The Enfield haunting was real.

Haven’t listened to the Battersea Poltergeist yet, but you’re bang on about Witch Farm. An alcoholic artistic type who pissed off his neighbours FGS. I bet the teenage son was delighted to leave.
There was an “incident” where a piano was making sounds by itself that was never mentioned again. It obviously had mice, rats or a bird inside it.

Don’t think anyone has mentioned it, but the film “The Conjuring 2” is all about the Enfield Poltergeist. Two American ghost hunters come over to investigate!

I know, but the fact that a whole newspaper serial and other media attentions could run with 'poltergeist' says a lot for what the public would swallow at that time

It wouldnt happen now. Why?

Its not about whether science exists at a time or not, its what societal beliefs are for behavioural explanations. I dont know if the children were ND, or had been abused or any number of reasons why they would have behaved like that. Today those are the explorations that would take place rather than feeling the house was possessed. In 50 years time it will be something else, another diagnosis or condition that replaces those explanations.

I thought the ‘Witch Farm’ was largely explained by the husband’s almost unmentioned alcoholism and obvious MH issues, plus their isolation, electrical faults, and a couple of nasty pranks from hostile neighbours. I imagine he pissed people off a lot sounding off in the pub. He was clearly a disturbed, angry and suggestible individual, particularly if, at the suggestion of a random, he sent his teenage son to live elsewhere on the suggestion he was the one ‘activating’ the poltergeist. I think the thing ‘haunting’ his house was chiefly his moods and drinking.

The Battersea scenario I think was fairly obviously the creation of the two YA children of the household, who may or may not have been collaborating — the ‘poltergeist’s’ preoccupations, including attacking the grandmother who had wronged the adopted son of the household (whose origins are never fully explained), getting the teenage daughter who wanted freedom, boyfriends and art college, not an overcrowded home and a dreary alterations job in Selfridges, fired, attention from a kindly uncle figure in the shape of the obsessive Harold Chibbert, the poltergeist’s obsession with Shirley’s favourite filmstar, the fact that the handwriting expert testified to the ‘poltergeist’’s’ handwriting being Shirley’s etc.

But how do you explain the voice she used when they made her hold water in her mouth and then taped it up?

That's the one! It's a briliant read. Him on the set of Most Haunted is hilarious.

It’s a bit much to insult people given that the global majority believe in some sort of supernatural/spiritual entities, it’s been an intrinsic part of human culture since forever.

I will admit that the only thing I’ve watched relating to this is the Enfield Poltergeist drama on Apple but I didn’t believe any of it whereas I think DH did, or was at least open to the possibility.

'Twas not 😄

I don’t believe it was real and photo looks very staged, however I love a spooky story!
I don’t have any myself unfortunately!
@Bridestone what are your thoughts on the Battersea poltergeist and the witch farm? I enjoyed BP but thought the witch farm was easily explained….just isolation and sleep deprivation, plus didn’t the husband drink quite a lot or am I remembering that wrong? Loved BP though and will have to listen to it again! I love Danny Robbins uncanny too although I am more of a sceptic.

Anyone who thinks ghosts are a thing or that the dead are somehow with us, needs their bumps reading. I know a good phrenologist!
Such nonsense
Such gullibility that people can take advantage of

We were quite good at science in the 60s and 70s, you know! 🤣🤣

She took a photo of her jumping off the bed and talking in a creepy low voice it was deffo fake

@Limprichteabiscuit - that sounds like a classic sleep paralysis experience, possibly influenced by the surroundings. Sleep paralysis is most likely to happen when you lie on your back and can be incredibly vivid. I'm not dismissing it though - I do believe in ghosts and have had some strange experiences.

I saw that programme, and didn't come away with any sense of real supernatural activity. The cheese in the fridge, though, is a phenomenon I'm only too familiar with. It's mostly food or remote controls that disappear then re-materialise exactly where you've been searching, but any interesting object small enough to be transferred temporarily to another dimension will do.

Some people will believe any old shite.

Of course it wasn’t real. There’s always an explanation. Only people that believe silly ghost stories are taken in.

There are very obvious explanations for this ‘haunting’, just as there were for Danny Robbins’ ‘Battersea Poltergeist’ and ‘The Witch Farm’ — all of them firmly embedded in human psychology. You’ll note that in both Enfield and Battersea, a young girl in a family with complex or troubled dynamics is being given fascinated attention by a kindly uncle-ish investigator.

Yes! I’m not the poster who mentioned the Will Storr book, but I read it after someone here on MN recommended it years ago. I’d class myself as a sceptic who thinks that the rational explanations are often scarier and sadder than the supernatural take, but who also loves a well-told ghost story, and I found it a fascinating read.

Wait until you have seen all of it. You might change your mind. It convinced me it wasn’t real.

Many people don’t realise that the girls had a brother who had been sent away to school due to his ‘behaviour’. I think all the children would have very different treatment today.

I am reasonably woo, and believe anything is possible. But I have always been skeptical about this. In every photograph I have ever seen of the girls 'floating' in their bedroom/being moved around by ghosts, they are always over the bed/near the bed. Looks a bit like they just jumped up and the pics were taken when they were in mid air.

Both girls said they mucked about because they were getting fed up of having all the paranormal investigators in the house and just wanted it all to stop. OP, you should check out Will Storr's book about him investigating the supernatural. Early on he went to meet a woman in the US called Kathy Ganiel who claimed she was being possessed by a poltergeist – the chapter where he witnesses her spinning out is so chilling. He was genuinely terrified by her. Then later in the book he went to meet Janet from the Enfield Haunting and when the interview started he was sure she reminded him of someone, but couldn't think who. This is what he wrote as the interview was coming to an end:

Up until her death, Janet’s mother would tell her that there was still something in the house. She’d hear footsteps on the stairs, and doors would open and close on their own. She didn’t mind so much, though. Compared to the hell that had ripped through the place during those months at the end of the seventies it was easily ignorable. Janet says, ‘Even my brother, until the day he left that place after Mum died, he’d say, “There’s still something there.” And there was. Put it this way, you’d feel like you were being watched.’ ‘And do you ever feel there’s something still with you?’ I ask. ‘Sometimes,’ she says. She’s speaking very softly, reluctantly, now. ‘I do. Nothing nasty, but I do. I can honestly say, though, that I’m not possessed. I … ’ She looks at me, and then, with the wrecking ball of realisation almost knocking me through the window, I finally get who it is that Janet reminds me of. ‘ … I try to convince myself that I’m not, anyway.’ It’s Kathy Ganiel.

Ghost took it
Too smelly
Put it back !

I categorically as an adult DO NOT believe in ghosts and believe that most so called paranormal activity can be explained.

However, 35 odd years ago, on a residential school trip to Burwell House, (Stately home) aged 15 I had a terrifying experience in the middle of the night which it affected me dreadfully, in terms of being scared at night, until I was 17/18 when I then sort of dismissed/forgot it.

I woke up in the middle of the night in my room to see an old man with a bald head and a waistcoat on, sat on the end of my bed, facing away with his head in his hands. At the foot of the bed by my feet I could see and feel a dip and sort of pressure. I froze and closed my eyes tightly for a few minutes and when I opened them the figure was gone.

As an adult I know this was a dream or my imagination being triggered by the environment I was in, however I still can’t sleep with my feet poking out the end of the bed, they have to be tucked in to the sheet /quilt.

I also never ever lay on my back in the pitch black as I am wary of opening my eyes like I did that night and imagining something that will paralyse me with fear like it did that night.