The Enfield Poltergeist

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Unthinkable, a True Crime Podcast. Thank you for joining me. So today I am going to talk about a case that is a little bit lighter for us all. As particularly the last two cases I've done have been awful, and I couldn't really bring myself to research another child abuse case so soon. So I was browsing on the internet, and this one came up, and it's so intriguing. And whether you believe in these sort of things or not, there's something about ghost stories that are quite enjoyable in a weird way.

So today I am gonna talk about the Enfield poltergeist. Now, this is one of the most famous ghost stories, and it's got photos and videos and audio clips, and you're probably familiar with there's a famous photo. Um, and it's so this story is kind of based around a lady called um Janet, she's a child, she's an 11-year-old girl when this happens. Um, and there's a photo of her apparently levitating and kind of being thrown across her room. Um, and you know, we don't really know if it's I mean it's a real photo, but we don't know if she's just jumping or whether she is actually being thrown by a poltergeist.

Um now I don't really believe in ghosts, but I think if someone tells me like a ghostly encounter they've had, I instantly believe them and I get a bit scared. And when I was researching this phone, I actually scared myself a little bit. Um, so yeah, I don't really believe in the paranormal, but I am quite easily convinced. It's yeah, it's a weird one. I can't my logical brain, I can't see how there could be like ghosts and paranormal things going on, but I do like I can change my mind really quickly and be like, oh no, I'm really scared.

So I still I don't really know how I feel about it. Right, so let's get started. Okay, so Penelope Hodgson, she's a single mother with four children, Margaret, uh Janet, sorry, Johnny, and Billy. And in 1977, the family lived in number 284, Green Street in Enfield, London. Now, in August 1977, Penelope, known as Peggy, she makes a call to the police saying that she has witnessed furniture moving around and that two of her children had heard knocking on the wall. So this is the first of many apparent paranormal activity, and this one is on the 30th of August.

The children are upstairs in bed, and Peggy is downstairs watching TV. Now she starts to hear strange noises coming from one of the bedrooms, sort of like a shuffling around sound, and then Peggy hears the children scream. So she goes upstairs, and as she approaches the door, the noise stops. Penny opens the door, and the children are sat up in bed and they look startled, and they explain that the beds had been shaking and that the chair next to Janet's bed had been sort of swaying from side to side.

So Peggy, like she understandably, she says to them, Stop messing around and go to bed. And she actually takes the chair downstairs with her. So all is quiet for the remainder of the night. However, the next evening, these noises start up again. The shuffling noise, followed by Janet and Johnny, her brother, screaming for their mother. Now Peggy is getting a little annoyed at this time, the children are messing around again, and she goes upstairs. But when she opens the door, she witnesses a large chest of drawers sliding towards the door.

Now Peggy puts her hands on the chest and she stops it and then she just pushes it back against the wall. And I can kind of understand her reaction. She doesn't want to panic, but she's more of a nope, this isn't happening. Nope, it's not happening, can't see it. But when she pushes it back to the wall, it then starts to move again. Now, this time she tells the children to come out of the room and they all go downstairs. So when they get into the living room, that's when the knocking starts. And Janet describes this knocking as coming from outside of the wall, but also on the inside of the wall and coming from underneath the floorboards.

Like that's really scary. Like, can you imagine being in a room and there's knocking all around you? Oh so Penny, not knowing what to do, she rushes to her neighbour's house and Vic Nottingham. He opens the door. Peggy and the children look absolutely terrified, so Vic agrees to come round and have a look and see what's going on. As soon as he enters the house, Vic is confronted by the weird loud knocking sounds, and then the lights start to flicker. Now everybody in the house is petrified, and Vic calls the police.

And WPC Caroline Heaps arrives. She describes hearing this incessant knocking coming from all around her. She says the lights are flickering, but then the chair that Peggy had brought down from the children's room. She says it starts to rock and then it moves four feet towards her. Now, Caroline, she writes this in her witness statement. This is a trusted police officer. We could say that the chair was being pulled by one of the children by a piece of string or something as a prank. But Caroline checks the chair all over and there's nothing.

And that wouldn't explain the banging. Everyone's in the same room. So where is the banging coming from? And this isn't the only police officer to write a witness statement. So Sergeant Brian Haymes, he went to the house a few days later and he said he witnessed Lego bricks levitating and marbles flying around the room. And he said that one of the Lego bricks started to fly towards his face and he actually ran out of the house. And the police have said they can't help as they can't arrest a ghost.

Now, on September the 4th, 1977, in the middle of the night, the family are all sleeping together in the living room when suddenly objects start to fly around the room. So toys, marbles, lego bricks, they look like they're being thrown by force. And then they hit the wall, drop, and then they stay completely still. So the marbles, like when they hit the floor, they don't roll, and when the Lego bricks drop, they don't bounce, they just stay completely still. So Peggy again, not knowing what to do, she goes back to her neighbours.

And Vic and his wife, who's also called Peggy, they come round. Now they know the police aren't going to help them, so they're trying to decide what to do. And Peggy, Vic's wife, she suggests why don't they call the Daily Mirror? Now, so this calling the press does make people a bit skeptical. You know, why invite the media into your house? Are you doing this for public attention, media fame, etc., etc.? But I don't know. I think, you know, they don't know who to call at this point. We're in this is in the 70s.

There's no Google, there's no social media. Um, and I doubt paranormal investigators are easy to come by. So are they reaching out because they are desperate and they think the media can help? Like they might have better connections. So the group called the Daily Mirror, and this is in the early hours of the morning, and at 2:30, a reporter, Doug Bent, and photographer Graham Morris arrive at the home. Now, initially, nothing happens, and after a while, the reporters think this is just a prank, and they get up to leave.

As soon as they leave the house, things inside start up again, and Peggy runs out and she gets them to come back in. And this time, Graham he catches photographs of the marbles and Lego in the air. And one piece of Lego actually hits him in the face so hard that it leaves a mark. So, of course, we don't actually know if these objects were flying around or someone is throwing them. And maybe the press think this would make a good story. But, you know, surely if they thought it would make a good story, they would have stayed in the first place.

Like, why would they have gone to leave and then come back in? Like if they're thinking, oh, this is a good story, they would they would sort of start straight away, wouldn't they? Um, I mean, and you could argue the family called them back in and talked them into it. But to this day, not one of the witnesses, including the police officers, have ever changed their story. And nobody has ever said it was a hoax. And there's a documentary in 2016 where Janet and her sister Margaret they talk about what happened in that house, and their version of events has never ever changed.

Now, the Mirrors Reporter Doug Bent, he gets in touch with the Society of Psychical Research, and they send Maurice Gross, who is a retired inventor, and he is here to investigate any activity that is going on. And he is joined by paranormal investigator Guy Playfair. So the pair set up their equipment, they have tape recorders, and the mirror reporter sets up cameras around the home. And between them, they monitor the cameras. Now, one night, Graham Morris, the photographer, it's his turn to monitor everything, and he's listening to an audio in Janet's room when all of a sudden he hears a scream, and he runs up to Janet's room and starts taking pictures straight away as soon as he goes in the room.

And what he catches is that that most famous image of the case, and it's Janet actually in the air above her bed, seemingly to be levitating before falling, like flying and falling to the floor. Now, these photos do divide opinion. Some say she's jumping, some say she's being thrown. And I don't know, but it kind of looks like she is jumping. But the first photo that we see, her legs are straight. And it looks like she's almost standing on her bed, and the photos are taken quickly. But the second photo, she's in the air, but we don't have the photo of like you know, when you jump, you need to kind of crouch and spring up, don't you?

Um, but we don't have that photo, like this isn't captured on the film, and you could say that the photo has been removed, and I can't see a time stamp. But it just, I don't know, it just feels like there would be it would be obvious that there would be a picture of her crouching and then springing up, you know, um, and the fear on Janet's face, and also with the photo where it looks like she's standing on the bed, so that's up towards like the head of the bed, and then but she ends up past the bottom of the bed, high into the air.

So that's a big jump to go that far and that high. And I don't know if I'm just sort of seeing what I want to see, but I don't know, it just it's very interesting. And the photographer, he actually said that so we always see the same sort of photo, but he said the sequence actually starts with Janet in bed, and you know, it goes from her lying in bed to literally coming up out of the bed and then being thrown, but we haven't seen the like the first photo, so we don't know if that's true. But it's so interesting.

Now, so this goes on for a long time, and it's actually 18 months, and more than 30 people, including family, neighbours, the police, and journalists, all say they saw paranormal activity. And I wanted to talk a bit about the levitating. So a lollipop lady called Hazel Short. Now she says that she saw Janet through the window, um, and she said that Janet was laying on her back, but was going up and down as if someone was holding her hands and feet and swinging her up into the air, but there was no one else in the room.

Now there's no photos or videos of this, but Hazel's a trusted member of the community. Why would she make it up? I mean, she could get herself in the paper, but there was another time when Janet claimed that she was lifted up and actually passed through a wall into the neighbor's bedroom. So the bedrooms are like adjoining, so Janet's bedroom in the neighbor's bedroom. Um, and she yeah, she claimed that she was lifted up and actually passed through the wall into the neighbour's bedroom. Now the neighbors do hear a noise and they go up to see what's going on, and Janet isn't in the room, she's not there, but the book that she is reading is there.

So, how did it get there? Oh, it's also fascinating. Um, again, you know, there's no real evidence, there is a photo, but there isn't any, you know, solid evidence, but still. Um, so I wanted to move on to the voices. So, Janet, over time, she starts to make strange noises, and it appears that the noises are coming out of her rather than her making them herself, and the noises eventually turn into words, and then the words turn into sentences. And these voices are seemingly coming from Janet, and she isn't moving her mouth.

Um, and there's like hours of audio of this, um, but there was this one that was um caught on video that I watched, um, and Morris is having a conversation where he's apparently talking to the poltergeist that has possessed Janet. And in the clip I watched, Graham is telling a knock-knock joke to the poltergeist. I know, very strange. Um, but the voice answers through Janet, and it's kind of an old croaky man's voice, um, and Janet's lips aren't moving. But I don't know, you kind of see a bit of a twitch in her mouth.

So I don't know, it's interesting. Um, it's a bit later on um that the voice starts to tell Morris that his name is Bill uh Wilkins, and that he died in the house of a hemorrhage, and that he died on a chair in the living room. And this is all in that creepy man's voice, like it's an old man's croaky voice. If you heard it, you you'd know what I mean. Um, this is reported in the paper, and Bill Wilkins' son Tom, he comes forwards and he said that his father had indeed lived in that house and died in that house in the chair in the living room.

And this was proven by the death certificate being presented. And you know, we've been talking about the knocking. Well, Tom actually said that his father Bill used to knock on the wall to let his neighbours know he was going out. So, how could Janet have known this? It, you know, again, it's not like she can look it up on Google, there is no internet, you don't have iPhones that you can search things up on. Like, how would Janet know where to find this sort of information? Now, there are questions over Janet whether she's able to be a ventriloquist, and that she's tricking everyone and making up this voice, like she's doing it herself.

But Morris, so he's desperate to prove that this is real paranormal contact, so he decides to put water in Janet's mouth, and he puts tape over her mouth, so she absolutely can't speak, and amazingly, the voice still comes from Janet. At the end of the tape, Janet spits out the water to prove it was still in her mouth. So is this actual proof? Well, we don't know because it wasn't caught on video. Now this seems weird, doesn't it? Why wouldn't you get this on film? I just go back and forth with this all the time.

I don't know why you wouldn't film that because that would be oh, that would be actual proof. Oh, it's just so fascinating. So now, Janet, it's safe to say she has been going through a lot, so this has been going on for 18 months, and it's there's things happening every day. Um, things are being thrown around every day. There's there's a time when the sofa gets tipped up when Janet's on it, and there's another time when she stands up from a chair and the chair follows her out of the room, and this is all witnessed by people that are in the house and the cameras and everything.

So, yeah, she's going through a lot. She's not sleeping because a lot of these things are happening to her at night, and you know, she's constantly being monitored and interviewed, and it starts to take a toll on Janet. So, Morris he actually arranges for some respite for Janet, and she goes to stay at the uh Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital for six weeks. Now, as soon as Janet leaves the house, the paranormal activity stops. And when Janet returns to the home six weeks later, the paranormal activity didn't restart.

So, what do we think? Is the fact that the paranormal activity stops when she leaves proof that it was all a hoax by her? And that she went to the psychiatric ward, got help, and returned not wanting to carry on with it? Or did the spirit leave with her? Now, I should mention that Janet was known to be a bit of a trickster, and she was caught a few times saying things like, let's play a trick on him. Um, she's caught trying to bend spoons in the kitchen, and there's an occasion where she's caught hiding um Morris's tape recorder.

But these are so minor compared to everything else, aren't they? Um and if she's caught, you know, trying to bend spoons, but she's not caught with all the other bigger things going on, like she's not even in the room sometimes when the marbles and the lego are flying around, and there's a time when Morris witnesses a boiling kettle being thrown across the room, and Janet's upstairs. Morris is in the room on his own. And there's another um occasion when I cannot find an explanation for this at all.

So there's one night Morris suggests that they take all of the furniture out of the bedroom, and so they just leave the beds in there. Um, so there's nothing there in the room that that can be thrown around at night. So in this room, there's now just the two beds for the children to sleep in, and there's a cut uh like a cast iron fireplace, which is actually attached by pipes to the wall. It's a gas fire, and this is a really heavy fireplace. So night falls, and it's Guy Playfair, he's monitor he's monitoring the house tonight, and he starts to hear like a loud sort of grounding noise coming from upstairs, and then there's a large bang followed by a scream.

Now, Guy runs upstairs, and the cast iron fire has been ripped out of the wall, thrown to the floor, and it's actually crumpled a bit where it's hit the floor, and this has caused extensive damage to the wall, you know, with all the pipes and everything. Like it was connected to the wall, so it's just all been ripped away and thrown. And there's pictures of this, so we know it happened, but there's absolutely no way Janet would have been able to lift that fireplace. She wouldn't have been able to rip it out of the wall and throw it.

And even if her brother helped her, it's impossible for those children to lift that fire. You know, they're solid, you know, they're solid, heavy, like even a grown man would struggle to pick that up. So how did this happen? There's no explanation. But I mean, there are parts in this case that of course can be explained, like the photos, for example, but there are also things that can't be explained. And what about the police officers? Um, there are witness statements. Why would they lie? So we know that the paranormal activity pretty much stopped altogether when Janet um went to the psychiatric hospital, and it seemed that the haunting was finally over.

Janet moved out of the house when she was 16. She moved out to get married, but her mother Peggy, she actually remained in the house up until her death in 2003, and she died in the house. Now, later, a lady called Claire moves into the property with her children. She also has four children, and strangely, Claire and her family only stay in the property for two months. She said that she had an uneasy feeling like there was an unwelcome presence, and one day her son came running out of his room saying an old man had just walked into his room.

And that was enough for Claire. She was like, I'm out of here. She and her family they packed up their belongings and they left. Oh, it's creepy. Right, so today, Janet, so she's now known as Janet Winter. She's married, she has children, and she lives a quiet private life out of the public eye. She does occasionally speak about what happened to her. Um, and Janet and Margaret, they participated in the 2023 documentary, The Enfield poltergeist. It's very good, it's very good. I recommend that one.

Okay, so there you have it. That's the case of the Enfield poltergeist. It's such an interesting one, isn't it? And I still don't know what I think. It's so tricky. Like, I don't really think I believe in it, but there's some stuff that just can't be explained. And there are so many things here that can't be explained. Like they really can't, like the things that are flying around the room, like the both police officers witnessed marbles and Lego bricks just flying around the room. It wasn't like they were being thrown from a corner, they were literally flying around the room.

Like you just oh, I don't know. Yes, I don't know, it's a tricky one, and it is you know, it has made me a bit scared. Um, I'm upstairs recording this by myself, and I do want to go back downstairs, really, where my husband is. Um, yeah, so anyway, so let me know what you think of this one. Um, it is an interesting one. Um, and I like to end by saying in a world where you can be anything, be kind. Take care.

The Story