The Enfield Poltergeist Case - Has it been debunked fully yet?

MrMojoRisin

You know the 'Enfield Poltergeist' case from 1977/78? The one that had the Hodgson family at the centre of the drama in an ordinary, semi-detached council house in a North London suburb? I know certain features of the case were attributed to trickery and tomfoolery by some of the children, like a chair supposedly teetering on a door and small objects 'disappearing' and the like. Suspicion centered on Janet, the 11-year-old girl, so, hidden cameras were set up, which recorded her bending spoons with her hands and trying to bend an iron bar. Other researchers from the Society for Psychical Research UK (SPR) came to investigate, but when they came into Janet's room to observe, they were made to stand facing away from the children, only to be hit with objects while the children giggled. The investigators felt that the children were producing the 'voices' themselves, and trying to hide it by burying their faces in sheets, etc, to disguise what they were doing. One researcher, Anita Gregory, claimed that the children's uncle had told her he believed Janet had taught herself to talk in a deep voice, and that she had always been very athletic and mischievous, delighting in tricking strangers. He apparently believed that Janet was the cause of the phenomena.

The investigators and researchers conducted a series of tests to determine the veracity (or not) of Janet Hodgson's gravelly voice, that might suggest otherwise. One test involved them placing two separate microphones on Janet's throat and another on the back of her neck, where it was found that when Janet spoke in that weird voice, more sound came from the mic on the back of her neck. That's where the False Vocal Fold secondary vocal chords are found. Janet would speak in that fashion for up to three hours at a time without needing to clear her throat or cough, and without causing any damage to her normal speaking voice. I think a person can train themselves to speak using that set of vocal chords at length alright though..

Then they made Janet hold water in her mouth, taped her mouth shut, and hooked her up to a device called a laryngograph. When Janet spoke in that weird voice again, the researchers found that her speech was a bit garbled from the water in her mouth but that the formation of her words was still coherent. When they untaped her mouth afterwards, Janet spat out the water, so she hadnt swallowed it at all.

Some things that happened were a bit bizarre, tbh...

http://forums.canadiancontent.net/spirituality-philosophy/58940-enfield-poltergeist-30-year-silence.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHHZp75EbWI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbmUs6CIy_U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qBLlruxPPI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nESwYTAA5Kk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPdnk0yStQI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCQDSPTcoxY

Janet Hodgson nowadays seems fairly weird. Her sister Margaret seems normal though.

patrickthomas

Got as far as the fireplace moving, investigator says "It was so heavy I could not lift it up" It was 60lbs, he could not lift 60lbs ??? It is a little over 25 Kilos, ie a small bag of coal, or potatoes, and it was too heavy for him to lift ???

Elaborate hoax!

pH

Hang on, let me get this straight, part of the 'evidence' is that investigators stood in a room with their back to kids, had things chucked at them and heard the children giggling?

Surely this is a piss-take?

MrMojoRisin

patrickthomas wrote: »

Got as far as the fireplace moving, investigator says "It was so heavy I could not lift it up" It was 60lbs, he could not lift 60lbs ??? It is a little over 25 Kilos, ie a small bag of coal, or potatoes, and it was too heavy for him to lift ???

Elaborate hoax!

Ah he was just stating that as a case in point from his own perspective.

The main brouhaha with that fireplace thing is, 'how did an eleven-year-old girl manage to yank it out of the wall and lift it, before throwing it over her brother's bed while he was sleeping in it (and narrowly missing him)?'

Of course a healthy grown man would have no trouble lifting 60lbs of something

MrMojoRisin

pH wrote: »

Hang on, let me get this straight, part of the 'evidence' is that investigators stood in a room with their back to kids, had things chucked at them and heard the children giggling?

Surely this is a piss-take?

Nah, that's not part of the evidence at all - that was just an observation that they (helpfully) noted.

Two independent witnesses - a baker delivery man and a lollipop lady - saw one of the children (Janet) levitating horizontally in a clockwise fashion along with some toys at the window of her upstairs bedroom from the street below at the same time as each other. I don't think that was a piss take on their part. On that same morning, the baker fella saw a large red cushion materialise out of nowhere on to the roof of the house (which was what caught his attention to start with), before seeing Janet levitating like that. He stuck to his story until his death and he never tried to make any money out of what he saw. Lollipop lady also stands by what she saw. Funnily enough, just minutes before the baker saw the red cushion appear on the roof, SPR investigators and a physicist from London University handed Janet the red cushion and asked her to make it disappear once they shut the bedroom door. Shortly after that came what the lollipop lady and the baker saw from outside.

After that, the neighbour Peggy Nottingham gave Janet a red pen and told her to try to draw a thin red line around the light fixture on the ceiling. They all figured that there'd be no way that Janet could do that without having to drag her bed along the floor to reach up and do it once the door was closed. Anyway they closed the bedroom door and left her to it. They heard a few whimpers and groans from inside the room after a few seconds, and Janet called out to them. So they opened the door, where Janet said, "I've been through the wall! I've just been in your (Peggy Nottingham, the neighbour) bedroom next door! I dropped my book in there as well". Peggy was certain that Janet had never been inside her bedroom in the house next door and thought it was nonsense. So Peggy went down, out, and upstairs to her bedroom next door to check it out. At the exact moment Peggy Nottingham picked up a children's book called 'Fun And Games For Children' off her bedroom floor, the physicist from London University next door noted that a thin red line had been drawn around the light fixture in Janet's bedroom.

patrickthomas

MrMojoRisin wrote: »

Ah he was just stating that as a case in point from his own perspective.

The main brouhaha with that fireplace thing is, 'how did an eleven-year-old girl manage to yank it out of the wall and lift it, before throwing it over her brother's bed while he was sleeping in it (and narrowly missing him)?'

Of course a healthy grown man would have no trouble lifting 60lbs of something

And two girls could not lift it and move it, the case is widely believed to be a hoax.

MrMojoRisin

patrickthomas wrote: »

And two girls could not lift it and move it, the case is widely believed to be a hoax.

So how did the fireplace come out of the wall and get thrown around the room? For the family to go to the trouble of deliberately getting some blokes to remove the fireplace is a bit pointless, considering a) the family - especially the mother - were shaken enough, and b) they had very little money. It'd cost them a fair few bob to replace the fireplace and repair everything else that was damaged in the house; money they clearly didn't have.

MrMojoRisin

patrickthomas wrote: »

the case is widely believed to be a hoax.

How wide? Your interpretation of 'widely' could be, in actuality, fairly narrow.

briany

Well the false vocal chord thing is troubling to me but it's about the only thing really. How would an eleven year old girl master such a thing? It's possible certailnly but where would you learn something like that at age 11 and in that era before the internet? I believe it was a hoax but it was good as far as hoaxes go. Two questions, 1.Was the previous occupant of the house who died there ever verified? Surely there would be ownership records?
Did the girls ever 'fess up and if so what was their motivation?

koHd

It's amazing how the intellect of the "ghost" seemed that of a 12 year old :rolleyes:

And the story of Bill was easilly passed on by somebody that lived on that street when Bill lived there.

I know the area I grew up stories would be passed from generation to generation about people that lived and died there.

It would especially be told if there's a supposed haunting in the house where somebody died.

Would have been interesting if they asked the "ghost" some particularly difficult question that Bill would know, but a 12 year old girl wouldn't.

But oh well.

MrMojoRisin

koHd wrote: »

It's amazing how the intellect of the "ghost" seemed that of a 12 year old :rolleyes:

And the story of Bill was easilly passed on by somebody that lived on that street when Bill lived there.

I know the area I grew up stories would be passed from generation to generation about people that lived and died there.

It would especially be told if there's a supposed haunting in the house where somebody died.

Would have been interesting if they asked the "ghost" some particularly difficult question that Bill would know, but a 12 year old girl wouldn't.

But oh well.

Yeah that's fair enough, but how do you explain the lollipop lady and the baker witnessing the girl 'floating' around her room and the red cushion suddenly materialising on the roof of the house outside? How do you explain the neighbour Peggy Nottingham having the girl's book showing up in her own house next door without anyone having gone into the house to put it there in that short space of time? How do you explain the thin red line being drawn around the light fixture on the ceiling of the girl's room in a matter of seconds at the same time as the book was found next door,when no furniture was dragged by her to reach up and do it? I want to understand these things.

Was everyone just lying through their hole?

pH

MrMojoRisin wrote: »

Yeah that's fair enough, but how do you explain the lollipop lady ...

Was everyone just lying through their hole?

You see you do ask "how do you explain", and yes a deliberate hoax, or people being tricked does explain it. Now that's not to say that *is* the case, maybe spirits did appear to levitate the girl and teleport cushions, but lying and fraud *are* an explanation.

briany

One of those sisters really doesn't seem to be all there, and that researcher is hard to take seriously mainly because of that absolutely glorious mostache of his.

Never mind the lollipop lady and the baker, did the researchers ever see the girls levitate? That really seems like the kind of thing you would either see or you don't see or you are simply lying. There were pictures taken of the girls in mid air as far as i know but that doesn't prove anything as they could of course been jumping.

jonnyfingers

I'd be pretty skeptical of the whole thing. As the skeptic in the video states eye witness accounts can be sketchy at best. Without decent video or photographic evidence I couldn't accept what people were saying as the truth.

And as for the picture of her floating?

Sure I do that all the time.

MrMojoRisin

Aside from the lollipop lady and the baker's testimonies, there was a physicist from London University who was present when the thin red line was drawn around the light fixture on the ceiling and when the book was found in Peggy Nottingham's bedroom next-door. So that's another independent witness.

The girl floating? Yeah, any muppet can do that (as you showed) but how do you make a red cushion suddenly materialise on the roof of your house?

Agreed that the Janet Hodgson lady is off her trolley nowadays (and maybe years ago as well).

briany

MrMojoRisin wrote: »

Aside from the lollipop lady and the baker's testimonies, there was a physicist from London University who was present when the thin red line was drawn around the light fixture on the ceiling and when the book was found in Peggy Nottingham's bedroom next-door. So that's another independent witness.

The girl floating? Yeah, any muppet can do that (as you showed) but how do you make a red cushion suddenly materialise on the roof of your house?

Agreed that the Janet Hodgson lady is off her trolley nowadays (and maybe years ago as well).

Did they see a line being drawn as they stood there and was it captured on film? If not then you are talking about an eye witness statement and eyewitness statements are not gospel and memory is a funny thing.

If the Enfield case and it's validity were to be looked at like a court case, the mental state of those girls would be a huge huge factor and really undermines their crediblilty. Was that sister's shakey mental state a result of or the cause of the experiences in the house?

The question of the red cushion..... is this like a teleportation or a moving? Materialise would indicate the former. The question I have is why couldn't Bill just have put Janet or Peggy up on the roof, you know, have her disappear in front of the researcher's eyes and then the next thing you know, she's up on the roof crying to get down? Did they even see the cushion disappear? Did it happen when they were gone from the room? Why can't these poltergeists ever do something fantastical to just completely remove any doubt about their existence? They can mess with the electrics of one house, why can't they shut down an entire city grid forever? Why can't they just completely run amok and what is stopping them? No, these cases always seem to be quite personal with a handful of witnesses at most. Of the cushion, the simplest explaination is a lucky throw and unless you saw footage of a teleportation or a moving, how could you believe otherwise?

Achem's razor has to take the prize here I'm afraid.

MrMojoRisin

briany wrote: »

Did they see a line being drawn as they stood there and was it captured on film? If not then you are talking about an eye witness statement and eyewitness statements are not gospel and memory is a funny thing.

If the Enfield case and it's validity were to be looked at like a court case, the mental state of those girls would be a huge huge factor and really undermines their crediblilty. Was that sister's shakey mental state a result of or the cause of the experiences in the house?

The question of the red cushion..... is this like a teleportation or a moving? Materialise would indicate the former. The question I have is why couldn't Bill just have put Janet or Peggy up on the roof, you know, have her disappear in front of the researcher's eyes and then the next thing you know, she's up on the roof crying to get down? Did they even see the cushion disappear? Did it happen when they were gone from the room? Why can't these poltergeists ever do something fantastical to just completely remove any doubt about their existence? They can mess with the electrics of one house, why can't they shut down an entire city grid forever? Why can't they just completely run amok and what is stopping them? No, these cases always seem to be quite personal with a handful of witnesses at most. Of the cushion, the simplest explaination is a lucky throw and unless you saw footage of a teleportation or a moving, how could you believe otherwise?

Achem's razor has to take the prize here I'm afraid.

Why are you asking me for all the answers? I'm not your mammy. I've gone away and read up on it and formed my own conclusions (mostly). I've done my homework. You should do the same. I don't have the time to be fielding an endless array of questions on this

MrMojoRisin

And for the record, I'd be able to answer most of what you asked but the truth is that I'm a lazy f ucker and I can't be bothered. I'm going up to the kitchen now, grabbing a beer for myself and then sitting down to watch mindless drivel like the X Factor.

briany

MrMojoRisin wrote: »

Why are you asking me for all the answers? I'm not your mammy. I've gone away and read up on it and formed my own conclusions (mostly). I've done my homework. You should do the same. I don't have the time to be fielding an endless array of questions on this

Hey whoa there, unfortunately the paranormal throws up so many more questions then it does answers no matter how much you look into it and I was just putting out a few that come to my mind and they were'nt directly aimed at you, I'm just putting them to the forum and they are things any skeptical person could say so please don't get so defensive no one is asking you to answer anything.

Thornography

Watch the part where your man starts asking questions to the two girls on the couch about the new voices.

He is directing the question at the one of the right, But every time the voice answers, the girl on the left starts to move appearing as she`s trying to get comfortable but her jaw is defiantly moving.

And the part about talking like that for long periods of time hurting is true but you can get that trained to not hurt,

Just google or youtube Dani Filth, He`s been doing it all his life but instead of playing pranks for obvious idiots, He made a band