Imagine waking in the dead of night to the sound of heavy furniture scraping across the floor above you, only to find the room untouched and still. Or hearing a child’s laughter echo down the hall, only to realize your children are sound asleep. For one family in the quiet London suburb of Enfield, this was no imagination—it was their horrifying reality. What began as unexplained knocks soon escalated into one of the most well-documented and controversial hauntings of the 20th century, leaving even seasoned paranormal investigators stunned and skeptics questioning their beliefs.
It all started in August 1977, in a modest council house on Green Street. Peggy Hodgson, a single mother of four, thought nothing of it when her daughter Janet, aged 11, complained that her bed was shaking. But that night, loud knocking noises erupted from the walls, as if the house itself were alive. Furniture moved on its own, objects levitated, and a sense of cold dread filled the air. When Peggy witnessed a chest of drawers sliding across the room by an invisible force, blocking her daughter’s escape, she grabbed her children and fled into the night.
Terrified and desperate, Peggy called the police. Officers arrived, skeptical but professional, only to leave shaken after witnessing a chair slide across the floor on its own. The phenomenon defied explanation. One officer later signed an official statement, affirming the chair moved “four feet across the floor” without anyone touching it. The Hodgson family’s nightmare was only beginning.
Soon, the media caught wind of the bizarre occurrences. Reporters and photographers from the Daily Mirror arrived, eager to expose a hoax, but they too experienced the unexplainable—flying objects, sudden temperature drops, and eerie, guttural voices emanating from empty rooms. By now, Janet, the 11-year-old, had become the epicenter of the activity. She was often thrown from her bed, and witnesses claimed to see her levitate above the ground, her body twisting in unnatural ways.
The most chilling development came when Janet began speaking in a gravelly voice—one that didn’t belong to her. The voice claimed to be “Bill Wilkins,” a man who had died in the house years earlier. “Just before I died, I went blind, and then I had a hemorrhage and fell asleep and died in the chair downstairs,” the voice rasped through Janet’s mouth. Bill’s son later confirmed this description of his father’s death, though Janet had no way of knowing these details. Recordings of Janet’s voice still send shivers down the spines of those who hear them, as the deep, guttural tone seems impossible for a child to produce.
Paranormal investigators Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair from the Society for Psychical Research took a particular interest in the case. They spent months documenting the phenomena, recording hours of evidence, and capturing chilling photographs of Janet allegedly levitating. Grosse, who initially doubted the story, later stated, “I’ve never seen anything like it. It defies all logic.”
Skeptics, of course, argued that the entire haunting was an elaborate hoax. They pointed out moments when Janet and her siblings were caught bending spoons or throwing objects. Janet herself admitted that they occasionally “faked” incidents to test whether investigators would notice. But even the skeptics couldn’t explain the sheer volume of strange events witnessed by police, reporters, neighbors, and investigators.
After two harrowing years, the activity mysteriously stopped as abruptly as it began. The Hodgson family was left traumatized, their lives forever marked by an experience they could never fully understand. Janet later said, “It’s not haunted now, but I sometimes feel like it wants to come back.”
To this day, the Enfield Poltergeist remains one of the most infamous hauntings in history. Was it an elaborate hoax fueled by media frenzy, or did something truly unearthly terrorize a family in their humble home? Whatever the answer, one thing is certain: the events on Green Street remain a chilling reminder that some doors, once opened, may never fully close.