When most people think of haunted places, they think of palatial castles, churches, graveyards and ancient ruins but this terrifying true tale takes place in a rundown council house, in Enfield, London, England. The story of the notorious Enfield Poltergeist started in 1977 and would endure for a year before finally dying down.
The Hodgson family were quite happy living in their modest council home. It was a home in which they had lived for the majority of their lives. Mr and Mrs Hodgson had four children but were now separated. Mr Hodgson had left the family home, leaving Mrs Hodgson and her four children alone.
Janet, the eldest of the children at 11, was a happy child. Although her family had experienced their fair share of turmoil in the past, she and her siblings had coped well and were adjusting to their new situation. Very soon, however, she would become the center of a supernatural reign of terror.
Shaking and Banging
One night, the children were rudely awakened when their beds began to violently shake. Fleeing from their bedroom, they reported the incident to their mother, Peggy, who was understandably skeptical about the whole thing. That is, until she also witnessed strange goings on in the children’s bedroom, when a chest of drawers slid across the floor of their own accord.
Confused, Peggy tried to put the drawers back in their rightful place, only for them to slide across the room once more. When she tried to put them back for a second time, she found that she was unable to move the furniture. It was as if the drawers had been glued the floor. This was enough for Peggy and she fled to a neighboring home with her four scared children in tow.
Peggy told her neighbor about the unusual events taking place in her home and they agreed to check it out for her. When they entered her home, they found nothing unusual save for a strange rapping sound which they thought was coming from inside the walls of the London council house. Thinking a burglar had found his way into the house, the neighbors called the police who could not find anything suspicious in the home, although they too heard the mysterious rapping sounds coming from inside the walls.
Levitation and Ghostly Voices
From that night on, the Hodgson family were plagued with paranormal activity, which could easily rival any horror movie. Objects, including children’s toys, plates and furniture would fly across the room. One photographer was actually struck on the head with a Lego brick, leaving a nasty mark and a police officer who attended the house signed an affidavit stating that she had watched a chair move across the room of its own accord.
Maurice Grosse, a paranormal investigator, spent a lot of time at home with the family and he noted that the poltergeist was always more active when Janet was around. The spirit seemed to be drawn to her and would cause her to levitate on more than one occasion. This led many people to believe that Janet herself was responsible for most of the activity and the children certainly were caught out, playing up to the home’s ghostly reputation, on more than one occasion but Maurice remained convinced that Janet could not possibly be responsible for the vast majority of happenings in the home.
Events finally came to a head when Janet was apparently possessed by the spirit of a former resident of the Enfield house. The voice of the spirit was heard through Janet. He claimed to be a man named Bill who had lived and died in the house. He went so far as to claim that he died in one of the armchairs which still rested in the front room.
Many people, who heard Janet speaking as Bill, thought that she was faking the whole thing and, with this in mind, they made her drink a sip of water and hold it in her mouth while they asked her questions. This she did, whilst answering every question they asked, in the voice of Bill. When she was finished, she spat the water back out and this was taken as confirmation that she was not responsible for the spirit’s voice.
Not long after Bill’s voice manifested, the paranormal events in the Hodgson home began to die down and the press lost interest. Many people now believe that the whole episode was greatly exaggerated but, a number of reputable witnesses, including journalists, photographers, psychical researchers and police, all believe that something supernatural took place in that cramped council house in Enfield.
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