Everything that happened in the distant 1970s in Enfield, located in the northern area of ​​London, was very reminiscent of a horror movie scenario. But the events, unfortunately, were quite real. The phenomenon almost immediately became known as the Enfield poltergeist. The public was shocked by this terrible story. And this was one of the most deeply studied cases of this kind.

The protagonists of the tragedy that took place on August 30, 1977 were Peggy Hodgson and her four children: Johnny, Janet, Billy and Margaret. The family had recently moved to a small apartment building in Enfield shortly before the events. As usual, in the evening the mother put the children to bed and was about to leave the nursery when Janet began to complain that her and her brother’s beds were vibrating strangely. Entering the room, the woman froze in fear. The heavy chest of drawers moved along the floor on its own. Trying not to scare me yet more daughter, she tried to return the furniture to its place, but that was not the case. The chest of drawers resisted, someone or something continued to push it towards the door. Later, Janet mentioned this evening in her notes and added that when the chest of drawers moved, she clearly heard the shuffling of someone’s feet. And her sister Margaret recalled that the house began to be increasingly filled with strange sounds, so the children could not sleep for a long time.
The poltergeist manifested itself in different ways. In front of numerous eyewitnesses (there were about 30 people), things and furniture were flying around the room and dancing in the air. The temperature dropped, graffiti appeared on the walls, water appeared on the floor, and matches spontaneously ignited. Physical attack.
The poltergeist focused his attention on his youngest daughter Janet. The girl often fell into trance states and showed all the signs of being possessed: levitation, inarticulate growling, seizures and attacks of aggression. Quite often, Janet spoke in a “rough male voice” on behalf of a certain Billy Wilkins, who died several years before the events in Enfield. The police even met with the son of the deceased old man to verify the truth of the words that came from the girl and to rule out the possibility of a simple hoax. The son confirmed all the details of the story.

We can say that all this looks like a fiction, a set-up trick, as skeptics claimed, only some of the eyewitnesses managed to take a few pictures of what was happening. One of them shows how the poltergeist lifted Janet and threw her with such force that the girl flew to the other side of the room. In the photo, you can clearly see from her distorted face that she is in a lot of pain. It is unlikely that a child would intentionally hurt himself.
The photographer Graham Morris himself said that when a poltergeist appeared in the house, there was real chaos, people screamed in fear, things moved through the air, as if through telekinesis.

Despite such a variety of manifestations of the phenomenon, many researchers believed that the Enfield phenomena were nothing more than a protracted children's prank organized by Janet Hodgson and her older sister Margaret. Skeptics claimed that the girls secretly moved and broke objects, jumped on the bed and made “demonic” voices. Indeed, on several occasions, researchers caught girls bending spoons. In 1980, Janet admitted that she and her sister faked some incidents, but only to test the researchers themselves.
“I felt controlled by a force that no one understood. I really don't want to think about it too much. You know, I'm not entirely sure that this something was truly “evil.” Rather, he wanted to become part of our family. It didn't want to offend us. It died in this house, and now it wanted peace. The only way He had communication through my sister and me.”

“It was hard. I spent some time in London, in a psychiatric hospital, where my head was covered with electrodes, but everything was normal. Levitation was scary because you don’t know where you’ll land. In one of the cases of levitation, a curtain was wrapped around my neck, I screamed and thought that I was going to die. Mom had to make a lot of effort to break it. The man Bill, who spoke through me, was furious that we were moving into his house.
I was teased at school. They called me “ghost girl,” calling me names and throwing various things at my back. After school I was afraid to go home. Doors opened and closed, came and went. different people, and I was very worried about my mother. She ended up having a nervous breakdown.”
Janet's brother was nicknamed the "freak from the haunted house" and passers-by spat on him. The girl herself made it onto the front page of the Daily Star with the glib title “Possessed by the Devil.” At the age of 16, still very young, she left home and got married. The press soon calmed down, and younger brother died of cancer at age 14.
Janet's mother also died of breast cancer in 2003. Janet's son died at the age of 18 in his sleep.
Janet denied that the whole story was a hoax and a hoax to earn money and fame.
“I didn’t want to experience this again while my mother was alive, now I want to tell everything. I don’t care if people believe it or not – it happened to me, and it was all real and true.”

Is there a poltergeist living in the house today?
After Peggy Hodgson's death, Claire Bennett and her four sons moved into the house. This is what she said: “I didn’t see anything suspicious, but I constantly felt uncomfortable. Someone’s presence was clearly felt in the house, I always felt that someone was looking at me.”
At night, her children often woke up and heard someone's voices below. Claire became interested in the history of the house and when she learned about the Enfield poltergeist, everything fell into place, she says.
After 2 months the family moved out. Shaka's 15-year-old son Claire said: “The night before I left, I woke up and saw a man entering the room. Running into my mother’s bedroom, I told her about what I had seen and said: “We need to leave,” which we did the next day.”
Another family lives there now. The mother of the family did not want to introduce herself and stated briefly: “My children know nothing about this. I don't want to scare them."

News edited LjoljaBastet - 28-06-2016, 05:41

The other day, the much-anticipated American horror film “The Conjuring 2” was released, telling the story of another battle with " evil spirits"media paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. By analogy with the first film, the plot of the second part is also based on a real story. This time the well-known poltergeist case that occurred in the late 1970s in the English town of Enfield was taken as the basis. Then An unknown force has been terrorizing the large Hodgson family for a long time. Traditionally, in this short article we would like to analyze how close the film adaptation is to the real case.

According to the plot of the second "Conjuring", the Warrens come to northern part London (Enfield town) to help mother of many children Peggy Hodgson expel an evil spirit from her house. The latter not only prevents the family from living peacefully, but also poses a direct threat to the lives of Peggy’s three children. On the spot, the Warrens realize that they are faced not with a simple spirit, but with a real demon, who, moreover, has his own designs on his youngest daughter Jeannette. Predictably, the screenwriters of the second "Conjuring" created a typical horror film from an ambiguous story with a cursed house, a possessed child and fashionable ghost hunters. But was it really like that?

Still from the film "The Conjuring 2".

It is worth noting that the filmmakers managed to quite accurately replicate the setting and costumes of the characters, reflecting the general synopsis of the Enfield poltergeist, but this is where all the similarities end and Hollywood fantasies begin. First of all, the real events that took place in Anfield in the 1970s have left many open questions and, according to a number of researchers, represent a skillful falsification on the part of the sisters Janet and Margaret Hodgson. Some experts even claimed that the girls secretly moved and broke objects, jumped on the bed, and made “demonic” voices.

Actress Madison Wolfe (left) as Janet in The Conjuring 2 and the real Janet Hodgson (right).

It was the repeated levitation of the younger Janet, captured by researchers on film, that became business card Enfield poltergeist. The girl claimed that an unknown force picked her up from the bed and “dragged her through the air.” A number of researchers had a different opinion. They believed that Janet was simply jumping out of bed so that it would appear on film as "floating in the air." It was known that the girl was involved in gymnastics and therefore could easily perform such a trick. Subsequently, Janet actually admitted that she and her sister were faking some of the episodes. All this is mentioned in passing in The Conjuring 2, and the skeptics, in contrast to the noble Warrens, are presented as scoundrels who do not want to help the poor girl.

However, demonologist Ed Warren claimed that he and his wife witnessed real levitations of Janet. The researcher noted that he personally saw how the girl was fast asleep, and, the next moment, was already floating in the air. According to the Warrens, these authentic episodes were not recorded on camera. But here you need to know that the real Warrens were known for considerable exaggerations in their investigations, which, however, was what Hollywood liked. It was the free interpretations of the materials from their cases that served as the impetus for the film adaptation of such famous horror films as “The Amityville Horror,” “The Haunting in Connecticut,” and “Annabelle Curse.” "The Conjuring 2" was no exception to this list. Moreover, as the Enfield case became widely seen as a hoax, some saw it as evidence that the Warrens themselves were frauds.

It was the Warrens' media presence that served as another divergence from real story. In the film, the famous couple are presented as the main investigators of phantasmagoric events, although, in reality, they stayed in Enfield for only a few days. It is common knowledge that the main investigation was carried out by other people. Of these, only Maurice Gross appears in the film, who appears here as a minor character with a comical fake nose. At the same time, the main photographer of the Enfield phenomenon, Guy Playfair, is not even mentioned in the film.

Still from the movie “The Conjuring 2” (top photo): from left to right, “movie” Lorraine Warren, Maurice Gross, Ed Warren and Peggy Hodgson and real demonologists the Warrens in one of the investigations (bottom photo).

It is clear that the filmmakers did not strive to accurately reproduce the real events in Enfield. Otherwise, they simply would not have been able to make a full-fledged horror film in the best American traditions. For example, storyline with a demon in the form of a nun is entirely the imagination of director James Wan himself. She has nothing to do with the Enfield case. As well as the episode when a poltergeist destroys the whole house brick by brick, trying to kill the researchers. On the other hand, moving furniture, multiple flights various items, spontaneous opening of doors and much more shown in the film are not fiction or exaggeration. In a real case, they were documented not only by experts studying the Enfield phenomenon, but also by local police officers who confirmed the fact of such anomalous incidents. For example, Officer Caroline Heaps gave written testimony that she witnessed the levitation of a chair in the Hodjohn home.

The real-life Janet exhibited signs of "demonic possession" (right), which was also reflected in the film adaptation (left).

I would like to note that the good, and sometimes even touching, acting of the actors allows you to completely sincerely empathize with them. As is usually the case with "based on a true story" adaptations, the film's characters are much nicer than their real-life counterparts. The Warrens are presented as noble, brave researchers who, at the cost of their lives, are ready to help unfamiliar people. The Hodgsons are unconditionally shown as innocent victims of “evil forces” and unknown circumstances, but the viewer does not even have the thought of distrusting these honest people.

Despite the noted inconsistencies with real events, as well as the ambiguity of the Enfield poltergeist himself, the horror film “The Conjuring 2” should appeal to all fans of this type of horror. The film does not waste time on long introductions and backstory. From the very first minutes, evil spirits attack the frightened heroes, using all possible poltergeist techniques. The sudden appearances of the demon and other spirits make the viewer flinch, although, for the most part, only from the effect of surprise. In theory, the feeling of a “film adaptation of real events” should only add to the fear, but in practice, a sophisticated viewer would most likely not believe that this could have happened.

The rough male voice made everyone in the room freeze with fear. Having appeared, he brought news from behind the gravestone, describing in detail the moment of his death.

“Before I died, I went blind, I had a hemorrhage, I passed out, and I died in the corner below.”

What was it? This was the case of the Enfield poltergeist, which 30 years ago intrigued the whole country, puzzled the police, as well as psychics, specialists in occult phenomena and, of course, journalists.

Poltergeist manifestations included levitation, with furniture flying through the air and things jumping around surprised witnesses. There were cold spells, physical attacks, writing on the walls, water appearing on the floor, and even matches exploding on their own.

A policewoman swore that she saw the chair move. In total there were about 30 witnesses to strange phenomena.

The most inexplicable thing is that the girl at the center of events served as something of a mouthpiece for Bill Wilkins, a grumpy and uncontrollable old man who died in this house many years ago. Those investigating the case met with his son, and he confirmed the details of his stories.

Many still doubt whether this case was a hoax, but no evidence has been provided for this, and the only plausible explanation remains the paranormal version.

So what happened in Anfield then, many years ago? Where are the Hodgsons now, have they gotten rid of their ghosts, and who lives at this address now?

The story itself, as the Hodgsons tell it, began in 1977. The family was unusual at the time, as the single mother had four children - 12-year-old Margaret, 11-year-old Janet, 10-year-old Johnny and 7-year-old Billy.

It was the evening of August 30, 1977, and Mrs. Hodgson was trying to put her children to bed. She heard Janet complaining that her bed and her brother's bed were vibrating.

Mrs Hodgson told her to stop complaining. However, the next evening more frightening events occurred. Mrs. Hodgson heard a loud noise upstairs. Crossing herself, she told her children to calm down.

Entering Janet's bedroom, Mrs. Hodgson saw that the chest of drawers was moving. She put him back in place, but found that an invisible force was again pushing him towards the door.

Years later, Janet would say: “It all started at the end of the bedroom, the chest of drawers was moving and you could hear shuffling. We told my mother what was happening, and she came to see everything with her own eyes. She saw that the chest of drawers was moving. When she tried to push it into place, she couldn’t.”

Janet's sister Margaret recounts how the symptoms began to increase in intensity.

“Various strange sounds were heard here and there in the house, it was not clear what was happening. None of us could sleep.

We put on our robes and slippers and left the house.”

The family turned to their neighbors Vic and Peggy Nottingham for help. Vic, a burly construction worker, went to their house to do his own investigation.

He says: “I went into the house and heard these sounds - they were coming from the walls and from the ceiling. Then I got a little scared.”

Margaret says: “He said: I don’t know what’s going on. It was the first time I saw a healthy man so scared.”

The Hodgsons called the police, who were equally puzzled.

After some time, the police left, saying that such incidents were not within the jurisdiction of the police.

The Hodgsons later contacted the press. Daily Mirror photographer Graham Morris, who was at the house, said: “It was chaos. Things suddenly started flying around the room, people were screaming.”

Some of the incidents were captured on camera. One of the photos shows Janet being thrown across the room by something. In another, her face is contorted in pain.

Photo

A BBC film crew came to the house, only to find that the metal components of their equipment were warped and the recordings had been erased.

The family then turned to the Society for Psychical Research for help. They sent researchers Maurice Grosset and Guy Lyon Playfair, poltergeist experts who later wrote a book about the case called This House is Possessed.

Grosse (who has since died) said: “As soon as I got into the house, I realized that this was a real case, because the whole family was in bad condition. Everyone was in terrible confusion.

When I first arrived, nothing happened for some time. Then I saw Lego pieces flying around the room, as well as pieces of marble. The most amazing thing is that when I picked them up, they were hot.

Violent paranormal activity swirled around the researchers: the sofa levitated, furniture tossed and thrown across the room, and at night someone threw the whole family out of bed.

One day, Maurice and a neighbor stopped by and heard one of the children screaming, “I can’t move! It's holding my leg!' and they had to fight what they insisted felt like invisible hands.

The constant knocking was one of the most unnerving aspects of this case. It went down the walls, died down and grew, as if deliberately playing on the nerves of the whole family, who were already frightened to such an extent that everyone was sleeping in the same room with the lights on.

The main activity centered around 11-year-old Janet. She went into trances that were scary to watch. In one case, the iron grate of the fireplace in her room was torn out by an invisible force.

“I felt like I was being used by a force that no one could understand. I really don't want to think about it too much. I'm not sure that poltergeists were truly "evil". Rather, he wanted to be part of our family.

“It didn’t want to offend us. It died in this house and wanted peace. The only way it could communicate was through me and my sister.”

However, some have doubts about these events. Two researchers caught the children bending spoons and asked why no one was allowed into the room while she spoke in her deep voice, believed to be that of Bill Wilkins.

And indeed, Janet admits that they set something up.

In 1980, she said: “Once or twice we faked some incidents. They wanted to see if Grosse and Playfair would catch us. They always figured us out."

She is now 45 years old and lives in Essex with her husband.

“When I heard about the film, I didn’t really like it. My father had just died and it was hard for me to go through it all again.”

She describes poltergeist manifestations as traumatic.

“It was an extraordinary case. This is one of the most widely recognized cases of paranormal activity in the world. But for me it was quite difficult. I think he left his mark - poltergeist activity, media attention, all these people who passed through our house. It wasn't a normal childhood."

When asked how many of the poltergeist manifestations they faked, she said, “I think about two percent.”

She also admitted that she had been playing around with a spirit-summoning board just before these phenomena began to occur.

She says she didn't know she was going into a trance until she was shown the photographs.

It was hard. I had to spend some time in a psychiatric hospital in London, where they put electrodes around my head, but tests showed that everything was normal.

Levitation was scary because you don’t know where you’ll land. I remember how a curtain was wrapped around my neck, I was screaming, and I thought I was going to die.

My mother had to use all her strength to tear it apart. The person who spoke through me, Bill, he was angry because we were living in his house."

All this had a great impact on the family.

Janet says: “I was teased at school. They called me “ghost girl” and threw various things at my back.

I was afraid to go home. Doors were constantly opening and closing, different people were coming and going, you don’t know what to expect next, and I was very worried about my mother. She eventually had a nervous breakdown.

Her brother was called "the freak from the haunted house" and people on the street spat at him.

Janet herself landed on the front page of the Daily Star with the headline "Possessed by the Devil."

Very young, at the age of 16, she left home and got married.

Soon the media attention began to fade, and Johnny's younger brother died of cancer at the age of just 14. Janet's mother subsequently developed breast cancer and died in 2003, and Janet herself lost her son, who died in his sleep at the age of 18.

She rejected any suggestion that the whole story was made up in pursuit of money or fame.

I didn't want to relive it while my mother was alive, but now I want to tell my story. I don’t care if people believe it or not – I lived through it, and it was all true.”

When asked if the house was still haunted, she said, “Many years later, when my mother was still alive, there was always a presence there - always a stranger's gaze.

As long as people don't interfere, like we did with the board for summoning spirits, it's pretty calm. It is much calmer now than when I was a child. But it's still there."

Who lives at 284 Green Street now?

After Peggy Hodgson died, Claire Bennett moved into the house with her four sons.

She says: “I didn’t see anything, but I felt uncomfortable. Someone’s presence was clearly felt in the house, I always felt that someone was looking at me.”

Her children woke up at night and heard someone talking downstairs. Claire decided to find out about the history of the house. “Suddenly everything fell into place,” she says. After living in the house for only 2 months, they moved out.

One of her sons, 15-year-old Shaka, says: “The night before we moved out, I woke up and saw a man entering the room. I ran to my mother’s room and told her, “we need to leave,” which we did the next day.”

Another family now lives in the house; they did not want to introduce themselves. The mother simply said, “I have children, they don’t know about this. I don't want to scare them."

The rough male voice made everyone in the room freeze with fear. Having appeared, he brought news from behind the grave, describing in detail the moment of his death. “Before I died, I went blind, I had a hemorrhage, I passed out, and I died in the corner below.”

A creepy voice that is still recorded can be heard on tape, believed to belong to Bill Wilkins. The recording was made in the 70s in Enfield, north London, a few years after his death.

What was it? This was the case of the Enfield poltergeist, which 30 years ago intrigued the whole country, puzzled the police, as well as psychics, specialists in occult phenomena and, of course, journalists.

Poltergeist manifestations included levitation, with furniture flying through the air and things jumping around surprised witnesses. There were cold spells, physical attacks, writing on the walls, water appearing on the floor, and even matches exploding on their own.

A policewoman swore that she saw the chair move. In total there were about 30 witnesses to strange phenomena.

The most inexplicable thing is that the girl at the center of events served as something of a mouthpiece for Bill Wilkins, a grumpy and uncontrollable old man who died in this house many years ago. Those investigating the case met with his son, and he confirmed the details of his stories.

Many still doubt whether this case was a hoax, but no evidence has been provided for this, and the only plausible explanation remains the paranormal version.

So what happened in Anfield then, many years ago? Where are the Hodgsons now, have they gotten rid of their ghosts, and who lives at this address now?

The story itself, as the Hodgsons tell it, began in 1977. The family was unusual at the time, as the single mother had four children - 12-year-old Margaret, 11-year-old Janet, 10-year-old Johnny and 7-year-old Billy.

It was the evening of August 30, 1977, and Mrs. Hodgson was trying to put her children to bed. She heard Janet complaining that her bed and her brother's bed were vibrating.

Mrs Hodgson told her to stop complaining. However, the next evening more frightening events occurred. Mrs. Hodgson heard a loud noise upstairs. Crossing herself, she told her children to calm down.

Entering Janet's bedroom, Mrs. Hodgson saw that the chest of drawers was moving. She put him back in place, but found that an invisible force was again pushing him towards the door.

Years later, Janet would say: “It all started at the end of the bedroom, the chest of drawers was moving and you could hear shuffling. We told my mother what was happening, and she came to see everything with her own eyes. She saw that the chest of drawers was moving. When she tried to push it into place, she couldn’t.”

Janet's sister Margaret recounts how the symptoms began to increase in intensity.

Various strange sounds were heard here and there in the house, it was not clear what was happening. None of us could sleep. We put on robes and slippers and left the house.

The family turned to their neighbors Vic and Peggy Nottingham for help. Vic, a burly construction worker, went to their house to do his own investigation.

He says: I entered the house and heard these sounds - they came from the walls and from the ceiling. Then I got a little scared.

Margaret narrates: He said: I don't know what's going on. It was the first time I saw a healthy man so scared.

The Hodgsons called the police, who were equally puzzled.

After some time, the police left, saying that such incidents were not within the jurisdiction of the police.

The Hodgsons later contacted the press. Daily Mirror photographer Graham Morris, who was at the house, said: It was chaos. Things suddenly started flying around the room, people were screaming.

Some of the incidents were captured on camera. One of the photos shows Janet being thrown across the room by something. In another, her face is contorted in pain.

Photo

A BBC film crew came to the house, only to find that the metal components of their equipment were warped and the recordings had been erased.

The family then turned to the Society for Psychical Research for help. They sent researchers Maurice Grosset and Guy Lyon Playfair, poltergeist experts who later wrote a book about the case called This House is Possessed.

Grosse (who has since died) said: “As soon as I got into the house, I realized that this was a real case, because the whole family was in bad condition. Everyone was in terrible confusion.

When I first arrived, nothing happened for some time. Then I saw Lego pieces flying around the room, as well as pieces of marble. The most amazing thing is that when I picked them up, they were hot.

Violent paranormal activity swirled around the researchers: the sofa levitated, furniture tossed and thrown across the room, and at night someone threw the whole family out of bed.

One day, Maurice and a neighbor stopped by and heard one of the children screaming, “I can’t move! It's holding my leg!' and they had to fight what they insisted felt like invisible hands.

The constant knocking was one of the most unnerving aspects of this case. It went down the walls, died down and grew, as if deliberately playing on the nerves of the whole family, who were already frightened to such an extent that everyone was sleeping in the same room with the lights on.

The main activity centered around 11-year-old Janet. She went into trances that were scary to watch. In one case, the iron grate of the fireplace in her room was torn out by an invisible force.

I felt like I was being used by a force that no one could understand. I really don't want to think about it too much. I'm not sure that the poltergeist was truly "evil". Rather, he wanted to be part of our family.

“It didn’t want to offend us. It died in this house and wanted peace. The only way it could communicate was through me and my sister.”

However, some have doubts about these events. Two researchers caught the children bending spoons and asked why no one was allowed into the room while she spoke in her deep voice, believed to be that of Bill Wilkins.

And indeed, Janet admits that they set something up.

In 1980, she said: “Once or twice we faked some incidents. They wanted to see if Grosse and Playfair would catch us. They always figured us out."

She is now 45 years old and lives in Essex with her husband.

When I heard about the film, I didn't really like it. My father had just died and it was hard for me to go through it all again.

She describes poltergeist manifestations as traumatic.

This was an extraordinary case. This is one of the most widely recognized cases of paranormal activity in the world. But for me it was quite difficult. I think he left his mark - the poltergeist activity, the media attention, all these people who passed through our house. It was not a normal childhood.

When asked how many of the poltergeist manifestations they faked, she said I think about two percent.

She also admitted that she had been playing around with a spirit-summoning board just before these phenomena began to occur.

She says she didn't know she was going into a trance until she was shown the photographs.

It was hard. I had to spend some time in a psychiatric hospital in London, where they put electrodes around my head, but tests showed that everything was normal.

Levitation was scary because you don’t know where you’ll land. I remember how a curtain was wrapped around my neck, I was screaming, and I thought I was going to die.

My mother had to use all her strength to tear it apart. The man who spoke through me, Bill, he was angry because we were living in his house.

All this had a great impact on the family.

Janet says: “I was teased at school. They called me “ghost girl” and threw various things at my back.

I was afraid to go home. Doors were constantly opening and closing, different people were coming and going, you don’t know what to expect next, and I was very worried about my mother. She eventually had a nervous breakdown.

Her brother was called "the freak from the haunted house" and people on the street spat at him.

Janet herself landed on the front page of the Daily Star with the headline "Possessed by the Devil."

Very young, at the age of 16, she left home and got married.

Soon the media attention began to fade, and Johnny's younger brother died of cancer at the age of just 14. Janet's mother subsequently developed breast cancer and died in 2003, and Janet herself lost her son, who died in his sleep at the age of 18.

She rejected any suggestion that the whole story was made up in pursuit of money or fame.

I didn't want to relive it while my mother was alive, but now I want to tell my story. I don’t care if people believe it or not, I lived through it, and it was all true.”

When asked if the house was still haunted, she said, “Many years later, when my mother was still alive, there was always a presence there—there was always a stranger's gaze.

As long as people don't interfere, like we did with the board for summoning spirits, it's pretty calm. It is much calmer now than when I was a child. But it's still there."

Who lives at 284 Green Street now?

After Peggy Hodgson died, Claire Bennett moved into the house with her four sons.

She says: “I didn’t see anything, but I felt uncomfortable. Someone’s presence was clearly felt in the house, I always felt that someone was looking at me.”

Her children woke up at night and heard someone talking downstairs. Claire decided to find out about the history of the house. “Suddenly everything fell into place,” she says. After living in the house for only 2 months, they moved out.

One of her sons, 15-year-old Shaka, says: “The night before we moved out, I woke up and saw a man entering the room. I ran to my mother’s room and told her, “we need to leave,” which we did the next day.”

Another family now lives in the house; they did not want to introduce themselves. The mother simply said, “I have children, they don’t know about this. I don't want to scare them."

While skeptics may scoff, the frightening story of the Enfield poltergeist has lost none of its power.

In the 70s of the last century, in Enfield, located in one of the northern districts of London, perhaps one of the most famous cases of poltergeist manifestations occurred, which attracted the attention of the whole country, and subsequently became world famous. Witnesses of paranormal activity were then not only residents of the house in which everything happened, but also journalists, specialists in occult phenomena, psychics and even police officers. Real events This story later became the basis for the horror film The Conjuring 2.

It all started in August 1977, when the Hodgson family moved into a low-rise apartment building at number 284 on Green Street. The family consisted of single mother Peggy Hodgson and her four children - Johnny, Janet, Billy and Margaret.

On the evening of August 30, Mrs. Hodgson put the children to bed. As she left, she heard her daughter Janet complaining that the beds in the room were vibrating on their own. The woman did not attach any importance to this, but the next day something stranger happened in the house. In the evening Mrs. Hodgson heard some noise upstairs, which greatly alarmed her. When she entered Janet's bedroom, she saw that the dresser was moving without anyone's help. Not understanding what was happening, she tried to return the chest of drawers to its place, but some invisible force continued to push it towards the door. Later, Janet mentioned this evening in her notes and added that at the moment the chest of drawers moved, she clearly heard the shuffling of someone’s feet.

After this, the paranormal phenomena did not stop: the children heard terrible sounds that did not allow them to sleep, objects were flying around the room. One evening, the family had to put on slippers and dressing gowns and leave the house to go outside. The Hodgsons turned to their neighbors for help, and they decided to figure out what was happening.

Commentary from the head of the family, Vic Nottingham, after he entered the terrible monastery: “When I entered the house, I immediately heard these sounds - they came from the walls and from the ceiling. Hearing them made me a little scared.” Margaret, Janet's sister, recalls: “He said to me: I don't know what's going on there. For the first time in my life I saw a healthy man so scared.”

Many years later, Margaret, Janet's sister, will tell you that every day the poltergeist became more and more active, so the Hodgsons decided to turn to neighbor Vic Nottingham for help. Then the family called the police, but they also could not help them, saying that such cases were not within their competence.

The poltergeist manifested itself in different ways. In front of numerous eyewitnesses (there were about 30 people), things and furniture were flying around the room and dancing in the air. You could feel the temperature drop, graffiti appeared on the walls, water appeared on the floor, and matches spontaneously ignited. The attack also occurred on a physical level.

Daily Mirror photographer Graham Morris, who also visited the house, said there was chaos there - everyone was screaming and things were just flying around the room, as if someone was moving them with the power of their mind.

The BBC film crew set up their cameras in the house. A few days later it turned out that some equipment components were deformed and all records were erased.

The poor family almost gave up, but still decided to turn to their last hope - the Society for Research in Psychical Phenomena, which studied human psychic and paranormal abilities. They sent researchers Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair, who stayed in the Hodgson house for two years and subsequently wrote a book about the incident called “This House is Haunted.” ).

Maurice's comments regarding paranormal activity in the house:

As soon as I crossed the threshold of the house, I immediately realized this was not a prank, but a real incident, the whole family was in terrible condition. Everyone was in terrible anxiety. On my first visit, nothing happened for some time. Then I saw pieces start flying around the room Lego constructor and pieces of marble. When I picked them up they were hot.

Then it got worse and worse: large objects began to fly around the house: sofas, armchairs, chairs, tables, as if someone had deliberately thrown the Hodgsons out of their beds. And one day a completely unthinkable story happened: two specialists heard Billy’s cry for help: “I can’t move! It’s holding my leg!” The men barely managed to free the child from captivity.

Also worth noting is the knocking, which did not stop and was one of the most unnerving aspects of this case.

The researchers tried their best: they recorded everything with voice recorders and cameras. Bottom line: they witnessed 1,500 paranormal phenomena that occurred in the Hodgson house.

The poltergeist haunted all family members, police officers who came to visit the family from time to time, neighbors and journalists. But 11-year-old Janet Hodgson got the worst of it: she could go into a terrible trance, somehow throw objects that an adult would not pick up, and also float in the air.

We can say that all this looks like a fiction, a set-up trick, as skeptics claimed, only some of the eyewitnesses managed to take a few pictures of what was happening. One of them shows how the poltergeist lifted Janet and threw her with such force that the girl flew to the other side of the room. In the photo, you can clearly see from her distorted face that she is in a lot of pain. It is unlikely that a child would intentionally hurt himself.

One day the girl even spoke in the gruff male voice of the Enfield poltergeist, whose real name was Bill Wilkins: “Before I died, I was blinded by a cerebral hemorrhage, I passed out and died in the corner.”

After this incident, the police met with the son of the deceased old man to verify the truth of the words that came from the girl and to rule out the possibility of a simple joke. However, the son confirmed all the details of the story.

The original audio recordings of conversations with Bill Wilkins while Janet Hodgson was in a trance have become available on the Internet:

Years later she talked about it:

I felt controlled by a force that no one understood. I really don't want to think about it too much. You know, I'm not entirely sure that this something was truly “evil.” Rather, he wanted to become part of our family. It didn't want to offend us. He died in this house and now wanted peace. The only way he could communicate was through me and my sister.

Despite such a variety of manifestations of the phenomenon, many researchers believed that the phenomena in Enfield were nothing more than a protracted children's prank organized by Janet Hodgson and her older sister Margaret. Skeptics claimed that the girls secretly moved and broke objects, jumped on the bed and made “demonic” voices. Indeed, on several occasions, researchers caught girls bending spoons. In 1980, Janet admitted that she and her sister faked some incidents, but only to test the researchers themselves.

Janet also claims that before everything started, she was playing with a board to summon spirits.

According to Janet, she did not know that she was falling into a trance until she was shown the pictures. And about her “flights in the air” she spoke like this:

Levitation was scary because you don’t know where you’ll land. In one of the cases of levitation, a curtain was wrapped around my neck, I screamed and thought that I was going to die. Mom had to make a lot of effort to break it. And Bill, who spoke through me, was furious that we were moving into his house.

Janet had to spend some time after the incident in a psychiatric hospital in London, where she was declared sane. She later recalled:

It was hard. I spent some time in London, in a psychiatric hospital, where my head was covered with electrodes, but everything was normal.

The girl herself made it onto the front page of the Daily Star with the glib title “Possessed by the Devil.” Janet also had a hard time at school. Childhood cruelty was shown to her in full:

I was teased at school. They called her “ghost girl.” Calling me names, they threw various things at my back. After school I was afraid to go home. Doors opened and closed, different people came and went, and I was very worried about my mother. As a result, she had a nervous breakdown.

At the age of 16 she left home and soon got married. Her younger brother Johnny, nicknamed "the freak from the haunted house" at school, died at the age of 14 from cancer. In 2003, her mother also died of cancer. Janet herself lost her son - at the age of 18, he died in his sleep.

Janet Hodgson / Janet (Hodgson) Winter

Janet still insists that the story is completely true. She claims that there is still something living in the house, but over time it has calmed down a little.

I didn’t want to experience this again while my mother was alive, but now I want to tell everything. I don’t care whether people believe it or not – it happened to me, it was all real and true.

After Janet's mother died, Claire Bennett and her four sons moved into the house. “I didn’t see anything, but I felt strange. Someone’s presence was clearly felt in the house; I always felt like someone was watching me,” said Claire. Her children said that at night someone was talking in the house, but when she found out what had happened in this house before, she immediately understood what was happening. 2 months after the move, the family left this house.

Claire's 15-year-old son, Shaka, said this:

The night before leaving, I woke up and saw a man entering the room. Running into my mother’s bedroom, I told her about what I had seen and said: “We need to leave,” which we did the next day.

Now another family lives in the house, but how the Enfield poltergeist reacted to their move is not yet known. The mother of the family did not want to introduce herself and stated briefly: “My children know nothing about this. I don't want to scare them."

There is a video where you can look at all the main participants in this unusual story. By time:

• 00:00 Opinion by Maurice Grosse (paranormal investigator)
• 04:27 Janet and Margaret as children (BBC recording)
• 11:27 Margaret and her mother Peggy Hodgson
• 13.06 Interview with police
• 13.34 Interview with Janet in 2014 (recorded by itv1)