A Tribute To Maurice Grosse

(I'll be citing Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's Enfield tapes. "MG" will refer to tapes from Grosse's collection, and "GP" will refer to those from Playfair's. MG28A is Grosse's tape 28A, GP11A is Playfair's tape 11A, etc.)

In the mid 1990s, Maurice Grosse appeared on a BBC television program, Video Diaries, to tell his life story. You can watch the program here and here. He discusses his background as an artist, his military service in World War II, meeting his wife, his Judaism, how the premature death of his daughter led to his work on paranormal issues, and his work as an inventor and businessman. But I know him mainly from his work on the Enfield Poltergeist. I want to say more about him from that perspective.

Hugh Pincott, who was Honorary Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) at the time when Grosse started on the Enfield case, was one of the contributors to Melvyn Willin's recent book on Enfield. Pincott recalls how Grosse became involved in the case and comments on the controversy surrounding his involvement. Grosse was a new member of the SPR and had been asking them to assign him to a case. After the Daily Mirror started going to the Hodgsons' house to report on the poltergeist that was occurring there, one of their reporters contacted the SPR to send somebody out to help the family:

Our most experienced member with poltergeists was Brian Nisbet at Croydon. A long way from Enfield, and he had been ill recently. Then I had an idea: "Let's send Maurice Grosse: that will get him off our back for a bit!". Eleanor [O'Keefe, Secretary of the SPR] smiled broadly as she dialled the Mirror's number. Hardly had they answered before a gleaming red E-type Jaguar drew up outside a house in Enfield….

Alas, at the time, there was a conviction among some senior members [of the SPR] that only academics were capable of competent investigation (and that they alone should govern the Society): clearly Guy and Maurice were "trade". Furthermore there was an unfortunate tendency for some members to refuse cases because "I am too busy now, but will take it over when it gets interesting". (The Enfield Poltergeist Tapes [United States: White Crow Books, 2019], 121, 123-24)

On one of his tapes, Grosse commented on the unwillingness of others to get involved in the Enfield case in a substantive way. In the middle of November of 1977, he remarked that Playfair was the only other person he could get to put any significant time into the case. "Everybody's busy. They've all got excuses. But I'm also a very busy man, but I've found time to do it, and so have you [Playfair].…It's like all sorts of things in this life, Guy. I've lived a little bit longer than you, and I can tell you that it's always the same bloody story. Whenever you get involved in something like this, everybody's going bloody mad to get in on the act, but when it comes to doing the hard work, you've got to really get around and find them. They're very few and far between. I've done enough charity work in my time - I still do a lot of charity work - and it's always the same problem. You always get the bloody talkers and the doers." (MG20Bi, 36:58)

Around the time Grosse made those comments, the BBC filmed a story on Enfield that aired later in November. You can watch a clip here in which Grosse is shown driving up to the Hodgsons' house in his Jaguar, gets out, and walks to the front door with his tape recorder in his hand. That clip encapsulates so much of his involvement in the case. In a later documentary, Mary Rose Barrington of the SPR would comment on how Grosse and Playfair had spent far more time at the Hodgsons' house than investigators usually do and how "extraordinary" the amount of time they put into the case was. Grosse was a doer. You had to be in order to handle a case as large and complicated as Enfield as well as he did. I want to repeat a passage I've often quoted from Playfair's book:

"Incredible things had happened, and Maurice Grosse and I knew they had happened, some right in front of our eyes. But what did it all mean? The sad part of it was that so few people seemed to be interested in finding out, and how fortunate it was that Grosse had seized upon the case with such enthusiasm, and kept going despite all obstacles. Had he not done so, I hated to think what state the [Hodgsons] might be in by now." (This House Is Haunted [United States: White Crow Books, 2011], 175)

The Hodgsons would have been much worse off if the average investigator had been assigned to the case rather than one as unusual as Grosse. Even his biggest critic, Anita Gregory, acknowledged, "she [Peggy Nottingham, the Hodgsons' next-door neighbor] stressed over and over again Maurice Grosse's marvellous kindness to the family, to which I also can testify….I never attributed to Mr. Grosse any but the most kindly concern for the family's welfare….Nobody doubts Maurice's good faith and kind intentions, certainly not I" (Journal Of The Society For Psychical Research, vol. 50, 1979-80, p. 541; vol. 51, 1981-82, p. 115; vol. 52, 1983-84, p. 95) Stewart Lamont, who covered the Enfield case for the BBC, wrote, "Fear has never been allowed to get an upper hand, perhaps because of the calming attitude of the researcher." (Is Anybody There? [Great Britain: Mainstream Publishing, 1980], 28) During Lamont's famous interview of the Hodgson girls, Margaret comments on "learning to accept" the phenomena. Go here for an example of Grosse using similar terminology ("start to accept") to counsel a woman involved in another paranormal case. His influence on Margaret in the previous video is evident. Go here to see Margaret commenting in a 1995 television program, with tears, about how much Grosse helped the family. After John Beloff and Tony Cornell made some public comments about how Grosse and Playfair supposedly were keeping the case going too long, Peggy Hodgson signed a statement saying she didn't think she could have survived the case without Grosse and Playfair's help (GP39A, 35:17). In a discussion about the case in 1979, Peggy Nottingham commented on how frightened the Hodgson children were when the phenomena began (MG98A, 5:47). She mentions how she would try to be brave for the sake of the children, to encourage them. Her husband, Vic (with his wife expressing agreement), goes on to comment on how Grosse was the one who calmed everybody down and enabled them to be brave in facing what they had to go through (6:33).

To get some idea of what state the Hodgsons were in when the case began, watch Douglas Bence, a journalist who visited the house in the opening days, commenting on the subject here and here. And here's both Graham Morris and Bence commenting on the condition of the family. Go here to listen to Peggy Nottingham, in a 1978 documentary, recounting how the children were frightened when phenomena occurred and were "screaming and screaming". People often comment on how unafraid the family seems to be in Lamont's video linked above. But that video was filmed about six months into the case. It doesn't depict the initial condition of the family. Their improved state six months later was largely a result of Grosse's influence.

We often compartmentalize too much and, therefore, underestimate how a person's traits in one context affect his involvement in another. Despite his lack of experience as a paranormal investigator, Grosse's background in other fields contributed a lot to his role in the Enfield case. He was an unusually good communicator, in a variety of ways. He was often a spokesman for the Hodgson family and others involved in the case, and he frequently interacted with the media. His loud and clear voice substantially improves the quality of his tapes and Playfair's. That's important, given how much audio is involved and the significance of what the audio is about. We could trace out many influences that his experiences as a soldier, an inventor, and a businessman, for example, had on his Enfield work. Traits like these are often overlooked or underestimated, but they go a long way in improving the quality of the Enfield case. They're traits that made him more helpful to the Hodgsons and others involved in the original events and better at interacting with his colleagues and the public.

People often refer to how he was a father figure to the children. There's some truth to that. His experience raising a few children of his own would have influenced his interactions with the Hodgson children. How could it be otherwise? I've referred in previous posts to how he would joke with the children at times or discuss subjects other than the poltergeist with them (e.g., discussing dogs with Janet). And he must have made some kind of agreement with Peggy Hodgson early on in the case, or there must have been some kind of unspoken understanding between them, because he frequently raises his voice with the children and threatens to smack them if they don't behave. I don't recall a single occasion when Peggy objected to any of it. But as David Robertson commented to me a couple of years ago, "I asked Maurice if it wouldn't be possible to take the family out, as he was almost a member of [the family] by now. He answered this quite carefully, that he wanted to keep some distance from the family, as his role was investigator. If he got too close, then he would no longer be seen as being objective." The tapes corroborate Robertson's comments. Grosse was somewhat close to the family, but he also kept some distance. I don't remember anything on the tapes or elsewhere that I would consider inappropriate. He continued to visit the family from time to time in later years, after he and Playfair had stopped going to the house to carry out their investigation. He was "helping with both their practical and emotional problems" (page 262 in Playfair's book). Johnny Hodgson died of cancer as a teenager in 1981, and Melvyn Willin's book that I cited earlier mentions that Grosse attended Johnny's funeral (98). I don't see anything wrong with that. Playfair commented to Hans Bender that he (Playfair) considers Frederic Myers the greatest paranormal researcher in history, and Myers often had a strong emotional involvement in what he was studying (GP39B, 39:06). Bender seemed to agree with Playfair's sentiment.

Much has been made of how the death of Grosse's daughter, also named Janet (like Janet Hodgson), was a large factor in furthering his interest in the paranormal and getting him involved in working as an investigator. If you watch the clip here from the television show I linked at the beginning of this post, you can see how emotional he was about his daughter's death even two decades after it happened. Janet Grosse did come up as a topic of conversation at times during the Enfield case. But not often, as far as I can tell from Playfair's book, the tapes, and other sources. You can't expect Grosse or any other investigator to not be influenced by something like the premature death of a child, nor can you expect any investigator to have never had such an experience. Every investigator is going to be biased, emotional, and such to some extent. To whatever extent Grosse can be faulted in this context, it falls well short of overturning his credibility as an investigator and a witness.

We know about factors like his daughter's death and how supportive he was of the Hodgsons because he was so open about those matters. He wasn't doing much to conceal them. A lot of the details we know about him in this context are details he took the initiative to make known. It's to his credit that he was as open and honest as he was, including when that made him more susceptible to criticism.

As the case developed and became increasingly large and complicated, Grosse spent a vast amount of time at the house, often after being called over late at night, often weary and sometimes sick. He had to provide guidance and make important decisions not only for the Hodgsons, but also for their neighbors and others involved. Because of the nature of poltergeists, the circumstances were disturbing, dangerous, and highly unpredictable, often taking up a lot of time and attention and causing loss of sleep, grief, disruptions in relationships, and other hardships. To get some idea of the misery often involved, read my article on the trance states Janet went through and another article I wrote on some choking incidents. As I noted in a previous post, Grosse referred to how deliberate and calculating the poltergeist was and compared their interactions with it to a game of chess, in which the poltergeist makes a move and they make a countermove (MG19A, 17:38). While leading the family through these difficulties, Grosse was gathering and sorting through an enormous amount of documentation, interacting with the media, and responding to critics, including some within the SPR, among other work. Go here to watch Mary Rose Barrington and others talking about how little support Grosse and Playfair initially got from the SPR. Grosse would later write:

"Our case rests on our efforts. History will judge whether our evidence, gathered over months of hard and often tedious work, will endure, or whether the opinions of occasional visitors (even those labelled experts) will predominate." (Journal Of The Society For Psychical Research, vol. 51, 1981-82, p. 195)

He refers to months of work. He could have referred to years.

I've said a lot in previous posts about Grosse's critics, the occasional visitors he refers to above, like Anita Gregory and John Beloff. I don't need to add much here, but I will make a few points. Hugh Pincott's comments that I quoted near the beginning of this post should be reiterated. Enfield was Grosse's first case as an SPR investigator. There were people with more academic and other credentials who never got a case even half as significant as Enfield after working in the field much longer. In that kind of situation, you can expect there to be some degree of envy and resentment. Being critical of Grosse's lack of credentials and his work is valid up to a point. I've discussed some of my objections to how Grosse handled the Enfield case in other posts. But some critics, like Gregory and Beloff, seem to have had their thumb heavy on the scale for some bad reasons, even though some of their objections to Grosse's work have merit. As I mentioned in a previous post, something that stands out about their responses to Grosse is how much they didn't interact with. They didn't even attempt to explain what most needed to be explained about the Enfield case. The same is true of more recent critics, like Joe Nickell and Deborah Hyde. That's an unintended tribute to the quality of Grosse's work.

Since the initial investigation, the case has gotten a lot of attention, but much less than it deserves. Grosse and Playfair wrote an article in 1988 that discusses some examples of that neglect in the earliest years ("Enfield Revisited: The Evaporation Of Positive Evidence", Journal Of The Society For Psychical Research, vol. 55, 1988-89, pp. 208-19). That sort of neglect is an ongoing problem. The case is widely discussed, but with a lot of repetition and not much depth. There have been some positive developments: some documentaries that are flawed, but significantly good; further editions of Playfair's book; Barrie Colvin's work on the acoustic properties of the poltergeist's knocking; the digitizing of Grosse and Playfair's tapes; the publication of Melvyn Willin's book; etc. But far more could and should be done. However much Grosse was to blame for some of the neglect that's occurred, I don't think you can blame him for most of it. That had to be difficult for him to live through. He knew the case deserved far more attention than it was getting. It still does. I've discussed how unreasonable recent critics, like Joe Nickell and Deborah Hyde, have been in responding to the Enfield case in general and Grosse's work on it in particular. Go to YouTube and take a look at a few Enfield threads to get an idea of how much apathy and contempt there is for the case and his work on it among many people at a popular level.

This is the second of four tribute posts I've planned. The previous one was for Peggy Hodgson, and the next two are for Guy Playfair and John Burcombe. I don't know if I'll post any others in the future, but I intend to address some other Enfield topics after the next two tribute posts. There are enough of those other posts to likely last for the remainder of the year. Every time I work on one of these tribute posts, I struggle with whether to say more about the significance of the case as a whole. I've decided to set that subject aside and address it in a post of its own, probably sometime in 2021 or later. But I'm still concerned that by not saying more about that subject in these tribute posts, the tributes are diminished to some extent. Whatever you think of Grosse as an individual, he was the chief investigator of an epic poltergeist case, what I consider the most significant one in history, the kind we could easily not see matched or surpassed for multiple generations. If you're the chief investigator of so important a case, that larger context enlarges your importance as an individual. If you haven't read many or any of my previous posts on Enfield, I hope you'll go to the page just linked and read one or more of them. The one here on dreams and trances, for example, will give you some idea of how numerous and varied the phenomena in the case were and how much Grosse went through, though that post addresses such a small portion of what he experienced.

There's an aspect of his character that doesn't get much attention in the context of Enfield, but ought to. Playfair referred to how Grosse was "an inventor, with a vested interest in discovering new ways of [doing] things whether they are 'possible' or not in terms of existing know-how" (page 261 in his book). The television program I linked at the beginning of this post provides some examples of Grosse's work as an inventor. In his interactions with the poltergeist, he would often try to get information from it about how it operates: how it makes objects materialize, how it levitates objects, etc. But, as Playfair notes, the large majority of what the poltergeist voice said was "trivial rubbish" (164), and "it was clear that the Voice would not, and probably could not, give us a lecture on interdimensional physics." (168) Grosse didn't get the answers he was looking for.

But he did get a lot of information from the poltergeist, whether it intended to provide so much information or not. Much of that information has been recorded in hundreds of hours of audio tapes, video tapes, notes, signed witness statements, and other documentation. It will be studied for generations to come and may provide some of the answers Grosse wanted. That documentation reflects well on the people who produced it and what it cost them to produce it.

On a more personal note, I have another concern. I am now in my 83rd year, and I suspect that when I am no longer here to refute the sometimes vicious criticisms of my investigations, particularly of the Enfield Case, the floodgates of uninformed scepticism will be opened and the bigots will have a field day….

Let us stop playing the sceptics' game. Let us stop falling into the trap of qualifying our positive results with an air of apology. It sends the wrong message to those who wish to listen. Let us admit openly and positively that there are such things as inexplicable phenomena. We do believe that our research is legitimate and of great importance. Let us stop apologising for the fact that we still cannot explain the phenomena, and may very well never reach that happy stage. We [the SPR] are not just a scientific society, but a society that leads a quest that is as important to humanity as any of the physical discoveries that dominate our lives today. (Maurice Grosse, The Paranormal Review, Issue 24, October 2002, "After 120 Years Of Psychical Research — Confusion Abounds!", p. 9)