The Enfield Poltergeist: fact or fiction
Everything started back in August 1977, in a little city in the North of London called Enfield. That involved the HUDGSON FAMILY, a household formed by 5 people: Peggy Hudgson, a single mother and her 4 children: Margaret, Janet, Jonny, Billy.
The first manifestation of these phenomena was exactly the 30 of August 1977 when Margaret and Janet experienced a strange event: their beds started to move and float on their own.
Since they were scared, they ran to their mother asking for help.
Not believing them and thinking that was kind of a joke, she ordered them to go back to sleep.
The next night, Peggy heard a sequence of loud noises coming from her daughters’ room.
Wanting to know what was happening, she entered the bedroom to find them huddled in the corner with terrified expressions on their faces.
After she entered and received the warning from the girls, she witnessed the chest of drawers move alone towards the door.
Stunned, she tried to move it with all her force with no results.
After this event, scared, she asked for help from her neighbors.
They turned to Vic and Peggy Nottingham, who lived across the street. Vic decided to go inside and learn what was really going on. He entered the house, began to hear strange noises, as if someone was knocking loudly on the walls.
The man was working as a bricklayer at that time. When he heard these loud buzzing noises, he realized that there was something wrong because he had never heard anything like this.
Peggy, starting to get really scared, decided to call the police.
When the forces of law and order arrived, they speculated that it was a joke gone too far since they saw a lot of kids around the house.
Until a chair moved exactly one and a half meters in front of the officers.
Confused, they inspected the chair trying to find a logical explanation. They checked if there was a wire that allowed the chair to move and also placed a marble on the ground to see if maybe the floor was tilted, but did not get results.
Left speechless, they told the family that it was not an event of their competence since it was not a crime.
After this horrible news, the Hudgsons decided to call the Daily Mirror office.
Hearing this crazy story, two curious reporters decide to go into their house.They took the necessary equipment with them: unfortunately nothing special happened so they decided to surrender.
But just as they were heading to lay down the equipment, the neighbor ran in their direction warning them that one of the demonstrations was happening. They hurried inside and saw different objects flying around the room. During this crazy moment, they tried to capture the manifestation. It lasted seconds, but according to the journalists, it seemed like it was hours.
The objects that flew through the room were toys, especially Lego bricks. You couldn’t tell where they came from; it looked like someone was throwing the bricks right at them, but they were all together at once.The reporters repeatedly reiterated that it was impossible for children to throw them at them because they were all together in a corner, scared.
Also, one of these bricks hit a reporter on the eyebrow leaving a scar. After the event, the two reporters leave in disbelief and report on the incident.
Later they went to the lab where they developed the photos, and they realized that incredibly nothing came out.
The news of this house with strange noises and bizarre events started to spread around the city, but it also came out that the photographers had not been able to develop anything and this led to developing mistrust about the reality or not of this case.
Not giving up, the newsmen decided to go back to Peggy’s house because they wanted to try again to document.
They also turned to the SPR to try to help the family and bring back a shred of hope in them.
According to the official website SPR, which stands for Society for Psychical Research, is a UK organization engaged in studying paranormal events in a scientific and impartial manner.
N.W = this organization was and still is formed by scientists skeptical about paranormal and not.
One member of this organization who played an important role in this affair was Maurice Grosse, a successful engineer and inventor who in later life became interested in psychical research.
He decided to take the case and went to them. Having heard the rumors about possible making up of the story, he arrived at the house with an open mind.
But as soon as he joined the family, he could see the fear in their eyes.
After knowing all that had happened up until that moment, he was able to give a definition to the force that was annoying this poor family:
It was a POLTERGEIST.
According to the Cambridge dictionary, a poltergeist is a spirit or force that moves furniture and throws objects around in a house.
After a few nights staying at Hudson’s house, he knew it was too complicated for him only. He decided to ask the help of the British writer Guy Lyon Playfair who had a high experience in the paranormal field.
The two scientists decided to stay with the family until the events stopped. But everything lasted more than one year, 14 months to be exact.
The well-known BBC newspaper also heard the rumors about this case and decided to send a young reporter to investigate the reality of the situation.
After a while, the events and sound started to intensify more and more until the scientists, without any ideas left, decided to try to talk with the spirit who was annoying the British family.
While trying to talk with the “ghost,” he realized that his way to communicate was knocking.
End of November, 1977.
Janet starts to make alarming drawings.
She also starts to show a strange behavior for an 11 year old. She had several episodes where it looked like she was going into a kind of trance and became aggressive. The young woman in those times used to develop almost superhuman strength, as if possessed. They once were also forced to give her 10mg of Valium to calm her down.
However, these “crises” did not diminish.
Maurice Grosse remembers one night in particular. He declared that it was a normal night and everyone was sleeping until Janet Hudgson woke up, and started to scream saying that some cold hands were grabbing her by her ankles and they were tossing her around the room. Not so much time later “they” took her down the stairs in an unnatural way.
The photographers were able to take some pictures about it, but they have been discussed a lot.
At this point to understand what was happening to Janet, they decide to turn to a doctor who was also part of the SPR.
To try and find some answers, he decided to hypnotize the child in a light state to ask her questions. One of these was crucial, and still is for the credibility of the case:
“Do you know who is the cause of this?” asked the doctor
“Me and my sister,” answered Janet Hudgson.
but then she corrects herself and says that she had no idea who that could be.
This doctor appointment was another of the many things that made skeptics and non-skeptics discuss.
Why did she initially insinuate that it was her and her sister’s fault?
It seemed that it was their fault because that fateful August 1977 they played with the ouija board.
They decided to use it as an innocent game, but may have accidentally attracted “something.”
Instead, the skeptics explained that it was an obvious admission of guilt for a joke gone too far.
However, after a short time, the part of this case that is considered one of the most disturbing of all happens.
One evening, the whole Hudgson family plus Maurice, Playfair, and the BBC reporter are together in the living room when they hear a dog barking. There would be nothing strange in this if only the family had a dog.
So the scientist came up with an idea: If this “thing” was able to bark, then perhaps she would have been able to speak.
With that, the girls are brought to their room, Grosse turns on his tape recorder and starts to tease this spirit and encourage him to speak. Suddenly, you hear some peculiar voices. The voice was deep, hoarse and the BBC reporter started talking to that.
At which point Maurice thought that this unnerving voice came from Janet and asked her if she was making those voices.
The girl, frightened, said that she heard the voice coming from BEHIND her.
So after that they decided to set up a test.
They make Janet drink water without swallowing it. At a later time, they put a tape on her mouth just to be sure she wouldn’t talk or spill the water.
This was a way to prove that she wasn’t pretending to make those voices, just to be sure.
Despite this, the voice was heard once more. When they took the tape off her mouth Janet spits out the water she had kept in her mouth all that time.
So there was no way she could impersonate those voices.
Anita Gregory and Johnny Belle:
Those two names still fight for the credibility of this case. They were one of the people that thought that all of it was just a set-up from Janet.
For example, when those “voices” were coming from “behind” her, you could notice sometimes her throat moving like she was impersonating the voice.
Anyway, since Janet was getting worse, in July 1978, Peggy Hudgson brings her daughter to a psychiatric hospital to try to understand if that was maybe something “wrong” in her body that was making her feel like this.
After three months of testing, she returns home with no promising results. Nevertheless, things seem to calm down in that poor little house in Enfield.
Peggy continued to live in the house until 2003 when she died.
Janet and Margaret continued their lives normally, as if nothing had happened.
In all this time, none of the people who attended this event changed their minds despite newspaper reports offering a lot of money to do so.
Janet has been discreet and still rarely talks about what she’s been through. In 2016 the movie Conjouring 2 was made. When Janet got the news, she was very upset and tried to stop the film with poor results. The child, now an adult, thought and still thinks that this is a very tragic fact and not suitable for creating films.
