It was 1977 on a typical Anfield municipal estate in North London, Middlesex. Peggy Hodgson was a single mother with four children. Up to this point, life had presented them with few surprises, but their world had to be destroyed in the most unnatural and inexplicable way.
The household members experienced the persecution of the poltergeist, which lasted more than a year and caused a sensation in the media. This case became infamous and was dubbed by journalists as the "Anfield Poltergeist". But Peggy and her children did not understand - was it a ghost or something else?
What is a poltergeist?
The term "poltergeist" derives from 19th century German, created from two separate words: "poltern", which means "to create disorder" and "geist", which means "ghost." The Oxford Dictionary describes a poltergeist as:
A poltergeist has settled in a house on this street.
There has been much debate about what constitutes a poltergeist as a paranormal. Is it just a noisy spirit, or the locked soul of a deceased person who cannot go into the afterlife for some reason? Or, as some people say, an emotional release into the atmosphere, a clot of energy, some kind of restless and evil entity?
Perhaps it is neither one nor the other. Let's look at the surreal events that took place in this beleaguered poltergeist family, and perhaps then it will be possible to make an informed decision about what and whom to believe.
Promotional video:
A year in hell
It all started on August 30, 1977. The "year of torment" began, which will forever remain in the memory of the Hodgson family and neighboring townspeople, thanks to regular publications in the local press. It all started small. Janet and her younger brother Pete complained to their mother that their beds were moving in a strange way. Peggy shrugged off that first wake-up call because the kids always played before bed (sometimes very actively) and never thought about it anymore.
Peggy Hodgson is a single mother.
The next night, however, marked a swift plunge into an unknown and surreal state for all of them. Janet complained about the noise in the bedroom, saying it sounded like someone invisible was dragging a chair. Peggy quickly removed the chair from the room, but when she turned off the light, she heard a noise too. She immediately turned on the light in anticipation to catch the joker, but both children were under the blankets.
After turning off the light, the noise from the moving chair resumed again. Then there was a repeated sound from a heavier object. Peggy, alarmed, turned on the light again, this time to see the dresser moving back and forth across the floor.
She immediately jumped out of bed and, overcoming her fear, pushed it back into place. But the chest of drawers immediately moved away from the wall again. Frightened, she again tried to push the furniture back, but found that it was stuck, as if someone, or something, was holding it in place. The chest of drawers seemed to be glued to the floor!
Janet in 1977 - she was infused with the spirit of "Bill".
Horrified, she gathered all the children downstairs and knocked on the neighbors' door to ask for help. Meanwhile, the strange knocking continued and were heard by the neighbors. This time the sound came from the wall. It was decided to call the police.
The police immediately showed up at 11 pm and began investigating the possibility of an invasion of private property. The bangs on the wall continued and was witnessed by the police present. Investigators have testimony from a female police officer, and her words speak for themselves better:
Terror intensifies
Day by day it only got worse. The Lego pieces were scattered across the floor with an invisible hand and felt hot to the touch. After the local vicar and medium failed to help, Peggy made a controversial but desperate decision. She contacted the press.
Reporter Douglas Bens and photographer Graham Morris were both working for the Daily Mirror at the time. They arranged a visit and, to their great disappointment, found nothing unusual that time. However, when they left for their car, it all started again. The reporters rushed back inside, and just as Morris entered the door with his camera, a piece of Lego set flew into his head, leaving a scar on his skin.
It was during this time that a senior reporter suggested that the family contact the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Psychologist Maurice Gross was invited into the family and spent a couple of quiet days with Peggy and her children, getting to know the family, until September 8, 1977. The poltergeist manifested itself at about 2 am. Maurice heard a crash from Janet's bedroom. Another chair "went for a walk."
The psychologist immediately contacted the staff of the Daily Mirror, who had visited the house the day before. At 3 a.m., Graham captured a chair that moved again on film, and Gross saw the bedroom doors open and close without human intervention.
All kinds of poltergeist phenomena were now fully manifested. Books spontaneously fell off the shelves, chairs still rolled across the floor and fell with a crash, dishes moved across the table and broke, and the family had no time to sleep. In addition, the electricity was constantly turned off.
Morris had three terribly expensive and reliable flash cameras, but the infrared cameras regularly broke down and the film was damaged and the tape was erased. Even the metal components inside some of the tape recorders were bent. The Anfield poltergeist seemed to gain confidence, power, and terror and violence.
Communication with the entity
Over the next weeks and months, the evil poltergeist phenomena continued to worsen. The knocking became commonplace at night, and the movement of furniture did not surprise anyone. Children's toys spontaneously scattered around the room, and what was much worse - the children were regularly removed from their nightwear, although they were sleeping. The sheets from the beds inexplicably ended up on the windows and on the chandelier, and the pillows from the headboard moved to the feet of the children.
The pillow slides to the floor by itself.
Unexplained puddles of water spontaneously appeared on the floor, forming perfect circles. The light for a moment spontaneously turned on in the lamps and went out again. The clown doll turned 180 degrees in the chair, Janet's neatly folded clothes were thrown from the chair onto the floor, the table lamp tilted 45 degrees, and then returned to its normal position. And the final chord - in front of nine witnesses, a heavy sofa rose into the air and turned over, falling to the floor with a crash.
It was at this point that perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the matter arose. A harsh male voice began to come from Janet. The girl at that moment was in a state of trance. At first, the voice claimed that he was not alone, but "their" whole company. There were several people who alternately displayed anger, frustration, an odd knack for a trance girl's naughty tongue, and a rather odd humor. One character kept coming back more often than others - this character introduced himself as "Bill."
Janet was possessed by the evil spirit of the former tenant.
Attempts to contact Bill seemed to be successful, first through tapping on the wall (once yes, three times no), but then direct voice communication became possible. Bill claimed to be 53 years old and then 64. He claimed to have died in the house, sitting in his favorite chair after being blind and bleeding.
Oddly enough, the facts about Bill were not previously known to the family or neighbors, but were later confirmed by his son, who was later found. Bill's son acted as a witness to confirm the events surrounding his father's life and death in the home, including the position of the chair on which he died. Investigators have finally found the answer to the question of who Anfield's Poltergeist really was.
Was the case a hoax?
There were witnesses who were present in the house but did not see any evidence of paranormal activity. There are also documented cases of Janet being caught creating a hoax. The thing is that the poltergeist in their house received increased attention from the press and researchers, and the paranormal events did not occur by order, but by themselves.
Every time journalists and photographers showed up, there was tremendous pressure, and Janet must have felt this pressure more than anyone else. Especially when the poltergeist was "resting." Of course, most of the time nothing happened in the house. This, however, does not allow us to dismiss the huge number of real phenomena that have been witnessed by the press, police officers, investigators, local church members, neighbors and others. Plus, there is physical evidence: photographs and recordings of Bill's voice.
Sinister Penthouse - Was something really going on there?
The conclusion about the hoax of otherworldly forces was led by the fact that Janet was approached at that time by two competing newspapers, offering by the standards of the 70s. rather large sums of money for a reportage. The publications were ready to pay money for "exposing" the poltergeist.
The girl was asked to tell how she had been pretending all this time and mystified the manifestation of the poltergeist. Janet flatly refused, but it was not a rich family, whatever one may say. There was also no attempt to move to a more livable home, as Peggy and her family remained there for another 25 years after the paranormal activity ceased until her death in 2003.
So how did the Enfield poltergeist end? As suddenly as it began. Janet was admitted to Maudsley Hospital for psychiatric evaluation in July 1978. She was examined carefully for two months and was found to be completely healthy and normal. While Janet was absent, activity in the house completely ceased. Upon returning home, she always felt that something was there until her mother, Peggy, died, but there were no more serious disturbances.
After this terrible ordeal, the family was able to return to normal life. Interestingly, after some time, none of the family members accepted a single offer to confess to the hoax (“I was just kidding!”), And not a single witness changed his story.
Instead of an afterword
While writing this article, the computer crashed twice, three pictures and an entire section of text that had been prepared earlier were lost, and it needed to be rewritten again. Maybe some stories just don't want to be told?