The Enfield Poltergeist: Why the unexplained mystery that shocked 1970s Britain continues to disturb.
In 1977, reports of supposedly paranormal goings-on in a north London house made headlines – and with a new TV series and play about events, they still confound, writes Natasha Tripney.
In August 1977, the police arrived at 284 Green Street in the north London suburb of Enfield. Peggy Hodgson, a single mother of four, reported that her two young daughters – Janet, aged 11, and older sister Margaret – had heard strange knocking. The source of the sound could not be determined. They called in the neighbours who were also disturbed by what they heard. Out of desperation, they rang the police, one of whom reportedly saw a chair move of its own accord. Next, they turned to the press.
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Over the next 18 months, stories of increasingly strange phenomena emerged from the house. Furniture was hurled across the rooms, there were reports of “paranormal whistling” and, most unsettling of all, Janet Hodgson was heard to talk with the rasping voice of an old man. The case came to the attention of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), and two of its members, inventor turned paranormal investigator Maurice Grosse and writer Guy Lyon Playfair, were sent to investigate. Playfair would later publish a book, This House is Haunted, about his experiences.
A new Apple TV+ docudrama is the latest work to retell the story of The Enfield Poltergeist (Credit: Apple TV+)
Eventually events in the house just stopped but not before Janet spent time in London’s Maudsley psychiatric hospital. She is still clearly affected by happenings in the house. “I know what I experienced. I know it was real,” she says in a new Apple TV + four-part drama-documentary series about the phenomenon. “It follows you. It has never left me.”
In the years since, the events in that Enfield council house have remained a source of fascination. There have been numerous retellings and adaptations of the so-called Enfield Poltergeist, including a 2015 TV drama, The Enfield Haunting – which starred Timothy Spall as Grosse and a pre-Succession Matthew Macfadyen as Playfair – and Hollywood blockbuster The Conjuring 2, which dispatched its lead duo, American paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, to North London.
Read More – The Enfield Poltergeist: Why the unexplained mystery that shocked 1970s Britain continues to disturb.
How The Terrifying Enfield Haunting Inspired ‘The Conjuring 2’
Between 1977 and 1979, a seemingly ordinary London home was allegedly tormented by the Enfield poltergeist in one of England’s most infamous cases of paranormal activity.
In The Conjuring 2, paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren travel to England to investigate the Enfield haunting. Though the film is fictional, the alleged haunting in North London did take place in the 1970s.
Much of the true story of The Conjuring 2 centered around 11-year-old Janet Hodgson.
During that time, a single mother named Peggy Hodgson and her four children reported a series of bizarre incidents that happened at their home, later known as the Enfield haunting or the Enfield poltergeist. More than 30 eyewitnesses later backed them up, describing items that flew through the air, matches that spontaneously burst into flames, and the voice of an old man that spoke through one of Hodgson’s young daughters.
Over time, some have come to see the Enfield poltergeist as concrete evidence of the paranormal. But others think that the entire haunting was orchestrated by the family who lived in the home. This is the real history of the Enfield haunting and the true story of The Conjuring 2.
How The Enfield Haunting Began
The house at 284 Green Street, where the true story behind The Conjuring 2 allegedly took place.
According to Peggy Hodgson, the haunting of her home at 284 Green Street, Enfield, in North London, began in August 1977. Peggy, who lived there with her four children, Margaret, 12, Janet, 11, Johnny, 10, and Billy, 7, claimed that she first knew something was up after there was a crash upstairs.
When Peggy went to investigate, she found Margaret and Janet cowering in the corner of their bedroom. “We [told our mom] the chest of drawers was moving toward the bedroom door,” Janet said. “She said, ‘Oh don’t be silly.’”
But the chest then slid across the room. “I just couldn’t believe it,” Peggy said. “In fact, I pushed it back twice, and a third time I couldn’t move it.”
As a strange knocking noise seemed to spread through the house, Peggy went to get help. She first reached out to a neighbor, and then the police.
Read More – How The Terrifying Enfield Haunting Inspired ‘The Conjuring 2’
The Enfield Poltergeist
In 1977, a house in the north London suburb of Enfield was the scene of violent disturbances of apparently paranormal origin. The occurrences were similar to those reported in other cases of the ‘poltergeist’ type: knockings and other noises with no apparent cause; doors opening and closing by themselves; furniture overturned; small objects hurled across rooms; picture frames ripped from walls; small fires that started and went out by themselves, and suchlike. The events continued for just over a year and in many cases were witnessed by neighbours, investigators, technicians, press reporters and broadcasters, police officers and others.
In its later stages the case was notable for the emergence of abusive and often obscene speech from the mouth of a twelve-year old girl. Tape recordings were made of the voice, which was gruff and masculine, apparently that of an old man.
Maurice Grosse, a successful inventor, initiated an investigation soon after the start of the events on behalf of the Society for Psychical Research. Grosse was soon joined by author and paranormal investigator Guy Lyon Playfair, whose 1980 book This House is Haunted: An Investigation of the Enfield Poltergeist is the main source of information about the events. Detailed and broadly accurate reports published over a period of time by the Daily Mirror led to widespread attention by other newspapers, radio and television.
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