Transcript of The Enfield Poltergeist

Hey, weirdos. I'm Elaina. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid. It's morbid in the mid-afternoon.

It is indeed. I like the lighting in here right now.

Yeah, we set the lighting. We have those light bulbs that you can change to make them fun colors. Yeah.

It's like a weird way to describe it, but it's like cotton candy lighting.

No, it is a little bit. It's like pinky, bluey, purpily. I like it.

I like it. Janks.

Hey, it's spooky season, everybody.

Yeah.

It's pre-October. It's pre-October.

Proctober, if you will.

Proctober, not John Proctober. No. But maybe in- Not good. Maybe in Massachusetts. Yeah. Goody Proctober over here. It We're pretty excited about it. We got some really fun stuff coming up for you today. One of those things we're actually doing later today. I'm so fucking excited. Yeah. You'll find out about it later.

In a few months. Yeah.

You'll find out about it soon. In a while. But yeah, it'll be fun. I'm trying to think if there's any other fun updates. Our bonus episode just came out. We hope you guys are digging that one. Talked about Unkown Number, the high school catfish documentary. And holy shit.

The wildest documentaries I've ever seen. Everyone is talking about it, too. I was listening to Sup this morning and I was crying at their coverage of it. Yes.

They're so fucking funny.

They are so funny. If you don't listen to SUP, I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you.

The sexy, unique podcast.

Sexy, unique podcast.

We love Lara and Kari so much. Come on the show. Come on the show.

Come on the show. It would be so random. It would be very random. They feel like, what the fuck are we doing here?

That's what bonus episodes are for now. Yeah. Once a month, We got a bonus episode in case you haven't heard. We've said it a few times, but just in case. I don't know when you're dropping in. You heard the word heard. You know? Once a month, we're going to do a bonus episode in addition to our weekly episodes. It won't be taking up the place of a weekly episode. It will be in addition. Don't even think. Don't even think about that. But those bonus episodes are just going to be... I think we're going to put a lot of guests on those bonus episodes, a lot of random documentary things, maybe some horror things, things that feel like they just need their own place.

Like miscellaneous.

Yeah, miscellaneous things. Those are going to be really fun, though. I have a feeling we're going to end up thinking those are like some of our favorite episodes. I think so, too. And hopefully you guys feel that way. But you know what? Let's start Goodie Proctober early. Okay.

Well, no, it's Goodie Proctober now because it's free October Proctober.

That's it. There you go. All right.

We're in Goodie Proctober.

We're in it. We're in Goodie Proctober right now. And we are going to start putting some... It's spooky season. Spooky season vibes are coming out. And we're going to cover the Enfield Poltergeist today.

I feel like I've heard this talked about so much because I feel like we've talked about it with Dave a zillion times, but I don't know if I know all the details.

Yeah, I definitely didn't know all the details before going into this.

I think this is Dave's favorite paranormal story.

I think, yeah, this is It's his favorite poltergeist. Yeah. So you know it's going to be good. Yeah. So this is a crazy one. It's just one part, but it's pretty long. It's a long story, but it's very interesting. And let's get into it, shall we? Let us. All right. So we're talking about a poltergeist here. And this affected, obviously, as most poltergeists do, an entire family.

Oh, poltergeist love nothing more than trying to break a family bond.

They love to do that.

Yeah.

They're very reckless.

Indeed.

But they're very interesting. And I still don't know what they are.

Well, when it's poltergeisty, I feel like it involves, am I wrong in saying it involves electricity? Because that's how they travel, right?

No, I think you're correct. And I think it involved just like...

Like physical movement.

And like gnarly energy.

And like, yeah, like menacing energy.

Yeah, I think it can feed on negative energy a lot of the time. That makes sense. Like upheavals and changes and stress and or changing family dynamics. I think it can really... Oh, no. I know. As I said all that, I was like, check.

Oh, no.

I was like, which one in our family is going to get a poltergeist?

Not it. I not being the one.

Got it. I should not be the one. No, we're fine. We're going through some stuff. You guys know. You guys know. Yeah, we've been taking care of the madre.

The Madre. But also things are so much better now because one, Madre is doing better, and two, we're with Series X7. We love it here. Exactly.

We're so much happier. So this poltergeist affected the Hodgson. The Hodgson. Why can't I say that? The Hodgson family. I don't know why that was so hard for me to say. Things happen. Yeah. Certain sounds just my mouth is like, no. I forgive you. My mouth is literally like, you don't know how to say that. So stop it, girl. And the Internet will agree. I'm like, oh, God, I can't say it right. You're outside. Touch grass. Now, when this alleged poltergeist activity began. It was in the summer of 1977. And the Hodgson family consisted of the mother, Margaret, and three children: Peggy, who was 13, Janet, who was 11, and Billy, who was seven years old. All right. Peggy's other child, 10-year-old Johnny, was at a boarding school. This was a boarding school for kids who were getting up to something.

For the reckless.

Yeah, for the Reckless.

For the Lawless. A boarding school for the Lawless.

That's the official title. Yeah. He was at a boarding school for the Lawless.

For the Lawless.

That would be a great name, I think. But Margaret never really understood what exactly was wrong with Johnny know what was going on. And I say wrong as in like, that's how it was seen back then. Like, what's wrong with you? You got to go to a boarding school for the lawless.

It was 1977, so there weren't a lot of options.

Exactly. Since her divorce from her husband three years earlier, the family lived in one half of a duplex apartment in a council estate on Green Street in Brimsdown, which was a neighborhood of Enfield, which is a village in North London. Oh. I know. You guys in Europe there, you got so many, and I respect it. You've got so many little... It's a village in the- In the Township. In the Township of a council estate this place. And I'm like, Am I getting this correct? It's like, what's it all mean? So, yeah. So a council estate on Green Street in the brims down neighborhood of Enfield, which is a village in North London. Over there. Just to place you. Okay. To drop a pin, if you will.

Here's the thing. I'm lost.

Here's the thing. I don't know where that is. So because the story focuses almost exclusively on the two young girls in the house, little is known about the boys. There's not a lot that we can really gather.

That happens a lot with poltergeist-y stories. Yeah, it really does. They focus on girls coming of age, which is creepy on a poltergeist part. It is.

It's sus. It is very suspect.

The most sus.

As the kids would say, it's sus. So the boys, everything's described in pretty vague terms when it comes to them. Janet and Peggy, on the other hand, are frequently described as lively and athletic, as well as very clever and intelligent. Oh, cute. So in his book, this House is Haunted. But author, Guy Lyon Playfair, described Janet as being, quote, all energy, big for her age, jumping up and rushing around on the slightest pre-test.

That just scared the shit. It just I am. It was like, oh, we should. Our ice maker just turned on.

Our ice maker just turned on, so I turned it off.

She really trotted across the room. I did. That was adorable.

I trotted for you guys. We were like, here I am. So yeah. So Janet's very energetic, jumping around, doing all that fun stuff. Peggy, meanwhile, was the opposite of Janet in nearly every way. She was pleasant, she was straightforward, but she was shy, a little timid, and tended to keep her thoughts to herself. Okay. You know, while Janet is very outspoken. But she was also reported by some to be the more rebellious of the girls. Okay. Often defying her mother and threatening to run away. Behavior that coincided with her parents' divorce. I was going to say. Which is very, it's very normal behavior. Yeah. According to Margaret, the divorce kicked off an extended rough patch for the family. And in the years that followed, she'd struggled to get back on her feet and was often forced to go without. And without basic things, like telephone service. Damn. Like, really struggled. Like many women in the 1970s, Margaret had been a full-time mother for nearly all her adult life. So when the divorce happened, she didn't have a ton of marketable skills for an employer. And leading, that led to years of unemployment and in turn, a lot of instability, economically.

So on top of all the financial stress that's going on and dealing with a divorce, all that stuff, Margaret was in constant fear that she was also going to be deemed an unfit mother. Yeah. Because she was struggling to provide, essentially. Like the necessities, right. Yeah. And she was also very worried because her son Billy was someone who had developmental disabilities. And she was worried that the authorities were going to put him somewhere like a home. Because at that time, that could happen easily.

And that would have been awful.

Exactly. By all accounts, the divorce had been not amicable. Yeah, it doesn't sound like it.

Because it's also like, okay, where's the fucking dad providing anything?

Margaret was struggling to keep the anger and the bitterness that obviously came from the situation. Like, That she struggled to keep what she felt about her husband from the kids as well. That happens a lot. It happens a lot. As a result, the girls developed similarly negative opinions of their father and strenuously objected to any visitations, believing that he was the source of the family's problems. Okay. He might have been. So the situation was considerably exacerbated in 1977 when their father began dating and eventually moved in with a new girlfriend. That's never good. Which, to Margaret, quote, had a distressing effect on the children. This is all really sad.

It is sad. And it's like your ex-wife is struggling to provide basic necessities for your kids. You're also responsible for that, too.

Well, that's the thing. I'm like, what's happening here?

You're just shacking up with a new lady.

And obviously, I have not dealt with a divorce and custody and all that stuff. So I'm speaking from complete inexperience. But my thoughts on it have always been like, if you can try to keep the adult problems from the kids. Oh, yeah. As a child of divorce, you really don't want to- We appreciate it.

Yeah.

You don't want to color their opinion about the other one. You know what I mean? But again, I'm speaking from complete inexperience, so I'll shut up about it because I don't want to piss everyone off.

No. Well, you're really not either because we've experienced it in our family.

I've at least watched it. Yeah. And that's me talking from an outside perspective.

Because it can really color relationships long term.

Yeah, that's the thing. But then in this case, you're also saying, okay, so that shouldn't have been happening. But also why isn't the father helping to make this life a little better for all of them? Their kids are included. Yeah. So it seems like just a lot of there's a mess happening here for sure. Yeah, the goal mess. Well, the picture of this family and what was going on seems at times pretty bleak and dire. Yeah, it does. They were not without any support network. Margaret's brother and his wife lived with their family just six doors down from them. And they were also friendly with their neighbors, Vic and Peggy, who occupied the other side of the duplex with their 20-year-old son. Nice. Although both couples were in similarly strained financial situations, they did have a lot of emotional and mental bandwidth to give to each other. They would take care of each other in that situation. That's nice. And they knew they could rely on each other in times of crisis, which is something that a lot of people don't have. So it's good that they did. So the poltergeist activity that occurred in the home started pretty benignly on August 31, 1977.

According to Janet, at around 9: 30 PM, she was trying to get to sleep in the bedroom she shared with her brother Johnny when they began hearing what she described as a shuffling sound that seemed to come from the floor of the bedroom. So obviously the disturbance led them to get out of their bed and search around the room. They're just like, what the fuck is going on here? What's making that noise? Which drew Margaret from her bedroom, the mom, to check on them. Yeah, what's going on? You hear your kids moving around. You want to know what's going on. As the most energetic and mischievous of the children, Janet and Johnny always had a way of feeding each other's excitement and getting each other pretty worked up. The previous evening, Margaret had scolded the two for, Larking About at bedtime.

Quit your larking about.

Which is honestly an adorable way to say that they were just not going to sleep.

You should write that down.

I should. Quit your larking about at bedtime. Because they had tried to convince her that their beds were, quote, going all funny, shaking up down. And this time, she was in no mood for the antics. She went into the room and she demanded to know what was going on, why they were out of bed. Janet explained that there were shuffling noises coming from the corner of the room. And Janet told her mother, Sounds like the chair, which is weird. So Margaret grabbed the chair from the corner of the room and carried it downstairs because she was like, You know what? I removed it. It won't cause a fuss anymore. That was pretty smart, actually. You remove the object of what's going on. And she returned to shut off the lights and remind them both that it was past their bedtime and time to go to sleep. Assuming that was going to be the end of the whole evenings, shenanigans, which you should never assume that. No.

Once it starts, it's not over that easy.

If you have kids, you know you never assume that. We always do, but we are always wrong. Yeah. So Margaret turned to leave the room, and when she went to leave, she actually heard the shuffling. But she was like, Wait, is it coming from the room or is it coming from somewhere else. She couldn't figure it out. So she switched on the light and she started looking around the room because she's like, like you said, I took out the chair. So where is this coming from? And as far as she could tell, everything was as it was supposed to be. And the children were in their beds, arms and legs tucked under the blankets. They weren't able to like, shuffle anything. So she was certain it wasn't the children, but still uncertain what it actually was. She switched off the light for a second time and started to leave the room. And that's when the knocking started. Oh, not the knocking. Not the knocking. I fucking hate the knocking. And I'm thinking about this as a parent leaving- Like a stressed out. And this is happening in their room. That would freak me the fuck out.

Yeah. Immediately, I'd be like, okay, get in my room. We get the fuck out of there. You're not sleeping in this room. No. Unlike the shuffling, which was pretty quiet and subtle. That's why she initially left and was like, maybe I'm just imagining things.

Yeah, I mean, that makes perfect sense.

They all heard the series of four loud knocks and traced them to the wall that separated their apartment from Vic and Peggy's apartment next door.

They're like, what the fuck are Vic and Peggy doing?

Hey, Vic and Peggy, what the hell?

Shut the fuck up.

So Margaret had only started to run through the possible explanations for the sound when the heavy chest of drawers started to slowly slide away from the wall in the direction of the door. What? Very heavy chest of drawers. So she walks towards it and pushed it back against the wall because you know- That was a brave bitch moment. You know she's just trying to be like, cool. Nothing to see here. And honestly, at bedtime, when you've had rough bedtimes with kids, you're like, You know what? It's fine.

She's like, Wow, the floors are so slanted. So crazy.

That's wild. So she just pushes it back against the wall. When she turns to walk away, It started sliding towards the door again. It was like, no, girl, I want to be over here. This time when Margaret tried to push it back in its place, it wouldn't move. No. It was like it had been nailed in place. It wouldn't budge.

It said, I like this position.

I was putting it here.

Said, I'm the interior designer now.

Now, at this point, Margaret wanted to run the fuck out of the house. Yeah, she wanted to get the fuck out of there, but she didn't want to scare her children because she's a mom.

And it's like, night time.

Yeah. So she was like, hey, Why don't you gather up all your bedding and we're going to go sleep in the living room. It's going to be a fun little sleepover. Let's do this. Now, in times of crisis, like I said, Margaret had always been able to rely on her brother and his wife for support, and which was particularly easy because they were very close to them. But at this time of night, she knew they would definitely be in bed asleep. Yeah. And she didn't want to wake them, especially considering she didn't even know what she was waking them for at this point. She was like, Hey, my The rest of drawers is moving. So instead, she got all four kids dressed, and they went next door to Vic and Peggy's apartment, reasoning that if nothing else, she wouldn't be alone in the house with whatever was making the noises and moving furniture.

This poor woman, because what the fuck do you say? And also, to actually put this in a more serious note, she's already worried that somebody's going to come and take her kids away. And now she's going to sound like she's losing it.

Yeah, she's going to sound a little cuckoo. So it's like, that's Hello? Guys.

A motherfucking low? What was that? Was that the calendar? What's that? Was it the calendar? I guess. I thought we stopped that. Damn, that was so loud and so scary. What does it say?

Nothing.

No, you're shitting me.

No, I'm not shitting you. It says nothing. There's nothing new on this.

There's no pop up? No. Do you hear the crows outside? Do you hear that? Do you literally hear that?

We're not even fucking with you right now.

No, I wish I was making it up, in fact, because we Here's the thing. We're like, going somewhere spooky tonight, but we're somewhere spooky now.

We're living somewhere spooky at the moment.

It is propped over. What the fuck? Holy shit. I don't like that that plays that music so loud.

I don't like that at all.

Listen, whoever this is- We're just telling a story. It's just a case.

Yeah. We're not trying to fuck anything up.

I know I sound probably like insane in the membrane, but it's weird that the crows started calling when that happened, and I just wanted to put that out for the room.

We're just putting it out there. I'm going to continue.

Goodie.

Goodie proctober. I'm literally obsessed with that.

Can I have confirmation, though, that you two think it's weird? I do. That the crows started calling.

I do. I'm just trying She's fidgeting. I'm fidgeting. I'm touching things.

I really just want. I'm fidgeting. I'm touching things.

I wanted to stop. So they listened to Margaret's story, Vic and Peggy. They were like, yeah, totally. They were very polite. Like, we're not going to cut off. We're going to listen to your tale. But they didn't believe a word of what she was telling them.

Oh, that's fucked up. My neighbor comes to my house in the middle of the night. It'd be weird, but I would listen to them if they were experiencing a haunting.

They listened. And the end, Vic agreed to take a walk around the house to make sure no one was trying to break in. That's nice. After walking through the apartment and checking every potential hiding spot, Vic and his son were about to leave when they all started hearing the series of knocks. Stop it. This time coming from the outside wall, not the wall that was separating their apartments. I hate that. So assuming it was one of the children playing a prank, Vic and his son, Gary, ran outside to see who was banging on the wall. When they got out in the alley, they found it completely empty. So at a loss for what to do next, they all just reconvened and determined the only thing they could do was call the police. They didn't know what else to do. They were like, someone's knocking on our door and wall, I guess, and running away. That's not okay.

Somebody is...

They're keeping us up.

Somebody He is knock, knock, ditching us. Yeah.

Now, when the call was placed to emergency services, the collar had only reported that there was a disturbance in the house. So the officers- I mean, there was. Yeah. The officers who arrived on the scene expected a fight or some other physical emergency. But when they entered the Hodgson's living room, they were immediately greeted by Margaret, who informed them, quote, I think this house is haunted.

Which like, Margaret, Maggie.

It's going to be tough. It's going to be tough to get out of that one. Yeah. After listening to the story about a strange noise and the furniture moving back and forth on its own, the officers naturally assumed it could be a break-in. So for the second time that night, the Hodgson's apartment was searched from top to bottom.

What?

So they found nothing in the upstairs bedrooms, and the officers moved to the first floor and were about to give up when Johnny called everyone's attention to a chair in the corner of the living room. Okay. Remember, police officers are here now. Yeah. In full view of the Hodgson's, Vick and Peggy and the officers, the chair began to wobble back and forth on its own, and then slid three or four feet in the direction of the kitchen.

And you said in front of the cops.

In front of the Hodgson's, Vick and Peggy, and the cops.

Yo, I'd be so excited.

With no one touching it.

Here's the thing. I would be over the moon.

Over just so excited.

If I was the cops and I didn't live there, I'd be like, this is awesome.

I'd be like, thank you so much for letting me see this. I'm leaving now. Bye.

I'd be like,.

When one of the officers, WPC Heaps, checked the chair, she found no signs of a wire or anything else that explains the movement because she was looking like, okay, what are you guys doing? Are you tricking me? Nothing. There was nothing attached to it. But still, no one appeared to be breaking any laws, and they couldn't identify the source of the disturbance. So there was really nothing the officers could do but promise to keep an eye on the house over the next couple of days and just leave them. They were like, sorry? Yeah. Happy hauntings? I don't know what to say. That night, they all slept together in the living room hoping that things would resolve themselves by the next morning.

Things like that don't really resolve themselves.

And they didn't hear because, yeah, those hopes were dashed by the time the sun came up. Margaret had barely finished rousing her four children in the living room when suddenly she felt something lightly strike her thigh.

Like- Yeah.

And she looked down to see one of Billy's Lego bricks lying on the floor by her foot. Oh, no. Yeah. So Margaret asked, pretty annoying at this point, Janet, did you throw that?

Like, what the fuck? Yeah, like why you throwing shit at me?

And Janet was like, no, I did not throw anything. I wouldn't do that. And all of her siblings were like, no, we did not do that. Nobody did that. And then quickly they were interrupted all their like, no, I didn't do that. It started raining legos. When more Lego bricks and marbles started flying around the living room.

It literally started raining legos.

Margaret later described the situation as if, quote, someone were shooting them as if from a It's called. Oh, fuck. So they're being launched across the living room.

You all know the fucking pain of stepping on a goddamn Lego.

The pain of stepping on a Lego.

Imagine being pelleted by one, though. Oh, ouchy.

I can't imagine.

Getting shot by a Lego is crazy work. Yeah.

It's an and marbles.

Yeah, because marbles hurt, too, if they're thrown at you.

I can't imagine this. Now, Margaret again found herself desperate in the face of something she literally couldn't understand and couldn't even explain. Yeah. So she returned to Vic and Peggy's apartment and rushed back to the living room with them, being like, Look what's going on, wanting someone else to witness what was What's happening? Peggy called her father, who rushed over to the house, and as the group stood in the kitchen, two large marbles rocketed past Peggy's father, slamming into the bathroom door before dropping to the floor. What the When he picked them up to look at them, the marbles were incredibly hot, like they'd been fired from a gun.

Oh.

Like they were just burning. Yeah. As promised, the local police stopped by the house later that morning because they said they were going to keep a watch and found the family still in distress. But by that time, the activity had stopped. But one of the constables, an older gentleman, sat down with the children and explained that sometimes things happen and we don't always know why. But there was nothing to worry about.

That was really nice of him, especially in the '70s.

Whether or not that little chap made them feel better is something I can't say. But it definitely did not a lot to come Margaret's growing fear and anxiety because she was just waiting for another attack at this point.

Which whatever this is, is probably just feeding off of that.

Feeding off of that anxiety and fear. The next few days went by with intermittent interruptions of knocking some moving objects. The family gathered in the living room and they tried and failed to sleep for the next few nights. It was just, it was really bad. Stressful. By September fourth, Margaret had become exhausted and the strain of all this disruption was very apparent to everyone around her. So concerned about her health and safety, Vic, her neighbor, suggested he take the family back to the police in the hope that they could maybe put them up somewhere for a few days so they could at least get a good night's sleep. Yeah. Which was very nice of him. That was sweet. But Peggy had what she thought might be a better idea rather than go back to the police who had been like, I don't want to say they've been little help. They were little help, but they really- What are they going to do? What else are they going to do? They've been as much help as they could be.

You can't place the poltergeist in handcuffs. Yeah.

So they did what they could. I mean, they tried to calm the kids and everything, and they did come back to the house when they promised they would. Which was kind. So Peggy suggested that they call the Daily Mirror to see if they had any ideas. All right. One of the UK's most notorious tabloids Yeah. The Daily Mirror had a reputation for publishing pretty sensational stories and a lot of Lauren scandals.

I think they still do.

Yeah. According to Guy Playfair, there was supposedly, quote, an unwritten law on that paper that ghost stories were taboo. Oh, okay. But the paper had published a lot of articles about ghosts and hauntings in the recent past. So it was maybe not so much. They didn't really adhere to it. Whatever the case, Peggy got lucky when she called that Sunday evening and reached the Deputy Night Editor, who was very intrigued, and sent reporter Douglas Bence and photographer Graham Morris to investigate the claims. The two spent the entire evening in the Hodgson home but never witnessed any unusual activity and eventually decided to pack up and leave a little after 2: 00 AM, which I was like, 2: 00 AM, you got to stay till at least 3: 00. They hadn't been out of the house for more than a minute when the Lego bricks started flying around the room again, which made Peggy's father rush outside and call them back into the house. Morris told a reporter in 2022, To start with, we thought it was a hoax, but I saw things happened, and it convinced me there was something happening in that house. Standing in the kitchen with Margaret, Morris saw something was coming at him out of the corner of his eye, and he turned just in time to be struck in the forehead with the sharp corner of a Lego brick.

Yeah. He said later, I knew that no one was throwing anything because I could see everybody in the room. Yeah. Despite seeing the Legos flying across the room, they appeared to be moving too quickly, and Morris was unable to get any of them clearly on film because they were launching. When they returned to the office the next day, the two men told senior reporter George Fallows what had happened the night before, and he immediately was interested in the story. Later that afternoon, they all returned to the Hodgson house, where they listened patiently as Margaret recounted all the events of the previous week. When she finished the story, the reporter looked at her right in the eye and told her, I accept what you say. I'm not an expert, but I've done a lot of reading on this thing. I think that what you have in your house is a poltergeist. Wow. I love that he was just like, I accept what you say.

That's so nice.

Fallows went on to explain to Margaret that in his reporting, he'd seen some things of this nature before and felt the best thing they could do was contact someone at the Society for Psychical Research, the SPR. Okay. A collection of volunteer journalists, scientists, and paranormal enthusiasts, founded in the late 19th century to investigate supernatural experiences. Relieved that someone was finally having some belief and idea of what they were dealing with, Margaret was like, Hell, yeah, let's go. Fallo immediately reached out to the SPR for a consultation. So in response to this request for help, the SPR assigned the case to their newest member, who was 58-year-old electrical engineer, an inventor, Maurice Gross. So Gross had like... He looked at it like very logically, like the supernatural in all of this, which is a good way to look at things because he's one that's going to look at it in a way that he's going to want to try to debunk it. Yeah, like an unbiased way. But his youngest daughter, Janet, had died a year earlier. And so his interest now became much more personal because he was looking for proof of life after death.

Oh, that's heartbreaking. Which just breaks my heart. Absolutely. It does. Now, what happened to his daughter, Janet, was in August of 1976, she was 22 years old. That's so young. And was traveling on the back of a motorcycle, driving through the center of Cardiff when the driver lost control and crashed. And he was killed instantly, and he left Janet with serious injuries, and she died the following day. Oh, that's awful. Naturally, Janet death was devastating for her parents. Of course. It took a serious toll on their marriage, their most emotional health, all the things you would imagine. In the wake of his daughter's death, Maurice delved deeper into his supernatural interests. Because, again, he really wanted to look for proof of life after death. He believed that Janet had actually had a premonition of her death a short time earlier and had become determined to find that she did know that that was about to happen and that her soul had lived on after her body had died. As the newest member of the SPR, Gross hadn't really participated in a lot of investigations, so he hadn't dealt with a lot of the hoaxes and the disappointments that a lot of the more seasoned members had.

But either way, he was just very enthusiastic about this. He wanted to just get his feet wet. Yeah. He had only just walked through the Hodgston's front door before he was pretty certain that something was up here. He later told Playfair, You can't fake that. Everything they told me was typical of poltergeist cases straight out of the book. Since they didn't even know what a poltergeist was until fellows told them, how would they know what to say if they were making this all right? Yeah. Now, Gross's presence was an immediate It's a soothing feeling for the chaotic house. They felt like, okay, he's here. He believes us. Yeah. And he's here to figure this out and help us get rid of it. He was very supportive in a very fatherly way to the family and immediately took to the children and they took to him because he is a dad.

Yeah, exactly. He's got that way about him.

Yeah. And most importantly to them, he seemed to believe everything that every member told him. Like, he was just willing to accept what they were And then he was like, And we'll see if we can prove it. But he was still very untested in this territory. You know what I mean? Yeah. He's going in here. Yeah. A former paranormal investigator, John Hastid, said later, When you go to such a disturbed family and you are not a professional psychiatric social worker, you feel ashamed of yourself. You feel that you shouldn't be investigating them. You should really be helping them. Yeah. By all accounts, Maurice Gross never seemed to struggle with dealing dealing with this family, like emotionally and on this supernatural investigatory level. He simply believed everything they told them. He didn't seem to go in there with the idea that this was definitely a hoax.

Yeah, he was open to whatever it was.

Which I don't think he should have. No, you want to go in open. You should go in there completely open to what's going on and then decide based on the evidence. Yeah. But his only goal, going in there, too, like his main goal, I should say, was that he wanted to protect these kids. And he wanted to protect Janet, especially because he felt very connected like she.

I mean, there's a daughter Janet.

Now, according to Bob Cody, we- Can I actually just point out how... Isn't that wild?

Life works in mysterious ways.

That is really weird to me.

I feel like that has meaning.

I feel like he was brought in for a reason.

Yeah, 100 %.

Now, we've cited all these in the show notes, so you can take a peek. But according to Bob Cody, after reviewing the request from the Hodgsons, the senior members of the SPR didn't believe there was anything in the Enfield case or expect it to be particularly important at first. So they assigned it to Maurice Gross, assuming he would look into it and find nothing there. Gross, however, threw himself fully into this investigation without hesitation, and within a few days in the house, his commitment was starting to pay off. Okay. In the early morning hours of September eighth, 1977, Maurice Gross and the men from the Daily Mirror were sitting on the landing outside Janet's bedroom while the girl was sleeping inside, and they heard a loud crash from inside the bedroom. They rushed in and saw that the chair that had been sitting next to Janet's bed had been thrown about 4 feet and was overturned near the center of the room. Jesus. Janet, she woke up, but she was groggy and not awake. And she said she had been asleep when that happened. It was just shot out of sleep. Yeah. So Gross put the chair back where it belonged and went back to the landing.

About an hour later, they heard the same noise. And when they rushed in, they found the chair had again been thrown to the center of room. Wanted to be sure Janet had, in fact, been asleep and not just playing a prank? Yeah. Gross approached the sleeping girl and gently forced the lids of one of her eyes apart to find the eyeball upturned. Offering that up to the men from the her as proof that the activity was genuinely paranormal in nature. He told the reporters, It's almost as if she were unconscious. Yeah. Which I can see that. Yeah. A few days later, during a lecture put on by the SPR, Gross announced to the room that he was certain that he was onto a genuine poltergeist case and could use some help. But a lot of people weren't taking him seriously or having any interest in joining his team, which makes me sad. Fuck them. In fact, an out of the room full of people, only one journalist guy, Lyon Playfair, approached Gross after the lecture and told him he would very much like to assist him and report on the activity, which Gross was like, Hell, yeah, brother.

He's like, You're my only, You're my only hope.

He literally. He said that. He did.

Pre-mandy Mor.

Yeah. At the time, Playfair had just finished the final edits on the cycles of Heaven, which was an exploration into extraterrestrials and cosmic forces on the body. That sounds fucking fun. It does sound cool. And was looking for his next project. Although the idea of diving right back into a new paranormal story right after finishing one didn't appeal to him a lot right now. He was pretty charmed by Maurice Gross's enthusiasm. He was like, he really believed this shit. He got me. And he seemed very sincere. That was the thing. And he didn't want to miss this opportunity with that enthusiasm. Yeah. So with the addition of play fair, there were now four or five men regularly camped out in the Hodgson's apartment, and they were routinely treated to a variety of supernatural activity, ranging from marbles and Legos flying around the room to drawers and cabinets opening and closing on their own. In fact, the frequency of the activity and Janet's proximity to it seemed wild. It was starting to get like... Even at this point, Maurice Gross said that he was even a little suspicious at this point because it was always around Janet.

Yeah, and there's three other kids.

And again, they have to be suspicious. You have to be. I would be, too.

Yeah, totally.

A few days after bringing Playfair on board, Gross had a talk with Margaret and insisted she keep an eye on her daughter as often as possible. And he told her, he said to Margaret, I'm not saying she's playing tricks, but we can't rule the possibility that this thing is working on her mind, making her do things without knowing why.

That was a smart way to approach it.

That really was. It was at that moment that Gross established what is one of the most frequently criticized parts of this case. In the same breath, he did say it's possible that Janet is the one responsible for everything in the house, but he was also ruling out the possibility of a hoax by saying that it was caused by a supernatural force. That's what a lot of people criticize this for. I see it as a way of soothing the mom and not getting her defensive by being like, I think your kid is causing this. Yeah. Because I would get defensive about that.

Of course you would, and you'd probably ask and believe.

She's her mom. And so I think he was doing it as a way to get her to make sure she was watching Janet while also making her feel heard and not like she was being accused of something.

That's what I think. Because also he wanted to stay and get to the bottom of this. Exactly. And if he approached it the other way, she might have been like, okay, then go away if you don't think I'm a good mom.

Yeah, fine. Go if you don't believe me. Now, on September 10th, the story was published on the front page of the Daily Mirror in an article written by George Fallows with photographs by Graham Morris.

It's so funny. It's like right around this time.

Yeah, it is. And we didn't plan it. The article was relatively straightforward. Talking about what the Hodgkins had claimed had happened in the house leading up to the article concluding, To the best of our ability, we have eliminated the possibility of total trickery. Okay. Now, not surprisingly, the article was met with skepticism and a lot of disbelief. It attracted the attention of other media outlets, all wanting to know more about this situation now. Just days after the Daily Mirror article, Gross and Margaret Hodgson appeared on a television call-in program, Nightline. After listening to Margaret tell all about the activity, the hosts opened the phone lines, and collar after collar started sharing their own paranormal experiences.

That's so fun.

Including a few who told stories of levitation and some who claimed to have witnessed supposed possessions in which the possessed individual started speaking in a voice that was not their own. I hate the notions. So scary. Now, in the weeks after that, the activity in the house seemed to escalate. The knocking on the walls became more frequent, objects were moving on their own, and the household was generally disturbed from morning to night. Wow. Believing the entity was attempting to make contact with them, Gross reached out to Lorraine Warren. Do you know her? Mm-hmm. Heard her? An American medium recommended by television host Paul Beard. By mid-October, Lorraine had made her way to London, accompanied by her husband, Ed. We know him. And the two visited the Hodgson's home in order to contact whatever was causing the disturbance. Positioned in a chair at the center of the room, Lorraine went into some trance, and soon after, she claimed to have made contact with the entity. Okay. That's good. With Ed Warren, let's go. With Ed Warren only a few inches from her face, Lorraine suddenly shouted, Go away. Go away. Before launching into a bit of laughter that quickly escalated into what Playfair described as, A grotesque cackle like one of the Macbeth witches, which is actually genuinely scary.

Yeah, that is pretty scary. I feel like I'd probably shit my pants. Yeah.

After communing with the entity, Ed Warren explained that the Hodgson family was under attack from two spirits he referred to as Gozer and Elvie. This Gozer is a nasty piece of work, Ed told Gross in Play Fair, a black magic chap. The other one, Elvie, is an elemental.

Okay, what?

And Gozer is using her. He's the boss. If we get her out of the way, the whole setup will fall apart.

Okay. This sounds a little... I love this. Sounds a little wild. But I love it. I'm not saying I hate it.

The Warrans explained that a psychic weakness in a very disturbed family condition had created the circumstances that allowed the two demonic entities to enter their lives.

That does make sense.

Although they had been speaking in extremely vague terms, the explanation resonated with Margaret, who told them that she had indeed been bitter since her divorce, and the family had been struggling since that time. Yeah. It's all true. To Guy Playfair, the Warrans' performance in the Hodgkins living room seemed like a very dramatic bit of theater. Okay. But Maurice Gross believed the couple's claim of psychic ability and their story of demons and elementals, so who can be sure? Whatever the case, the Warren's visit seemed to provide Margaret with some comfort. Okay. So she at least was getting answers. Which is nice. So Play Fair saw no reason to challenge their involvement. I get that. But that was really the extent of their participation in this. Love that. While the Warren's visit may have brought some comfort to the family, it really didn't do anything to stop the activity, which by the end of October had extended outside the home and into the classroom. Oh, no. After a few days, Janet's teachers, who were aware of the children's difficulty adjusting to the divorce, had lost patience with her and referred her to a social worker and clinical psychologist.

Oh, no. Despite all the activity around her, Janet never seemed all that bothered by the constant disruptions at Homer School. She told Maurice Gross in early November, I'm getting used to it. But one evening, while Gross was asking Janet questions about her experiences, she did say that there was one thing that did scare her, which makes me sad. Every now and then, often when she was trying to get to sleep, she felt like someone was putting a hand over her nose and mouth in order to stop her from breathing.

Oh, that's fucking terrifying.

Which gave me full chills.

I would fist fight whoever that was.

I hate that a lot.

Invisible or not.

Yeah, I hate that a lot. Gross got up and left the room, turning the lights out as he left. He hadn't been outside the room for more than a minute or two when he heard a loud crash and went rushing back up the stairs. And in Janet's room, he found her sitting up in bed and the chair, which was usually next to the bed, had been thrown to the center of the room. Janet said, There was an old man sitting on the chair. He was putting his hands on my face. I couldn't breathe. Oh. Which like, oh. Like, is that Gozer?

Probs.

Now, for nearly three months, Gross and Playfair, along with one or two men from the Daily Mirror, were camped out at the Hodgson's home, with at least the former two completely convinced that something supernatural was happening.

I don't know how you could be unconvinced.

Something that's happening. Others who visited the house were less convinced. When senior members of the SPR visited the house in early November, they witnessed Janet and her sister, quote, add to the activity with some tricks of their own.

Okay, well, yeah.

Yeah. Leading them to conclude that in all likelihood, this whole thing was a hoax.

It's like adding to it is one thing. Obviously, it doesn't look great, but they're kids.

Yeah. And play fair and gross said that the girls obvious tricks were not really concerning to them. They could tell what they were and they could tell what they weren't.

Probably a way of coping with this all.

Whenever it got brought up that it seems like whenever we're not looking, these things are happening. Like when you leave Janet's room and the chair is being thrown. Gross and play fair would say, It's smarter than we are. Look at its timing. The moment you go out of the room, something happens. You stay in the room for hours and nothing moves. It knows what we're up to.

Okay.

They figured It only happened. It had nothing to do with childish pranks. It was just a smart entity. That's all. I mean, who knows? Could be. In the weeks and months that followed, there were more visitors to the house who, like the more experienced members of the SPR, found that they didn't really believe a lot of it. They thought it was a hoax. The stories in the Daily Mirror attracted other journalists who all seemed a little annoyed by the whole thing, which is sad.

Yeah, there's kids being affected.

Yeah, that's the thing. In a short article, a November edition of The Observer made an innocuous comment about Gross being, quote, a newcomer to the SPR, and he wrote a response to clarify. He said, I think it's only fair to both myself and the society I represent to point out that although I am comparatively a new member, I have been actively involved in the study of parapsychology for nearly 40 years.

Absolutely.

Good for him.

He should put that out there.

Yeah. It's like, don't. Yeah. Don't talk about me like I didn't know this.

Yeah, like I just stepped on the scene. Exactly.

The London newspapers weren't the only ones who grew skeptical of the family and were questioning aspects.

You know what that thing is, though? People just get so sick of a story once it's been reported on for a while and they want to move on to the next thing. Yeah.

In her summary article for the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, SPR member Anita Gregory concluded that Janet and her sister were, quote, non-psychically responsible for many of the incidents that were attributed to poltergeist phenomena. Now, she said many, not all. Yeah. Also, Gregory acknowledged that whatever was happening in the house might have had a supernatural origin. But after a few months, quote, it had turned quickly into a far performance for investigators and reporters desiring a sensational story. So they're admitting that there was some supernatural thing here.

Yeah, I mean, the cop said they saw it. Yeah.

Anita Gregory's summary of the case was pretty charitable Well, actually, compared to other people who were talking shit about this whole thing. But as time went by, the growing number of vocal skeptics came to far outnumber the true believers, unfortunately, leading Margaret to bar all investigators and reporters from the house. I would, too. Other than their Maurice Gross and Guy Playfair, because they were the only ones that were willing to listen and were being respectful. Gross said to Playfair, What beats me is the obsession these people have with what they call fraud. It's all they can think about. But even Play Fair had started to, at this point, question whether they also might be victims of a hoax. Excuse me. Okay. Which I get it. Yeah. They have to think that way. On one occasion, after a large chest of drawers had crashed against the wall in Janet's bedroom, Play Fair listened back to the tape recorder he'd left in the room, and he, quote, heard suspicious creaking noises as if someone like Janet had slipped up to the chest. Which I'm also like, do you know her specific creaking noises?

Yeah, like what?

Like, I don't know about that. In early November, just a few days after Janet's 12th birthday, Playfair and Gross decided it was time to make contact with whatever was tormenting the family, reasoning that if they knew what it wanted, they would be better equipped to make it go away. They had tried this before by using a series of knocks, but it wasn't successful. This time, they decided they would leave several notepads and pencils laying around the apartment, and within days, the messages all in crude handwriting and capital letters, started appearing, which is pretty creepy. On the first occasion, Margaret was standing in this kitchen and said to the seemingly empty room, Leave me a message so I can help you if possible, without knocking. Margaret left the room, and when she returned 5 or 10 minutes later, she found the response scratched out on the sheet of paper, I will stay in this house. Do not read this to anyone else or I will retaliate. Oh, faught. Which is fucking terrifying.

And also retaliate is a very big word for a child.

It is. Exactly. Almost immediately, Playfair noticed that the message had not been written on a sheet of paper from the pad, but on a page torn from one of Janet's school notebooks. Though she insisted it wasn't her that wrote the note, and they decided to believe her. Okay. So there's that. All right. We're going to give you all sides of this story.

We got to give you all the facts.

The following day, during a phone call with her ex-husband, the couple got into an argument when the subject of the poltergeist came up. Her ex-husband believed the entire thing was a prank. In a moment of impulsivity, Margaret blurted out what the poltergeist had written on the pad, and then she immediately remembered that it was a warning and said, Don't tell anyone. So she shouted out, Oh, I'm sorry, like speaking to the poltergeist and hung up the phone. A few minutes later, when she returned to the living room, she found another forgiving and oddly sympathetic note that said, A misunderstanding. Don't do it again. I know who that was.

Wait, I think that's actually really I'm so sorry. That's the kids. That's so sweet. The kids are like, Don't worry, Mom. It's cool. I mean, Margaret.

I know you were talking to dad. I get it.

That's actually really cute. I was like, That's actually really cute.

Oh, my God. The notes, if it is the demon, I love that as well. It's like misunderstanding.

It happens. Strike one. There's three.

It's fine. The notes continued in the December and were soon accompanied by what Gross and Playfair determined was Janet's psychic writing and drawing. In one image, she drew a picture of a woman, quote, with blood pouring out of her throat. And next to it was the name Watson. The pictures continued in the days after that, always a bloody scenes and referencing someone named Watson. Okay. One afternoon, Guy asked Margaret if the name meant anything to her, and she said, Oh, yes, that was the couple who lived in the house before we moved in. Okay. According to Margaret, the Watsons had lived about twelve years earlier, and Mr. Watson died in the house, though she didn't know of what. Shut the fuck up. Yeah. The drawings went on for a few weeks and were soon accompanied by what Playfair described as barking and whistling sounds that appeared to come from Janet. Though unusual, she insisted she wasn't doing it.

Like she wasn't in control of it.

Like she wasn't doing it on purpose. Instead, the men determined that it was the poltergeist trying to speak with them using Janet as conduit. Okay. The problem was that the entity refused to make any noise or attempt to communicate whenever any of the adults were in the room, only when Janet would be left out of sight, but still within ear shot.

Okay.

One afternoon, while Gross was trying to make contact with the entity, a strange noise came from the direction of the room where Janet and Peggy were sitting. Okay. Excited, Gross started asking the entity, Can you tell me what your name is? There was a pause, and then the entity said, Joe Watson. Thrilled by this turn of events, Gross rushed into the room and said, That was a man's voice, wasn't it? To which Peggy replied, Yes, it's not ours.

Okay.

Now, Gross went back out in the hall, now joined by Playfair and the girl's mother, and they started interrogating the entity. He had lived in the house, the voice insisted, though when they asked how long ago, they got no response, only knocking. Then, Guy asked whether the entity knew he was dead, and Joe replied in a gravelly tone, Shut up. Confident they were on track to get rid of this, the two men started attempting to explain that Joe was a disembodied spirit and he needed to leave the house and leave this family in peace. But Joe was very uninterested in that. All right. Each time they wanted to ask a question, Play Fair would burst into the room and address the entity. But the response would only come when he left Janet and Peggy alone in the room. The more they tried to persuade Joe to leave the house and move on, the more abusive the voice became, telling them to fuck off and bugger off. Oh, no. In addition to a litany of other vulgarities.

We have Logan Roy on the set.

Yeah. So on their second communication session, Gross asked who they were speaking with, and the entity gave the name Bill. And so Gross said, Bill. And he said, When we spoke to you on Saturday night, you said your name was Joe. And the voice responded with a string of nonsense, followed by vulgarities, and they couldn't figure it out. But it could have been a second one.

You never know.

I'm just thinking. The communication with Joe, though, went on for several weeks, and Gross & Play Affairs' recordings were even played on a BBC radio broadcast for millions of people. Wow. But despite the investigators holding up their recordings as further evidence of a genuine poltergeist, the communications were never really... They didn't have a lot of substance to them. They didn't provide any real insight into what was happening. Yeah. At least not in the way that Gross and Playfair were thinking they did or wanted them to. In the years since they were recorded, the communications with the poltergeist have been held up as one of, if not the The longest piece of evidence that the entire thing was actually a hoax. When professional ventriloquist Ray Allen visited the house, he quickly determined that Janet wasn't exactly a conduit for the voice, so much as she was the one creating the voice.

So now she's a ventriloquist?

Exactly. As evidence, Allen pointed out that the sounds Janet was making were coming from her throat rather than the larynx, where the human voice is produced, which would be the way to make the voice sound husky or raspy.

Okay.

Like an older man's voice. Like the other professional investigators, Allen concluded that the communications were a hoax created by Janet and her sister because, quote, they obviously loved all the attention they got when objects were mysteriously moved around the house, and they decided to keep the whole thing going by inventing the voice. But it's got too big for them, and they don't know how to stop what they started. That's what he had concluded. All right. As they had done before, Gross and Playfair jumped to Janet's defense with Playfair writing, The connection between Janet and The Voice is obviously very close. There have been several occasions when she says something it obviously meant to say and vice versa. Would she slip up like that if she was faking the whole thing? Here again, he's really just trying desperately to believe this child and not paint her as a prankster, essentially. But Joe Nickel put it, who was also on this and is cited in the show notes. He put it as evidence of ventriloqual fakery. That's hard to say. Ventriloqual? Was even taken as proof of authenticity. Now, the point of origin for the voice wasn't the only thing that caused skeptics to raise an eyebrow.

The content of the communications was also a little suspicious. While the conversations between Gross Playfair and Joe Bill, were typically rambling and unfocused and nonsense, they were also peppered with a significant number of gratuitous obsenities and vulgar language from the entity, usually not really making sense.

It was just fun for a kid to swear, possibly.

To swear in an old man voice. Yeah.

I mean, it is fun to swear. It is in an old man voice.

Fuck you.

That feels good. That is that scene. Oh, Shit.

You dumb cunt. That does feel nice.

Oh, motherfucker. That is fun. It's the best.

I forgive it.

I forgive it. I get it. It's understandable. Your parents just got divorced. You want to poltergeist it up.

Hell, yeah. Now, given the era in which this happened, it's not that surprise That's amazing because just a few years earlier, The Exorcist had a pretty similar situation in which a young girl was possessed by an evil spirit who frequently used very aggressive and vulgar language, often sexually graphic language, to shock disturb people in the film. But The Exorcist was written by an adult who understood how explatives function in communication. In the Enfield case, on the other hand, the vulgar language was just inserted into the conversation awkwardly.

I so wish we had a quote.

Like a child.

I'm trying to think. I know. Your kids have always sworn correctly.

I know, right? You have to have in the right context. Yeah. I feel like it was just they'd be like, Hey, so how long have you lived here? And they'd be like, can't. I feel like it was just like it wasn't...

You know?

Like that feels like it was probably how it was.

Isn't it funny? Because you've been an adult so long and swearing so long, it's hard to think how to swear incorrectly. Out of context. I can't figure it out.

It feels like the kids understood that the words are supposedly bad words and not to be used in polite conversation, but they're only able to use them in a way that they think would be shocking and just being like, Bitch, out of nowhere. Also, a lot of people noted that the poltergeist seemed unusually interested in some surprising subjects.

Okay.

Writing in 2016, psychologist Chris French wrote, When Janet was supposedly possessed by the spirit of an old man, he took a lot of interest in menstruation. That's not something you'd expect an old man to be interested in, but a young girl, well, yes. In fact, when speaking through Janet, Joe seemed unusually preoccupied with the particularities of bodily functions, much the way a pubescent child would. In fact, well- Why do we fucking fart? Why? Why fucking do we fart, bitch? Does your...

Does fucking your period? That's all I'm thinking of. It's so nonsensical. How old fucking are you when you start? I'm screaming. I am screaming. Oh, my God.

In fact, when considered as a whole, the response is given by the poltergeist, Don't It doesn't sound like an adult at all, but like a child pretending to be an adult.

Excuse me, I think you mean an icon pretending to be an adult.

In fact, here's one that's just silliness. When investigators asked Joe where he had come from, the most complete answer that they were given was, I come from out of the grave in Durance Park.

It was basically like any time When they asked about death, they were like, Graves. I come from out of the grave.

Rising from the grave. It was very cartoon. I love it. Yeah, a lot of spiritual imagery that was very immature, I think.

Oh, my God, I'm crying.

Yeah. So the communication continued into the following year, but the conversations never elevated beyond crude threats, vulgarities, and a lot of strange thoughts and ideas. All right. But the recordings of these conversation remain some of the most frequently cited examples of the legitimacy of the claims in this case. I'm going to find those tapes. We got to find them. From the grave. From the grave. Oh, man.

Stop it.

It's scary. It is.

Okay, this is genuinely terrifying.

Here's the thing, though. My oldest can make that sound.

Actually, fact. Fact. She could scare the shit out of us.

She does it sometimes. Really? Just to freak us out. What? She can speak from that place of making it. That's so weird. Sound crazy.

I was picturing like this.

Yeah, it's very like... It's rounded. It is rounded. I don't know how it feels. Play more.

Wow. Wow, shit. Bullshit. Sleighton is talking. It sounds like Bluey's swearing. Bullshit. Sleighton is talking. Janet Marker, a very older Sleighton is talking.

Talking.

This should be an episode of Bluey. The creator of Bluey has run out of ideas, and I would like to formally request an episode where they pretend to be possessed. Thank you. Thank you for hearing me out.

I think his name is Joe, the creator of Blue Age. Joe. If you're listening. I think it's very coincidental that this entity's name is Joe. I think we are calling. I think the universe is telling you this is the next episode of Bluey.

Not only that, but this girl's name is Janet.

Oh my God.

Janet and Rita, get possessed.

Janet and Rita, get possessed.

There's your idea, Joe. Make it happen, please.

So after more than six months of flying objects and foulmouth ghosts, most reporters and readers had a lost interest in the Enfield story. And those who were covering it were doing so with a little bit of a sarcastic tone, which is a little sad. Yeah. By the late winter, 1978, the first signs of a dramatic shift in public opinion came when an article appeared in the Daily Mirror claiming that one of the girls involved had admitted to the whole thing being a hoax. Oh. It said... How did they make it read Marble? Well, I think there are some aspects that they can't explain, but maybe they were admitting to doing things.

Some things.

In the Daily Mirror, praised for its handling of the story by Gross and Playfair, the story of a confession was beginning to emerge. This is a quote. One of the young girls involved had admitted it was a hoax. Faithfully, the mirror recorded that the girl had retracted her admission the following day, but this seemed to add to the confusion, which tends to swamp serious attempts to investigate psychic phenomenon. That was in the Cambridge Evening News. Now, by that point, the audio and video recordings of the communication between the investigators and this entity had been shown to reporters, and what they saw strained the credibility for even those most desperate to believe in it.

I was desperate to believe in it.

I am, too. And one reporter who viewed the tape described it as, quote, A videotape of a cheeky young girl struggling to keep her lips closed and speak at the same time. Cheeky. There you go, Bluey. It's there. Come on, Joe. Was there anyone present at the conference where the tapes were shown who would seriously believe that the grunts coming from the girl's body were anything other than an elaborate game. After several prominent, respectable investigators had publicly declared the case a hoax, likely, the girl's confession, although it was brief, was the last straw for the public who had already started to suspect it was a fraud. In his book, This House is Haunted, Playfair did his absolute best to defend his engrossed belief that this girl's story was genuine. But although it was a successful supernatural story, it didn't really convince people of the authenticity of the whole thing. Yeah. Even the investigator's most compelling evidence, a photograph of Janet supposedly being levitated and tossed in the air by an unfean entity. It's like a famous photo from this. It was criticized by several investigators for clearly showing what skeptical investigator Melvin Harris described as levitation gymnastics.

What is levitation gymnastics? Harris notes, It's worth remembering that Janet was a school sports champion, and the image clearly shows the girl in a jumping position. Her legs are bent to propel herself. I got to Google it. Yeah. Rather than laying down and being levitated. Yeah. She looks like she's jumping. Okay. I'm not here to say she is or isn't. I'm just saying that's what it looks like.

It just looks that way. I'm looking at it right now. Hang on. Yeah. Oh, she's 100% jumping.

She's jumping. I mean, I don't know. In the years since, the Hodgkins may have stepped out of the public eye, but the story of the Enfield Poltergeist has remained a pretty fascinating source. Believers, skeptics, everyone in between. In 1992, the case was the inspiration for the controversial BBC television mockumentary Ghostwatch, in which a television news crew spends a night in a supposedly haunted house with devastating consequences. Several A couple of decades after that, the story was brought back again, first for an entry in the Conjuring franchise, despite the warrants only having the most tertiary involvement in this.

I was going to say you guys were there for like 3. 2 seconds.

Then again for an ITV miniseries titled The Enfield Haunting. The legacy of this whole thing speaks a lot to a very compelling narrative in an unresolved case, because although people believe it's a hoax, they haven't been able to prove it either way. We can't prove that it's real. We can't prove that it's a hoax. Nobody really can explain what happened here, why it would have happened here. For hardcore skeptic Joe Nickel, the explanation is as simple as the principle of Occam's razor. They are best explained as children's pranks. Basically, they were children's pranks who are vigorously defended by two men who couldn't fathom the possibility that they were wrong in their assessment. That's a quote by Nickel. Others, though, are less critical and dismissive in the judgment of the case. Deborah Hyde wrote in 2015, People frequently see what they expect to see. She came to a much more sympathetic conclusion. She wrote, We don't have the processing bandwidth to pay attention to everything all the time, and often don't notice when things have been placed or have disappeared. Personally, I would find it plausible if somebody suggested that two bright girls feeling abandoned by their father and given the focused attention of two kind men, attention that would in all probability, evaporate if the strange phenomena did, could have been motivated to manifest a poltergeist.

That's actually so sad. Very sad. That's probably one of the saddest things I've ever heard.

And that breaks my heart. Yeah. Still, there are those who like Playfair and Gross and the friends of the Hodgson family who all saw it happen, they all remain steadfast in their belief that the entire story of the poltergeist, knocking on the walls, the arguments with the spirit, talking to Joe, the previous occupant of the residence, things moving, things throwing, like flying through the air, they were all genuine, all of them. Now, more than four decades later, neither side is any closer to proving either that it was real or that it was a hoax than they were on the day that Maurice Gross arrived in the summer of 1977. What a bummer. So right now, it is what it is. That's the story. And no one can prove shit.

I feel like it's, to me, there are some things that I'm like, okay, obviously the kids were doing that. But there were things, like Especially, and it's interesting, there were things, especially in the beginning, that sounded like it could be something. Yeah, exactly. Inexplicable. So I think maybe it started off as something, and then...

That's how I feel. Perhaps veered off. I feel like maybe something was a here, but maybe it wasn't going to get as bad as it got. And then the kids maybe ramped it up. Yeah. Like, made it into something. Not wanting anybody to leave. Not wanting people to leave, which is really sad.

I'm surprised I never faked a pool of your ice.

It's an interesting story. I'm honestly surprised you never faked a polter guy.

I could go back in time. I would. Yeah. But actually, I used to pretend to be a ghost named Glenn to scare my little sister.

You did. You did. You did do that. And you had Luke Skywalker. Yeah. And the lady who didn't have a body, she She was just made of bones. That was real.

That was the realest fucking thing I've ever experienced. I believe that. To this day, I'm not, I'm not going to go back to that place.

If you could project the image of her out of your body so I could see what you see, I would pay endless amounts of money.

It scares me to this day. Do you know that one time my mom was so fed up with it and could not calm me? I was literally inconsolable. She called my dad and my dad had to come over in the to try to calm me. Wow. Yeah. And my mom and dad do not like each other at all.

So that wasn't amicable.

Yeah, it was not an amicable divorce.

So that was pretty serious. Yeah.

Like, big serious.

Damn.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

Yeah, it was wild.

Shit.

So, yeah, sometimes those things are real and unexplainable. I don't know why that lady showed up to me. I don't need her. She also probably could have been a nightmare.

I don't know what she is.

I was dealing with a lot. You were.

But she was real.

Yeah, I think she Damn.

And we don't know if the Umfield Poltergeist is.

You just never know. There's weird things in life. We're going to experience them tonight. I can't fucking wait. Hell, yeah. But we can't talk to you about that for a while. Not yet. So you better keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. But not so weird that you don't continue fucking listening to the podcast, you fuck.

Bullshit.