The
Enfield Poltergeist Story
From the
Livings Spirit's Website
In late August of 1977, Mrs.
Peggy Harper, a divorcee in her mid forties, had put two of her four
children to bed. They were living in a semi detached council house in
Enfield, North London that had three bedrooms. Late at night, Janet, aged
eleven and her brother Pete, aged ten, complained that their beds were
"jolting up and down and going all funny". As soon as Mrs Harper got to the
room the movements had stopped - as far as she was concerned her kids were
making it all up.
The following night at 9.30
pm, Peggy was called to Janet and Pete’s room when they complained something
was making a shuffling noise. Janet said it sounded like one of the chairs
moving, so Peggy took the chair out of the bedroom to put their minds at
ease. Saying goodnight to the children once more and turning off the light,
she too heard the shuffling noise. As though somebody was "shuffling across
the floor in their slippers". She turned the light on to see the furniture
as normal and the children under their covers. Turning the lights off again,
the noise started once more.
They then heard four loud
knocks on the partitioning wall of the house and Mrs Harper was astonished
to see a heavy chest of draws moving about 18 inches across the floor, well
beyond the children's reach. As soon as it stopped, Mrs Harper pushed it
back against the wall but as she turned her back, it moved once more to it’s
former position. This time she found it impossible to move. Mrs. Harper
recalls shaking with fear, yelling at the children to get out of their beds
and to go downstairs - she was convinced that something unexplainable was
going on. Seeing that their neighbors lights were on, the Harpers, still in
their night clothes, ran next door for help.
The neighbors searched the
house and garden but found no-one. Soon they also heard the knocks on the
walls which continued at spaced out intervals. At 11pm they called the
police, who heard the knocks, one officer even saw a chair inexplicably move
across the floor, and later signed a written statement to confirm the
events.
The following day, the events
continued with small plastic bricks and marbles being hurled around house -
when picked up, they were found to be hot. This ‘attack’ continued for three
days by which time they sought help again, not only from the police, but a
local vicar and local medium. But no-one seemed to be able to stop the
escalation of events. The Harpers eventually turned to the press and the
Daily Mirror sent out a reporter, Douglas Bence, with a photographer, Graham
Morris, who stayed in the house for several hours. Nothing happened and the
reporters decided to leave - they were almost in their car when the ‘flying
bricks’ promptly resumed. They were called back and a toy Lego brick flew
across the room hitting the photographer on the forehead as he attempted to
take a picture. Later, as the photographer developed his negative he noticed
that it had an inexplicable hole in it and that the flying brick could not
be seen. Senior reporter at the Daily Mirror, George Fallows, was so
impressed by his colleagues experience that he followed up the story
himself. He suggested that the Harpers call in the SPR (Society for
Psychical Research) which in turn contacted Maurice Grosse, a member and
resident of North London.
Grosse arrived at the Harpers on September 5th, a week after the disturbances
had begun. For the next few days nothing out of the ordinary occurred. Then,
on September 8th, whilst Grosse and a journalists from the Daily Mirror were
keeping vigil, between 10 pm and 11 pm, they heard a crash in Janet’s
bedroom. They discovered that her bedside chair had been thrown about four
feet across the room where it was lying on it’s side. Janet was asleep at
the time and no one saw the chair move. But when it happened an hour later,
the photographer Morris was ready and captured the event on film.
Grosse claims that then he
experienced the strange happenings - first a marble was thrown at him from
an unseen hand, he saw doors open and close by themselves, and claimed to
feel a sudden breeze that seemed to move up from his feet to his head.
On 10th September, the Enfield
case made the front page of the Daily Mirror, then the story was picked up
by LBC radio ( a London based station) and that evening, Grosse, Mrs. Harper
and her neighbor took part in a two and a half hour NIGHT LINE programme.
The phenomena continued - there was interference with electrical systems in
the house, electrical faults and mechanical equipment failure, as soon as
camera flashes were recharged they were quickly drained of power, an infra
red sensitive television camera was brought in to do remote monitoring of
the bedroom, but as soon as it began filming the tape would jam. The same
thing was happening to the BBC Radio reporters tapes when tape cassettes
were found to be damaged. Often the recordings were erased, the
metal inside some of the machines would be found bent, and even some of the
tape decks would disappear reappearing several hours later.
Grosse was soon joined in his
investigation by writer Guy Lyon Playfair and the two men spent the next two
years studying the case until it finally ceased.
The knocking on walls and
floors became an almost nightly occurrence, furniture slid across the floor
and was thrown down the stairs, drawers were wrenched out of dressing
tables. Toys and other objects would fly across the room, bedclothes would
be pulled off, water was found in mysterious puddles on the floors, there
were outbreaks of fire followed by their inexplicable extinguishing,
curtains blowing and twisting in the wind when all windows and doors were
closed, even accounts of human levitation - Janet claimed to have been
picked up and flung about her room by an unseen entity (witnessed by
neighbors passing by and looking up into the girls’ bedroom). Both girls
claimed that they were being pulled out of their beds by an invisible force
and Janet claimed that the curtain beside her bed twisted several times in a
tight spiral and attempted to wrap itself around her neck trying to strangle
her. This was backed up by her mother who had witnessed this more than once.
Soon an extraordinary harsh
rough male voice was heard - coming from Janet’s throat. Janet claimed to
have no control over the voice, and would even appear to be in a ‘trance’
like state when the voice occurred. The voice claimed to be several
identities, often speaking in obscene language. One character who did keep
reappearing was ‘Bill’ who claimed to have died in the house. Out of all the
voices, this was the only one that could be verified. ‘Bill’ was a man who
had allegedly died in the house, and event that none of the Harpers knew
about.
Psychiatrists and local
doctors were brought in to see whether this was indeed Janet being
mischievous or if a second personality was developing, or perhaps there was
indeed a paranormal ‘entity’. Maurice Grosse spoke to speech therapists who
suspected that the voice was not coming from Janet’s usual vocal chord
equipment but by the second set of vocal chords all people have. Actors can
be trained to speak using these ‘false chords’ to produce a deep gravely
voice, however it can be a painful process. This theory was soon backed up
by a recording of ‘the voice’ on a laryngograph (registers patterns made by
frequency waves as they pass through the larynx). However to keep up this
‘gravely’ voice for hours on end would naturally have consequences on
Janet’s normal voice. But Janet’s voice did not seem to be affected.
Grosse deemed that the source of the poltergeist activity seemed to have
intelligence of some kind, since it would rap out answers to simple
questions - one rap for no, and three for yes. During a session, Grosse
asked how many years ago the supposed entity had lived in the house - there
followed 53 raps.
Mediums were brought in to
help and Janet spent six weeks in Maudsley Hospital in South London where
she underwent extensive tests for any signs of physical or mental
abnormality - but none were found and during this time the poltergeist
activity ceased.
Professor Hasted, head of
physics at Birkbeck College, University of London, assigned his assistant to
help identify the problems in the house, especially the spontaneous metal
bending and snapping that appeared to be occurring around Janet.
Not everyone was as willing to
believe that this was entirely paranormal activity as Grosse and Playfair
seemed to be - further researchers were sent by the SPR (Society for
Physical Research) - Anita Gregory and John Beloff. Gregory was convinced
that all the activity stemmed from Janet’s trickery. She claimed that they
were excluded from the children’s bedroom when the phenomena was said to
occur and that they would hear a ‘thump and a squeal’ from Janet’s room and
upon entering they would find Janet sitting in the middle of the floor
claiming she had been flung there by the ‘entity’. Another occasion, Gregory
was allowed into the room but had to stand with her head towards the door to
allow the poltergeist activity to occur - it proceeded by throwing objects
at her head whilst she heard the children giggling. Gregory believed the
voices to be muffled voices of Janet and her thirteen year old sister Rose
covering their mouths with their bed sheets or averting their faces whilst
producing this ‘phenomenon’. During her visit, Gregory ‘caught’ Janet
cheating - a video camera had been set up in a room next door to Janet that
recorded her bending spoons and attempting to bend an iron bar by sheer
force, as well as "bouncing up and down on her bed, making flapping
movements with her hands". Janet admits to having done this. She claims that
she "wanted to see if the investigators would catch her out - they always
did".
Gregory also claims that
Janet’s Uncle, John Burcombe had told her that he believed that Janet had
taught herself to talk in a deep voice and that she had always been a
mischievous child, enjoying misleading strangers. Janet was also an athletic
girl who could have quite easily jumped from her bed to the floor when she
claimed she was being ‘thrown’ by the ‘entity’.
After two years, the events
subsided and the Harper family continued their normal lives.
Was this genuine phenomena? If
not, why did the Harpers have their household disrupted for two years,
invaded by investigators, psychiatrists, mediums? Because the Harpers went
to the newspapers in the very beginning, skeptics argue this was a hoax. Did
Maurice Grosse, the paranormal investigator, who had lost his young daughter
Janet in a car accident only a year earlier, want to believe too easily in
the paranormal? Was the Poltergeist activity caused by frustrations
externalising? Some researchers believe that sexual frustration can aid the
activity - such as Janet beginning menstruation and her mother going through
the menopause? Was the recent divorce of Janet’s parents a contributing
factor? Two years later, why did the activity mysteriously stop? It was also
claimed that Mrs. Harper was trying to get to the top of the housing queue
as it was becoming quite common for council tenants to have created ‘haunted
houses’ - however Mrs Harper refused to leave her home.
It is widely believed that
this case began with genuine phenomena, but soon turned to trickery. As the
media demanded paranormal activity, eleven year old Janet and thirteen year
old Rose, were not going to allow them to go away disappointed, and reveled
in the attention.
Photo Strip - in the photo
strip pictures above, the curtain by Janet's Bed mysteriously wraps itself
around her bed sheets and attempts to pull them off.
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