After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Enfield Poltergeist: 1970's Suburban Horror

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

The Enfield Poltergeist is Britain's most infamous haunting - set in the late 1970s on the outskirts of London, it continues to be told and retold. Most famously in the film The Conjuring 2.But this is a real piece of history about a real family and a young girl, Janet, who became the focus of newspapers, paranormal investigators and - if we believe what we're told - a malevolent poltergeist.Written by Anthony Delaney.Edited by Tom Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/ 

Enfield is a large town on the very northern edges of London, some 10 miles from Charing Cross at the heart of the capital. It has been the location of some impressive histories over several centuries too. Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, lived there in the 11th century, for instance, and it was in Enfield that the poet John Keats attended Clark's school in the early 19th century. But the history we've gathered to hear today is far more recent and significantly more unsettling than either of those. This history, in its essential form, asks one thing from us. It asks us to determine if an evil entity might possess an 11-year-old girl, unleashing chaos on her family, or if an 11-year-old girl could fool the world, creating a legacy for herself that ensures her place in

the history books alongside Geoffrey de Mandeville and John Keats. Now, as luck would have it, our producer, Freddie, lives just 10 minutes from the site of this particular haunted history and so much to his chagrin we sent him to the most famous address in his area 284 Green Street 280 282 so next one is 284. Hello, it's producer Freddie here. We're on Green Street. It's a busy road, as you can hear, like so many roads in Enfield. And number 284 is a 1950s council house. I'm pretty sure about that because it's the same house as mine, basically.

We've got pebble dash on this top story, flaking paint on the bottom, brick and a blue door. The curtains are drawn and it could be any house in Enfield, honestly, any house. So many are like this. Now let's stand in front of that same council house again, shall we? Now let's stand in front of that same council house again, shall we? But this time, it's the evening of the 31st of August, 1977. It is not dark, but the light is fading. Birds sing of the final days of summer over the continuous noise of traffic. August had been wet, but on that particular day, temperatures hovered in the high 20s.

Inside number 284 Green Street, as night drew in, sisters Janet and Margaret Hodgson, 11 and 13 respectively, readied themselves for slumber in what they called the back bedroom. Their bedroom. Janet later recounted that the very first sign that anything was amiss in the house was the incessant sound of shuffling coming from their room. Their mother, Peggy, hearing the commotion from downstairs, assumed a sisterly tiff was underway and so, as was her duty, she ascended the stairs to deal with their childish brawl. But when she came into the room, as Janet retells it, Peggy found the girls huddled together and frightened, not fighting

at all. Just then, Janet says, Peggy saw the cause of the commotion with her own eyes. A chest of drawers was slowly, but surely, shuffling across the floor towards them. Peggy attempted to push the furniture back to its proper place, but it would not budge, as though a force unseen was pushing against her. would not budge, as though a force unseen was pushing against her. For the rest of that night, the walls of 284 Green Street in Enfield seemed to come alive. Knocks and taps fell like heavy raindrops throughout the house, seemingly arbitrarily. None of the Hodgins present could account for the sounds as they spread and grew louder. As the sun came up the next day, September dawned and a return to

school beckoned. But Peggy, Janet and Margaret were utterly exhausted. But they hadn't seen anything yet. What unfolded under their roof that night would go on to haunt them for a further two years and make them one of the most famous families in Britain. and make them one of the most famous families in Britain. This is After Dark, and this is the history of the Enfield Poltergeist. Oh my god, I have goosebumps. Let's get into it. Hello, if you are listening and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony. And as you might have gathered, we're going to talk about the Enfield Poltergeist. I don't know anything about this case. I'm very familiar with the Battersea Poltergeist case. And I've purposefully not read anything about this case. I'm very familiar with the Battersea poltergeist case,

and I've purposefully not read anything about this. So I'm going to be reacting genuinely as we go through this story. Anthony, I'm already scared. There is something about poltergeist activity that is particularly unsettling because so much of it happens in the home, right? Now, just for anybody who doesn't know, a poltergeist could be, some people believe, a type of ghost or supernatural entity that is responsible for mischievous happenings in a house. Some people think it's a sign of a psychological or physical disturbance in the house. Others believe that there's an unknown energy, but that energy could be associated with a living person, not necessarily a ghost or a supernatural entity. And other people, sceptics particularly, think that these are just mundane, attention-seeking pranks that are being played.

But either way, whatever the explanation, certainly on the 31st of August 1977, we have what is referred to as poltergeist activity unfolding at 284 Green Street. Now, that's Green Street. So what's happening in the rest of the UK at this time? So we have Elizabeth II on the throne. There is a Labour PM in Downing Street. His name was James Callaghan. Angela Rippon presented the Eurovision from London, which of course is the most important of all of these points. And as this is all unfolding in August 1977, there are National Front confrontations taking place at different locations across the UK. So it is an interesting time in terms of national history and what's happening, but our focus today is going to be directed towards what's happening in Enfield. I think what's so terrifying about the idea of a poltergeist is when you think about other

supposed hauntings, whether you believe in it or not, but let's take it at face value for a second. This idea, usually, that a ghost, you see it, but you can't touch it. It can't touch you. It can't cause you any harm other than to frighten you. And with a poltergeist, that's different. The idea is that they can have an effect on the material physical environment around you. And obviously, we just heard at the beginning here, there's a chest of drawers moving across the room to two young girls. The other thing that I know about poltergeist cases, of course, is that they're always associated, or at least most often associated with young children and specifically teenage girls. And I can think of many cases that that applies to, but I suspect we're going to talk about them in a little bit. We are indeed. So if you want to know some of the historical

precedents for this, I suppose, we're going to cover that after the second narrative. So stay tuned for that. In Enfield, however, one of the most compelling things about this, I think anyway, Maddy, is the ordinariness of where this is set. This isn't a ghostly manor. This isn't an 18th century setting, as Freddie described at the top of the episode on his visit to the actual location. This is a 1950s council house. It's an everyday home.

And there's something very compelling about that, too. It feels very real, very. We've got people participating in popular things on a bigger level than ever before. And so ordinariness, working class, middle class lives are visible in ways that they maybe weren't necessarily before. I find that the ordinariness is so interesting, particularly thinking about ghosts in London. The centre of London is so layered with history and there are so many ghosts associated with various landmarks. I'm thinking, for example, the Tower of London. And yet this is in the suburban outskirts. This is just an ordinary home with an ordinary family

going about their ordinary life. And this extraordinary thing starts to happen. And it's really compelling, but it's very, very frightening. Well, nobody was more frightened, I think, than the Hodgson's themselves. So that's Peggy, the mum, Janet, the younger daughter, and Margaret, the three of them, particularly found themselves at the centre of this. The following morning, they need some help with this. So they go to their neighbours, the Nottinghams, Vic and Peggy Nottingham. Now, Vic is always lauded as being this very brave, manly builder, and nothing is going to faze Vic. So he goes next door and he goes to investigate in 284. And he heard the knocking for himself. And other people have said since that because he was

a builder and because he would be familiar with the natural knockings of a house, you know, if a pipe was broken or if something was amiss, he would identify those things. But he went in and he did hear the knockings. So now we don't, we have the chest of drawers moving. Now we have knocks and taps and wraps, as I was explaining in the beginning of the description. And they're all around the house. And Vic, the next door neighbour, is hearing these too. So it's going beyond the family. It's not just the Hodgson's that are hearing this now. And they're bringing in witnesses already, which is so important. This isn't something that is contained to a family that, you know, maybe the teenage girls have played a trick and they're trying to persuade their mum that they've done it.

This is something that the whole family has become instantly frightened of. And they've straightaway called in other people to investigate it with them. Not only that, but once the Nottinghams get involved, they decide that they need to call in the police straightaway. That's quite early to do that. Right? I think so too. Because there's no crime happening. Why would call in the police straight away. That's quite early to do that. Right. I think so too. Because there's no crime happening. Why would you call the police? But they do. That's who they call first. They call the police. They say, right, this is unusual. Now, I suppose what it indicates is that their initial thought is that this is supernatural because they didn't call Plummer. They didn't call the council, they didn't call whoever it was,

they called the police. So they go, well, you guys are going to have to deal with this. Something is going on. But as you say, it's not a crime. Do the police have a special department for dealing with supernatural elements? Oh my God, I hope so. If they do, I want to know about it. We need to do an episode on that. I want to join it. Right in and let us know if the police have a department for supernatural elements. But listen, they called them and they came. Two police officers came.

But as you pointed out, they find it very difficult to establish what crime is trying to be reported here. And even at this very early point, the police suggested that maybe they wanted to look at the children in the house, that perhaps there was some kind of pranking underway or that the adults were being led astray somehow. That's all well and good until we look at Carolyn Heaps' testimony. Now, Carolyn was one of the police officers that attended. Or if you look at any of the interview footage, and it's all available online with her, she's referred to as W, Carolyn Heaps, which of course is a bit of history in itself. And she had suggested that potentially it was the children, but then apparently she saw some more furniture move. This time it was a chair. Yeah, so she's seeing this move now herself as an observer, an impartial observer. So Maddy, I have her testimony here and I would

love if you could read it for us, just to let us know what she saw when she went to 284 Green Street. I'm slightly uneasy reading her testimony. I feel like her words are going to conjure something. Okay, so this is WPC, as it would have been then, Carolyn Heaps. She says, WPC, as it would have been then, Carolyn Heaps, she says, it came off the floor by maybe a half inch, I should say, and I saw it slide off to the right about three and a half to four feet before it came to rest. I checked to see whether or not it could possibly have slid on the floor. I placed a marble on the floor to see whether or not the marble would go in the same direction as the chair did or didn't. It didn't roll at all. I checked for wires under the cushions, the chair, and I couldn't find an explanation at all. I've got chills. It adds credibility because we have a member of the police force. You know,

have a member of the police force you know 1977 they are credible witnesses we have somebody who's performing a few little investigations the marble checking for wires i have a question did carolyn heaps have the marble on her person was that part of the police kit in the 1970s or is she she got it from the children in the house and marbles will go on to play even more of a role in this particular story. But no, she took it from the children's collection. But they gave up. Ultimately, the police gave up. They left. They were like, right, okay, well, good luck with that.

We don't know what it is, but we tried our marble thing, so we'll leave you to it. And they left. And so the Hodgesons have gone to the neighbours. The neighbours plus the Hodgesons have gone to the police. The neighbours plus the Hodgesons have gone to the police. The police arrive, they give up. And now... There's an obvious next step. Right.

Peggy, who's the mum, with the help of Vic Nottingham. Now, Vic, for me, is an interesting character because he features a lot in the impetus of the earlier stories. But anyway, they call the Daily Mirror. And they think that, right, well, the police couldn't help. Now we're going to go to the press. And Vic, apparently, it's Vic who was particularly insistent. He would call, he would leave messages and kept calling, kept calling, kept calling until finally they said, right,

we'll come out and we'll see the house. I find that so fascinating. And I think in cases like these, and I don't necessarily mean poltergeist cases I mean cases where there might potentially be a hoax playing out and I'm reserving judgment on what is or is not happening but you have to look at those peripheral characters those characters who are pulling the strings as you say putting in the impetus moving all the pieces around the board. And Vic, for me, is coming up as someone who's doing that immediately. Draws a bit of attention to himself at that point, doesn't he? Even though he probably doesn't mean to, but certainly I noticed it too when I was researching this. I went, all right, Vic, you're inserting yourself there quite a lot. But it works. Two reporters arrive,

Graeme Norris, who's a photographer, and Douglas Bence, who's a writer. And they come and they assess the scene. They see what's going on. They think it might be an interesting human interest story for their paper. What they encountered was a little bit more unsettling than they anticipated. And that was the extreme fear and discomfort that they found Peggy, the mother, in. That unsettled them significantly. Initially, at least, they didn't really think anything paranormal was happening at 284 Green Street, but they were really worried about Peggy, the mum. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, the dynamics of the family are interesting. Is there a dad on the scene at this point?

There is, but they have separated. So dad has left. Peggy is now raising the children on her own. Dad has had at least one new girlfriend and they often come to visit the children, but apparently in a very tension-filled way with the new girlfriend. Peggy feels displaced. There's tension in the house. The girls aren't as happy as they used to be they would say this themselves they in fact they have said this themselves so yes there is a dad but it's a tension-filled relationship yeah the domestic situation does feel tension-filled we've got peggy obviously living alone during a lot of the time then, looking after these two young girls. And there's something there about her shifting role in the domestic space that she is having to take on responsibilities, not that as a mother, she wouldn't have been taking on these responsibilities already,

but in 1970s society, maybe she's feeling that she has to step into a new role as a single mother. And then you've got the next door neighbours, particularly Vic, the man living next door, coming into their domestic space and sort of taking over the narrative a little bit. I'm just keeping my eye on that. I think that's an interesting thread. And then you've got these two journalists coming into the space and straight away they're picking up on the fear of the mother. There's a lot going on here.

There's a lot to unpick, even without the supernatural element. And a lot of men coming into that domestic space. Yeah. So what happens? The journalists, presumably, they don't leave thinking it's just a human interest story. They were about to. They were about to leave just being like, oh, there's nothing here. There's nothing to even write about.

I feel sorry for the mum, but let's pack up the car. So they did. They took everything down. They took all their cameras. And that's apparently when things started to happen. As the journalists were loading their car, things started flying around the house, items. So accounts vary. And you can see all this testimony online, by the way. But some people say it was Lego, a combination of Lego and ashtrays. Other people say Lego and marbles. Household items flying across the rooms. Douglas Bence and Graham Norris went back in. Bence particularly says he couldn't see the source of where these items were coming from. He could see the items, but he is confident that the Hodgesons were not throwing them. So that's something that they witness and they

attest to. Norris, who's a little bit more sceptical, this is Graham Norris, the photographer, he is taking pictures of these items flying through the air, but conveniently or inconveniently, when they come to develop them the next day, there is no evidence contained on the camera roll. So they didn't capture those items flying around the room okay that is either very scary or very suspicious that's very interesting see again i'm usually the one who's more open to these things i feel like i'm playing the skeptic today but to me the timing of everything kicking off then just as they're leaving that feels so attention seeking is it a poltergeist being attention seeking or is it the family?

It's like they feel that they've invited their media in and they've missed the chance and they haven't received the interest they thought they were going to receive. So they've had to ramp it up to the next level. Now, I will say, interestingly, the Lego and the marbles, and as you say, the details change in terms of people's testimony of what was flying around. But those are both children's toys, popular, ordinary household toys in that period. Again, we've got the ordinariness, but we've got the focus on children, which we now know has become such a staple of the Poltergeist case. And I'm interested to know whether that was already understood as a staple in these cases by the time this case started, or whether this sets a precedent.

No, that was already understood. And we'll see that in a little bit more detail. And actually, that would have been understood by no group more clearly than the Society for Psychical Research. They would have understood the cultural, social, and historical context for the supposed poltergeist activity. So the way the Society for Psychical Research became involved is that Benson Norris, our journalists, they think they need extra help here. And they're also becoming increasingly worried for the well-being of the family. So they ask the SPR, the Society for Psychical Research, to come in and help. Now, a little bit of history on the SPR. They were set up in 1882. So by this stage, they're not quite yet 100 years old. They had six initial areas of study that they were interested in. And that was thought

transference, so mind power, basically. Mesmerism, very 19th century phenomenon. Mediumship, again, very 19th century. The Reichenbach phenomenon, also known as the Odic force. Apparitions, and haunted houses and seances. So we're hitting a lot of the big topics there, right? Haunted houses, seances, apparitions, mesmerism, mediumship. So they are looking into all of these things. There's another literary committee that's also established to study historical accounts of these phenomenon within the SPR. Now, they are not initially believers necessarily, although some of them are. What they want to do is debunk as much as they can, and they want to debunk fake psychics in particular. And they even had a journal, like the Journal for the Society

of Psychical Research, which was published quarterly. As we know, because we've discussed this particular man before, Arthur Conan Doyle was a member, a fully believing member, actually, we should say, in Doyle's case. Friend of the pod. Weirdo of the pod. And Harry Houdini had links to the society too, but he was specifically interested in exposing fraudulent mediums and fraudulent ideas of hauntings. So this is who we're bringing into this situation now. And it's growing, right? You can really get this sense that this case, say, for instance, the children are doing this. If I

was one of those children, if I was one of those two girls, I'd be going, oh my goodness, this is getting out of hand. There are so many adults coming in here now. But that might be their motivation. That might be that they want the attention it could be that peggy is pulling the strings and making them do this it could be that vic is controlling the family again i'm now becoming suspicious of the two journalists who were interested enough in the case to go in the first place and investigate it and now they're bringing in such an english thing and i suppose this happens in america in the 19 century as well, but it feels so British, rather, to me, that something as ephemeral and complex and difficult to pin down as supernatural experience is institutionalised and there's a society set up to investigate it. I love that. But the fact that they go to the Society of Psychical Research

and draw in their help. Everyone has something to lose in this, but they also have something to gain. Everyone has skin in this game here. And I think what's emerging is a really complex web of motivations, of relationships. All that is presumably going to continue to expand and expand as more and more people become involved and the layers of nuance and subjective experience are going to increase. Yes, things are definitely about to ramp up. Thank you. powered Catherine Parr. Six wives, six lives. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'm joined by a host of experts to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII, who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the

Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. The journalists called the SPR would introduce a potent new element to the events that were unfolding at 284 Green Street. A paranormal investigator with a heartbreaking history of his own, Mr. Morris Gross. Gross was a man that had witnessed his fair share of history. On an international stage, he had fought in the Second World War and was one of a number of soldiers who were evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940. In 1944, Gross married his wife, Betty, and the pair went on to have two daughters and a son. He also put much of his ambition and energies following the war into his inventions. He filed his first patent in 1945 for a mechanical

toy, though his most successful invention was the rotating advertising board. Life for the Grosses was, on the whole, good. But tragedy was just around the corner. In August 1976, one year before the Enfield hauntings, his daughter, also named Janet, died in a motorbike accident. She was just 17 years old. It was in the aftermath of this life-altering loss that Morris Gross joined the Society for Psychical Research. Now, during his time at Green Street, Gross quickly conducted a series of investigations and observations

which helped him determine that, in his view, the house was truly haunted. Gross, realising the potential of the case before him, called Guy Lyon-Playfair, a journalist and paranormal investigator, to record events alongside him. Both men took up almost permanent residence at 284 Green Street. Amidst the flying Lego pieces and marbles and wrappings and tappings, it soon became apparent that a very traditional element of poltergeist activity was present in the Enfield case too.

Now this is a recurring historical pattern that has been explained as the poltergeist activity was present in the Enfield case too. Now this is a recurring historical pattern that has been explained as the poltergeist centre, when a supposed spirit attaches itself to an adolescent girl. Both Margaret and her sister Janet matched the age profile of this poltergeist centre. But it soon became apparent that the ongoing activity coalesced around young Janet in particular. Okay, so we're starting to see this typical element of such cases coming out. And we're going to talk about the possible reasons for this in terms of, I suppose, the human interest, the possible supernatural meanings. But first, tell me what exactly is happening to Janet, because this is really frightening. She's a young girl living with her mum and her sister. She's had these

scary experiences, again, if we take this at face value. And now things are going to get quite violent and quite physical for her, aren't they? Yeah, they absolutely do. She's 11 at this time, as I said. She is having fits, during which she becomes very strong and very violent. She bashes her own head against the wall. She, in her own words at the time, and as an adult since, has said that she feels like she was possessed by an evil spirit. So she felt that she was being taken over, possessed. She was very careful about using those words, but those are her words, possessed by an evil spirit. Things would get worse for her at night. Some of these episodes are caught on tape or in photograph,

but there is no moving images to show any of this supposed possession. So you may very well be familiar with some of the pictures that show her supposedly flying from her bed, which people who believe take as very concrete evidence to other people it looks like a child jumping in the air from their bed. But at this point, another member of the SPR, the Society for Psychical Research, was called in, a medical doctor, Dr Ian Fletcher. And this was because people were worried about Janet's health and her wellbeing. He hypnotised her and under hypnosis, Janet said that it was her and her sister that were doing all of this, but then went on to say, actually, she didn't know if it was. Can I just interject? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So many questions here about consent.

This is a young girl who her body is being taken over in some way, whether that's through her own mental ill health, whether it's a performance that she's doing, and actually it's under her consent, but it's violent, whatever is happening. And she's harming herself if that's the case. And then a doctor comes in and hypnotizes her and there's just so many complex layers here aren't there about autonomy female agency in this domestic space especially the young girls and then also and i find this fascinating bringing in experts in avertedas, potentially to talk about the

SPR, but a medical doctor coming in. We are measuring this in the 1970s in terms of male coded expertise to what is a subjective female experience happening in a domestic space. And I just find that fascinating that there's that framework of legitimacy and illegitimacy going on there. One of the only women, external women, to the family or to the neighbour that came in was a journalist. And she doesn't like speaking about her experiences, not because she believes them necessarily, but only because she says she can't really explain them. But again, there are interviews with her online. But what I find fascinating about that is that this doctor, Dr. Fletcher, hypnotises her. She says, Janet says, that it is her and her sister that are doing these things. But the conclusion that Fletcher comes to is that, no, they're not hoaxing. So that's an

interesting conclusion, I think, right? Did you say that he's a member of the SPR? He is. Is there a sense that he wants to believe this? I think so. That it would align with his beliefs about the world? I think so. I think that's what's happening here. There are also times at which even Morris Gross would say that they caught the children, and I'm quoting here, in the odd little game, but they dismissed those odd little games. And there's rationale to this. They're saying that actually it would be more weird if the children weren't playing little games, which I get because children would potentially play up on that. But at the same time, you are finding a source for at least some of

these disturbances and you're choosing to ignore that source. You're choosing to ignore your findings because it might not fit in with your own personal beliefs. It feels to me at least. Yeah, no, I agree. And I think what was maybe needed here would be something like a child psychologist to come in and just think more about these girls and protecting them, but also understanding them. Because presumably, they're changing a huge amount during this period. I know in December of that year that Janet, who is the focus of all this, gets her first period. Her body is changing. She's going through puberty. That's a huge hormonal change, a huge emotional change. Do people take this into account when they're thinking about these girls or not?

Certainly they talk about that. When I came across that detail about Janet's first period, I felt like, well, that's none of my business. But there it is in the public realm, being hugely publicised as part of this case, either directly or indirectly. We know the day of Janet's first period, which is the 14th of December 1977. And the reason we know that is because it coincided with a day where Hazel Short, a neighbour who was a lollipop lady, apparently on that very day saw Janet floating horizontally across her bedroom window and other objects from the house were floating around her at the same time. So Hazel runs home, tries to levitate herself off the bed in the same way that she saw or that she thought she saw Janet and couldn't achieve it. So this poor girl's body and changing body is being placed

at the centre of these disturbances. It's being laid bare for the world's media and there's an intimacy there which does feel uncomfortable. It makes me think of if social media had existed in the 1970s. There's endless TikToks and things of women playing pranks on men saying that their skin peels every time they have a period. And I feel like Janet could have done something about, we all levitate and objects fly around us. I mean, do you know what? It's so funny that you say TikTok because what happens next made me think of TikTok as well. And that is that Janet starts speaking in a voice. It starts as a dog growl first, and then Morris Gross thinks that if she can make it into a growl,

she can potentially talk. And she talks in this, I'm going to do an impression of it, but it is online, you can hear it, but it goes kind of something like that. It's very deep, it's very masculine in many ways. And everyone was convinced by, well, everyone that was investigating was so convinced by this. There's no way this girl could do this voice. There's just no way. And they looked into the vocal cords and all of this kind of thing that the sound had to be made very high up in her throat. But then literally the other day, I saw this little girl on TikTok

and she is making the sound of a roaring lion. And she kind of does this noise way better than I do it. It sounds exactly like Janet when she's making those ghost voices. It sounds exactly like her. It really, really struck me that the similarity. Someone find that girl and cast her in an Enfield Portuguese film. Oh my God. Yeah. There are also the kids that do the seagull impressions. It's a whole competition. It's like an international competition. Anyway, we digress. So hold on. I mean, this is a huge, a huge development in the case.

We've had flying. We've had things moving around the room. Janet herself being lifted up. We've got these violent episodes where Janet's becoming seemingly super strong. We've got the tappings on the walls, we've got all of these things. But now she's speaking in a different voice. What? Yeah, yeah. And now people start to become suspicious, people involved in the case. They basically, Graham Norris, the photographer, for instance, says it's all starting to become

a little bit ridiculous now. He starts thinking, is this something got to do with the separation of Janet's parents, potentially some of the poverty that the family had found themselves in? As it happens, Janet is admitted to the Maudsley Hospital for psychiatric testing. And the thing is, at this point, she spends two months in that hospital as an 11-year-old girl. And she comes out, and all we hear about in the press at the time and from witnesses is she was given a clean bill of health. I would argue that nobody is kept in a psychiatric hospital for two months if everything is OK. I don't know. I don't know enough about her personal medical record. But it seems to me potentially a little bit more was going on there.

And that actually, you know, two months is a long time for somebody who doesn't need to be there, is what I'm saying. And presumably it would have had a huge, huge impact on her development as a young girl, you know, to be away from your home and your friends and your school and your sister for two months. It's the perfect link to the next part of the story because the cases start to diminish after she goes to the hospital. They don't disappear entirely, but they do significantly start to diminish. And as a side note, they don't move from that house. They stay in that house and Peggy, the mum, actually dies while she's still living there in 2003. So the events, I suppose, just peters away. But like, as you were saying at the start of this episode, Maddy, this is not an isolated case. There are significant cases throughout history that show us that young girls often start to experience or enact similar things to Janet did.

So we have an example from 1956, 15-year-old Shirley Hitchings in Battersea, which of course people are probably very familiar with the Battersea poltergeist case. We have Anne-Marie Chabrol in 1960s Germany. We have Marcia Goodwin Bridgeport in Connecticut in 1974. Tina Resch in Columbia in 1984, she was 14. Betty Parsons, now these are going back a little bit, but it shows the history of these things. Betty Parsons was 12 years of old when she became embroiled with the Cock Lane ghost case, which I know you're really familiar with, Maddy, because you're doing some research on that. I am currently working on it for something. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And then there's another case as well, isn't there, in the 18th century, Anne Robinson as well, who is a servant girl in 1772. And actually, if you were to transpose these dates onto a timeline,

it seems to me that a lot of them in the 20th century are happening in the late 1950s into the 60s up to the 80s, when there is huge social change going on, and particularly change around the roles of women in society and the opportunities, the options that are available to young girls as well. Think about in the 60s, we've got the pill coming in for the first time. We've got women's liberation. We've got pop music, pop culture. We've got all of these things that are completely transforming women's lives. And I just wonder if there's a correlation there. And in the 18th century, we've got these two cases happening in the 1760s and the 1770s.

Is there a similar feeling in that moment in terms of women's lives? I would say, not to give too much away about what I'm doing on the Cochlea and Ghost case, but that is all about women's lives, domestic intimacy, women's relationships, and what happens when they slip from their position in society. And I would bet good money that that's the same in the Anne Robinson situation in the 1770s. And people were very intrigued at the time to know what was going on. Why was this happening? And when I say at the time, I mean at the time of each of these individual cases. So even in the 18th century, even in the 19th century, and then in the 20th century. And so many different

theories came up, one of which is these are children who are deliberately hoaxing. They're scaring people to get attention, and it's a psychological state of some kind of attention-seeking. Other people think it's some form of dissociation where actually maybe these girls don't know. But I will draw your attention then to the medieval female mystics as well. I think this is a morphing of some of those experiences where often young girls felt they were having a sexual or an intimate relationship with Jesus or with God around the time of their adolescence. And I think this might be a morphing of that in the way that you're describing slightly.

Again, it comes down to that thing about bodily intimacy, your relationship with your own body changing. There's a sexual element there. It's so fascinating. I know you're thinking of people maybe like Joan of Arc, who says that she's speaking to God when she's 18. this overwhelming feeling of union with something divine, or in the case of Poltergeist, something supernatural and maybe malevolent. What side of the argument do you fall down on in this case? Do you think that it's the children doing a hoax? Do you think it's the parents, well, Peggy and maybe Vic from next door being involved in this? Do you think it's a case that people, as they come into the case, add their own level of misinformation, whether they mean to or not, and it just grows? What do you think is happening here? Or do you think it is a supernatural event? No, I don't think it's a supernatural event, but I'm going to caveat that in a second. No, I do think there is an element of hoaxing

happening here. I think that seems to be the most, whether that's deliberate or subconscious hoaxing, I don't know. I'm not a psychologist. I can't speak to that. I always think that anything I've seen or read about this can be explained through hoaxing. And what I find fascinating is that a lot of the witnesses involved are so determined for this to be true that they ignore things. So, you know, Janet saying under hypnosis that it was her and her sister. I believe that. Pretty damning evidence. Yeah, yeah. I think that's, why would you not believe that? Finding them playing the odd

little trick, it means, well, they did it once. What's to say that they haven't done it a million times? What's the combination? I know in the Cotlain ghost history, there is not just one person at the centre of that hoax. And in similar other things, you often find networks of women, actually, in a lot of cases, who are helping one another to maintain this position that they have gained through these stories. Nonetheless. Now, regular listeners of After Dark will know that besides Maddy being sceptical in this episode, that I'm usually the resident sceptic. Anytime there's like fairies or big feet or whatever it might be, I'm usually the first to question that and question any of the authenticity of any of those accounts.

But the reason the Enfield Poltergeist case was so interesting to me, and I didn't realise this until I was researching it, is that I myself, I can't even believe I'm saying this, have actually experienced some similar phenomenon. Now, not happening to me. So we're going to play you a voice note now that I sent to Maddy in, I think it was August 2023. I'll have to look at the timestamp. Now, this is before we even started recording After Dark, and it comes the day after I had been on a cemetery tour in Edinburgh, as you do. Most people who go to Edinburgh will go on a cemetery tour. And yes, it was the famous cemetery in Edinburgh. And it was being led by the icon that is Yvette Fielding, who used to host one of the campus TV shows of all time, Most Haunted. And this is my account of what I witnessed

and heard 24 hours after the incident had occurred. So listen to it, see what you think, and Maddy and I will have a quick chat about it afterwards. So we went into Greyfriars Kirkyard with Yvette Fielding and she did the whole thing of, if anybody's here, you know, next thing the knocking started. And the only way I can describe the knocking is that it was it sounded like it was coming from within the walls of this mausoleum so I went outside had a look on the outside walls was nobody there knocking in it didn't sound like anyone was making the sound on the surface of the walls it sounded like it was coming from the walls then it started to sound like it was coming from underneath the floor slightly. I know that sounds ridiculous and I'm mostly in, but anyway, there

you go. She was asking questions. How many people were there? Three, apparently, was the answer. I would say maybe about 70% of the questions garnered what you could term as coherent response. And then about 30% were either incoherent or there was no tapping in response to some of that stuff. But the most significant thing for me yesterday was, she said at one point, she was like, if you're here and if you can hear us, blah, blah, blah, why don't you walk amongst us? Why don't you take a walk around and look at us?

And Maddy, I heard with my own human ears, the starts of footsteps coming from the back of the mausoleum, interweaving between us, coming past me and going towards the door of the mausoleum. Now, there was nobody moving. There was nothing. I cannot account for it. I remember having the thought in that moment.

I don't necessarily think this way now, but it was so kind of alive, which is a stupid word, but nonetheless, it was so alive in that moment that I went, there is no way I can ever doubt the existence of a life after death from what I am hearing right now. Now I've calmed down since and I'm trying to be a little bit more rational about it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But in that moment, I was like, what? This is unbelievable. I heard the footsteps they were footsteps they weren't they weren't taps this time the taps I was like okay that's really interesting and they are answering they seem to be answering so that's really interesting but it was the footsteps for me and I heard it travel it wasn't just like standing in one position or I heard it move through the mausoleum so yeah I remember you sending this to me and

having genuine shivers down my spine because you are such a skeptic and you know I will always voice at you about ghost stories or things we should look into for the podcast and frequently you're like no there's no way that's real. Get a grip. And he's nicer than that in real life. But you were so convinced of your experience and that that had happened to you and that it was real. It's phenomenal. It's really, really interesting. It was odd and it was emotional at the time. I remember in the moment when I was standing in that mausoleum, I felt very emotional about it. I was like, oh my God, this changes everything. Like my entire understanding of life changes in this one moment. And then, you know,

give me a couple of hours and that all started to fade away. And I started to go, okay, I know exactly what I heard. That is what I heard. What I don't know is, and it wasn't in a controlled enough environment for me to determine the source of those sounds. Now, if it turns out that those sounds were in some way ghostly or coming from another world or whatever, which I don't technically believe in, then guys, we all better start living our lives better because there is definitely an afterlife. It was the most convincing thing in that moment. But I don't know where the sounds were coming from. I don't know who was making those sounds. Somebody could have been in that mausoleum or behind the mausoleum or on top of the mausoleum that I wasn't aware of that was

making those sounds. So I don't know that. I can't know that for sure, that that wasn't being manipulated by a human force. I will say the most bizarre thing, which strikes me to this day, was that I heard the footprints within the mausoleum travel from the back to the front. It passed by me. I didn't feel any touch or anything like that, but you know, you can just hear the sound travel. I could hear it travel out the door of the mausoleum. And yet, I still don't believe. But you know, one of life's many mysteries, I suppose. Put it down to that. I am looking forward to listeners saying what they think of this experience

and the Enfield Poltergeist case more generally. I think in the case of the Edinburgh haunting that Anthony's had, that can be its own episode. We will go to the graveyard. We will listen out for his footsteps. We'll get there. We'll do it.

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