Enfield poltergeist

In August 1977, single mother Penelope Hodgson called the Metropolitan Police to her rented home at 284 Green Street in Enfield, London, saying she had witnessed furniture moving and that two of her four children had heard knocking sounds on the walls. The children included Janet, aged 11, and Margaret, aged 13. A police constable reported witnessing a chair "wobble and slide" but "could not determine the cause of the movement." ==Investigations==

Paranormal Society for Psychical Research (SPR) members Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair reported: "curious whistling and barking noises coming from Janet's general direction." Although Playfair maintained the paranormal activity was genuine and wrote in his later book This House Is Haunted: The True Story of a Poltergeist (1980) that an "entity" was to blame for the Enfield disturbances, he often doubted the children's veracity and wondered if they were playing tricks and exaggerating. Still, Grosse and Playfair believed that, even though some of the alleged poltergeist activity was faked by the girls, other incidents were genuine. Other paranormal investigators who visited the Enfield house included American demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, who were convinced that the events had a supernatural explanation. According to Brian Dunning, the Warrens' visit was short: "Ed Warren tried to persuade Playfair that money could be made from this case by writing books and selling movie rights; and then the Warrens left". Grosse had observed Janet banging a broom handle on the ceiling and hiding his tape recorder. Psychical researcher Renée Haynes noted that doubts were raised about the alleged poltergeist voice at the SPR conference at Cambridge in 1978, where videocassettes from Enfield were examined. SPR investigator Anita Gregory stated the Enfield case had been "overrated", characterising several episodes of the girls' behaviour as "suspicious" and speculated that the girls had "staged" some incidents for the benefit of journalists seeking a sensational story. In the first edition of the BBC series Hauntings, broadcast on 13 October 2024, it was revealed that the unexplained voice of "Bill Wilkins" was later played on an LBC radio talk show, featuring Maurice Grosse. A listener to the show identified the voice as that of his father, William Charles Wilkins, who had lived at the house, had gone blind, had suffered a haemorrhage and had died in a chair downstairs, on 20 June 1963. Other Milbourne Christopher, an American stage magician, briefly investigated the Enfield occurrences and failed to observe anything that could be called paranormal. He was dismayed by what he felt was suspicious activity on the part of Janet, later concluding that "the poltergeist was nothing more than the antics of a little girl who wanted to cause trouble and who was very, very clever." Ventriloquist Ray Alan visited the house and concluded that Janet's male voices were simply vocal tricks. ==Sceptical interpretations==

Criticism of investigations Sceptic Joe Nickell of the US-based Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) examined the findings of paranormal investigators and criticized them for being overly credulous; when a supposedly disembodied demonic voice was heard, Playfair noted that "as always Janet's lips hardly seemed to be moving." He states that a remote-controlled still camera—the photographer was not present in the room with the girls—timed to take a picture every fifteen seconds was shown by investigator Melvin Harris to reveal pranking by the girls. He argues that a photo allegedly depicting Janet levitating actually shows her bouncing off the bed as if it were a trampoline. Harris called the photos examples of common "gymnastics" and said, "It's worth remembering that Janet was a school sports champion!" Nickell pointed out that a tape-recorder malfunction that Grosse attributed to supernatural activity and SPR president David Fontana described as an occurrence "which appeared to defy the laws of mechanics" was a peculiar threading jam occurring with older model reel to reel tape-recorders. He also said that Ed Warren was "notorious for exaggerating and even making up incidents in such cases, often transforming a 'haunting' case into one of 'demonic possession'." A 2016 article by psychologist Chris French in Time Out magazine described five reasons why he believed the case to have been a hoax. His reasons are: • The two sisters involved admitted to hoaxing some of the activity • The photo of Janet levitating above her bed could just as easily be explained as Janet jumping • The "spirit" of an old man who supposedly possessed Janet took a great deal of interest in menstruation • Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable • Other schoolgirl pranks before and after have got out of hand ==In popular culture==

• On 26 December 1978, BBC Radio 4 broadcast The Enfield Poltergeist by BBC reporter Rosalind Morris. Morris visited the Hodgson family on numerous occasions to make this documentary. • In 1992, the BBC aired a controversial mockumentary titled Ghostwatch, written by Stephen Volk and based on the Enfield poltergeist. • In March 2007, Channel 4 aired a documentary about the Enfield poltergeist titled Interview with a Poltergeist. • The Enfield poltergeist has been featured in episodes of ITV series Strange but True? and Extreme Ghost Stories. • The Enfield poltergeist was the subject of the 2015 Sky Living television series The Enfield Haunting, which was broadcast from 4–17 May 2015. • The 2016 film The Conjuring 2 is based on Ed and Lorraine Warren's investigation of the case. • In 2018, the BBC Radio 4 programme The Reunion, presented by Sue MacGregor, revisited the case, with interviews with witnesses Morris, Richard Grosse and Graham Morris. • On 27 October 2023, Apple TV debuted "The Enfield Poltergeist" miniseries, filming the documentary in a recreated set of the allegedly haunted house at 284 Green Street, utilising actors lipsyncing to original tape recordings, archival video footage and modern-day interviews with living witnesses of the events. • On 13 October 2024, BBC Two debuted its series "Hauntings". The first episode, titled "The Enfield Poltergeist", revisited the unusual events of 1977 with archival footage & new testimonies from witnesses present in the Enfield house. ==References==