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Perhaps the most well-known and
documented poltergeist case ever recorded in England, The Enfield
Poltergeist which happened between 1977 & 1980.
The haunting took place in an ordinary
three bedroom semi detached council house in the Enfield burro of London,
Mrs Hodgson a single mother and her four children two girls and two boys
lived fatherless in the rented house after Mr and Mrs Hodgson had
divorced.
Mrs Hodgson was on the council
transfer list and was waiting to be re-homed to a bigger nicer house but
because of her financial situation could not afford to privately rent,
This fact alone made many sceptics believe the case was a hoax as around
that time many haunted cases were reported by council tenants to have
their place moved up the list for a fast re-home.
The events that accrued over the 3
year haunting started suddenly one night with the youngest daughter Janet
claiming to her mother to have herd shuffling noises across her bedroom
floor as she tried to sleep, The mother thinking this was Janet paying up
to not go to bed stood outside the bedroom door and waited for the noises,
Surely enough the noises began and the mother opened the door expecting to
see Janet out of bed but instead saw both girls in bed knowing it would be
impossible for either girl to have moved into bed that quickly without
being seen the mother then stayed in the room to see a chest of draws move
roughly 18 inches on its own, Mrs Hodgson pushed the chest of draws back
to its original place then almost immediately the chest of draws moved
again this time when Mrs Hodgson tried to move the draws back again she
found it impossible to move as if was bolted to the floor. The mother then
in a state of panic shouted at the children to get up and go downstairs,
Seeing the neighbours (Vick and Peggy Nottingham) lights on the family ran
to their door waking them up to ask for assistance.
The neighbours believing this was
simply an intruder searched the house and garden but found nothing, not
knowing where to turn Mrs Hodgson telephoned the police. WPC Caroline
Heaps was the police woman who attended the case, while interviewing the
family she witnessed a chair in the living room move on its own and slide
across the floor. Mrs Hodgson knowing that this matter could not be ended
by the police also called the daily mirror to investigate, the very early
call to the media also makes sceptics believe this was a hoax but Mrs
Hodgson insist she did this as she had no idea where else to turn.
The Daily mirror journalist and
photographer came to the house for and experienced nothing, as the left
the house to enter their vehicle Vick Nottingham ran out of the house to
explain” it had started again” , The pair returned to the house , while in
the living room the photographer had another Lego brick thrown so hard at
him it left a mark for several days, On picking up the Lego brick the
photographer noticed it was very hot as were most of the objects that were
moved and thrown over the 3 year happening.
The journalists from the Daily Mirror
not wanting to leave Mrs Hodgson with this problem recommended she contact
the Society of Psychical research who sent their relatively new member
Maurice Gross to investigate.
Maurice Gross was a middle aged man
who had become interested in the paranormal after the death of his
daughter Janet who had died from head injuries on her brother’s birthday
resulting from a motorbike crash, the card she had given to her brother
earlier that day mentioned her loosing her head in a joking way but didn’t
make much sense, Maurice saw this as her predicting her own death and also
believed he felt Janet wanted to contact him and so he became a paranormal
investigator and joined SPR. Maurice also reportedly said years after the
Enfield case that he believed Enfield was a way of his daughter contacting
him, and he was destined to be there.
Maurice spent a great deal of time at
the Enfield house with the family and witness allot of paranormal
activity. To hear recorded experiments and his explanations for several
events visit
http://www.zurichmansion.org/ghosts/video2.html
During his time at the house objects
would frequently be thrown around the upstairs room Janet slept in, one
day Maurice removed every object from the room and told the ghost “what
will you throw now” after walking downstairs Maurice herd a mighty crash!
He ran upstairs to fine the iron fire gate which was secured to the wall
had been ripped off and thrown across the room landing inches from the
youngest boy.
Not long into the investigation Janet
Margret started speaking in tongues, muttering the occasional obscenity
which eventually in Janet became a voice of an old man who spoke though
her “fake chords” who would talk for hours though her while she was in a
medative unconscious state. Fake chords is the vocal box every human has,
which is the gruff voice you would speak in if your voice had gone, Actors
can be trained to use there “Fake Chords” but nobody should be able to use
them for long without damaging their throat, making their normal voice
suffer in an obvious way. However Janet would talk thought her “fake
chords” for hours with no effect to her regular voice, which most doctors’
still say is impossible to do.
Maurice would talk to the spirit
though Janet while she was talking though her “Fake chords” and revealed
although there was a main spirit causing the majority of the events there
were several other spirits also in the house, an elderly man Frank Watson,
along with his wife and a number of his children.
The poltergeist identified itself as a man named
Bill, who explained that "I had a haemorrhage and then I fell asleep and I
died in a chair in the corner downstairs." He also said he was
buried in Durant’s Park graveyard, he said he was 72 and had returned to
the house to see his family but was disappointed to find them gone.
Subsequent research showed that long before the Hogsons had moved in to
the house, an old man called Bill Wilkins had indeed lived there. And he
had died of a brain haemorrhage while sitting in a living room chair.
As well as the objects being moved and
the possession of the girls, Electronic equipment would refuse to work in
the house, fully charged electrical equipment would be fully drained in
seconds, several very expensive video cameras from the BBC would not
record and when examined the cameramen found metal pieces inside the
camera were bent and broken. Pools of water frequently appeared out of no
where around the house and then quickly dried up. Fires started randomly
and then extinguished themselves. Caught on a regular camera one night was
the curtain next to Janet’s bed wrap its self into a spiral and move to
Janet’s neck as if it was attempting to strangle her, shortly after Janet
was thrown from her bed across the room, this happened on several
occasions.
In all 1,500 Separate phenomena
occurred and were witnessed by many people, during one of Janet’s
possessions she described her neighbours bedroom perfectly, having never
been in there it should have been impossible for Janet to know this,
Maurice asked her to prove she can see into the neighbours room and the
voice inside Janet replied that he has placed a pillow in the centre of
the room, The neighbour ran to her room to find the pillow in the centre
of her room, Maurice then returned the pillow and asked Bill (the
poltergeist) to prove it was him and thrown this pillow though the shut
window outside the house, Maurice left the room to let Bill do this which
did happen, later on two separate passers by, a lollypop lady and a
resident of the road reported seeing Janet flying around her room like
inside a hurricane, getting very close to the window the lollypop lady
thought she was going to crash though it. As Janet herself recalls it:
"The lady saw me spinning around and banging against the window. I thought
I might actually break the window and go through it.
On several occasions the two girls
were caught playing tricks on the investigators, one time hiding Guys tape
recorder, however not realising it was recording and so it recorded their
plot to pretend it was the spirit, Guys response to this was "They weren't
very good at playing tricks, we always caught them out. What do you expect
children to do? "I would have been more worried if they hadn't played
around from time to time. It means they were behaving like normal kids."
In an interview in 2003 with Will Storr Janet explained that her sister
and her felt like when all these people came to see the paranormal events
and they didn’t happen the sisters felt they had let them down and so
faked a few, they also as kids found it funny but insisted that only one
or two percent of the thousands of reported events were faked by her and
her sister. However an assistant sent by SPR called Anita Gregory claimed
in a report she wrote that she contributed all the paranormal events to
Janet who she describes as a very naughty, troubled young girl who craved
attention, Anita claims she was never allowed to be in the same room when
Bill spoke though Janet and the one time she was she was forced to look
the other way and have covers wrapped over her so she could not see, while
sitting with her back towards the children she had objects such as pillows
thrown at her and could hear the children giggling. Upon reading her
report Maurice was very angry and up in till his death in 2006 insisted
Anita was a liar.
Some doctors believed that Janet may
have been telepathic and so for over a month was studied in hospital,
during this time there were no paranormal activities reported in the
house, However despite hundreds of exhausting tests Janet was declared a
normal little girl with no mental or personality disorders.
The paranormal activities would
frequently become physical to other members of the family with a report by
Maurice that on entering the house found the mother with one foot on the
stair case unable to move, she claimed that something was holding her foot
and could not release it, both Maurice and his fellow investigator Guy
grabbed hold of the mothers arm and pulled but were unable to move her in
till her leg suddenly became free, Janet was seen being dragged as if by
an invisible force across the upstairs landing into her bedroom. Janet
would also have violent fits which investigators feared she may hurt or
even kill herself as she would bang her head against the wall; one
occasion was so bad a doctor was called and Janet was given 10 milligrams
of valium to force her to sleep. The investigators and doctor returned
downstairs to hear a loud crash, when they entered Janet’s room they found
her on top oh her set of draws still asleep in a pile as if she had been
thrown.
In 1980 as quickly as the suddenly as
the activity had begun the paranormal activity stopped, Mrs Hodgson stayed
in the house in till her death in 2003 with her youngest son, the other
children group up and moved away, Will storr had the first interview with
Janet since her mother had died in 2000, Janet reportedly did not want to
talk about the events while her mother was still alive as she did not want
to upset her. Janet still has paranormal activity around her but no where
near the scale the apologists brought and Will Storr seemed to think she
could still be possessed.
Watch the interviews with all the kids
and investigators :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQQj4dXJaZ8
There are 6 parts and it’s a great
watch! Some of the facts are slightly misleading due to the editing so
keep an open mind.
The investigator Guy Lyon Playfair
also wrote a book about the case called “this house is haunted”
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