01x01 - The Enfield Poltergeist

[bunniefuu]

- It was 1977, and I was
working as a photographer

on "The Daily Mirror" newspaper.

And I was doing the late shift.

You'd be just sitting there
on call

waiting for anything to happen.

Could be parties, celebrities,

car crash, plane crash, murders.

It could be absolutely
anything at all.

And then, quite late at night,

this one call had come in
from a family in Enfield

saying that weird things have
been happening in their house.

Furniture had been
moving around on its own.

And, of course,
nobody really believed it.

A lot of people
phone up newspapers

and tell you all
sorts of things,

so we didn't know
what to believe.

But a second call came in
where a neighbor had said

that the police had seen
things move around the house

and they were
convinced there was

something strange
happening in the house.

- The local police reported
seeing an armchair levitate

across the
Hodgson's living room.

- It came off the floor, oh,

maybe a half inch, I should say,

and I saw it slide
off to the right

about 3 and 1/2 to 4
feet before it came to rest.

Um, I checked to
see whether or not

it could possibly have
slid along the floor.

I placed a marble on the
floor to see whether or not

the marble would go in the
same direction as the chair did,

and it didn't,
didn't roll at all.

I couldn't find an
explanation at all.

- I drove up with the
reporter, Doug Bence.

We had no idea what
we'd find when we got there.

We pulled up at
Green Street, Enfield,

jumped out.

The house looked
perfectly normal.

Didn't look anything...
Anything special.

Peggy Hodgson was a
mother, single mother,

trying to bring up a
family of four on her own.

She couldn't cope.

- When I did see the
dressing table moving,

I just couldn't believe it.

In fact, I pushed it back twice,

and the third time,
I couldn't move it.

But while I was doing it
and while I was in the room,

I was literally trembling,

and my mouth went completely dry

because I didn't really
know what I was up against.

It's almost as though
someone's standing there

with an invisible
hand and lifting it

from one place to the other.

- It was decided that I
would go into the house

first of all, and
I planted myself

right in the very far
corner of the kitchen.

Then the family came in,

and nothing happened really.

That was... that
was it. Nothing at all

until the last child, Janet,

who was about 11 or
12, she was brought in.

Suddenly things just took off,

flew around the room as if
you fired them out of a g*n.

You know, it was sort of
marbles and LEGO bricks.

They were really
moving, hitting the walls,

hitting windows.

I remember Janet screaming
and covering her face.

She seemed to be the
epicenter of everything.

And then, suddenly I
got hit by a LEGO brick.

And it brought a lump
up on my right eyebrow.

If it weren't for having the
camera up over my face,

that force, I would
have been blinded.

I have no idea if any of those
pictures are gonna come out.

It was quite frustrating
because it was just

shots of the family there

rather than seeing marbles
whizzing across the room.

Looking back at it,

I still haven't got
the faintest idea

of what happened in that house.

- Britain today
is on the red line.

Confusion and
anxiety are everywhere.

As people search for meaning,

many have become
fascinated by the supernatural,

the occult, and the paranormal.

- Blockbuster horror films had
people fainting in the cinema.

- Beat down Satan
under our feet!

- And we've had regular reports

of hauntings and possessions.

- The Hodgson family
from Enfield in North London

aren't getting on too
well with what they believe

to be a poltergeist.

- A poltergeist is a ghost

which makes its presence
known through noises.

- Those who've studied
the phenomenon say

it concentrates its attention
on adolescent children.

11-year-old Janet Hodgson
appears to be the focus

of many of the strange
happenings in Green Street.

- I was a reporter for
BBC "World at One"

and "World This
Weekend," and I was working

on "World This
Weekend" on the Saturday

when "The Daily
Mirror" had this headline:

"The House of
Strange Happenings."

You don't usually get
kind of ghost stories

on the front page, do you?

It wasn't necessarily
news in the sense that...

Not hard news anyway...

And I was threatened all day
with, if nothing else happens,

you'll have to go and cover
this ghost story in Enfield.

It's well known that
when a reporter is sent out

to a ghost story,
absolutely nothing happens.

I mean, it's really, you
know, difficult to report on.

So I didn't really
want to do it at all.

But in the end, nothing
else happened that day,

so I went out to Enfield
on a Saturday evening

and was quite skeptical

and thought, well,
what's gonna happen?

I thought Mrs. Hodgson
seemed a very sensible woman.

She seemed very normal and
ordinary and down-to-Earth.

She had four children.

Johnny was ten, Billy was seven,

Margaret was 13,
and Janet was 11.

Mrs. Hodgson was divorced,
and her husband wasn't there,

and the family were
obviously quite poor.

And there didn't seem anything
remarkable about the family.

Just what was happening
to them seemed remarkable.

At the time, I was just focused

on the fact that I
needed to get something

that could go on the
program the next day.

It's now about half an hour
since the family settled down

for the night, and Janet,
who's the 11-year-old,

the one we've
been watching most,

she now seems to be asleep.

She's not really moving
around very much.

I was in the front room,

and it was really quite loud

and quite persistent
sort of knocking.

It wasn't like a
knock on the door.

It was like a knock on the wall,

and sort of high up
on the wall sometimes.

You could never
tell where it was.

We've just heard a noise
having come downstairs.

We've just heard
a noise upstairs.

And the chair which was
standing by Janet's bed

appears to have moved.

Now the chair was by the
bed, and it's now by the door.

Well, Janet appears to be
sleeping quite peacefully.

Well, I'm hoping I'm not
getting the microphone

shaking in my hand
because that was rather

an unnerving experience.

- Roslyn, you're looking
fairly fresh, I have to say,

after that night and being
up till 5:30 this morning.

Are you persuaded?

- I think I more
or less am, yes.

I couldn't explain what
had happened that night.

It did all seem extremely odd.

And I thought there really
was something strange

going on in that house.

- As a couple of
"Daily Mirror" hacks,

you know, we were
out of our depth,

so we had no idea
what this was about.

So we decided that the
Society for Psychical Research

had to get involved.

They'd studied this sort
of stuff over the years

in lots of different
countries around the world,

and they knew what
they were doing.

And we certainly didn't.

- The Society for
Psychical Research,

which was founded
in the 19th century,

does research into a whole
range of different types

of alleged paranormal phenomena.

So this can range
through the whole gamut

of apparitions, poltergeist,

spiritual mediums,

extrasensory perception.

Just about you name any
anomalous phenomena

that you can think of,
and the SPR is interested

in investigating it in
a scientific manner.

My role in the
SPR is the honorary

archive liaison officer,
which means that I basically

collect archive material,
catalog it, conserve it.

Well, this is where I keep
a lot of the paranormal,

shall we say, archive.

Up here we have the Enfield box,

which has the items
that were thrown around

in a poltergeist-like manner.

So here we have the LEGO bricks.

And one of the first times
that anything flew in the air

was when a piece of LEGO
brick hit the photographer,

Graham Morris, brought
up a bit of a bruise on him,

and with such a volition

that it couldn't have just
been sort of chucked in the air

and hit him on the
head or something.

It had to be thrown very hard.

And at the time,
everybody was in view.

There were quite
a few people there.

So I don't think he ever
managed to explain how,

other than through
some paranormal force,

this thing managed to
throw itself across the room

and hit him.

The posh words for this,
psychokinetic energy,

which means things that
get thrown around, basically.

The explanations are
the same as they are

for all of this sort
of phenomena,

ranging from fraud
at one extreme

to spirits at the other extreme,

and plenty of other
things in between the two.

Fraud could have been, in
an extreme circumstance,

somebody palming
a piece of the LEGO,

waiting until they were pretty
sure that nobody was looking,

and then throwing it
as hard as they could,

aiming it at poor old Graham,

it hitting him so that it
brought up a bruise on him.

Graham didn't know
what was going on,

so he contacted the SPR.

And then the SPR contacted
Maurice Grosse to say,

you live relatively near...
He lived in Muswell Hill...

Would you like to go
along and investigate?

Maurice had not been
a member of the SPR

before this case for very long.

The first job that
Maurice had in the SPR

was actually the Enfield case.

- My father was 20 in 1939,

and he joined the Royal
a*tillery straight away.

And in fact, he was in
the expeditionary force

to Dunkirk.

He ended as an acting captain.

And at the end of the w*r,

he was in retail,
designing and inventing.

And then my father showed
interest in psychic phenomena

and joined the Society
for Psychic Research.

And after a period of time,

he realized that the only
way to really get anywhere

with this subject was to
research it on the ground.

And he'd been badgering
the secretary for a case.

And the secretary had
got in touch with him

and said, Maurice,
there's something going on

in Enfield in Middlesex.

Would you like to
go and have a look?

So he jumps at the opportunity.

And he marshaled his resources,

jumped into his car,
and went off to Enfield.

And there started the story.

- I found chaos.

And there were a lot of very,
very frightened people there,

so we sat down, and we talked
about what was happening.

And I began to realize
that here we had

a classic poltergeist
case on our hands.

- My father was a
scientific, rational person,

no one more so.

Um, and he would have
been looking at everything

with a very critical eye,

learning each hour, each day,

and assessing each
event as it came along.

- I have actually seen myself
marbles being thrown about

because they'd
been thrown at me.

I've seen the door moving
backwards and forwards

as though the
wind was blowing it.

I've seen a T-shirt jump
off the table onto the floor.

The door chimes on the wall,

I've seen them
moving on their own.

I've also experienced the
reduction of temperature.

- Janet was the
focal point of activity.

My father became clear about
that from relatively early on.

His enthusiasm
was unbounded here.

I mean, I would come
back from a discotheque

at 3:00 in the morning, and
he'd be going off to Enfield.

We have our morning debrief
sessions over breakfast,

and out would come the tapes,

and he would
tell me the stories,

the new events,
the progressions.

- And it is one of the
extraordinary coincidences

that his very first
case should be

one of the most important cases

in the history of
paranormal phenomenon.

- We were there
just about every night.

It was too fascinating not to.

- We'd be sitting
in the sitting room

for hours and hours

just waiting for
something to happen.

And then, bang!

Got upstairs to find this bed
that turned itself sideways

and was stood
up against the wall.

And we couldn't have
done that between us,

and let alone children.

And heavy chests of drawers,

big pieces of
furniture would move.

Chairs would slide across
floors staying upright.

My role then was to do
sort of continuity pictures.

So I'd go into the house,
and I'd take a picture

of each room, showing
everything that was there.

And then when
something happened,

piece of furniture
moved or whatever,

I'd be the first one to go back
in and take a picture again.

Everywhere Janet went, it
seemed to follow her around.

That was quite
frightening for her.

She hated that.

There was just so much of it.

We were seriously worried
that somebody at some point

could get hurt and
could be badly hurt.

- There's an old
fireplace in the bedroom.

Janet said to me, "I can
hear this scraping sound."

And she says, "Oh, my
God, the fireplace is moving."

And all at once, the front
of the fireplace lifted up,

and it lifted right
over the double bed

and right onto the
side of the camp bed

because Billy was
next to me at that time.

We just sat there
looking at one another.

We didn't know what to
do. We were so scared.

- A fireplace had flown across
the room and almost hit Billy,

the seven-year-old
boy, in the face.

It could have k*lled him.

- The fireplace was a
turning point as to my father.

For the first time,
it was dangerous

and worried him hugely.

- Mum was beside herself.

Mum was trying to bring
up four kids, no husband,

and just didn't
need it, you know.

So it was just awful.

It was just too much for her.

Janet couldn't get away
from it, couldn't shake it off.

It was just always with her...

Whatever it was.

- As the activity
gained in momentum,

it changed.

It became more intelligent.

- Are you a male spirit?

Knock one for no
and two for yes.

- Two.
- It's two.

You are a male spirit.

Did you used to
live in this house?

You did.

Was it... was it more
than 50 years ago?

Yes.

Did you... did you
die in this house?

Did you pass on?

You did pass on in this house.

- That's when he
realized he was dealing

with some form of entity
that could communicate.

- What happened next
was completely unexpected

and very disturbing.

- I want you to
call out my name,

my complete name,
Maurice Grosse.

- These voices came from Janet.

And they were very
strange and gruff

and very deep like
a grumpy old man.

- Come on. Let me
hear you say my name.

- Maurice.

Maurice.

Maurice.

- I thought, well,
I've got to record that,

so with Maurice Grosse,

I went and talked to the girl.

And the voice
just started talking.

- People say to me, where
do the voices come from?

I don't know. They
were just there.

Really strange.

I've never known
anything like it,

but then that's true of most
of the Enfield poltergeist.

I mean, I've never
known anything like it

before or since.

- I was a skeptic,
absolutely skeptical,

until I stepped into the house.

And at about 9:00
in the evening,

the kids were going to bed.

And the kids were in the
room, the door was closed,

and almost immediately
this voice started,

this old man's voice talking.

I went into the
room, and I was told

I had to stand facing the door.

I said to him, to
the voice, I said...

I want you to tell me
whether you remember

what happened to
you when you died.

And he said,
"I'm Bill Wilkins..."

"And I died 15 years ago.

"I'm 72 years old,

"and I used to live here.

"Just before I
died, I went blind.

And then I had a hemorrhage..."

- It had identified
itself as Bill Wilkins.

The intellect behind the
voice was not Janet's.

Can an 11-year-old child
speak in a gruff old man's voice

for literally an hour or more

and not show any
sign of distress,

not cough, not splutter?

You would say,
that is impossible,

and that's my position.

Also, the chances of
Janet even knowing

what a hemorrhage was
had to be close to zero,

so we're talking about
language and knowledge

which was outside of Janet's
experience or understanding.

Obviously, the examination
of the voice to try

and discover what it was
and where it was coming from

was of paramount importance.

They asked Janet to put
some water in her mouth

but not swallow,

and then they put some
tape over her mouth.

So the water was in her mouth,
and her mouth was taped shut.

The voice was not
coming from her.

It was coming from behind her.

- I could see the
family deteriorating

because the upheaval of not only

what was happening in the house,

but also having all these
strangers coming to your house

to do whatever they
needed to do to prove

that this thing was happening.

Maurice Grosse was quite
excited about the whole thing

because this was suddenly
taking on a different feel.

And Janet, who was
just completely mystified,

wanted it to go away.

There she is a 12-year-old girl

being possessed
by a 72-year-old man

who died in a chair
downstairs years before.

This was taking over her life.

Suddenly one night, there
was this enormous scream

and then a crash.

Everybody rushed upstairs
to see what had happened

and found Janet lying
facedown on the floor

in a bit of a heap.

Maurice asked her what happened,

and she just said that
there was someone there

who had just grabbed her
and thrown her out of bed,

thrown her across the room.

So I had to then try and
photograph it somehow.

So I set up a
camera on a tripod,

corner of the room, flash g*n.

The camera was
triggered by a cable

that ran down the stairs
into the room below

where we were all sat
with a tape recorder running

where we could hear what
was happening live in the room.

And as soon as we heard a noise,

I'd hit the button, it would
take loads of pictures.

When the pictures were
taken, they were at least

a sixth of a second
between each frame.

She started off
flat in bed normally.

The next shot, the
covers had come away.

Her arms were flat by her side.

There is no picture
of her between flat

and coming out of the bed.

There's not one picture
of her climbing up

or moving the covers down
to get her legs out or anything.

She's gone from that to that.

- She's literally flying...
- In a sixth of a second.

- Was that a big distance
that Janet was thrown?

- Across a room, uh,

you'd be looking at
about 3 or 4 meters.

That's quite a force to be able

to pick up a 12-year-old girl.

That could have done
her some serious damage.

Maurice, as soon as
he'd seen the pictures,

he then said, oh,
they're levitating.

But there were lots
of different theories

as to why they could
or could not be levitation.

- The number of
people that have looked

at that photograph and said,

"She's just jumping."

You know, you'll
get people saying,

should her knees
be flexed and so on.

You know, would her
body be in that position?

But I just looked at the
face, and I thought to myself,

mm, that's not
someone who's playing.

- It was reported
by several people

who had nothing
to do with the family

that they'd seen Janet floating

around the upstairs bedroom.

I went and interviewed
two eyewitnesses,

one of whom was the
school crossing warden.

The house was
opposite the school.

And she had looked up

and seen Janet
floating around the room.

And she was very shaken by this,

but she was prepared
to be interviewed about it.

- I was standing there
looking, and all of a sudden,

I saw the middle girl, Janet,

going up and down
in front of the window.

Well, I thought that
she was jumping

up and down on the bed.

But when I looked,
she was horizontal,

going up and down with her arms

and legs going everywhere.

And I suppose she did this
about half a dozen times,

and then it stopped.

- What was
interesting about all this

was that people who
had no skin in the game

were prepared to be
interviewed about it

because they'd seen
something so extraordinary.

- The lollipop lady and
the baker both believe

that they saw Janet actually
in the horizontal plane

going up and down rather
than this sort of straight up

and straight down,
almost like a triangle shape,

which it looks like from
Graham's photographs.

If Janet was
physically fit enough,

which she possibly was,
then there is a possibility

that she could have been
manufacturing this herself,

and this sort of
correlates, if you like,

with "The Exorcist" film,
which came out in 1974.

Remember, this was
all happening in 1977,

and it's possible that Janet
may have seen the film

or seen clips of it
somewhere or the other

and that she was
therefore trying to copy

what was going on there.

There were several
members of the SPR who,

without displaying a
corporate viewpoint,

as individuals felt that it
was not real, the levitation.

And they put that
into print occasionally

and defended their case.

Maurice was very upset about
some members being so hostile

to his interpretation
of what was going on.

And so the controversy
raged backwards and forwards.

I think that a few
members of the SPR felt

that Janet's
motive for levitating,

if you want to call it that,

was because she
wanted to have fun.

She wanted to draw
attention to herself.

She wanted to be special,

because she was
the star of the show

for quite a bit at the time.

And I think she
probably enjoyed that

as a break from
some of the miseries

that she was suffering
in her childhood

and at the time of her life.

- I had been there up
to four nights a week

for months by the time
we got 'round to the voices.

It was getting a bit like
a circus by then anyway.

There were so many people
coming and going in the house.

All these experts
were brought in,

doctors and voice coaches,

and all sorts of people
that would be there

to try and prove that
she couldn't do this.

It was crazy.

It was like Victorians
pitching up a Bedlam hospital,

you know, and putting
up scaffolding and looking

over the wall and watching
them for the afternoon.

Janet wanted
everything to go away.

She was scared
of the whole thing.

I was really worried
that she was gonna get

seriously hurt at some point.

- It did get worse and worse,

and Janet did
actually get quite ill.

She was getting quite frightened

by feeling that things
were happening to her.

She felt that something
was pushing her around,

pulling her out of bed,
wrapping her in a curtain

and nearly strangling her,
making her fall down stairs.

She was put in the
Maudsley for two months,

which is a psychiatric
hospital in South London.

I visited her a week later,

and she was calmer
and more cheerful

and said she was
getting more sleep.

And I think it was good for her

to get away from the house

because there were a
lot of demands on her.

The doctors gave
her lots of tests,

and they decided that
she was just a normal child.

There wasn't anything
wrong with her.

And she was discharged
after six weeks.

- After Janet got back
from the Maudsley,

the activity died down.

It felt like it was time to go.

It had run its course.

That was it.

Maurice was desperate
to see it through to its end

and found it very
hard to leave it.

It turned out that he also
had a daughter called Janet,

and she had died in
a car crash recently,

you know, just before he
came along to the house.

And he did mention that
he was hoping somehow

that it was his daughter
trying to contact him.

The chap who's coming
along to try and solve

the whole mystery was
really being sort of sidetracked

by this unfortunate incident

that had happened
with his daughter.

- My sister, Janet, was
two years younger than me.

She decided she
wanted to be a reporter.

She had moved on
to the Cardiff "Leader,"

and it was in Cardiff
that she was k*lled

in a motorcycle accident.

When Janet died, obviously,

the effect on my
parents was profound.

For my father, he
found a practical outlet.

He decided that he wanted
to look at psychic phenomena,

the paranormal, in more detail.

When he arrived at the
house, he was struck by the fact

that one of the girls
was called Janet.

He didn't give it anything
other than passing mention,

the fact that she
was called Janet.

A lot of people thought
it was terribly important.

A lot of people tried
to attribute to him

an emotional
connection to the case,

to Janet, to what was going on...

Entirely wrongly.

It's an easy thought.

But it wasn't one
that was borne out,

because at the end of the day,

the entity was Bill Wilkins,

not Janet Grosse.

This was a statement of fact.

So therefore, it
should be verifiable.

There was an extraordinary event

that happens sometime later.

My father was on a
talk show on OBC,

and they played
some of the tape.

- They had a phone
call, and they said,

a gentleman wants
to speak to you.

He says it's important.
So they put him on,

and he said, well,
I know that voice.

That was my
father, Bill Wilkins.

He did live in that
house, went blind,

had a hemorrhage,
died downstairs,

and he was buried in a
cemetery down the road.

"Treasured memories of
dear husband and father,

William Charles Wilkins,
died 20th June, 1963."

Do I believe in ghosts?

It's hard to say no

because I've had a conversation

with Bill Wilkins, who's dead.

It opens the door
for such a question,

and as a result,
I can't close it.

- The Enfield tapes
are in that box.

Those are the
original reel to reels,

and these are the
Enfield cassette tapes

that belonged to Maurice Grosse.

So they're all in
those boxes there.

So these are the
recordings that Maurice made

of just about all the
phenomena that occurred there

from an auditory viewpoint
between 1977 and 1979.

- That's a long time.
- Yeah.

- Have you
listened to all of it?

- I've listened to all of
the recordings twice.

I would say hundreds of hours
and approaching thousands

of hours have been
spent listening to it.

I'm not happy
with the voice at all

because I think that
it doesn't fit with me.

I don't like the sort of
things it was coming out with.

A lot of the time it wanted to...

It swore a lot of the time,

very bad swearing constantly,

as if somebody
is allowed to swear

because they're not
who they really are.

So they can swear
and get away with it

because it's not me
swearing, Mummy.

It's the voice swearing.

My overall thoughts
about the case in Enfield

are that I think that there
was more playing about

going on than Maurice
believed there was,

but I don't think it
was all playing about.

The incidents that I think
from my own viewpoint

have the most credit are things
where things appeared on tape,

so you could hear them...
Alas you couldn't see them,

but you could hear them,
you could hear the reactions

of the people, and
you thought, well,

there's something happening
there that just doesn't fit.

I do think some
of the activities

that occurred there were
beyond our normal senses,

and therefore needing
to be investigated more.

- I never want to do
anything like this ever again

because it was very disturbing.

It was really worrying.

It was dangerous and difficult,

and you didn't know
what was happening.

And while it was
extremely interesting

to record it as an observer,

it was very, very disturbing.

- I don't mention it.

I don't tell anyone I know.

You know, I
haven't told my wife.

I hadn't told my daughters.

I haven't told anyone really,

because they
wouldn't believe you.

If you told them what happened,

they'd just think you're mad.

It's too strange.

People can't get
it into their heads.

45 years later, I'm no
closer now to knowing

as I was on day one
when I walked into the place.