The Enfield poltergeist was a claim of

supernatural Supernatural phenomena or entities are those beyond the Scientific law, laws of nature. The term is derived from Medieval Latin , from Latin 'above, beyond, outside of' + 'nature'. Although the corollary term "nature" has had multiple meanin ...

activity at 284 Green Street, a

council house A council house, corporation house or council flat is a form of British Public housing in the United Kingdom, public housing built by Local government in the United Kingdom, local authorities. A council estate is a building complex containing ...

Brimsdown Brimsdown is a neighbourhood of eastern Enfield in the London Borough of Enfield, north London, on the west side of the mid-to-lower Lea Valley. Geography The east of Brimsdown, that is, east of the eastern Lea Valley line is one of the boroug ...

, Enfield, London, England, between 1977 and 1979. The alleged

poltergeist In German folklore and ghostlore, a poltergeist ( or ; ; or ) 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 polter ...

activity was centred on sisters Janet, aged 11, and Margaret Hodgson, aged 13. Some members of the

Society for Psychical Research The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to condu ...

(SPR) such as inventor

Maurice Grosse Maurice Grosse (6 March 1919 – 14 October 2006) was a British paranormal investigator. Famous for his involvement in the Enfield Poltergeist case from 1977 to 1979, he has been portrayed in several films and television series, including '' T ...

and writer Guy Lyon Playfair, believed the haunting to be genuine, while others like

Anita Gregory Anita Gregory (née Kohsen; 9 June 1925 – 7 November 1984) was a German-born British psychologist and parapsychologist.John Beloff John Beloff (19 April 1920 – 1 June 2006) was an English psychology professor at Edinburgh University and parapsychologist. Biography Beloff was born and brought up in London, and was from a Russian Jewish family. His parents were Semion ...

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

Milbourne Christopher Milbourne Christopher (23 March 1914 – 17 June 1984) was a prominent American illusionist, magic historian, and author. President of the Society of American Magicians, an honorary vice-president to The Magic Circle, and one of the founding ...

and

Joe Nickell Joe Herman Nickell (December 1, 1944 – March 4, 2025) was an American skeptic and investigator of the paranormal. Nickell was a senior research fellow for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and wrote regularly for their journal, '' Skeptic ...

, criticised

paranormal investigator Ghost hunting is the process of investigating locations that are purportedly haunted by ghosts. The practice has been heavily criticized for its dismissal of the scientific method. No scientific study has ever been able to confirm the existenc ...

s for being credulous whilst also identifying elements of the case as being indicative of a

hoax A hoax (plural: hoaxes) is a widely publicised falsehood created to deceive its audience with false and often astonishing information, with the either malicious or humorous intent of causing shock and interest in as many people as possible. S ...

. The story attracted press coverage in British newspapers, has been mentioned in books, featured in

television Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

and radio documentaries, and dramatised in the 2016 horror film ''

The Conjuring 2 ''The Conjuring 2'' (known in the United Kingdom as ''The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Case'') is a 2016 American supernatural horror film directed by James Wan. The screenplay is by Chad Hayes, Carey W. Hayes, Wan, and David Leslie Johnson. It ...

''.

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 A constable is a person holding a particular office, most commonly in law enforcement. The office of constable can vary significantly in different jurisdictions. ''Constable'' is commonly the rank of an police officer, officer within a police ser ...

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 18 months, more than 30 people, including the Hodgsons' neighbours,

s 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 The ''Daily Mirror'' is a British national daily Tabloid journalism, tabloid newspaper. Founded in 1903, it is part of Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), which is owned by parent company Reach plc. From 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the tit ...

'' newspaper until reports came to an end in 1979.

Investigations

Paranormal

(SPR) members

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

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 Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

in 1978, where videocassettes from Enfield were examined. SPR investigator

Anita Gregory Anita Gregory (née Kohsen; 9 June 1925 – 7 November 1984) was a German-born British psychologist and parapsychologist.sensational story.

John Beloff John Beloff (19 April 1920 – 1 June 2006) was an English psychology professor at Edinburgh University and parapsychologist. Biography Beloff was born and brought up in London, and was from a Russian Jewish family. His parents were Semion ...

, a former president of the SPR, investigated and suggested Janet was practising

ventriloquism Ventriloquism or ventriloquy is an act of stagecraft in which a person (a ventriloquist) speaks in such a way that it seems like their voice is coming from a different location, usually through a puppet known as a "dummy". The act of ventrilo ...

. Both Beloff and Gregory came to the conclusion that Janet and Margaret were playing tricks on the investigators. In the first edition of the BBC series ''Hauntings'', broadcast on 13 October 2024, it was revealed that the unexplained voice of "Bill Wilkins" was later played on an

LBC LBC (originally the London Broadcasting Company) is a British phone-in and talk radio station owned and operated by Global and based in its headquarters in London. It was the UK's first licensed commercial radio station, and began to broadc ...

radio talk show, featuring Maurice Grosse. A listener to the show identified the voice as that of his father, William Charles Wilkins, who had lived at the house, had gone blind, had suffered a haemorrhage and had died in a chair downstairs, on 20 June 1963.

Other

, 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 Raymond Alan Whyberd (18 September 1930 – 24 May 2010) was an English ventriloquist, television entertainer, and writer. His career spanned over half a century, though he was most popular from the 1950s until the 1980s. He was associated pri ...

visited the house and concluded that Janet's male voices were simply vocal tricks.

Sceptical interpretations

Criticism of investigations

Sceptic

of the US-based

Committee for Skeptical Inquiry The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), formerly known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), is a program within the U.S. non-profit organization Center for Inquiry (CFI), which seeks to " ...

(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 Reel-to-reel audio tape recording, also called open-reel recording, is magnetic tape audio recording in which the recording tape is spooled between reels. To prepare for use, the ''supply reel'' (or ''feed reel'') containing the tape is place ...

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 Spirit Possession is an altered state of consciousness and associated behaviors which are purportedly caused by the control of a human body and its functions by Supernatural#Spirit, spirits, ghosts, demons, angels, or Deity, gods. The concept ...

'." 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 organised 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 The larynx (), commonly called the voice box, is an organ (anatomy), organ in the top of the neck involved in breathing, producing sound and protecting the trachea against food aspiration. The opening of larynx into pharynx known as the laryngeal ...

and had the

phraseology In linguistics, phraseology is the study of set or fixed expressions, such as idioms, phrasal verbs, and other types of multi-word lexical units (often collectively referred to as ''phrasemes''), in which the component parts of the expression tak ...

and

vocabulary A vocabulary (also known as a lexicon) is a set of words, typically the set in a language or the set known to an individual. The word ''vocabulary'' originated from the Latin , meaning "a word, name". It forms an essential component of languag ...

of a child. In a television interview for

BBC Scotland BBC Scotland is a division of the BBC and the main public broadcaster in Scotland. Its headquarters are in Glasgow, employing approximately 1,250 staff as of 2017, to produce 15,000 hours of television and radio programming per year. BBC Scotla ...

, 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 digitised by the SPR and a book of their content, ''The Enfield Poltergeist Tapes'', was produced by Dr Melvyn Willin in 2019. A 2016 article by psychology professor

Chris French Christopher (Chris) Charles French (born 1956) is a British psychologist who is prominent in the field of anomalistic psychology, with a focus on the psychology of paranormal beliefs and anomalous experiences. In addition to his academic activ ...

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 Menstruation (also known as a period, among other colloquial terms) is the regular discharge of blood and Mucous membrane, mucosal tissue from the endometrium, inner lining of the uterus through the vagina. The menstrual cycle is characterized ...

* Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable * Other schoolgirl pranks before and after have got out of hand

In popular culture

* On 26 December 1978

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

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 The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

aired a controversial

mockumentary A mockumentary (a portmanteau of ''mock'' and ''documentary'') is a type of film or television show depicting fictional events, but presented as a Documentary film, documentary. Mockumentaries are often used to analyze or comment on current event ...

titled '' Ghostwatch'', written by Stephen Volk and based on the Enfield poltergeist. * In March 2007

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...

aired a documentary about the Enfield poltergeist titled ''Interview with a Poltergeist''. * The Enfield poltergeist has been featured in episodes of ITV series ''

Strange but True? ''Strange but True?'' is a Paranormal documentary television show that aired on ITV for four seasons, from 21 May 1993 to 7 November 1997 and was hosted by Michael Aspel. Premise The series explored a number of aspects of unexplained activity, ...

'' and '' Extreme Ghost Stories''. * The Enfield poltergeist was the subject of the 2015

Sky Living Sky Living was a British pay television television channel, channel owned and operated by Sky Limited, Sky. The channel's programming was aimed mainly at women and young adults. It originally launched as UK Living yet became Sky Living by 2011. H ...

television series ''

The Enfield Haunting ''The Enfield Haunting'' is a British drama horror series which was commissioned by Sky Living and first aired on 3 May 2015. Kristoffer Nyholm, who rose to fame after the hugely popular Danish series, '' The Killing'', directed the three-parte ...

'', which was broadcast from 4–17 May 2015. * The 2016 film ''

'' 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 Catherine Tate (born Catherine Jane Ford, 5 December 1969) is an English actress, comedian and writer. She has won numerous awards for her work on the BBC Two, BBC sketch comedy series ''The Catherine Tate Show'' (2004–2007), as well as bein ...

, to be premiered at

Theatre Royal, Brighton The Theatre Royal is a theatre in Brighton, East Sussex, England presenting a range of West End and touring musicals and plays, along with performances of opera and ballet. History In 1806, the Prince of Wales (later George IV) gave Royal Assen ...

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, utilising actors lipsyncing to original tape recordings, archival video footage and modern-day interviews with living witnesses of the events.

References

External links

''BBC Radio 5 Live'' interview with photographer Graham Morris

The Enfield Poltergeist Case - Ghostwatch

The Original Enfield Poltergeist Recordings
{{coords, 51.655, -0.035, display=title Enfield, London 1977 hoaxes 1977 in London 1978 in London 1979 in London August 1977 in the United Kingdom English ghosts History of mental health in the United Kingdom History of the London Borough of Enfield Paranormal hoaxes Poltergeists Ed and Lorraine Warren Hoaxes in England