The Conjuring swept the nation as one of the scariest horror movies to exist because of how intense and true it was. The Conjuring 2, however, revoked the first movies title and became an even scarier movie that inspired a spin off movie of the Nun that is coming out later this year. The Conjuring 2 is based on an extremely real story that many people do not know about, so sit back, relax (maybe), and enjoy the true story of the Enfield Haunting.
A still image from The Conjuring 2.
Image via: Denver Post
Peggy Hodgson, a single parent, and her four children moved to 284 Green Street in Enfield, UK in 1977. After the family moved into their new home, they started to experience unexplainable paranormal activity that would continue happening for a year and a spirit by the name of Bill soon started to possess Hodgson’s 11-year-old daughter. There have been extensive investigations, police reports, and press reports about what occurred inside of this home, but no one knows the true answer to this case, making it unsolved.
A still image of the real Janet Hodgson being levitated from her bed.
Image via: Taringa
Peggy’s four daughters are Margaret, who was 12 at the time of the haunting, Janet, whom was 11, Johnny, whom was 10, and Billy, who was 7. After the children moved into the home with their mother, they started to complain about hearing noises in the house at night and that the noises were so loud that they woke the children up. They explained that it sounded like someone was knocking loudly inside of the walls. Peggy panicked just a little because she didn’t know what to make of the sounds the children were hearing, so she told them that they were still getting used to the house and soon the noises would go away. The children agreed but soon other strange events started to occur: furniture moved on its own, the children’s beds would shake at random times, toys like marbles and Lego pieces would fly across the room (often aimed at people), or they would become too hot to touch.
Janet (middle), Margaret on the right, and Johnny on the left.
Image via: Daily Mail
After these strange occurrences happened for a while, Peggy confirmed to herself that the strange occurrences were happening mainly around her two daughters, but specifically Janet, her middle child. The events only escalated and when Peggy witness a chest full of drawers slide across the room towards her children on its own, she was fed up with the escalating events in her house and decided to reach out for help. Her first instinct was to call the police and when the two officers arrived at the home, they initially thought the mother was playing a prank or the three children were playing one on her. Their suspicions of the children and the mother pranking the officers soon vanished when arriving officer WPC Carolyn Heeps witnessed a chair slide five feet across the room on its own. The officer was in disbelief of what she just witnessed and informed Peggy to contact the local media to see if someone would help them.
Janet after one of her violent episodes.
Image via: The Unredacted
After reaching out to the media, journalists Graham Morris and Douglas Bence, from The Daily Mirror, arrived at Peggy’s house to cover the story and hear the claims from Peggy. The group sat down in the living room and discussed at length about the events that occurred the night before the journalists arrived and as they discussed the events over the course of an hour, no paranormal activity occurred. The journalists decided to pack up their things, but before they left they were stopped by a hysterical Peggy. They re-entered the home and were left speechless as they witness small, inanimate objects fly across the room and smashed into walls and people. Morris quickly ran out to his vehicle to grab a camera so he could capture the activity as it was happening, but by the time he went back into the home, all of the paranormal activity stopped. With her heart heavy, Peggy reached out to the Society of Psychical Research in hope that they would help her in any way possible.
Janet with Maurice Grosse.
Image via: Mirror CO
After Peggy reached out to the SPR for help, paranormal investigators Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair responded to Peggy’s cry for help and spent the next 13 months with her and her family. During their months there, they recorded paranormal activity they witnessed and heard about as Peggy told them about the strange events before they came to the house. As the investigators were recording the paranormal experiences they witnessed, they concluded that the house also had a poltergeist.
An iconic photo of Janet being levitated from her bed.
Image via: YouTube
Also, there were 26 experiences during this time that the investigators could not rationally explain. These experiences included levitations, bedclothes being pulled off of the beds with no one pulling them, apparitions, cool breezes, puddles of water on the floor with no known source, and fires would randomly start on their own and then they would extinguish all on their own. There were also documents that were recorded as disappearing and reappearing again and there were also numerous reports of their equipment failing on them countless times. A BBC crew member came out to the house to look at their equipment and found that the metal inside of their machines were bent and all of their recordings had been erased.
Maurice holding Janet back during an attack.
Image via: Haunted Attraction Online
In November, three months into Grosse and Playfair’s investigation, events started to escalate inside of the house and were becoming intense. The loud knockings inside of the walls increased in volume and persistence, making the investigators believe they were a form of communication from the unseen forces harassing the family. This made Grosse tell the unseen force that they should respond to questions by rapping once or twice on the wall and what freaked everyone out was that these unseen forces actually did respond to the questions in the way that Grosse asked them to. Around this time, Janet’s possession grew more intense and she would fall into trance like states and act out in violent tendencies with superhuman strength, the investigators reported. Because they grew concerned about her safety, Janet was soon sedated and restrained so she wouldn’t harm herself or anyone else.
The Hodgson children.
Image via: Movie Pilot
It appeared that the paranormal activity remained consistent in the girl’s room, so The Daily Mirror reporter Graham Morris returned back to the house to see if he could capture the phenomena on camera. He set up a remote controlled camera system so the camera could take a photo every four second. In the series of shots that Morris took in the girls’ room, he captured the movement of Janet being violently thrown her bed from an unseen force, but somehow that wasn’t the worst of the events that took place in her home.
A still image from chairs being thrown at people.
Image via: 21 Ghosts
Janet continued to fall in and out of trances and soon developed a deep speaking voice that was one of a man. Grosse and Playfair were present during one of the apparent possessions Janet underwent and started to interview her. As they questioned her, Janet referred to herself as Bill and said that he had died of a brain hemorrhage sitting in his favorite chair in the house a few years before Janet and her family moved in. Bill continuously exhibited a cruel and odd streak that consisted of swearing and jokes, something the investigators weren’t expecting.
The girls’ room.
Image via: Daily Mail
Oddly enough, the two investigators were contacted by a man named Terry Wilkins who had claimed to be Bill’s son. Wilkins further confirmed that Bill had lived in his house prior to the Peggy and her family moving into the home and that the events his father said in the audio recording were accurate. You can listen to the audio here.
A still photo of Janet.
Image via: Daily Mail
During the month of July in 1978, Janet was admitted to a psychiatric hospital where she stayed for two months and was extensively examined and watched. As she was extensively examined, doctors were confused when they didn’t find anything psychiatrically wrong with her and released her back into her home. Apart from a sudden burst of activity in 1980, the haunting of the Hodgson’s family was gone as quickly as it started.
The start of Janet being levitated from her bed.
Image via: The Line Up
So, was this haunting all a hoax or did it actually happen? Two separate investigators from SPR spent time with the family and were less convinced than Grosse and Playfair. These two separate investigators believed that the children were behind all of the events that happened in the house after they saw Janet and Margret bending spoons in the kitchen. Janet and Margret both openly admitted that they did in fact bend spoons, they continue to stand by their original statement that the events that occurred in their home weren’t done by them. Grosse defended the family and explained that the kids occasionally played tricks on one another because they were in fact kids, but the tricks don’t compare to what really happened in the house.
Janet and Margaret being interviewed.
Image via: YouTube
Playfair was so convinced that the house was severely haunted and their were actual possessions happening inside of the home that he wrote a book about what happened in the house called This House is Haunted. In 2010, Playfair welcomed findings that proved the recordings they recorded inside of the house were not humanly possible and that the activity was from an unknown force. The recordings were extensively analyzed and the sounds made in the recordings were replicated in scientific conditions, which means they did not produce the same sound waves as those made in the Enfield house. Playfair stated, “This is absolutely the biggest step forward in the last 30 years, and it’s easily reproducible as all scientific evidence should be … In doing this research, scientific order has been brought into a very crazy area – poltergeist activity. I don’t think it’s been done before.”
Purchase the book to read more about what had happened inside of the house.
Image via: Abe Books
What do you think about the Enfield house haunting? Do you think all of the events that happened inside of the house ACTUALLY happened or do you think it was all a hoax by the mother and her children?