Episode #24: The Enfield Poltergeist

The Enfield Poltergeist is one of the more famous cases supposedly investigated by the Warrens, but is there actual truth to it, or was it just a hoax? Join E.M. Moon as we delve into this haunting case of purported poltergeist activity.

P.S. I apologize for the weird clickiness again in this recording. I thought I had it fixed with the Shadow People episode but it seems to be back, almost like my recording is haunted...I'm working on figuring out the problem. For now, you can pretend like you are listing to an old-timey radio program :P


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Transcript

The Enfield Poltergeist

Tonight’s episode focuses on another case investigated by the famous supernatural duo and married couple, Ed and Lorainne Warren: The Enfield Haunting. Many of you have most likely seen the Conjuring movies and this particular case was used to create the story for the Conjuring 2 that hit theatres in 2016.

A synopsis for the film reads:

In 1977, paranormal investigators Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren come out of a self-imposed sabbatical to travel to Enfield, a borough in north London. There, they meet Peggy Hodgson, an overwhelmed single mother of four who tells the couple that something evil is in her home. Ed and Lorraine believe her story when the youngest daughter starts to show signs of demonic possession. As the Warrens try to help the besieged girl, they become the next targets of the malicious spirit. 

While the movie is based on the case that happened on Green Street in London, England, it is obviously embellished and many liberties were taken to create and intense horror film, but supposedly the actual truth was just as scary, if not more horrifying. But was it actually demonic possession or poltergeist activity?

Let’s have a little Occult history lesson and talk a bit about what a Poltergeist actually is (and no, it’s nothing like the 1982 movie or its subsequent sequels, all of which are some of my favorites)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poltergeist

In German folklore and ghostlore, a poltergeist (/ˈpoʊltərˌɡaɪst/ or /ˈpɒltərˌɡaɪst/; German: [ˈpɔltɐɡaɪ̯st] ; 'rumbling ghost' or 'noisy spirit') is a type of ghost or spirit that is responsible for physical disturbances, such as loud noises and objects being moved or destroyed. Most claims or fictional descriptions of poltergeists show them as being capable of pinching, biting, hitting, and tripping people. They are also depicted as capable of the movement or levitation of objects such as furniture and cutlery, or noises such as knocking on doors. Foul smells are also associated with poltergeist occurrences, as well as spontaneous fires and different electrical issues such as flickering lights. 

These manifestations have been recorded in many cultures and countries, including Brazil, Australia, the United States, Japan and most European nations. The first recorded cases date back to the 1st century. 

Etymology

The word poltergeist comes from the German language words poltern 'to make sound, to rumble' and Geist 'ghost, spirit' and the term itself translates as 'noisy ghost', 'rumble-ghost' or a 'loud spirit'. A synonym coined by René Sudre is thorybism, from the Ancient Greek θορυβείν (thorubeín) 'to make noise or uproar, to throw into confusion'. 

Suggested explanations

Hoax

Many claims have been made that poltergeist activity explains strange events (including those by modern self-styled ghost hunters), however their evidence has so far not stood up to scrutiny. Many claimed poltergeist events have been proven upon investigation to be hoaxes. 

Psychical researcher Frank Podmore proposed the 'naughty little girl' theory for poltergeist cases (many of which have seemed to centre on an adolescent, usually a girl).He found that the centre of the disturbance was often a child who was throwing objects around to fool or scare people for attention. Skeptical investigator Joe Nickell says that claimed poltergeist incidents typically originate from "an individual who is motivated to cause mischief". According to Nickell: 

In the typical poltergeist outbreak, small objects are hurled through the air by unseen forces, furniture is overturned, or other disturbances occur—usually just what could be accomplished by a juvenile trickster determined to plague credulous adults.

Nickell writes that reports are often exaggerated by credulous witnesses. 

Time and time again in other "poltergeist" outbreaks, witnesses have reported an object leaping from its resting place supposedly on its own, when it is likely that the perpetrator had secretly obtained the object sometime earlier and waited for an opportunity to fling it, even from outside the room—thus supposedly proving he or she was innocent.

Unsubstantiated claims: 

• Stockwell ghost (1772) - since 1825 
• Ballechin House (1876) 
• The Enfield poltergeist claim (1977) - John Beloff, a former president of the Society for Psychical Research and Anita Gregory concluded that the claimants were playing tricks on the investigators.
• Columbus poltergeist case (1984)

Psychological

A claim of activity at Caledonia Mills (1899–1922) was investigated by Walter Franklin Prince, research officer for the American Society for Psychical Research in 1922. Prince concluded that the mysterious fires and alleged poltergeist phenomena were because of a psychological state of dissociation.

Nandor Fodor investigated the Thornton Heath poltergeist claim (1938). His conclusion of the case were a psychoanalytical explanation and in a subsequent publication: "The poltergeist is not a ghost. It is a bundle of projected repressions,".

According to research in anomalistic psychology, claims of poltergeist activity can be explained by psychological factors such as illusion, memory lapses, and wishful thinking.A study (Lange and Houran, 1998) wrote that poltergeist experiences are delusions "resulting from the affective and cognitive dynamics of percipients' interpretation of ambiguous stimuli". Psychologist Donovan Rawcliffe has written that almost all poltergeist cases that have been investigated turned out to be based on trickery, whilst the rest are attributable to psychological factors such as hallucinations. 

Psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung was interested in the concept of poltergeists and the occult in general. Jung believed that a female cousin's trance states were responsible for a dining table splitting in two and his later discovery of a broken bread knife. 

Jung also believed that when a bookcase gave an explosive cracking sound during a meeting with Sigmund Freud in 1909, he correctly predicted there would be a second sound, speculating that such phenomena were caused by 'exteriorization' of his subconscious mind. Freud disagreed, and concluded there was some natural cause. Freud biographers maintain the sounds were likely caused by the wood of the bookcase contracting as it dried out.

Unverified natural phenomena

Attempts have also been made to scientifically explain poltergeist disturbances that have not been traced to fraud or psychological factors. Skeptic and magician Milbourne Christopher found that some cases of poltergeist activity can be attributed to unusual air currents, such as a 1957 case on Cape Cod where downdrafts from an uncovered chimney became strong enough to blow a mirror off a wall, overturn chairs and knock things off shelves. 

In the 1950s, Guy William Lambert proposed that reported poltergeist phenomena could be explained by the movement of underground water causing stress on houses. He suggested that water turbulence could cause strange sounds or structural movement of the property, possibly causing the house to vibrate and move objects. Later researchers, such as Alan Gauld and Tony Cornell, tested Lambert's hypothesis by placing specific objects in different rooms and subjecting the house to strong mechanical vibrations. They discovered that although the structure of the building had been damaged, only a few of the objects moved a very short distance. The skeptic Trevor H. Hall criticized the hypothesis claiming if it was true "the building would almost certainly fall into ruins." According to Richard Wiseman the hypothesis has not held up to scrutiny. 

Michael Persinger has theorized that seismic activity could cause poltergeist phenomena. However, Persinger's claims regarding the effects of environmental geomagnetic activity on paranormal experiences have not been independently replicated and, like his findings regarding the God helmet, may simply be explained by the suggestibility of participants.

David Turner, a retired physical chemist, suggested that ball lightning might cause the "spooky movement of objects blamed on poltergeists." 

• Sampford Peverell (1810–1811) - poltergeistal noises were determined made by smugglers from behind a false wall 

Paranormal

Parapsychologists Nandor Fodor and William G. Roll suggested that poltergeist activity can be explained by psychokinesis. 

Historically, actual malicious spirits were blamed for apparent poltergeist-type activity, such as objects moving seemingly of their own accord. According to Allan Kardec, the founder of Spiritism, poltergeists are manifestations of disembodied spirits of low level, belonging to the sixth class of the third order. Under this explanation, they are believed to be closely associated with the elements (fire, air, water, earth). In Finland, somewhat famous are the case of the "Mäkkylä Ghost" in 1946, which received attention in the press at the time, and the "Devils of Martin" in Ylöjärvi in the late 19th century, for which affidavits were obtained in court. Samuli Paulaharju has also recorded a memoir of a typical poltergeist — the case of "Salkko-Niila" — from the south of Lake Inari in his book Memoirs of Lapland (Lapin muisteluksia). The story has also been published in the collection of Mythical Stories (Myytillisiä tarinoita) edited by Lauri Simonsuuri. 

Now that you know a little bit more about what a poltergeist is, let’s get into the meat of this episode and the claims made by the Hodgson family back in 1977.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfield_poltergeist

The Enfield poltergeist was a claim of supernatural activity at 284 Green Street, a council house in Brimsdown, Enfield, London, England, between 1977 and 1979. The alleged poltergeist activity centred on sisters Janet, aged 11, and Margaret Hodgson, aged 13.

Some members of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), such as inventor Maurice Grosse and writer Guy Lyon Playfair, believed the haunting to be genuine, while others such as Anita Gregory and John Beloff were "unconvinced" and found evidence the girls had faked incidents for the benefit of journalists. Members of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), including stage magicians such as Milbourne Christopher and Joe Nickell, criticized paranormal investigators for being credulous whilst also identifying elements of the case as being indicative of a hoax. 

The story attracted press coverage in British newspapers, has been mentioned in books, featured in television and radio documentaries, and dramatised in the 2016 horror film The Conjuring 2. 

Claims

In August 1977, single mother Peggy 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." Later claims included disembodied voices, loud noises, thrown toys, overturned chairs, and children levitating. 

Over a period of eighteen months, more than thirty people, including the Hodgsons' neighbours, paranormal investigators and journalists, said they variously saw heavy furniture moving of its own accord, objects being thrown across a room and the sisters seeming to levitate several feet off the ground. Many also heard and recorded knocking noises and a gruff voice. The story was regularly covered in the Daily Mirror newspaper until reports came to an end in 1979. 

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". 

Janet was detected in trickery: a video camera in an adjoining room caught her bending spoons and attempting to bend an iron bar. Grosse had observed Janet banging a broom handle on the ceiling and hiding his tape recorder. According to Playfair, one of Janet's voices, whom she called Bill, displayed a "habit of suddenly changing the topic—it was a habit Janet also had". When Janet and Margaret admitted pranking to journalists, Grosse and Playfair compelled the girls to retract their confessions. The two men were mocked by other researchers for being easily duped.

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", characterizing 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. John Beloff, a former president of the SPR, investigated and suggested Janet was practising ventriloquism. Both Beloff and Gregory came to the conclusion that Janet and Margaret were playing tricks on the investigators. 

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

Criticisms of investigations

Sceptic Joe Nickell of the US-based 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'." 

In 2015 Deborah Hyde commented that there was no solid evidence for the Enfield poltergeist: "The first thing to note is that the occurrences didn't happen under controlled circumstances. People frequently see what they expect to see, their senses being organized and shaped by their prior experiences and beliefs."

Response to claims

Sceptics have argued that the alleged poltergeist voice that originated from Janet was produced by false vocal cords above the larynx and had the phraseology and vocabulary of a child. In a television interview for BBC Scotland, Janet was observed to gain attention by waving her hand and then putting her hand in front of her mouth while a claimed "disembodied" voice was heard. During the interview both girls were asked the question, "How does it feel to be haunted by a poltergeist?" Janet replied, "It's not haunted" and Margaret, in a hushed tone, interrupted, "Shut up". Sceptics have regarded these factors as evidence against the case. 

As a "magician experienced in the dynamics of trickery" Nickell examined Playfair's account and contemporary press clippings. He noted that the supposed poltergeist "tended to act only when it was not being watched" and concluded that the incidents were best explained as children's pranks. 

Although Grosse made tape recordings of Janet and believed no trickery was involved, the magician Bob Couttie said, "He made some of the recordings available to me and, having listened to them very carefully, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing in what I had heard that was beyond the capabilities of an imaginative teenager." All of the recordings have been catalogued and digitized by the SPR and a book of their content, The Enfield Poltergeist Tapes: White Crow, was produced by Dr Melvyn Willin in 2019. 

A 2016 article by psychology professor 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

I scrounged up a few articles written fairly recently about the case and figured I would give them a read and see what they have to say about the now infamous poltergeist activity.

https://people.com/movies/inside-the-real-story-that-inspired-the-conjuring-2/

The Enfield Poltergeist: Inside the Real Story that Inspired The Conjuring 2

While some questioned its authenticity, others considered this one of the most-witnessed cases of supernatural activity

By 

Jodi Guglielmi 

Writer-Reporter, PEOPLE

People Editorial Guidelines 

Updated on July 22, 2024 09:20AM EDT

The Conjuring 2 gave horrorphiles a chance to enter the “house of strange happenings” — even if it was just on the big screen. 

The 2016 film stars Madison Wolfe, Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson and focuses on one of the most infamous supernatural cases in history: the Enfield poltergeist. The story — of a young girl thought to be possessed by a demon inside her London home — mystified a nation. 

The case involved strange voices, levitation, flying objects, furniture moving through the air, cold breezes and more — and while some called it a hoax, plenty of others are convinced it's one of the most compelling supernatural cases ever documented. 

So what really happened during the case of the Enfield poltergeist? Here’s an inside look at the real story that inspired The Conjuring 2.

 Peggy Hodgson first heard odd noises from her daughters’ bedroom 

It all started in a quaint little home in Enfield, London, in 1977, when Peggy Hodgson, a single mother of four children, heard loud noises coming from her daughters’ bedroom. When she went to tell her daughters Margaret, then 13, and Janet, then 11, to settle down and go to sleep instead of roughhousing, she found them huddled in the corner with terrified expressions on their faces. 

“We [told our mom] the chest of drawers was moving toward the bedroom door,” Janet recalled while speaking on iTV1 in 2012. “She said, ‘Oh don’t be silly.’ ”

But then Hodgson witnessed the drawers moving toward the door by a seemingly invisible force, almost as if some supernatural presence was trying to trap the girls in the room. When she tried to push back against the dresser, it wouldn’t budge. 

Terrified, the Hodgson family ran across the street to ask for help from the neighbors, Vic and Peggy Nottingham. When Vic went into the house to investigate, he, too, said he heard strange noises coming from around the home. The Hodgsons called the police, and even though one officer claimed to have seen a chair move clear across the room, they deduced that it was not a police matter. 

According to the family, that was just the beginning of what would become their nearly 18-month haunting. 

 The Hodgson family’s haunting lasted a year and a half 

“We didn’t understand what was happening,” Margaret told PEOPLE at the Conjuring 2 premiere in Los Angeles in 2016. “We went through periods where we just couldn’t believe what happened, really. It’s frightening. We didn’t like to be on [our] own in the house or anything.”

When the strange incidents continued, the Hodgsons decided to call a popular U.K. publication, the Daily Mirror, to come and investigate the supposed supernatural occurrences. But when the reporter arrived, the house sat silent for hours. It wasn’t until the reporter was about to leave that something happened. 

“The photographer came back and a Lego brick hit him above the eye. He still had the mark a few days later. And then Maurice Grosse came in on the case,” Janet said, The Telegraph reported. 

The Daily Mirror called the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), who sent Grosse to investigate the case. During his stay at the house, Grosse has said he witnessed more than 2,000 incidents of supernatural activity. 

“Furniture turning over, cups filled with water, fires igniting, voices, levitation,” Janet recalled to iTV1 in 2012. “The most frightening [encounter] was when a curtain wrapped itself around my neck next to my bed.” 

It was during his time in the house that the supposed poltergeist started speaking through Janet. 

 Janet Hodgson claimed she was possessed 

Janet would often go into a trancelike state where she would speak in a deep, scratchy voice, claiming to be the ghost of a man named Bill Wilkins, who had died in the house years before. (It was later proven that a man by that name was once a resident of the home and did die of a hemorrhage while sitting in the living room.) Janet claimed the ghost would “talk” through her for hours at a time.

Throughout the 18-month experience, several additional paranormal researchers visited the house, including famed demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren. Though the 2016 film takes liberties with time and the extent to which the Warrens were involved with the case, they publicly stated that they were convinced that the supernatural was responsible for the strange happenings inside the house. 

“Those who deal with the supernatural day in and day out know the phenomena are there — there’s no doubt about it,” Ed said, according to All That’s Interesting. 

 Janet Hodgson admitted to faking some supernatural incidents 

Of course, many cast their doubts on the events, claiming the children were behind the elaborate hoax and were faking their demonic symptoms. Two SPR experts adamantly questioned Janet’s gruff voice and later caught the children bending spoons themselves. 

In fact, Janet admitted that she and her siblings fabricated a few events. “Oh yeah, once or twice [we faked phenomena], just to see if Mr. Grosse and Mr. Playfair would catch us,” she told ITV News in 1980, per the Daily Mail. “They always did.” 

She later told the outlet that “two percent” of the events in the house were faked. 

Even after all this time, Janet and Margaret said that while they’ve managed to move on from that traumatic time, the haunting “stays with you.” 

“Every step of the way,” Margaret told PEOPLE at the Conjuring 2 premiere in Los Angeles in 2016. “It’s just like a death, really: It gets a little bit easier as time goes on. But the fear and the memories of it and what happened never leave you.” 

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20231026-the-enfield-poltergeist-why-the-unexplained-mystery-that-shocked-1970s-britain-continues-to-disturb

The Enfield Poltergeist: Why the unexplained mystery that shocked 1970s Britain continues to disturb

26 October 2023

Natasha Tripney

Features correspondent

 In 1977, reports of supposedly paranormal goings-on in a north London house made headlines – and with a new TV series and play about events, they still confound, writes Natasha Tripney.

In August 1977, the police arrived at 284 Green Street in the north London suburb of Enfield. Peggy Hodgson, a single mother of four, reported that her two young daughters – Janet, aged 11, and older sister Margaret – had heard strange knocking. The source of the sound could not be determined. They called in the neighbours who were also disturbed by what they heard. Out of desperation, they rang the police, one of whom reportedly saw a chair move of its own accord. Next, they turned to the press.  

Over the next 18 months, stories of increasingly strange phenomena emerged from the house. Furniture was hurled across the rooms, there were reports of "paranormal whistling" and, most unsettling of all, Janet Hodgson was heard to talk with the rasping voice of an old man. The case came to the attention of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), and two of its members, inventor turned paranormal investigator Maurice Grosse and writer Guy Lyon Playfair, were sent to investigate. Playfair would later publish a book, This House is Haunted, about his experiences.

Eventually events in the house just stopped but not before Janet spent time in London's Maudsley psychiatric hospital. She is still clearly affected by happenings in the house. "I know what I experienced. I know it was real," she says in a new Apple TV + four-part drama-documentary series about the phenomenon. "It follows you. It has never left me."   

In the years since, the events in that Enfield council house have remained a source of fascination. There have been numerous retellings and adaptations of the so-called Enfield Poltergeist, including a 2015 TV drama, The Enfield Haunting – which starred Timothy Spall as Grosse and a pre-Succession Matthew Macfadyen as Playfair – and Hollywood blockbuster The Conjuring 2, which dispatched its lead duo, American paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, to North London.

Why it's back in the spotlight

Now a new play about the bizarre phenomenon written by Paul Unwin, creator of long-running UK medical drama Casualty, and starring Catherine Tate and David Threlfall, is set to premiere. Also called The Enfield Haunting, it will open in London's West End in November. Meanwhile the Apple TV+ series painstakingly recreates the interior of the Green Street house, and weaves together visual enactments of audio recordings made by Grosse at the time and interviews with people who were there.

Unwin's interest in the case began 11 years ago when he was introduced to Playfair, as they shared an agent. "I met this extraordinary man, who told me this very peculiar story," he tells BBC Culture. Unwin visited the writer's basement flat in Earls Court and Playfair played him some of the tapes he'd recorded in the house. At first Unwin was unconvinced – it sounded to him like children shouting and playing games – but the more he listened, the more questions he had.  

Emotions are not simple. It can be very easy to become committed to stuff that isn't necessarily true – Paul Unwin

He has his own ideas about what happened in the house. The story of the Enfield haunting can be understood on different levels, he explains. It's important to remember, he says, that the late 1970s was "quite an odd, intense period", with the UK in political and economic turmoil. The family had just gone through a divorce and were living in considerable poverty, so he understands how two young girls might become possessed by the circumstances in which they found themselves, swept along by events that quickly became bigger than them. "Emotions are not simple," he says. "It can be very easy to become committed to stuff that isn't necessarily true." He makes a connection between what happened in Enfield and the anti-vax and QAnon movements. However, he adds, he does not discount a supernatural explanation for at least some of what went on there. There are some things about the story, he says, that "really don't make sense".   

Unwin stresses that his play is not a documentary. "It's an imagined response to those events." The play is a taut 90 minutes and takes place on one night in 1978, after events had been going on for some time. "I've aligned a lot of things that happened over a period into that one night because it makes for good theatre," he explains. His primary goal was not to spook an audience but to present a "deeper exploration of what was going on, to show the forces at work".

At the same time, he is very conscious of the fact that, intentionally or otherwise, there was a degree of exploitation of the young girls in the Enfield case. "I didn't want to be another male exploiting them," he says. "In my exploration of the story, I tried to find an emotional truth for me and things that have happened in my own life."

The impact it left

Why has this story proved so culturally enduring? "Enfield is the archetypal British haunting," says Stephen Volk, writer of the iconic 1992 BBC show Ghostwatch, a faux-reality TV show which was in part inspired bv The Enfield Poltergeist. The familiarity and normality of the setting, with a normal working class family in a normal house, not a stereotypical haunted mansion, made it more resonant. "It wasn't a Hammer Horror castle," he says. "There were no clanking chains.

In the 1970s, he explains, with films like The Exorcist, horror was beginning to shift into more recognisable domestic spaces, in the US at least. "There was more to relate to in Stephen King's Maine than in a lot of British horror." However the events in Enfield echoed this new US model, taking place in a house that, he says, "could easily be around the corner".

Though pre-recorded, Ghostwatch was presented as a live on-air investigation into mysterious events at the London home of the fictional Early family, with real-life television presenters including Michael Parkinson and Sarah Greene hosting the show and adding to the sense of veracity. "I read everything I could get my hands on in terms of ghosts and hauntings, and formulated what I thought was a kind of an archetype of the way these things work," he says.

In part inspired by The Enfield Poltergiest, Ghostwatch was watercooler television before the term entered the lexicon

"It seemed incumbent on me to create a kind of fractured family," says Volk, though the family dynamics were based not on the Hodgsons, but on the Fox Sisters, 19th-Century mediums who convinced people that they were communicating with spirits via strange rapping noises.

Ghostwatch terrified audiences and resulted in outraged headlines in the tabloids, though it has since become a cult favourite. It was watercooler television before the term entered the lexicon, and subverted the rules of reality TV before they'd been established. Playfair was credited as "psychic consultant", and members of the SPR manned the phone lines that the audience was invited to call (at which point they were informed the show wasn't real), But the organisation was not overly pleased with the resulting show, which they felt trivialised the science of parapsychology. For children watching at the time, however, it was seminal television, and says Volk, "television is a kind of a haunting. It's full of people that don't exist anymore".

What really happened?

The Apple TV+ documentary shows that while Grosse and Playfair were convinced that there was something otherworldly going on at 284 Green Street, other members of the SPR were harder to convince, including Anita Gregory, a lecturer in psychology, who speculated that the presence of Grosse, Playfair and the media was contributing to the situation.

Paranormal investigator Maurice Grosse (pictured centre) spent months at the house, making audio recordings among other things (Credit: Alamy)

Deborah Hyde, editor-in-chief of The Skeptic magazine, which promotes "science and critical thinking", says we shouldn't underestimate the role that facilitators like Playfair played in both shaping the story and legitimitising it. Usually a facilitator is an educated, articulate man of a certain class background who has a stake in the story, she explains. "There was a very clear facilitator in the case of the Fox sisters as well," she adds. "And when they get involved, the story gets out of hand because it can get transmitted to other places.".

The case is part of the cultural fabric of the UK. I can't remember when I first encountered the story. I feel like it's always been in my memory – Danny Robins

In 2011, Hyde appeared on This Morning alongside Playfair and Janet Hodgson, in one of the latter's rare public appearances. Hodgson, Hyde believes, would undoubtedly have been better off if she could have left that chapter of her life behind long ago, but "she wasn't able to because Playfair's identity depended on it". Playfair subsequently passed away in 2018, but the story has not died with him: Hyde ultimately believes the reason writers and documentary makers keep returning to Enfield is "because it's easy to sell an existing IP."

"Enfield is part of the cultural fabric of the UK," says Danny Robins, broadcaster, playwright and creator of the hit supernatural podcasts Uncanny and The Battersea Poltergeist, who is now also presenting a TV version of Uncanny on BBC2. "I can't remember when I first encountered the story. I feel like it's always been in my memory," he tells BBC Culture.

Part of the reason Enfield has proved so durable is because of the sheer volume of evidence we have of the case, Robins says – not just Grosse and Playfair's recordings but stills and audio footage from Daily Mirror photographer Graham Morris and the producers of the BBC radio documentary made at the time. Numerous eyewitnesses described items flying through the air and matches that spontaneously burst into flames. Morris himself described being hit by one of those objects. Robins interviewed Morris about his experiences for the first episode of his Uncanny TV show. "He was there at the beginning, capturing images, and recording his own experiences, which are quite incredible." 

The BBC's infamous 1992 faux-supernatural investigation show Ghostwatch borrowed the Enfield Poltergeist's British suburban setting (Credit: Alamy)

"There's a huge amount of evidence there, which is something that is normally absent from paranormal cases," says Robins. While people have referred to Enfield as one of the UK's most credible hauntings, he says, "there's a case to be made that it's just the most photographed".

The case also took place at the "sweet spot", in Robins's words, when there was a lot of public interest in ghosts, UFOs and other unexplained phenomena, and when newspapers also had the resources to send journalists to investigate these cases. There was also a degree of public trust in the media that led the Hodgsons to call the paper for help.  

In general, when it comes to the supernatural, Robins is neither believer nor sceptic, but approaches every case with an open mind – as he does, too, the Enfield Poltergeist. "Enfield is a really murky, complicated and deeply intriguing case," he says. Though Grosse and Playfair had, he feels, the best intentions, "their presence certainly created a very heightened sense of drama around it". But despite this, the case is "clearly robust enough to deflect sceptic inquiry", he believes – for while there have been many convincing sceptic theories on it, "none [has been] significant enough to completely debunk it in the same way that the Amityville haunting has been debunked in the US". Enfield remains culturally resonant, Robins concludes, because "it retains its mysteries",

In popular culture

• On 26 December 1978 BBC Radio 4 broadcast the documentary 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.[citation needed] 
• 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.[citation needed] 
• 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. 
• In 2023 a play titled The Enfield Haunting was announced, starring Catherine Tate, to be premiered at Theatre Royal, Brighton and Richmond Theatre before moving to the Ambassadors Theatre in London from 30 November 2023 to 2 March 2024. 
• 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, utilizing actors lipsyncing to original tape recordings, archival video footage and modern-day interviews with living witnesses of the events.

 So, what say you about this case of supposed poltergeist activity? Do we have enough evidence to make a deduction or is more research needed? As usual, and as much as I love the idea of them and their research, we see that Ed and Lorainne Warren didn’t have as much involvement in this case as advertised and it was clearly sensationalized for publicity and monetary gain. Could the activity surrounding the Hodgsons have been true, or was it all a hoax? Maybe a mixture of both?

 I guess it’s left for us to decide if the science debunks the happenings and our imaginations have just run wild, or if the truth is actually far stranger than fiction.