The Enfield Poltergeist

Between August 1977 and September 1978, a council house in the London suburb of Enfield became the site of one of the most extensively documented poltergeist cases in history. The Hodgson family—particularly daughters Janet (11) and Margaret (13)—experienced phenomena that included furniture moving on its own, objects flying through the air, loud knocking sounds, and most disturbingly, a deep male voice that spoke through young Janet. The case attracted investigators, journalists, and skeptics, and remains controversial to this day.

The Beginning

The Hodgson family consisted of single mother Peggy and her four children: Margaret, Janet, Johnny, and Billy. On August 30, 1977, Peggy heard loud knocking from her daughters’ bedroom. When she investigated, she witnessed a chest of drawers slide across the floor by itself.

This was only the beginning. Over the following days and weeks, furniture moved, objects flew through the air, and loud knocking sounds echoed through the house. The family was terrified. They called the police, who witnessed a chair slide across the floor but could not explain what was happening.

Investigation

The Society for Psychical Research sent investigators Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair to examine the case. They spent months at the house, witnessing and documenting phenomena.

Grosse and Playfair observed objects moving without apparent cause. They saw chairs tip over, toys fly across rooms, and heard the relentless knocking that seemed to come from the walls themselves. They photographed Janet apparently levitating above her bed—though skeptics noted she could have been jumping.

The phenomena seemed to center on Janet, following the typical poltergeist pattern of activity connected to an adolescent. She was at the heart of the most dramatic events.

The Voice

The case’s most disturbing development came when an entity began speaking through Janet. The voice was deep and masculine, completely unlike Janet’s normal voice. It identified itself as “Bill,” claiming to be an old man who had died in the house.

Researchers attempted to verify Bill’s claims. They did find that a man named Bill Wilkins had died in the house years earlier. However, skeptics pointed out that this information could have been discovered through normal means.

The voice spoke frequently, engaging in conversation with investigators and sometimes becoming vulgar or threatening. It seemed to know things about the house’s history and about visitors. Skeptics suggested Janet was ventriloquizing, while believers considered the voice evidence of genuine supernatural intervention.

Controversy

The Enfield case was controversial from the beginning. Skeptics pointed to several incidents where the girls were apparently caught faking phenomena—bending spoons when they thought they weren’t being watched, or Janet admitting she had faked some events “just to see if investigators would catch it.”

However, investigators maintained that these fraudulent incidents did not account for all the phenomena. Much had occurred under controlled conditions or was witnessed by multiple independent observers. The police, for example, had no reason to lie about seeing a chair move.

Journalist Guy Lyon Playfair, who wrote a book about the case, argued that some trickery by bored children did not invalidate the genuine phenomena that occurred around them. Maurice Grosse remained convinced of the case’s authenticity until his death.

Resolution

The phenomena gradually subsided over the course of 1978. Janet spent time away from the house, and the activity decreased. By September 1978, the poltergeist had effectively ceased.

The Hodgson family continued living in the house for years afterward, though Peggy died there in 2003. Janet Hodgson has given occasional interviews about her experiences, maintaining that while she did fake some things, much of what happened was genuine and terrifying.

Legacy

The Enfield Poltergeist has become one of the defining cases in poltergeist research. It was adapted into the film “The Conjuring 2” (2016), though the movie took significant creative liberties. It has been the subject of documentaries, books, and television specials.

The case illustrates the difficulties inherent in poltergeist investigation. How do you distinguish genuine phenomena from trickery, especially when the subjects are children who might engage in both? The mixture of apparently genuine events and admitted fakery has made Enfield a Rorschach test for paranormal belief: believers see evidence of the supernatural, skeptics see evidence of hoax.

Whatever actually happened in that Enfield council house, the case remains a landmark in paranormal research—one of the most extensively documented and most fiercely debated hauntings in modern history.