‘What I went through was real!’ What really happened with the Enfield Poltergeist

20 July 2018 | Your Stories

I came across a brand-new article from The Express newspaper. An article about one of the most famous hauntings of all time. The Enfield Haunting. I wanted to share this article with you. You can read the original by clicking here.

There’s nothing that picks out 284 Green Street as anything other than a suburban semi possessed by little more than everyday domesticity. But from the humdrum routine of family meals, school times and homework, it emerged as the chilling epicentre of paranormal activity that held a nation spellbound.

The Enfield Poltergeist became a sensation as it terrified a family over an 18-month period with furniture clattering across rooms, household objects flying around, disembodied voices, sudden temperature drops and even episodes of levitation when an 11-year-old girl was witnessed floating horizontally across her bedroom.

Sceptics and believers have been colliding about things that went bump in the night in the north London suburb for almost 40 years. Was it paranormal activity that took hold of a family or was it an exercise in fooling the public and getting a move to a new council house? Unusually for a haunting, there is evidence.

Photographs, recordings and observations at the time made up a compelling case – even a local policewoman signed an affidavit stating that she saw furniture impelled across a room by a hidden force.

And, despite the concerted rebuttals and explanations, the Enfield Poltergeist still has a disturbing presence. It also has an enduring box office appeal, spawning a cottage industry of experts and theorists when the Hodgson family’s home, just north of Ponders End, became a portal for spirits in late 1977.

Single mother Peggy and her four children went from non-entity to “other-world” infamy; their story would eventually inspire a TV mini-series (The Enfield Haunting) starring Timothy Spall and Juliet Stevenson, as well as a Hollywood film, The Conjuring 2, with Vera Farmiga, long after the family moved away.

The legend refuses to die and an attempt to look back with clarity at the traumatic happenings with three of the key personnel, BBC Radio 4’s The Reunion programme, does little to support the contention of paranormal activity but even less for the conviction that it was a total fake.

One of the starkest images of the episode was a photograph of 11-year-old Janet, who became the focal point of the poltergeist’s activity, apparently levitating, a shriek tormenting look on her face as posters of pop icons David Soul and the Bay City Rollers smiled down from the walls of her bedroom.

It was taken by Graham Morris, a Daily Mirror photographer despatched to the tormented house after Peggy phoned the newspaper in despair at the persistent bumps and moving furniture. She had sent the children next door for their safety. You can read the full article by clicking here.

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