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The Enfield Poltergeist was a period of apparent poltergeist activity in England between August 1977 and September 1978, with an added outburst in August 1980.
Activity
The said activity occurred at Enfield in North London, in a council house rented to Peggy Hodgson, a single parent with four children. Furniture moved about on its own, knockings on the walls were heard, and children's toys were thrown about the rooms and were too hot to touch when picked up. A police officer signed an affidavit to affirm that she saw a chair move. Reports of the activity attracted various visitors including mediums and members of the press. After visiting the house, George Fallows, a senior reporter for the Daily Mirror, suggested that the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) be called in to investigate.
Investigations
The incidents were investigated by Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair, both members of SPR, who were convinced by the evidence which they encountered during their thirteen month investigation. They reported witnessing various phenomena, including moving furniture, flying marbles, cold breezes, shallow pools of water appearing on the floor, and fires which spontaneously ignited and extinguished themselves.
Interviewing the Poltergeist
Grosse 'challenged' the poltergeist to speak to him and it did not take long before the poltergeist was communicating. The poltergeist had a habit of making jokes, but also had a very nasty temper, choosing to swear at Maurice, once calling him; "A f*cking old sod."
However, the spirit did reveal itself to Grosse as a man named Bill, who died in the house of a brain hemorrhage. After a few weeks of Bill revealing himself, a man contacted Grosse and claimed to be Bill's son. In The Enfield Case, the documentary revealed that the two girls often played their own tricks on Grosse, but only to see if he could tell the difference between the poltergeist activity and the girls' activity. The girls said that Grosse always caught them out. Bill's voice was said to be a hoax coming from Janet (whom the poltergeist seemed to focus most of its attention on). Scientists believed that Janet was creating Bill's voice herself, but doubt has been cast on this claim.
The family
The family consisted of a mother, two daughters, and two sons; Margaret aged 12, a younger sister Janet aged 11, Johnny aged 10 and Billy aged 7. At least 26 of of the events, investigators considered could not be accounted for by fraud. These included movement of small and large objects, interference with bedclothes, pools of water on the floor, apparitions, physical assaults, graffiti, equipment malfunction and failure, spontaneous combustion, disappearance and reappearance of objects, and apparent levitations.
Among other alleged phenomena that the SPR investigators witnessed was one of the children speaking using her false vocal folds for hours on end (which is believed to be medically impossible), while she was apparently possessed by another entity. When speaking with the false cords she said she was "Bill" who had died in the house. Recordings were made of these occurrences. After the BBC went to the house the recording crew found the metal inside of the recording machines bent, and recordings had been erased.
However, further investigations by Anita Gregory and John Beloff, also from the SPR were not so positive. They spent a few days with the family and came to the conclusion that the children had faked the poltergeist activity after they found them bending spoons themselves. One of the children (Janet) admitted to Gregory that they had fabricated some of the occurrences. This admission was repeated on the ITV News (12 June 1980) when she stated: "Oh yeah, once or twice [we faked phenomena], just to see if Mr Grosse and Mr Playfair would catch us. And they always did."
Fakes?
Margaret has publicly stated that although she did fake a few phenomena to catch the investigators in action, they were not responsible for all the phenomena. She has stated that "It is ridiculous to suggest that either my sister or I could have been responsible for the strange activity that went on in our house."
Ghostwatch Panic
On Halloween night, 1992, BBC aired a fictional mockumentary entitled Ghostwatch, based on the Enfield Poltergeist investigation. Like the Enfield Poltergeist, Ghostwatch supposedly took place in a North London house, and featured a possessed adolescent girl speaking in a other worldly voice. The program, which was only aired once on television, created a brief period of War of the Worlds-style panic due to many viewers believing the events that they had just witnessed were real.
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