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BBC, Deborah Hyde, Education, Faith, Ghost Story, Ghosts, Ghostwatch, Guy Lyon Playfair, Hoax, Janet Hodgson, Maurice Grosse, Melvin Harris, Phillip Schofield, Poltergeist, Scepticism, Society for Psychical Research, The Enfield Poltergeist
The word “poltergeist” is taken from the German for “noisy spirit,” and it is characteristically impossible to ignore these troublesome presences. The Enfield Poltergeist famously terrorised a North London council house for about eighteen months in the late 1970s, throwing children in the air and acquiring a deep, gruff voice which was recorded gamely telling investigators to “fuck off.” Even today he is still up to his old mischief.
In 1992, the BBC broadcast a fake documentary called “Ghostwatch,” which was based upon the events at Enfield, and the poltergeist himself would have been heartily satisfied with the consequent uproar. Even though “Ghostwatch” is too patently fictional to seriously qualify as a hoax, many uninformed viewers purportedly assumed that it was a genuine live broadcast. There are numerous, if anecdotal, reports of viewers soiling themselves or developing post-traumatic stress disorder after tuning in. But it is certainly true that some of the Enfield Poltergeist’s original mischief had possessed the BBC and unleashed itself upon a terrified nation.
The Enfield Poltergeist remains troublesome and in a sort of debt to the world because, unlike with comparable cases such as the haunting of Borley Rectory and the Amityville Horror, we are still waiting for a definitive and convincing explanation of the haunting. Melvin Harris’ otherwise excellent Investigating the Unexplained (1987), which debunks half the encyclopedia of the supernatural, suffers from Harris’ conspicuous failure to square up to the Enfield Poltergeist. And the poltergeist returned earlier this month when Janet Hodgson (now Winter), who at the age of eleven was regarded as the “centre” of the Enfield haunting, turned up on “Good Morning” to be interviewed by Phillip Schofield. Deborah Hyde, editor of the Skeptic, was given a rare opportunity to challenge her.
Most of this ten minute feature was spent recalling the facts of the case rather than contesting them. We plunged back into the terrifying décor of that 1970s council house, the oppressive swirling brown wallpaper that would drive anybody mad, and the gaunt, ghastly faces of the hysterical family. Guy Lyon Playfair, who had originally investigated the poltergeist for the Society for Psychical Research, appeared alongside Janet (although, bizarrely, he now seems to be the same age as her). When describing his relationship with the Hodgson family, he was allowed to claim unchallenged that, “We were the only people who were able to do anything for them.” In fact, the SPR’s interminable and aimless investigation appeared to prolong the haunting, by guaranteeing an appreciative audience for either the poltergeist or the hoaxers.
Hyde’s case would have been stronger if she had admitted that the Enfield Poltergeist remains largely unexplained by sceptics, rather than trying to smear the poltergeist by insinuating that he may have been a hoax because Amityville had also been a hoax. She pursued an approach that never fails to wind people up: that “humans are remarkably bad at remembering things accurately and seeing things accurately,” that our consciousness is naturally faulty, and that we have to remain in a constant state of alertness, checking everything that enters our minds with the mental equivalent of airport security procedures.
Hyde’s scepticism was not only a faith in the failure of the mind, but it was also used euphemistically or diplomatically. Confronted with Janet Hodgson and unable to say to her face that she may have been lying, Hyde resorted to the unlikely possibility that it could have all been an innocent misunderstanding and that any untrained witness could have gotten into the same muddle. Hyde ended up vaguely attributing bad faith to the “girls” at Enfield (but never to the woman sitting alongside her).
Whilst patronising Janet with the possibility that she was at odds with her own mind, Hyde freely dismissed all of Playfair’s research, claiming that the Enfield phenomena were not “replicable” under “controlled conditions,” when those investigating the case at the time appeared to subject the poltergeist to an energetic scrutiny (and in doing so procured evidence that the girls may have indeed faked certain phenomena). Hyde was on a surer footing when claiming that today’s accounts of the poltergeist have disregarded the testimonies of “all the people at the time who disagreed” that the poltergeist was real.
Both the SPR and the sceptics make the mistake of squabbling over the evidence, when no evidence exists in a vacuum and it is always at the mercy of ideas and ideology. The investigators at Enfield had gathered vast quantities of evidence which adds up to nothing. The Enfield Poltergeist is in fact nothing but pure evidence, a catalogue of sterile phenomena without any external sense to it, other than the most occasional and fleeting shadow of a coherent narrative.
Let us look at the meaning rather than the evidence of the Enfield Poltergeist. The investigators at one point affixed an identity to the poltergeist – he was Bill Wilkins, a former tenant of the Hodgsons’ council house, who had apparently died in a particular chair in their living room. The poltergeist seems to have also appeared under various other names and identities. But why should one or several working class Cockneys return from a future state in order to pointlessly interfere in the lives of a random, unfamiliar family?
If those on the ground at Enfield had literally made contact with the dead, then there was surely the greatest of moral imperatives – for the benefit of humanity! – to learn about the process of arriving in a future state. Yet the researchers at Enfield must have been completely clueless, for there is no sense of any such urgency to their investigations. They occasionally quiz the poltergeist about the afterlife and he replies with vague or cryptic answers. The intelligence behind the voice was either still senile or rather unimaginative.
An alternative theory is that the pre-pubescent Janet was using telekinesis in order to create disruption and become the centre of her family’s attention. The powerlessness and frustration of being the second child in a crowded household was henceforth displaced into an uninhibited force which could simply not be ignored. Unfortunately, if this was true then the investigators at Enfield were even more clueless. Imagine being able to learn about the origins of telekinesis and how to develop such a power. If you possessed telekinesis, then working on a building site or waiting tables in a restaurant would be completely transformed, not least because you could do these jobs whilst lying in a hammock. Yet those at Enfield wasted their opportunity to capture these secrets for the human race.
More to the point, they did not even try to “cure” Janet of her poltergeist by finding a social role for her which involved more than terrorising her family, egged on by irresponsible investigators. Indeed, the investigators at Enfield seem to have showed a breathtaking irresponsibility towards the welfare of the children under their supervision. A staple of the Enfield story is that all of those who were caught up in the haunting were decent, honest people, and yet once one begins to question this, then the whole case immediately collapses. Every victim of a poltergeist attack is defined by the fact that they dare the world to be rude enough to question their honesty. Deborah Hyde was too polite to ask whether the mother Peggy Hodgson or the chief investigator Maurice Grosse were acting in bad faith, and yet both of them had something more at stake than truth in their poltergeist.
The mother was a struggling single parent who was living in a council house with four children, and whilst Grosse has claimed that she did not make any money from the poltergeist, she received a support and strength from the investigators which was not forthcoming from her own community. Grosse, on the other hand, should never have been allowed anywhere near the poltergeist, not least because he was still grieving for his recently-deceased daughter (who was also named Janet). Haunted more by the possibility of human annihilation than by any ghost, he has openly admitted that he was using the Society for Psychical Research to search for evidence of a future state rather than to objectively investigate the supernatural.
Grosse was by all accounts a kindly and charismatic man, and it seems bad form to question his integrity, but he was ultimately a bit of a crank. In 1998, he appeared on the Esther Rantzen show to claim that he possessed scientific evidence of levitation. A talented inventor with a polytechnic education, Grosse was, rather like the fraudulent ghosthunter Harry Price, a self-appointed amateur enthusiast rather than a trained professional scientist. Whilst sceptics have occasionally speculated (and, incidentally, failed to establish) that the supple and undeveloped vocal chords of some children may be capable of producing the sort of voice used by the Enfield Poltergeist, I have always been embarrassed by the fact that the voice sounds, well, a lot like that of Maurice Grosse. It may be that Janet was somehow impersonating Grosse, and perhaps she was searching for a substitute father in the same way that he was missing a daughter named Janet. The conflation of their voices provides a fitting symbol of the inappropriate sympathy between the investigators and the investigated at Enfield, who have over the years closed ranks like a tiny beleaguered church.
Cases like that of the Enfield Poltergeist are no longer possible these days, because the ubiquitous possession of digital cameras put potential hoaxers under too much scrutiny. Moreover, the expansion of social services and the invention of conditions such as “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder” mean that lonely children no longer have to come up with a poltergeist in order to earn attention from sympathetic adults. But the Enfield Poltergeist remains at large, unexplained by the sceptics, and amongst lovers of ghost stories, he still enjoys a certain reputation for being the only true ghost.
Tychy 
As I have mentioned elsewhere (“God, Ghosts, and Independnent Minds” Penpress; also via Amazon and Kindle) a better understanding of a poltergeist is that it is a ‘psychic bully’ – and that its ‘vicitms’ are essentially bullying themselves, the ‘geist’ being something of a safety valve. The most helpful way to deal with a poltergeist outbreak seems to be to calm everyone down, and have all the principal parties speak honestly with each other about their relationships; not easy!
Within my limited experience, however, it works. So much for the practicalities. What causes the mainifestations, exactly, I do not know. Intense emotion, largely suppressed, seems to play a large part. How ‘biological’ – eg, the health or puberty of ONE of those involved – the emotion may be, I am not sure; I suspect the usual full range of human inter-personal needs is involved, but I may be wrong. The kinetic effects seem to need energy from the environment, and obtaining this may be the reason for drops in temperature in the vicinity. A common complaint – usually by ladies – is of a draught blowing round their lower legs, just before some minor movement of some utensil or ornament occurs. How and, more importantly, why – I do not know. It is certainly attention -grabbing in itself! Also, it can quite easily be faked, of course; like the terrorist at work, no-one else knows what is to happen next.
There is no doubt that poltergeists are a fact of lives which have, if only temporarily, become too stressed to be agreeable. This seems the best place to start investigations. I have suggested as much in my book. The point is, keep calm, and keep investigating. There is something here which is a facet of our humanity. It cannot be bad to try and find its mechanism, and alleviate the distress caused when a poltegeist is seen in its context as threatening, and not treated like a family pet!
Thank you I’ve just watched a documentary on this matter available on youtube and I was looking for some debunking and here I am ; my guess is the 70’s were also the years of big-productions-horror-movies such as Amityville or the Exorcist, the Omen or Rosemary’s Baby thus perhaps the idea for the kids to emulate these pictures and somewhat they did it. Your last consideration is very true indeed even though the “haunted house/paranormal” business still run for unbelievable as it seems
Enfield ‘Poltergeist’
There is a series coming up called the Enfield Haunting and all this rubbish is going to come up again.
Having been brought up in the area (Brimsdown, Enfield) in 1977 I was 8 years old I know the area very well. What was it like living as a child here? CRAP. This is a highly industrialised part of Enfield and an improvished area.. AT the bottom of my road the cooling towers of the power station dominated the landscape. These were pulled down. When they were demolished it was the only exciting thing that happened..We had a private street party for the Queen’s Jubillee which I suppose was something. It was stipulated that noone outside the street was allowed to come (there was a council estate nearby).
It was something to was the year of power cuts! I enjoyed when this happened though.
There was very little to do especially during the summer holidays…that august it was very cool and wet (I checked this). I remember as a child when it was a bad summer it made us all annoyed and we’d play up as we had to stay inside. So we had to entertain ourselves as best as we could without annoying each other…my mother knew some of the people (the lollipop lady witness). she told me that she heard a howling when walking past the said house in green street I said I couldn’t remember anything…it was featured on a widely watched Nationwide and the mirror newspaper.
A became more a ware of this case when a boy brought in a tape recording of a radio program with the girl doing the voice of Bill. It was chilling. This Girl was good! It was like The Exocist film (1973/74). We wanted to go to the nearby graveyard (at night of course) and try to find the tombstone.
My conclusions
HOAX with the Janet girl and her sister fabricating the whole thing. Attention seeker all over. However, she did experience something but its was more to do with her mind. It was a time of great stress for the family. She Despite appearances she was quite clever (a journalist mentions this when he helped her with homework). She comes across as an odd bod a sure target for bullies and today probably be diagnosed with ADHD. I don’t want to go through all the points. But there are RED FLAGS everywhere. I could go through all the points why this is but I’m bored by this stupid topic coming up again. Everything is dubious as being supernatural.
I’d clocked the new docudrama, but unfortunately I don’t have time to see/review it. Thanks for your comment – it’s very interesting and useful.
“Grosse was by all accounts a kindly and charismatic man, and it seems bad form to question his integrity, but he was ultimately a bit of a crank.”
Actually there is evidence to suggest he wasn’t a kindly or charismatic man as some believe. Grosse did not accept valid skepticism of the Enfield poltergeist case – not even from fellow psychical researchers.
Anita Gregory a fellow SPR member (and believer in some paranormal phenomena) investigated the Enfield case but came to the conclusion the case was the result of mostly tricks from Janet. Gregory was only a student at the time, taking her PhD thesis on the Enfield poltergeist (she was a parapsychologist). Grosse threatened Gregory with legal action, she never published her critical paper on the Enfield poltergeist case in the SPR journal and she did not obtain her PhD thesis – Grosse made it so she failed this. Not many people know these facts.
Former president of the SPR John Beloff commented Grosse “put Anita Gregory’s Ph.D thesis out of bounds”. You can read about this in the book “Will Storr Vs. The Supernatural” pp. 156-157.
Also regarding Melvin Harris, he believed the Enfield Poltergeist was the result of fraud. He didn’t cover it in his book because he didn’t believe it was worth covering. There is a published letter from him to the SPR declaring the case a hoax after he examined Janet’s “levitation” photograph on a bed (which was just her jumping). Anyway, thanks for your article, was a pleasure to read. Regards.
Thank you for your excellent comment and for putting me right on Melvin Harris. I’m sorry if I’ve done him an injustice.
I know this is an old comment but I think this case is likely to come up yet again with the upcoming release of The Conjuring 2 (which somehow puts the Warrens at the centre of everything but I don’t even want to get into that!) I know that Will Storr got hold of Anita Gregory’s thesis but has anyone else read it? I poked about in the SPR archives a few years ago but didn’t find much that I didn’t already know. What I did find was that the voice also came from Margaret and Billy which seems to be glossed over in the book, perhaps because it seriously calls the legitimacy of it into question.
This is a great article by the way, summed up how badly Deborah Hyde presented herself perfectly.
It’s great to be skeptical, but to say something is a hoax without proof is not convincing. Growing up and describing the area does not prove that the girls faked anything. A child can be clever up to a point. A child is not going to understand or know how to do all the physical occurances that happened. When something as extreme and unexplainable as this story is, I lean more toward believing than not. It is possible that because this child Janet was in a certain emotional or mental state that she was able to connect with the other side or with spirits. Some people have this ability. So, don’t be so quick to laugh, and say “fake” without valid explanation. Be open minded.