Guy Lyon Playfair’s supernatural thriller, This House Is Haunted isn’t fiction. It is his subjective experiences while living with a family plagued by a poltergeist; one seemingly able to hold conversations with the living.
Peggy Hodgson was a newly divorced woman raising four children in a home on Green Street in Enfield, North London. On the night of August 31, 1977, she stormed into her daughters’ bedroom and told them to keep the noise down. 12 year old Margaret and eleven year old Janet were lying in their beds staring at the dresser, which had been moved away from the wall. Peggy pushed it back, but when she turned to leave, she heard it slide back away from the wall. With a raised eyebrow, she tried to move it back, but it just wouldn’t budge.
A little while later, neighbors Vic and Peggy Nottingham were torn from their beds by a persistent knocking on their door. It was Peggy Hodgson, her two girls and two boys, ten ear old Johnny and seven year old Billy. They quickly related the phenomena going into their house to the confused Nottingham's. A little annoyed, Vic decided to investigate; he returned a little too quickly. He confessed strange knocking noises had followed him throughout the whole house and he couldn't’t find their source. Not knowing what else to do, he called the police.
WPC Carolyn Heeps and her partner were dispatched to the Nottingham residence and led both families into the house to take statements. Heeps later confessed that while she was standing in the living room, a chair moved, seemingly of its own accord. Being an excellent detective, she tried every way to recreate the anomaly, looking for hidden wires and testing the slant of the floor with a marble. However, she could come up with no explanation. After an hour, the two shaken police officers left the house and the Hodgson family went back to stay with the Vic and Peggy.
Unsure of what to do and a little put out by his desperate houseguests, the couple called the local paper. On September 4, reporter Douglas Bence and photographer Graham Morris of the Daily Mirror paid the family a visit. After speaking with everyone about their experiences, they felt confident that there wasn’t anything of interest going on in the house. Just as they were about to leave, the unthinkable happened. Marbles and other small toys began to fly around the living room. Morris was hit in the brow by one of the projectiles, but when the paper ran he expressed his deep regret he wasn’t able to capture a photograph of any of the flying toys. With his perspective on life and death now in crisis, he called the Society for Psychical Research (SPR).
The organization quickly sent out one of their newest members, Maurice Grosse, who had come to the group after losing his daughter, also named Janet. After the initial visit he and Guy Lyon Playfair inevitably moved in with the family for 14 months. Soon, amateur radio personality Roz Morris was asked to do a story on the strange goings on in the Hodgson home.
By then, all manner of things were moving around the house, and Grosse took notice that while three of the children always seemed distressed by the phenomena, eleven year old Janet was practically giddy when something odd happened. He theorized this was a classic poltergeist case, with Janet as the agent unknowingly causing all of the commotion with unconscious psychokinetic energy.
Grosse contacted John B. Hasted, Professor of Physics at Birkbeck College at the University of London to do some tests on young Janet. In these studies, the Profession discovered that from a distance of six inches, Janet was able to significantly bend metal without even touching it, much like the magician of the time, Uri Geller who amazed audiences with spoon-bending tricks.
All of the publicity surrounding the occurrences eventually attracted the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). While there, cameramen reported equipment problems and during an interview strange knocking sounds could be heard in the background. It was because of all of this attention and the easy way Grosse dropped the Society for Psychical Research’s name that the SPR sent out the skeptical duo, Anita Gregory and John Beloff. After spending a few days in the home, the girls confessed to Anita that they had played tricks on Grosse and Playfair, but had been caught each time. With a contemptuous grin, the two investigators claimed the whole thing was a sham and left.
In November, Janet began acting very strange. Her vibrant enthusiasm and never-ending hyperactivity gave way to hysterical fits. Both Grosse and Playfair commented on her seemingly preternatural strength during her episodes. Janet also began drawing some rather disturbing pictures and claimed she thought she was possessed. After that, the girls were reportedly tossed from their beds almost nightly.
The sound of a dog barking always seemed to interrupt the adults’ conversations. That wouldn’t have been too odd if the Hodgson family had had a dog. Soon, this alleged voice was speaking legibly through Janet. Most people thought this was just some childish prank, but speech therapist concluded the raspy voice was coming from the false vocal cords in Janet’s throat. Since using them for a few minutes can cause throat pain and making use of them over a long amount of time can cause permanent damage, everyone was perplexed as to just how Janet was able to talk in that tone for up to three hours without showing any signs of distress. Janet herself later said it was as if she was being used as a ventriloquist’s dummy by a ghost.
The investigators installed microphones in the girls’ bedroom to keep the remote-operated cameras company. One interesting conversation between Grosse’s son, Richard, and the voice through the closed bedroom door proved to some disturbing. Richard asked the voice what his name was.
“Bill,” it replied.
When Richard asked “Bill” how he died, the voice explained, “I went blind. Then, I had a hemorrhage. Then, I feel asleep and I died in a chair in a corner downstairs.”
He was impressed first because he didn’t believe a young girl would realize blindness is indeed associated with a hemorrhage, and secondly because Janet had indeed named the man who lived in the home before her family moved in. The investigators later contacted the former homeowner’s son, Terry, who listened to the recording and verified the statement.
Peggy and Grosse decided it would be best to send Janet to nearby Maudsley Hospital for two months of psychological testing. She was released with a clean bill of health, but couldn't’t escape the resentfulness she felt towards her mother for sticking her in a mental hospital so things would quiet down at home.
As typical, the paranormal activity slowly died down until finally it ceased altogether in 1978. The official stance of the Society for Psychical Research was to divide the members for a short time. Skeptics in the SPR point out the confession of the girls as pranksters, the lack of concrete photographic evidence and the anecdotal nature of all of the accounts. Still, the only thing that perplexed the members was the voice.
On March 6, 2007, Channel 4 aired the documentary called Interview With a Poltergeist, detailing this story and once again bringing the case into the public eye where it has again caused controversy between believers and skeptics.
