The so-called Enfield Poltergeist case took place between 1977 and 1979 in Brimsdown, Enfield, United Kingdom and the reasons it interests me are several fold. They were recently reignited by the movie “The Conjuring 2” which is supposedly on the “True Events” in Enfield, and if you’ve seen it you already know how this case relates to the Warrens.
The basics of the Enfield case are that In August 1977, Peggy Hodgson called the police to her rented house in Enfield after two of her four children claimed that furniture was moving and knocking sounds were heard on walls. The children included Margaret (14), Janet (11), Johnny (10) and Billy (7). Upon arriving, a police constable said she saw a chair slide on the floor and "was convinced that nobody there had touched it". Later claims included allegedly demonic voices, loud noises, thrown rocks and toys, overturned chairs, and children levitating.
Reports of further incidents in the house attracted considerable press attention and the story was covered in British newspapers such as the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror until reports of activity came to an end in 1979.
Members of the well-known and respected British Society for Psychical Research were the primary investigators on the case, mostly in the persons of Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair.
As the case gained notoriety questions began to come up almost immediately.
I’m certainly not going to detail nearly three years of activity here, but suffice it to say that after extensive reading and reviewing of evidence, I don’t consider the Enfield case to be an authentic case of paranormal activity.
Many incidents lead me to this conclusion;
First is the infamous levitation picture. Stories abounded of eleven year old Janet levitating off her bed while sound asleep (Ed Warren himself made this claim). However no images were ever captured of that phenomenon. The only evidence at all of Janet’s levitation is the below photograph, which appears to me to be a girl jumping off a bed, and I’m not alone. Paranormal Investigator Melvin Harris studied the case and the photograph, calling it “Gymnastics”.
The levitations weren’t the only phenomena that could be termed bashful. In fact virtually all of the activity credited to the poltergeist (dubbed “The Thing”) occurred when no one was present. Maurice Grosse commented “It’s smarter than we are. The moment you go out of a room something happens, it knows what we’re up to”.
Amazingly Grosse and Playfair knew that Janet and sometimes Margaret (Peggy) were “Sometimes motivated to add to the activity with some tricks of their own. It didn’t bother us very much” to quote Playfair.
In time the curious whistling and barking noises started to become words, including obscenities. Playfair understood how many could still consider Janet responsible but he didn’t think so even though “The Voice” refused to speak unless Janet was in the room alone with the door closed!
Professional ventriloquist Ray Alan visited the house numerous times and concluded that the girls were producing the voice because they “Obviously loved the attention they got”.
Even when Janet and Peggy confessed their trickery to several reporters Grosse and Playfair elicited a retraction from the girls.
Joe Nickell is an American skeptic who has been involved in investigations all over the world, many paranormal and many forensic. It was Nickell who debunked and dated the Shroud of Turin on a commission from the Catholic Church.
It should be noted that Nickell is a skeptic, so he doesn’t believe in hauntings as a general rule and to say his opinions on the case weren’t well received by the principles would be an understatement.
He spent an hour on television with the Warrens in 1992 at the end of which Ed Warren threatened to beat him to a pulp. Guy Lyon Playfair accuses Nickell of cherry picking his facts to use only those that fit his narrative, saying “Nickell has collected quite a basket of unripe and rotten cherries from his ‘careful examination’ of this house, while leaving all the ripe ones on the tree”.
Playfair goes on to list a number of incidents Nickell allegedly ignores, one of which being “A sequence on Graham’s motor-drive Nikon showing a curtain twisting itself into a tight spiral and apparently being blown into the room although the window behind it was closed, and another sequence clearly showing bedclothes moving untouched by any incarnate human hand.”
However I have to say, and if someone can correct me I’d love to know about it, that to the best of my knowledge no video evidence exists of neither that occurrence or any of the others Playfair puts forward as examples.
There are many websites that devote time to this case so I’ll stop here after reiterating that I consider this case to be a fraud and I’ll move on the involvement of Ed and Lorraine Warren…
If you’ve seen The Conjuring 2, which I enjoyed, you may be under the impression that the Warren’s were the primary investigators on the Enfield case, when as you’ve just read that was clearly not true.
In fact, in an interview with Dave Schrader on Darkness Radio in January of 2016, Guy Lyon Playfair was very candid about his interaction with Ed Warren at Enfield.
They did turn up once, I think, at Enfield, and all I can remember is Ed Warren telling me that he could make a lot of money for me out of it. So I thought, “well that’s all I need to know from you” and I got myself out of his way as soon as I could. As I said was not impressed. He didn’t spend… I don’t think he went there more than once. And I did read somewhere a transcript of a lengthy interview which he’s alleged to have with one of the girls – which they couldn’t remember giving him – and it was describing all sorts of marvelous wonders which I don’t think ever happened. I think he was a complete…um… well… (laughs)… fill in whatever word…
Nickell has no problem filling in the words. He considers the Warrens “exploitative and harmful charlatans”.
As with everything else I write here it’s left to you to decide what you think.
My opinion? The jury is still out, but as I read evidence is starting to mount.
The basics of the Enfield case are that In August 1977, Peggy Hodgson called the police to her rented house in Enfield after two of her four children claimed that furniture was moving and knocking sounds were heard on walls. The children included Margaret (14), Janet (11), Johnny (10) and Billy (7). Upon arriving, a police constable said she saw a chair slide on the floor and "was convinced that nobody there had touched it". Later claims included allegedly demonic voices, loud noises, thrown rocks and toys, overturned chairs, and children levitating.
Reports of further incidents in the house attracted considerable press attention and the story was covered in British newspapers such as the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror until reports of activity came to an end in 1979.
Members of the well-known and respected British Society for Psychical Research were the primary investigators on the case, mostly in the persons of Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair.
As the case gained notoriety questions began to come up almost immediately.
I’m certainly not going to detail nearly three years of activity here, but suffice it to say that after extensive reading and reviewing of evidence, I don’t consider the Enfield case to be an authentic case of paranormal activity.
Many incidents lead me to this conclusion;
First is the infamous levitation picture. Stories abounded of eleven year old Janet levitating off her bed while sound asleep (Ed Warren himself made this claim). However no images were ever captured of that phenomenon. The only evidence at all of Janet’s levitation is the below photograph, which appears to me to be a girl jumping off a bed, and I’m not alone. Paranormal Investigator Melvin Harris studied the case and the photograph, calling it “Gymnastics”.
The levitations weren’t the only phenomena that could be termed bashful. In fact virtually all of the activity credited to the poltergeist (dubbed “The Thing”) occurred when no one was present. Maurice Grosse commented “It’s smarter than we are. The moment you go out of a room something happens, it knows what we’re up to”.
Amazingly Grosse and Playfair knew that Janet and sometimes Margaret (Peggy) were “Sometimes motivated to add to the activity with some tricks of their own. It didn’t bother us very much” to quote Playfair.
In time the curious whistling and barking noises started to become words, including obscenities. Playfair understood how many could still consider Janet responsible but he didn’t think so even though “The Voice” refused to speak unless Janet was in the room alone with the door closed!
Professional ventriloquist Ray Alan visited the house numerous times and concluded that the girls were producing the voice because they “Obviously loved the attention they got”.
Even when Janet and Peggy confessed their trickery to several reporters Grosse and Playfair elicited a retraction from the girls.
Joe Nickell is an American skeptic who has been involved in investigations all over the world, many paranormal and many forensic. It was Nickell who debunked and dated the Shroud of Turin on a commission from the Catholic Church.
It should be noted that Nickell is a skeptic, so he doesn’t believe in hauntings as a general rule and to say his opinions on the case weren’t well received by the principles would be an understatement.
He spent an hour on television with the Warrens in 1992 at the end of which Ed Warren threatened to beat him to a pulp. Guy Lyon Playfair accuses Nickell of cherry picking his facts to use only those that fit his narrative, saying “Nickell has collected quite a basket of unripe and rotten cherries from his ‘careful examination’ of this house, while leaving all the ripe ones on the tree”.
Playfair goes on to list a number of incidents Nickell allegedly ignores, one of which being “A sequence on Graham’s motor-drive Nikon showing a curtain twisting itself into a tight spiral and apparently being blown into the room although the window behind it was closed, and another sequence clearly showing bedclothes moving untouched by any incarnate human hand.”
However I have to say, and if someone can correct me I’d love to know about it, that to the best of my knowledge no video evidence exists of neither that occurrence or any of the others Playfair puts forward as examples.
There are many websites that devote time to this case so I’ll stop here after reiterating that I consider this case to be a fraud and I’ll move on the involvement of Ed and Lorraine Warren…
If you’ve seen The Conjuring 2, which I enjoyed, you may be under the impression that the Warren’s were the primary investigators on the Enfield case, when as you’ve just read that was clearly not true.
In fact, in an interview with Dave Schrader on Darkness Radio in January of 2016, Guy Lyon Playfair was very candid about his interaction with Ed Warren at Enfield.
They did turn up once, I think, at Enfield, and all I can remember is Ed Warren telling me that he could make a lot of money for me out of it. So I thought, “well that’s all I need to know from you” and I got myself out of his way as soon as I could. As I said was not impressed. He didn’t spend… I don’t think he went there more than once. And I did read somewhere a transcript of a lengthy interview which he’s alleged to have with one of the girls – which they couldn’t remember giving him – and it was describing all sorts of marvelous wonders which I don’t think ever happened. I think he was a complete…um… well… (laughs)… fill in whatever word…
Nickell has no problem filling in the words. He considers the Warrens “exploitative and harmful charlatans”.
As with everything else I write here it’s left to you to decide what you think.
My opinion? The jury is still out, but as I read evidence is starting to mount.