It’s the late 1970s in Enfield, North London. Rows of drab-looking houses make up what’s
known as Green Street. Inside one of those houses two young girls
are being asked about a story that has already made headlines and shocked a nation. The story contains what we might call supernatural
disturbances. We are talking about moving objects, things
flying around the room, knocking inside the walls, contact with an out-of-this-world entity. A policeman who went around to investigate
said these exact words in his report, “I then saw a chair slide right across the floor.” He could offer no explanation as to how this
happened. No one ever has, and more frightening things
happened. This has been called the best case ever for
proof of a poltergeist, but there are many skeptics. It all started on a balmy night in August
of 1977. A single mother made a phone call to police
and told them something they didn’t regularly hear. The mother, named Peggy, told the cops she
believed her house was haunted. Things were moving around by themselves. Sounds were emanating from the walls. The policeman went around to see what was
happening, and as we said, he witnessed a chair sliding across the floor. He checked for hidden wires, fishing line,
anything that might have been used to move the object, and wrote in his report that he
found nothing. No crime had been committed, though, so what
could the police do. Unfortunately, in North London there was no
branch of Ghostbusters Inc. At first many people just thought it was the
kids playing a prank. These were the then 13-year old Margaret and
the 11-year old Janet. The two almost became household names because
the British media were all over the story. On TV the two would talk about flying Lego
bricks, and generally just things moving on their own accord. Maybe they were just kids with very active
imaginations, but others came forward, too, to say they had seen the same. In interviews one man said he was hit by a
flying slipper. There is an interview with another police
officer, and her exact words were, “I saw a chair levitate.” Many more people in the end would witness
these strange happenings, some say about 30, but 17 of those people were confirmed and
interviewed. Could they all have been hallucinating? Could they have all fallen for an elaborate
hoax played on them by the kids? We’ll get around to it later, but we should
tell you now that those girls, now middle-aged women, still say today what they saw was real. That they had been a part of a haunting. When you can’t call Ghostbusters perhaps
the best thing to do is to call the Society for Psychical Research, and that’s what
the stricken family did. A member of that society and a paranormal
investigator would spend a lot of time at that house. His name was Maurice Grosse. He didn’t have to be there long to claim
that he was dealing with perhaps “the best case this century, maybe of all time, of a
poltergeist.” It wasn’t long until he was conversing with
the spirit using a knocking system, one knock for yes and two for no. But surely some prankster kid could have been
doing the knocking. Oh yes, there were plenty of skeptics, but
also a lot of rational thinking people whose minds were blown. It’s written that during the investigation,
Grosse, and his partner Guy Lyon Playfair, logged over 2,000 instances of what one might
call paranormal activity. Moving chairs seemed to be a favorite, but
the pair also noted drawers just opening and closing by themselves, toys flying around
the room, things just flipping over and even pools of water forming for no reason. We should say as the family, including two
young sons, had relatives on the street when things got too bad they stayed elsewhere. In November, the mother became quite upset. Her daughter’s bed had been upturned in
the night throwing the young girl to the floor. Ok, enough is enough, thought the mother. She said out loud that she wanted to know
what was going on. She left a notepad and paper on the table. In the morning this is what was written on
that pad, “I will stay in the house. Do not read this to anyone or I will retaliate.” It just got worse. The kids were now being knocked out with Valium
to help them sleep. They often just crouched in corners, slept
on tables even, because time and again they’d be found in the morning flipped out of bed,
sometimes violently. The same month a medium was invited to try
and talk to this ghost that didn’t seem to like kids having a good night’s sleep. His name was Luiz Gasparetto, known as the
Brazilian psychic. All that happened, though, was he made the
family feel better. It’s now December, and Janet, the youngest
child, has been acting up. She speaks in a weird voice as if possessed,
and it’s said in a semi-conscious state she produced a series of rather violent and
disturbing drawings. Janet seems to have it the worst, and now
isn’t just being thrown from her bed but is found sleepwalking. She believes she was pulled out of bed and
led by someone. Janet seems to be the chosen one, because
for one day when Maurice was trying to get the entity to speak and record it, at first
all the thing did was whistle and bark. But then Maurice got a shock, because Janet
then started speaking like an old man. She said her name was Joe Watson. All this was recorded. A few days later and a William "Bill" Wilkins
makes an appearance through the girl. The investigators asked what happened to him,
and he replied, “I went blind, and I had a hemorrhage, and I fell asleep and I died
on a chair in the corner downstairs.” Hmm, maybe that explains the dislike of chairs. It’s almost 1978 now, but something special
is going to happen just before Christmas. Two independent witnesses explained how one
night books, cushions, pillows started flying around Janet’s bedroom. Here the spirit through Janet said David should
get away, and the door should be locked. But from the street a woman was walking past
the house. Her name was Hazel Short. In a statement she said, “When I looked
up, a candy-striped pillow hit the window as well. That came after the books, and I was... I don't know if I was frightened or not, just
fascinated. The windows were still closed. Then after a little while, I saw Janet.” She then said she saw the girl levitate. In her exacts words she said she saw Janet,
“going up and down as though someone was just tossing her up and down bodily, in a
horizontal position, like as if someone had got hold of her legs and back and throwing
here up and down." Another man saw the same thing, but again,
was this little girl just very good and making things seem a certain way? Many more people visited that house, and from
all over the world. It was a big case, only because respected
people had all witnessed these strange things, not to mention police reports stating objects
moved in front of officers. The American magician and paranormal researcher
called Milbourne Christophe went over to London, but he was part of a group that believed this
was a giant hoax created by smart or even crazy kids. They’d have to be slightly mad to do what
happened on their mother’s birthday on January 15th. The oldest sister went to the bathroom and
came out upset. Someone had written S-H-I-T on the wall and
it had been written using human excrement. Hmm, happy birthday Peggy. The day got worse because that’s the day
Peggy said she clearly saw an apparition of a man at the bottom of the stairs. As a single mother with four kids, a poo-paining
ghost, months of craziness, Peggy was later hospitalized. She was soon released, though. Many people, supernatural experts, magicians,
and the media, made trips to the house. It’s was like a paranormal circus. Perhaps the most famous people to visit were
the paranormal investigators Ed & Lorraine Warren. You might know these guys as they have been
portrayed in the Conjuring movies. On a second trip to London in 1979 they filmed
for hours, saying they captured things levitating and also the "spontaneous removal of the wallpaper.” They were both convinced the haunting was
real, and year’s later Lorraine would call The Conjuring 2 movie “accurate”. That’s the one with the Enfield trip in
it. Eventually young Janet stopped speaking for
dead people. She would say she didn’t remember much of
what went down when she was in those trance states, but many years later when she was
a middle-aged woman would say in an interview, “I know what happened and I know what was
real. I don’t care what others think. I know what was real.” Her sister would back her up, and looking
at the two women it would be hard to accuse them of lying. Still, they both admitted at times playing
up for Maurice and his team because they liked the attention, but they said this was only
about two percent of the occurrences. They said they felt bad if nothing happened
and someone had come to visit, so a few occasions did cheat somewhat. There have been many skeptics of course, with
that American magician saying the girls were behind it all. He once said, "The poltergeist was nothing
more than the antics of a little girl who wanted to cause trouble and who was very,
very, clever.” Others said Janet was very smart and was able
to do amazing things with her voice, which is possible, but not easy without training. Many came forward and said it had all been
a hoax, just a very good one. But then there are just some things that still
stand out. Did the kids really go to all that trouble
to flip out of bed? They, or perhaps just Janet, or even the whole
family, must have had great sleight of hand to make things just fall over, slide, fly
through the air and make dozens of people see it. All that without adults seeing the trick. One of the better known critiques of the Enfield
haunting came from Chris French, a psychologist who works at Goldsmiths, University of London. He starts with the basic stuff, saying if
the girls said they made up about 2 percent of what went down it’s likely they were
lying about more things. He then says that famous photo of Janet apparently
levitating isn’t exactly trustworthy and she could have just been mid-jump. He goes for a bit of a long shot with the
police reports, stating that people can be very suggestible. Conjurers often make people see something
that isn’t actually happening, he says, and suggests that the cops just saw what they
thought they should see. He added, “I strongly suspect it was Janet
and her sister behind it. There are other cases where schoolgirl pranks
have got out of hand.” Once those sister got going, there was no
going back, he believes. Maybe that is still the case, because they
still say what happened, happened. Another point is that they seemed so scared
at times. Were they incredibly good actresses, these
two children? This is what one newspaper reporter said when
he visited the children during the hauntings. “You had to see it to believe it,” he
said. “They were petrified, they were so frightened.” He was one of the believers, of course. And this is what one of the police officers
said in an interview, rather than an official report, when talking about the moving chair,
“It came off the floor, ooh maybe a half inch I should say. And I saw it slide off to the right, about
three and a half or four feet, before it came to a rest.” Could suggestibility move a chair four feet? One inch perhaps, but across the room? Nonetheless, time and again skeptics have
debunked the paranormal story, with one of them recently stating in The Guardian that
none of the occurrences happened under controlled circumstances. Expectations can fuel perceptions, said that
writer, and people saw what they wanted to see. That might not necessarily mean the family
was playing tricks, or rather the girls, but they had become convinced of what their imaginations
told them. It’s time now to leave this open to you. An elaborate hoax or a real life haunting? Tell us what you think in the comments. Also, be sure to check our other show The
Ghost Ship That The Government Tried To Keep A Secret. Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t
forget to like, share and subscribe. See you next time.
