Was this a case of genuine poltergeist activity or an elaborate hoax?
01:05:45I read a short summary of our conclusions, which were that, roughly speaking, there was every reason to think that
01:05:54there was poltergeist activity in the house,
01:05:57though there was a lot of it that we thought was, at best, unproved.
01:06:04So finally, a line was drawn under this bizarre series of events.
01:06:09Soon after, in 1980, Playfair's book, This House Is Wanted, was published, to much critical scrutiny and acclaim.
01:06:18I think it's an important landmark book for all investigators because it catalogues from the very start to the very
01:06:28end of the activity that occurred.
01:06:31And it's not done with any glamorisation or any sensationalisation. The story's just told as it is.
01:06:38So what is the legacy of the Enfield case?
01:06:42One thing that, as investigators, we are aware of is the copycat effect.
01:06:48This happens with UFO cases, you know, where you have a massive sighting which is reported in the press,
01:06:54then all of a sudden everybody's seeing UFOs. It happens with ghosts and hauntings and poltergeist cases as well.
01:06:59And those sort of things occurred after the Enfield case.
01:07:04But what became of the Hodgsons and those at the centre of this apparent supernatural whirlwind?
01:07:11To me, it was easily the most fascinating thing that's ever happened in my life.
01:07:17I mean, beyond shadow and out.
01:07:20So it was fascinating to be a witness of the whole thing and just stand there and watch it.
01:07:26The story did affect me. The position of that family, so impoverished and underprivileged and unable to cope.
01:07:37That family did not ever really become a particularly happy family.
01:07:42Nearly 30 years later, they certainly haven't forgotten it.
01:07:47And Mrs. Hodgson, who sadly died recently, she was very much affected by the whole thing.
01:07:55And it's very, very upsetting and it's something you can't ever really get over.
01:08:04The Enfield poltergeist changed the way the public perceived supernatural phenomena.
01:08:09It opened people's minds to the idea of a world beyond their own and made the nation ask,
01:08:15If this can happen to a normal family in a house in North London, then could it happen to me?
01:08:25People out there.
01:08:25Ooh are probably two brilliant ones as yet.
01:08:52Similarly, in the world beyond the ugly香港 methods.
01:08:52You
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