Nearly fifty years later, the Enfield Poltergeist remains one of the most debated paranormal cases ever recorded.

Was it a genuine haunting?

… or a hoax that spiraled out of control?

Or something stranger that happened when belief, attention, and fear collided inside one small house?

Transcript

Host:

In 1977 a single mother in England called the police. Not because of an intruder but because something inside her house was moving the furniture.

Chairs sliding across the floor, knocking sounds inside the walls, toys flying across bedrooms, and at the center of it all an 11 year old girl. Soon investigators would arrive. Journalists would crowd the house. Photographs would capture a child seemingly levitating in midair. And then the voice began. A deep rasping voice claiming to belong to a man who had died in the house years earlier. It spoke through the body of the girl. But even today no one agrees on what actually happened inside that house. Tonight on the midnight drive we’re visiting 284 Green Street in North London to visit the Enfield Poltergeist.

The house itself was ordinary. A council house at 284 Green Street in Enfield, a suburb in North London. Two floors, small bedrooms, a narrow staircase. The Hudson family had moved there after the parents separated. Peggy Hodgson was raising four children of her own. Margaret, 12, Janet, 11, Johnny, 10, Billy, 7.

It was the evening of August 30th, 1977 when the first disturbance was reported. Janet complained that her bed was shaking. Her mother assumed it was rough housing. But the next night something changed. Peggy Hodgson heard a loud crash from upstairs. She climbed the stairs to scold the children. But when she entered the bedroom, she saw the chest of drawers moving. Not wobbling, but sliding across the floor. She tried her hardest to push it back against the wall, but something pushed it toward the door. The family ran to the neighbors. A man named Vick Nottingham, a builder, came to investigate. He searched the room. Then the knocking began. Loud, rhythmic, moving across the walls from bedroom to ceiling to hallway. He later admitted something unusual. I was beginning to get a bit frightened. So the family called the police. One of the officers, Carolyn Heaps, later signed an official statement. She said she saw an armchair move across the floor on its own. About four feet. No wires, no visible force. She inspected the chair carefully and found absolutely no explanation. But the police could not investigate a ghost. So they left. What happened next turned a strange household disturbance into an international phenomenon. The Hodgson’s contacted the press. Soon reporters from the Daily Mirror were visiting the house. Photographer Graham Morris arrived with his camera and he described the scene simply as chaos. Objects flying, furniture overturning, children screaming. One of his photographs captured Janet Hodgson suspended in midair above her bed, her face twisted in what looked like terror. That image would become one of the most famous paranormal photographs ever published. But the strangest element had not yet appeared. Because the disturbances began focusing on Janet, the knocking followed her. Objects moved when she entered a room and sometimes she would fall into violent trances. But then came the voice. Witnesses describe it as harsh, gruff, the voice of an old man. The voice introduced itself as Bill Wilkins, a former resident of the house who had died years earlier. Through Janet’s body, the voice told investigators how he had died. The voice said, I went blind, then I had a hemorrhage and I died in the chair downstairs. Investigators later confirmed that a man named William Wilkins had indeed died in the house in 1963. And his son contacted researchers to confirm the story. For months, the activity escalated. Furniture was thrown. Children claimed to be lifted from their beds. Cold breezes moved through sealed rooms. Matches reportedly burst into flame spontaneously. And more than 30 witnesses, including neighbors, journalists, and investigators, claimed to see objects moving without any explanation. Needless to say, the house became a spectacle. Reporters, cameras, psychics.

Everyone wanted to see the Enfield poltergeist. But the closer people looked, the stranger the story became. Because some of the investigators began noticing something else.

Sometimes, the poltergeist only appeared when no one was watching.

In our next segment, we’re going to be getting into the investigations, more about the voices, and the doubt that surrounds this case. If you’d like to join the conversation, go ahead and leave us a comment below, or feel free to reach out to us on our hotline, 402-610-2836. You’re listening to The Midnight Drive.

Welcome back. Tonight on The Midnight Drive, we are talking about the Enfield poltergeist. Eventually, the case attracted the attention of the Society for Psychical Research,

one of the oldest paranormal research organizations in the world.

Two investigators arrived at their house, Maurice Gross and writer Guy-Leon Playfair. Playfair would later write a book about this very case, titled, This House is Haunted.

When Gross arrived, he believed almost immediately that something unusual was happening.

He described Lego pieces flying across the room, marbles thrown from empty containers, spaces, a shirt lifting off a table and sailing across the kitchen, and perhaps the most disturbing of all, the voice, the rasping voice of Bill Wilkins speaking through Janet Hodgson.

The recording still exists today.

The voice speaks in a harsh whisper, answering questions from the investigators.

But not everybody was convinced. Other researchers noticed something troubling. Janet had been caught bending spoons when she thought no one was looking.

She was once seen banging a broom handle against the ceiling to simulate knocking sounds. And skeptics began suggesting something else entirely, that the voice itself might be a trick,

a form of ventriloquism. One investigator, in particular, John Bailoff, suggested Janet was producing the voice using false vocal cords above her larynx, a technique capable of producing the illusion of a separate speaker. Professional ventriloquists later agreed.

The sounds heard on tape were entirely within the abilities of a clever child.

Then came the photographs, the famous levitation image. At first glance, it appears to show Janet floating in the air above her bed.

But skeptics pointed out something else.

In the sequence of the photographs taken that night, Janet appears to be jumping. Her body is arched forward in the photograph. Her hair is thrown upward in the photograph,

as if someone is bouncing off a mattress. Which made sense, because Janet was reportedly because Janet was reportedly a school sports champion.

Now, even some paranormal investigators admit doubts.

Guillaume Playfair himself acknowledged that the girls had occasionally played tricks. But he argued that not everything could be explained as hoax, because too many witnesses had seen objects move. Too many people had heard the knocking, and too many incidents occurred when the girls were not directly involved.

Meanwhile, the case was attracting attention from outside of Britain.

Among the visitors were American paranormal celebrities, Ed and Lorraine Warren.

They were already famous for investigating haunted houses.

But their involvement at Enfield was brief. Critics later claimed the Warrens were more interested in the publicity potential of the case than the investigation itself.

By the late 70s, the Enfield house had become something else entirely. Not just a haunting, a full-on media circus.

Journalists filled the living room, photographers waited outside the door,

and the children of the house were growing up under a spotlight that they never asked for. Janet would later say that the experience was traumatic. She was bullied at school.

Children called her Ghost Girl.

Reporters came and went through the house constantly. Her mother eventually suffered a nervous breakdown. And years later, when Janet was asked how much of the case she had been faked, her answer was surprisingly precise.

Two percent.

Just enough, she said, to see if the investigators would notice. Which leaves the Enfield poltergeist in an uncomfortable place.

Because the case, it contains elements of both.

Genuine fear, documented trickery, eyewitness testimony, and obvious pranks. So, what actually happened in that small house on Green Street?

Was it a spirit? A hoax? A house under enormous psychological pressure?

Or something stranger still?

Or a house that was in a house that was in a house that was in a house that was in a house that was in a house? A moment where belief, attention, and childhood imagination all collided.

Because once the press arrived, the haunting had an audience. And once an audience appears, the story almost writes itself.

The Enfield poltergeist remains one of the most debated paranormal cases in modern history. There are photographs, tape recordings, dozens of witnesses, and just as many skeptics.

Some believe the Hodgson’s house was genuinely haunted. Others believe it was the work of clever children and eager journalists. But one thing is absolutely certain.

For the family who lived there, the experience never really ended. Because when chaos enters a home, even after the noises stop, the memory stays.

And sometimes, that’s the part that haunts people the longest.

The Hodgson’s house is one of the most haunted houses in the world. It’s the most haunted house in the world. It’s the most haunted house in the world.

It’s the most haunted house in the world. It’s the most haunted house in the world. It’s the most haunted house in the world. It’s the most haunted house in the world.