The Enfield Poltergeist

[sherbetbizarre]

The STRANGE BUT TRUE Enfield episode:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX6LbNFYijQ

[AutumnMaidenDove]

I have my doubts about some of the "evidence" gathered. In the clip of Janet and the voice, you can see her throat moving, like when you talk and her trying to hide the fact that her mouth is moving. I would have believed it if her mouth didn't move at all and was close but every time the "voice" talks, her mouth is moving and so is her throat. Also, the photo doesn't hold water for me, looks to me like she's jumping off the bed. I am not saying that the other things didn't happen, I just feel she faked some of it.

[sherbetbizarre]

New article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... d-bed.html

Now aged 45, Janet lives in Essex with her husband, a retired milkman.

She told me: ‘I wasn’t very happy to hear about the film, I didn’t know anything about it. My dad has just died, and it really upset me to think of all this being raked over again.’

She describes the poltergeist activity as traumatic.

‘It was an extraordinary case. It’s one of the most recognised cases of paranormal activity in the world. But, for me, it was quite daunting. I think it really left its mark, the activities, the newspaper attention, the different people in and out of the house. It wasn’t a normal childhood.’

Asked how much of the phenomena at Green Street was faked, she says: ‘I’d say 2 per cent.’
She also admitted playing with an Ouija board with her sister, just before the activity flared up at the house.

She says she was unaware that she went into trances, until she was shown pictures.

‘I recall being very distressed by the photos when I was a child, I was very upset.

‘I knew when the voices were happening, of course, it felt like something was behind me all of the time. They did all sorts of tests, filling my mouth with water and so on, but the voices still came out.’

She says: ‘It was hard, I had a short spell in the Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital in London, where they stuck electrodes on my head, but the tests proved normal.

‘The levitation was scary, because you didn’t know where you were going to land. I remember a curtain being wound around my neck, I was screaming, I thought I was going to die.

'My mum had to use all her strength to rip it away. The man who spoke through me, Bill, seemed angry, because we were in his house.’

The situation had a huge effect on the family.

Janet says: ‘I was bullied at school. They called me Ghost Girl and put crane flies down my back.

‘I’d dread going home. The front door would be open, there’d be people in and out, you didn’t know what to expect and I used to worry a lot about Mum. She had a nervous breakdown, in the end.

‘I’m not one for living in the past. I want to move on. But it does come to me now and again. I dream about it, and then it affects me. I think why did it happen to us?’

Her brother was called ‘freak boy from the Ghost House’ and people would spit at him in the street.

Janet herself was on the front page of the Daily Star with a headline: ‘Possessed by the Devil.’

She left home at 16, and married young.

‘I lost touch with everything, all the coverage of the case in paranormal books. My mum felt people walked over her at that time. She felt exploited.’

Shortly after the Press attention drifted away, Janet’s younger brother Johnny died of cancer, aged just 14. Janet’s mother then developed breast cancer, dying in 2003, and Janet suffered the loss of her own son, in his sleep, when he was 18.

She rejects any suggestion that the whole story was faked in pursuit of fame or money.

‘I didn’t want to bring it up again while my mum was alive, but now I want to tell my story. I don’t care whether people believe me or not, I went through this, and it was true.’

Asked whether she believes the house is still haunted, she says: ‘Years later, when Mum was alive, there was always a presence there — something watching over you.

'As long as people don’t meddle the way we did with Ouija boards, it is quite settled. It is a lot calmer than when I was a child. It is at rest, but will always be there.’

Janet reports that it was a priest’s visit to Green Street that resulted in the incidents ‘quietening down’ in autumn 1978, although the occurrences did not stop entirely, she says, with her mother continuing to hear noises in the house.

Janet says: ‘Even my brother, until the day he left that place after Mum died, would say: “There’s still something there.” You’d feel like you were being watched.’

Janet said she continues to believe in the poltergeist, saying: ‘It lived off me, off my energy. Call me mad if you like. Those events did happen. The poltergeist was with me and I feel that in a sense he always will be.’
Who lives at 284 Green Street now?

After Peggy Hodgson died, Clare Bennett and her four sons moved into the house.

Last week, she said: ‘I didn’t see anything, but I felt uncomfortable. There was definitely some kind of presence in the house, I always felt like someone was looking at me.’

Her sons would wake in the night, hearing people talking downstairs. Clare then found out about the house’s history. ‘Suddenly, it all made sense,’ she says. They moved out after just two months.

One of her sons, Shaka, 15, says: ‘The night before we moved out, I woke up and saw a man come into the room. I ran into Mum’s room and said: “We’ve got to move,” and we did the next day.’

The house is currently occupied by another family, who do not wish to be identified. The mother says simply: ‘I’ve got children, they don’t know about it. I don’t want to scare them.’

Though cynics may scoff, the story of the Enfield Poltergeist has clearly lost none of its frightening power.

[Rokiisun]

I thought the Enfield Poltergeist activities were faked... unless I am thinking about something else? If I remember right, Enfield was the one where the young girl levitated across the bedroom and it was captured on still film.

[sherbetbizarre]

I thought the Enfield Poltergeist activities were faked... unless I am thinking about something else? If I remember right, Enfield was the one where the young girl levitated across the bedroom and it was captured on still film.

As the article says, they admitted to faking some of it late on, when the phenomena dwindled...

[Rokiisun]

I wouldn't be suprised if they faked a few things in front of the investigators, because it's always been the thing where most people fake stuff for the cameras just so that they don't feel as if they are wasting the investigators' time.

I remember the voice recordings of 'Bill' and thinking, 'There's no way that this could be faked' because making that sort of voice is bound to hurt your throat after a minute or two, but I was always really skeptical about the levitation picture. It could be real, but it could also just be a perfectly timed photograph, you never know...

[tomspy77]

I always felt that this was one of the better well documented ghost cases. Amazing that the next owners of the house seen and felt things. Also glad Janet admits that some of it was faked.

Really love this one with all the collaboration and the police seeing chairs move and all the different people swearing something happened there. Deffo one the ghostly community should take on as a more serious, possibly mostly credible case.

[sherbetbizarre]

The BBC have dug up some great archive footage!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2 ... _room.html

[Miz Kizzle]

The Enfield poltergeist is one of my all-time faves, right up there with the one that harassed the Herrmann family in Seaford, Long Island in 1958.
Hans Holzer "investigated" that one, too, along with his trusty medium Ethel Johnson Meyers. They announced that the paranormal activity was caused by (drumroll, please) the ghost of an angry Indian who was buried beneath the house.
Sound familiar?

[sherbetbizarre]

http://www.itv.com/thismorning/life/sup ... ltergeist/

...video is up of the 13 minute reunion of Janet and Guy.

Thirty years ago Janet Winter (formally Hodgson), was at the centre of Britain's most famous ghost story The Enfield Poltergeist.

For two years from 1977, the goings-on at 284 Green Street, Enfield, made national headlines as furniture moved of its own accord, fires spontaneously ignited and extinguished themselves and 11-year-old Janet appeared to be possessed by spirits.

Joining Janet, now 46, is Guy Lyon Playfair, a poltergeist expert who was one of the investigators who visited the house and subsequently wrote a book about what he saw called This House Is Haunted; and Deborah Hyde, editor in chief of magazine The Skeptic, to give her alternative explanation of events

[devilbustedinct]

Only available for viewing inside the UK? Anybody else get that message?

[Shawn]

Me too DBIC.

[Miz Kizzle]

How to attract a poltergeist:
1. Find a house with one or more children. Pubescent girls are best but boys will do.
Extra points if the child is adopted.
2. Throw in an authoritarian dad, especially one who drinks.
3. Poltergeists love unhappy families. Divorce, separation, an overworked single mom in severe financial straits are all catnip to poltergeists.
4. Add a Ouija board. Stir and season with a pinch of adolescent angst then stand back as the poltergeist begins to scratch, bark, move furniture and throw stuff!

[sherbetbizarre]

Only available for viewing inside the UK? Anybody else get that message?

Now on Youtube:

[Rokiisun]

'You wasn't there love' Janet must have been pretty offended by the Skeptic's comments.

I sort of agree where the skeptic is coming from. I vaguely remember one night five years ago
I was in the midst of having a panic attack and after recovering I saw a flash of what appeared
to be a tall figure in a suit at the top of the stairs. It looked real, felt real, but given the frame
my mind was in minutes before it could have been my imagination.

But I would also have to disagree with the skeptic because two years before that event my sister
and I both woke up one night where we saw an 'orange floating screw' twisting above our beds and
it was weird in the sense that we just looked at it, never really freaked out or anything and we went
back to sleep like it was nothing important. Not one person to this day believes what we saw that night.

Another instance occurred last year where my grandfather passed away, now I am usually skeptical about
spooks and stuff at times like that but strange things happened on the day of the funeral. A whole pack
of eggs shoved at the back of the bunker fell down onto the floor and when my sister made a comment
about how she 'wished grandad would just jump out of the coffin like nothing had happened' an ornament
sitting on the fridge launched itself straight into the washing machine at the other end of the room. It was
just so surreal... so I do believe that some things such as what the lutzes and Janet's family experienced
were real.

[sherbetbizarre]

Before The Conjuring 2 comes along, we will get this new TV series in the UK...

The Enfield Haunting

Sky Living announces a brand new original drama commission The Enfield Haunting - a three part dramatisation of the terrifying and bizarre real events that took place at an ordinary house in Enfield during the autumn of 1977.

Adapted from Guy Lyon Playfair's book This House is Haunted, the show is a supernatural drama based upon real events surrounding the phenomena, and draws on extensive documentation, recordings and witness statements. The incident remains to this day the most documented account of poltergeist activity in British history.

British actor Timothy Spall OBE, recently bestowed the Best Actor accolade at this year's Cannes Film Festival for his role in Mike Leigh's Mr Turner, will play Maurice Grosse, a rookie paranormal researcher. After a recent personal tragedy, he is drawn to the house on Green Street after disturbing reports of a desperate family terrorised by malevolent unseen forces. BAFTA nominated actress Juliet Stevenson CBE will star alongside Spall to play his wife Betty.

Award-winning actor Matthew Macfadyen will play Guy Lyon Playfair, an experienced investigator who approaches the case with scepticism. Working together to get to the heart of the supernatural happenings, Maurice and Guy will both have to confront their own pasts. Can they save this family from the hauntings and make peace with their own ghosts?

Kristoffer Nyholm, widely acclaimed for his work on the global hit drama 'The Killing' will direct from screenplays by Joshua St Johnston. Adrian Sturges will produce for Eleven Film, alongside Executive Producer Jamie Campbell. Cameron Roach, Acting Head of Drama will executive produce for Sky.

http://www.sky.com/tv/show/the-enfield-haunting

[Brendan72]

It looks like they have some quality actors lined up to play the lead roles.

I will wait to see how it turns out as it also needs a good script for an actor to work with.

[sherbetbizarre]

[Brendan72]

This is due to screen in the UK on May 3rd? I am wondering whether it will screen in Australia soon after.

[Amit Y Ville]

It's amusing in 2015 we are digging deep to the 1970's to documented poltergeist cases. Guess no one cares for modern hauntings, right? Everyone knows ghosts hate Youtube!

[sherbetbizarre]