The Enfield haunting was real.

[ALittleBitWooo]

I’m watching The Enfield Poltergeist, probably the most famous ghost story in England.
The two sisters both give interviews and still seem deeply troubled by what happened, what are people’s thoughts?
And does anyone want to share their own spooky experiences. I’ll go first,

When my son was three I caught him chatting to himself in my hallway, he told me he was talking to a sad little girl who had lost her way in and was stuck.
He’d come into my room at night and tell me she’d woken him up by playing with his toys.
I was home alone one night, I got up to get a glass of water and was walking back to the bedroom and the hallway light turned off and the kitchen radio turned on.. full sodding blast, I was terrified!
I also come home one day to find the oven door open and all of the oven trays on the floor.
Another day I come home to my cat with its fur all puffed up, growling at the wall like the dog in The Poltergeist movie. Nothing else like this has happened since moving out of that house.

I thought at least one of the two sisters had admitted to monkey business?

Shortly after my mum died random devices would go off. Like my laptop and phone would start playing random YouTube videos or songs even when the lid was closed/screen was locked. Never happened before or since.

Then I was sitting the living room and all the photo frames fell over, the same thing my mum said happened after my grandma died.

Otherwise I am not very woo, I find it funny that ghosts might exist but they are a bit useless. Like in the series Ghosts where it takes all there effort to move something 1cm!

Im very sceptical about the Enfield poltergeist. And usually there’s an explanation for spooky stories.

However I became open minded to the possibility of a third dimension when a block of Roquefort I definitely bought, definitely put in the fridge and looked forward to eating suddenly disappeared 20 minutes after I put it there. I even counted out loud to myself the number of shelves as in “It’s not on shelf 1, shelf 2” all the way to shelf 4. Several times. Then I went for a bath, came back opened the fridge - there in the middle shelf at the front was by block of Roquefort, and there were suddenly 5 shelves. I was all alone. I absolutely crapped myself (still ate the Roquefort though).

I’m watching it now, they are sticking to their story and like I said both sisters still seem affected. Janet was actually put in to care because the mum was convinced the ghost was attached to her.

Yes I thought this too. It’s quite sad what happened to a lot of the family in the end IIRC.

https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/movies/new-movies/margaret-and-janet-hodgson-return-to-london-poltergeist-house-after-40-years/news-story/745ac33467c1ac744272740ce9f47166

I absolutely believe there was something going on in that home. The social workers, police officers etc who were all genuinely quite disturbed going into the home really struck me.
Yes the girls did admit to some mischief at the time but I don't think that means that nothing happened.

Not the same thing (and I always thought the sisters had admitted to it being a fraud), but my friend has to have a big operation this week and is worried about it going south. Me, in all sympathy, told her that if it does, and she tries to haunt me, then I'm stocking up on salt to circle the house and sage to burn and shoo her off!

Holy moly this program is insane that I’m watching, lots that I didn’t know.
The photo of Janet flying across her bedroom.. She went from being tucked under a duvet to the up right in the middle of her room in less then one second. They’ve also got photos where the poor girl has woke up on top of her record player!

No it wasn’t.

What program are you watching?
I recommend watching the one on Apple TV which is all taken from the audio recordings taken at the time. They have actors lip syncing to the recordings but it is much better than it sounds.

There is so much more to the whole story than many people realise. I don’t believe any of it now.

Children with disturbed, unexplained, distressing (to them and others) behaviour, have always been around, its given different names at different times in history. In the 60s and 70s people still believed in things like the supernatural rather than recognising what psychological and physiological changes children go through at puberty. Children display what society believes in.

That is what I’m watching, and it’s making it really believable to me! I’m only half way through it though.

😁😁🤣🤣

F

I don’t think the sisters admitted fraud, Janet says 2% made up in that article. I’m not convinced, all the photos look like she’s jumping - hair up, toggles up, etc.

This is the poshest ghost story ever! 😁

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.

Ghost took it
Too smelly
Put it back !

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.

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.

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.

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

Thankyou, is this the one?

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.