THE ENFIELD POLTERGEIST

The Hodgsons - Janet 11, mother Peggy, Margaret 12, Billy 7, Johnny 10.

Johnny died of cancer, aged 14. Peggy developed breast cancer, dying in 2003. Janet suffered the loss of her son when he was 18.

Foolishly, Janet Hodgson and her sister had begun to play with an Ouija board.

Then things began to go wrong.

In 1977, Janet Hodgson and her family began to experience strange events in their home at 284 Green Street, in Enfield in London.

A policewoman signed an affidavit that she had seen a chair move.

There were more than 30 witnesses to the strange events.

The events included levitation, furniture being moved through the air, cold breezes and physical assaults.

(The Enfield Poltergeist - 11 year-old London girl who 'levitated' above her bed)


Witnesses heard Janet apparently deliver a message, in a rasping male voice.

The voice said: "Just before I died, I went blind, and then I had an ’aemorrhage and I fell asleep and I died in the chair in the corner downstairs."

The voice was recorded on audio tapes.

The voice is said to be that of Bill Wilkins.

Bill Wilkins was "a foul-mouthed, grumpy old man" who had died in the house many years before.

The strange events continued for more than a year.

'Janet levitating'

The first strange event happened on the evening of 30 August 1977.

Janet complaining that her and her brothers' beds were wobbling.

The following evening, in the children's bedroom, Mrs Hodgson saw the chest of drawers move, apparently due to an invisible force.

Margaret said: "There were strange little noises in the house, you couldn’t make out what was going on. None of us got slept."

Neighbours, Vic and Peggy Nottingham were called in.

Vic said: "There was a knocking on the wall, in the bedroom, on the ceiling. I was beginning to get a bit frightened.’

11-year-old Janet went into violent trances.

The Hodgsons called the police.

A policewoman, WPC  Carolyn Heeps, saw a chair move.

She said: "A large armchair moved, unassisted, 4 ft across the floor."

She inspected the chair for hidden wires, but could find none.


The Daily Mirror photographer Graham Morris visited the house.

He said: "It was chaos, things started flying around, people were screaming."

Photographs were taken.

One shows Janet apparently being thrown across the room.

The BBC went to the house.

The BBC crew found the metal components in their tape equipment had been twisted, and recordings erased.

Maurice Grosse and Janet

Investigators from The Society for Psychical Research, Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair, went to the house.

Grosse said: "As soon as I got there, I realised that the case was real because the family was in a bad state. Everybody was in chaos."

"When I first got there, nothing happened for a while. Then I experienced Lego pieces flying across the room, and marbles, and the extraordinary thing was, when you picked them up they were hot.

"I was standing in the kitchen and a T-shirt leapt off the table and flew into the other side of the room while I was standing by it."

One day, Maurice and a neighbour found one of the children shouting: "I can’t move! It’s holding my leg!"

They pulled the child free from 'the grip of invisible hands'.

In 1978 a priest visited Green Street.

The incidents 'quietened down' although there were still some 'noises'.

Janet told Channel 4: "I felt used by a force that nobody understands.

"I really don’t like to think about it too much.

"I'm not sure the poltergeist was truly 'evil'.

"It was almost as if it wanted to be part of our family.

"It didn’t want to hurt us.

"It had died there and wanted to be at rest.

"The only way it could communicate was through me and my sister."


In 1980, Janet told ITV News: "Oh yeah, once or twice (we faked phenomena), just to see if Mr Grosse and Mr Playfair would catch us. They always did."

Janet was recently asked by the Daily Mail how much of the phenomena at Green Street was faked.

Janet says: "I’d say 2 per cent."

Janet says: "I recall being very distressed by the photos when I was a child, I was very upset.

"I knew when the voices were happening, of course, it felt like something was behind me all of the time.

"They did all sorts of tests, filling my mouth with water and so on, but the voices still came out.


"I was bullied at school. They called me Ghost Girl and put crane flies down my back.

"It was hard, I had a short spell in the Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital in London, where they stuck electrodes on my head, but the tests proved normal.

"The levitation was scary, because you didn’t know where you were going to land. I remember a curtain being wound around my neck, I was screaming, I thought I was going to die.

"My mum had to use all her strength to rip it away. The man who spoke through me, Bill, seemed angry, because we were in his house."

Janet says: "I was bullied at school. They called me Ghost Girl and put crane flies down my back.

"I’d dread going home.

"The front door would be open, there'd be people in and out, you didn’t know what to expect and I used to worry a lot about Mum.

"She had a nervous breakdown, in the end."

Janet's brother was called 'freak boy from the Ghost House' and people would spit at him in the street.

Janet appeared on the front page of the Daily Star under the headline: 'Possessed by the Devil.'

Janet left home at 16.

Janet says of her haunted house: "Years later, when Mum was alive, there was always a presence there - something watching over you.

"As long as people don’t meddle the way we did with Ouija boards, it is quite settled.

"It is a lot calmer than when I was a child. It is at rest, but will always be there."

Janet says of the poltergeist: "It lived off me, off my energy.

"Call me mad if you like. Those events did happen.

"The poltergeist was with me and I feel that in a sense he always will be."

After Peggy Hodgson died, Clare Bennett moved into the house.

Clare Bennet said: "I didn’t see anything, but I felt uncomfortable. There was definitely some kind of presence in the house, I always felt like someone was looking at me."

Clare Bennet's son, Shaka, 15, says: "The night before we moved out, I woke up and saw a man come into the room. I ran into Mum’s room."

Clare Bennet and family moved out after two months.