Featured Photo: Taken by Graham Morris, Daily Mirror photographer
The Enfield haunting, also called the Enfield poltergeist, was a series of supposed paranormal events that took place at a house in the United Kingdom within the London Borough of Enfield which is located in North London, the events started on 31st August 1977 and lasted up until 1979 and became one of the most infamous poltergeist cases in the UK’s history with numerous witnesses.
The paranormal events were mostly focused around two sisters who lived at the property of 284, Green Street with the entity seemingly taking a particular interest in the youngest sister, Janet.
A drama series focused on the events was also released in 2015, consisting of three episodes, the program was called “The Enfield Haunting” and chronicled the supposed events on television using CGI effects.
What is even more interesting about the case and is what likely makes it so infamous still to this very day is the picture and audio evidence also captured by investigators who had been invited into the house to look into the strange goings on as well as the records kept on the supposed occurrences by the then tenants and investigators.
So, without further stalling, let’s move on to what a so-called poltergeist is.
What is a Poltergeist?
Photo by fotografierende from Pexels
The word Poltergeist originated in the mid-19th century from the German words Poltern which means “create a disturbance” and Geist which simply meant “ghost”.
A poltergeist is a paranormal entity that supposedly has the ability to interact with its physical surroundings, usually in an aggressive and threatening manner and at times, in extreme cases, causing physical injury; such as scratches and bruises; to the tenants and/or occupants of the place it chooses to haunt. It is also said to be able to possess its victims in a handful of cases and communicate through them.
The typical hallmarks of a poltergeist can include loud noises from objects being thrown, moved or bashed, doors opening and closing by themselves as well as scratching and shuffling noises and levitation of objects without explanation. Footage of poltergeists are plenty across the internet, including Youtube and other social media, probably being some of the most commonly caught on camera paranormal footage out there, but much of it is easily faked so it is nearly impossible to tell the difference between what is fake and what may be real, many times looking out for thin pieces of string attached to objects, used to pull them over or off a surface, is a possible way to catch out a fake video, as well as that people hiding behind things and magnets can also be used to create some, apparently, convincing “poltergeist” footage.
Poltergeist hauntings tend to focus in around a specific person rather than on everyone within the given haunted location, it is theorized by some that the reason for this is because the entity chooses to use the energy of a specific person to enable it to interact with its surroundings, this can be given more credibility in the fact that many poltergeist cases have centered around children, often during the times they are going through puberty, which again is theorized by some to cause lots of energy to be released.
The Victims
284, Green Street accommodated five occupants that included Peggy Hodgson, who was a divorced mother with four children that included two younger brothers called John (eldest brother) and Billy and two older sisters, Margaret (eldest sister) and Janet, who became the main two victims of the poltergeist activity, especially the youngest sister, Janet.
The Events
The first events begun on the night of 31st August 1977 when Janet and John had heard shuffling noises in their room, after which Peggy, the mother, entered into the room to see what the commotion was and shortly after that a chest-of-drawers moved by itself across the room. After witnessing the terrifying activity, they immediately sought help from their next-door neighbors, Vic and Gary Nottingham. The Nottingham’s claimed to hear knocks inside the house of which they could not locate the source of. After this Peggy decided to call the police.
The two police officers, Hyams and Heeps arrived in the early hours of the morning, the officers heard further knocks and Heeps claimed to see a chair move by itself across the living room floor.
Over the next few days the unexplainable activity really begun to pick up in intensity, specifically toys such as marbles and LEGO pieces were being levitated and thrown across rooms, apparently witnessed by the family and their next-door neighbors, the Nottingham’s.
On September 4th, after failing to get help and with the activity continuing, Peggy called The Daily Mirror, in hopes that it would result in them finding someone who could help them in their ongoing predicament with the paranormal, the phone call was followed up with the visit of a photographer (Graham Morris) and a reporter (Douglas Bence) to the house, both of which claimed to witness objects flying across rooms without explanation, Morris was also hit forcefully on his forehead by a LEGO brick, of which he said the bruise was visible for days.
After the visit, The Daily Mirror contacted the Society for Psychical Research (a non-profit organization whose purpose was to understand events and abilities described as psychic or paranormal) whose secretary later got in touch with Maurice Grosse who had recently joined the SPR and had said he was willing to act as an investigator on any interesting cases. Grosse was an inventor who had become interested in the paranormal after certain unexplained incidents that had occurred after his daughter was killed in a motorcycle accident.
Grosse first arrived to the house on September 5th and advised Peggy to take notes of the unusual activities that happened around the house, after this Grosse returned on 8th September alongside several Daily Mirror reporters and all claim to witness a loud unexplained crash. Grosse quickly came convinced of Peggy Hodgson’s claims and decided to take on an investigation of the unexplained events.
In visits that followed Grosse and a number of Daily Mirror reporters claimed to witness marbles flying through the air without explanation and landing perfectly still on the floor without rolling, doors and drawers that seemingly opened by themselves and objects that jumped of their own accord among various other unexplainable events.
Following this Grosse made an appeal through the SPR for assistance with his investigation and Guy Playfair, an author and investigator responded and joined Grosse at the house on 12th September, both Grosse and Playfair investigated the disturbances and events together for over a year including nearly 200 visits to the house and 25 all-night investigations at the house. The amount of documentation that amounted from them, such as records of events, audio recordings (totaling almost 180 hours) and pictures, made the Enfield Poltergeist one of the most well documented poltergeist cases in paranormal history.
During this time, the events that were witnessed included small objects being thrown, sometimes even emanating through walls, objects being shook violently and also being physically damaged, various objects being moved, doors opening and closing, objects levitated, Janet herself being levitated around the room, unknown footsteps, numerous unexplained knocks, bangs and crashes, small fires being started and then extinguished, water appearing in places without any known cause, electrical investigative equipment sometimes failing to work for no known reason, total and partial apparitions, feces found in inappropriate places as well as written messages being found.
Some outside witnesses, some of whom didn’t even know the Hodgson’s personally, claimed to glimpse unexplained events from outside the house.
But one of the most disturbing events first occurred in December 1977, a strange voice begun emanating from Janet, as if she was being possessed by the entity as a way for it to communicate, some of this activity was caught on audio recordings. When it first started happening, the voice made whistles and dog-like barks through Janet but eventually it became an intelligible voice, sounding like that of an old man’s voice. The voice said its name was “Joe Wilkins” and said it had lived in the house. What is interesting about this is as it turns out the former occupant of the house was a Mr. Wilkins and he had died in the house, the voice even said how it died, saying it was a hemorrhage and that he went blind, fell asleep and died in a chair. Much of the time the voice would shout out obscenities.
A series of investigations were carried out by different people to try and rule it as either a trick or some kind of disorder with the vocal chords, but despite tests by researchers and a visit by a Speech Therapist, the unusual voice phenomenon remained inconclusive of origin. Janet’s mouth was also taped over by Grosse to try and see if the voice could still speak, of which it could, numerous experiments with water being held in Janet’s mouth also didn’t stop the voice from being heard, making it ever more unexplainable.
In the end Grosse was so confident that the voice was of paranormal origin that he even offered to give as much as £1,000 to a charity if another child could replicate the voice under specified terms, no one came forward to replicate it.
Skeptics Conclusions
There have been numerous skeptics that have tried to explain and to come to conclusions on the seemingly strange and unusual paranormal events that afflicted the Hodgson’s. Many claims have come across that the work done by Grosse was over-exaggerated and also overly-personal, to do with strange circumstances that happened to him after his daughter’s death, which many claim may have made him far too attached to the case and trying too hard to make anything into something of another nature, for personal comfort.
Grosse and Playfair also admitted that sometimes the two sisters, Janet and Margaret, would try to trick them from time to time during their investigations, but that the majority of the evidence collected was genuine and of a paranormal nature. They also argued that pretty much any child would most likely copy the things they witnessed in the house, it’s something kids do.
Many skeptics say that children enjoy attention and so, many of the events could simply have been tricks that mis-guided Grosse and Playfair, making them stay and investigate for a longer period of time. SPF member Anita Gregory, another investigator, was herself a skeptic of the Enfield Haunting case, and also claimed knowledge that the girls enjoyed play-acting for attention, she also heavily critiqued Playfair’s book on the case, ultimately claiming that the book didn’t make enough sense of events to be officially counted as research. Anita Gregory also claimed that the brother of Peggy Hodgson had told her that Janet had taught herself how to speak in a deep voice.
Despite mounting skepticism, Grosse continued to defend the case of the Enfield Haunting through media and at conferences until his death in 2006. Playfair also continued to believe that events that happened at 284, Green Street were of a paranormal nature, Playfair died in 2018.
The case of whether the events that happened at 284, Green street in Enfield between 1977 and 1979 were real or not continue to be a source of debate even until this day.
There have been two families that have moved into the house since the events that happened there, the first family said that although nothing had happened, the place did give an uneasy vibe, like you were being watched. The other family, when asked about the house they were living in, were less reluctant to get involved with promoting the idea of a haunting, more so because they didn’t want to scare their kids, who didn’t know of the houses past history.
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