Sunday, June 5, 2011

The Enfield Poltergeist

       It is often that children play pranks, though would a child be capable of fooling not only their family, but investigators, for over a year? Skeptics seem to think so when considering the unnatural activity that took place during 1977 and 1978 in Enfield, North London. A single mother with four kids had her life change drastically one late August night when two of her children complained that their beds were "going all funny." She assumed they were making up stories that their beds were shaking, but she would soon come to realize that it was only the beginning.
       The activity that was to follow included knocking sounds on the walls, furniture moving on its own, and toys being thrown without anyone touching them. Peggy Harper took her children,  Margaret age twelve, Janet age eleven, Johnny age ten, and Billy age seven, out of their house and sought help from their neighbors. After having the neighbors search the house and yard and find nothing, she took her children back inside. When the unexplainable happening continued, she called the police. While an officer was there, the officer claimed that she saw a chair move on its own, and even signed an affidavit to confirm it.  
       The strange occurrences continued to take place, and they were now being blamed upon what was deemed the Enfield poltergeist. Various investigations and media coverage took place, including a visit from George Fallows from the Daily Mirror, a reporter who claimed to have been hit on the head by a Lego block that no one had thrown, a thirteen month investigation by two members of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), and the book that was written about the haunting that was titled: This House is Haunted.
       Another phenomenon that was reported was Janet speaking in a male voice. While speaking in the false cords, she claimed to be a man called Bill whom had died in the house of a brain hemorrhage. Recordings of this that were taken, as she would speak in this voice for hours (which is believed to be medically impossible), were found to be damaged. BBC had gone to the home and taped it, but the recording crew later discovered that the metal in the machines was bent and the recordings thus erased. 
       Janet was taken to the hospital after these strange episodes of speaking in a male voice, and while she was gone from the home the phenomenons came to cease until her return. At one point, the children were caught bending spoons themselves, and when questioned, Janet admitted that they had been behind some of the happenings, but only "...just to see if Mr Grosse and Mr Playfair would catch us. And they always did." (the two men that Janet named were the investigators from the SPR.) This caused people to question if the phenomenons were the work of a poltergeist, or the work of mischievous children. 
Is Janet truly levitating, or simply jumping off of her bed? You be the judge.
       

1 comment:

  1. George Fallows was my father, he died in 1982. He did not claim to have been hit by a lego brick, that was the photographer with him. His notes for the first night are brief, the only one relating to lego reads 'saw lego'. I presume that meant that he saw the lego move.

    ReplyDelete