The House on Green Street

In August 1977, Peggy Hodgson — a single mother living in a council house in Enfield, north London — contacted police after reporting furniture moving on its own and strange knocking sounds emanating from the walls. What followed over the next fourteen months would become one of the most scrutinised, debated, and enduring cases in paranormal history.

Peggy lived at 284 Green Street with her four children: Margaret (13), Janet (11), Johnny (10), and Billy (7). The activity seemed to centre on Janet and Margaret, particularly Janet.

What Was Reported?

The range of phenomena attributed to the Enfield Poltergeist was extensive and, unusually for such cases, witnessed by multiple independent observers including police officers, journalists, and researchers.

  • Furniture movement: Chairs and sofas reportedly moved across rooms without being touched. A responding police officer, WPC Carolyn Heeps, signed a sworn statement saying she witnessed a chair slide across the floor on its own.
  • Knocking and percussion: Loud banging sounds — seemingly from within walls — were recorded and became a signature of the case.
  • Object throwing: Toys, books, and household items were reportedly thrown across rooms, sometimes with considerable force.
  • Levitation: Multiple witnesses, including neighbours, claimed to have seen Janet levitating in her bedroom.
  • Gruff voice: Janet appeared to speak in a deep, gravelly voice that she — and those present — claimed was not her own. This was captured on audio recordings by investigators. The voice identified itself as "Bill," a former occupant of the house who had died there.

The Investigators

The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) sent investigators Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair to the house. Both spent considerable time documenting events at the property. Playfair later wrote a book — This House is Haunted (1980) — detailing the investigation in full.

Grosse, in particular, became convinced the phenomena were genuine. He accumulated hundreds of hours of audio recordings, photographs, and written witness testimonies over the course of the investigation.

The Skeptical View

Not everyone was persuaded. Some investigators caught Janet bending spoons herself and, on one occasion, apparently faking levitation by bouncing on her bed. Janet herself, in later interviews, admitted that some events were fabricated — though she maintained that others were genuine.

Skeptics argue the case is a textbook example of childhood attention-seeking behaviour amplified by credulous adult investigators. The psychological stress of a recently broken home, they suggest, created a fertile environment for suggestibility and performance.

Why It Still Matters

The Enfield case remains compelling for several reasons. The sheer volume of independent witnesses — many with nothing to gain — makes wholesale dismissal difficult. The audio recordings of the "Bill" voice remain genuinely unexplained by mainstream analysis. And the case predates the era of viral media, meaning the Hodgson family received no significant financial reward for their claims.

The case was dramatised in the 2016 film The Conjuring 2 and a 2015 Sky Living series, The Enfield Haunting, both of which reignited public interest. Janet Hodgson has spoken publicly about her experiences as an adult and maintains that the genuine events occurred alongside the admitted fabrications.

Conclusion

Whether you believe the Enfield Poltergeist was genuinely supernatural, a product of childhood psychology, or some combination of both, the case stands as a fascinating intersection of grief, family trauma, investigative methodology, and the human capacity for the unexplained. It remains required reading — and listening — for any serious student of the paranormal.