Two videos that are highly relevant to the Enfield Poltergeist were published recently on the Official Ed and Lorraine Warren Channel on YouTube. You can watch them here and here.
The first video has an introduction from Tony Spera, the Warrens' son-in-law, followed by a slide show Ed Warren presented on paranormal issues. There's a discussion of Enfield at the end of it. Start watching here. The Warrens visited the house in 1978, 1979, and 1981 at least, perhaps on one or more other occasions as well. Warren refers to the children's ages at the time of the first photo as 16 (Janet), 17 (Margaret), 9 (Billy), and 12 (Johnny). That's incorrect. He seems to be taking the ages of the girls around the time of the 1981 visit and combining those with the ages of the boys during the 1979 visit. The children look significantly older than they do in the photos and videos from 1977-78 that have been widely circulated, and the house looks significantly different. The Warrens' 1978 visit was in June, and their 1979 visit was in August. The clothing worn by the people in the photo makes less sense in either of those months than at other times of the year. Maurice Grosse apparently attended Johnny Hodgson's funeral on March 30, 1981 (Melvyn Willin, The Enfield Poltergeist Tapes [United States: White Crow Books, 2019], 98). That doesn't leave much time for Warren's photo to have been taken that year, but the clothing makes more sense then, and so do the differences between how the children and the house look in Warren's photo and how they looked in 1977-78. Janet would have been 15 at the time of an early 1981 visit, and Margaret would have been 16. The best explanation of the photo and Warren's comments on it seems to be that the Warrens visited and had the photo taken in early 1981, just before Johnny died, and that Warren was mistaken about the children's ages at the time. (Janet and Margaret would turn 16 and 17, respectively, later in 1981, after Warren's visit. Billy and Johnny had been 9 and 12 when Warren visited in 1979.) Though some of the photos in the slide show are Warren's, and I don't recall having seen them before, most of them are from Guy Playfair's book on Enfield. Warren refers to how Janet passed through a wall "in full view of investigators". I suspect he's referring to the December 15, 1977 event in which Janet went through the main bedroom wall into the Nottinghams' house. There's good evidence for that event, but it didn't happen "in full view of investigators". He refers to about six occasions when Janet was thrown onto the radio in the corner of the room. I only know of three occasions, but Warren may have heard of others I'm not aware of. There's a brief audio clip of the poltergeist voice at the end of the slide show, taken from the audio tapes released to the public when The Conjuring 2 came out in 2016.
The second video is much more significant. It includes a discussion of the Enfield case involving Lorraine Warren and John Kenyhercz, a member of the Warrens' team who investigated the case in 1979. The video was recorded on August 1, 2013. Much of what Kenyhercz says is corroborated to some extent by other witnesses (the timing of his team's visit, events that occurred during that visit, the nature of some of the phenomena the poltergeist would produce, etc.). There are apparent discrepancies between what's on this video and what John and Sylvie Burcombe reported about the Warrens' 1979 visit on tape 95B in Maurice Grosse's collection of Enfield tapes, but those apparent discrepancies are relatively minor. For the most part, there's agreement about what happened. There's some discussion on the video about Billy Hodgson dying of cancer, but Johnny is the one they had in mind.
To get a more balanced view of the Warrens' involvement in the case, see my previous posts on the subject here and here. I suspect the Warrens and their team did experience some paranormal events at the Hodgsons' house, but not everything they reported was genuine. The Warrens, Kenyhercz, and Spera should be given credit for releasing so much of their Enfield material to the public and making it so accessible. I hope they'll do more of that.
The problem I have with the Warrens is that they were opportunists who regularly stretched the truth, often into outright lies. They encouraged the press to do the same. Ed in particular was a showman who only seemed interested in profiting off of the paranormal. Sort of an anti-James Randi.
ReplyDeleteAgree, the Warrens were basically ambulance chasers, hamming it up for fame and monetary gain.
ReplyDeleteUntil Guy Playfair's 2017 interview with Blake Smith and Karen Stollznow, I'd had no idea that the Warrens had ever even been to Enfield. I seem to recall, however, that Playfair stated that he felt the Warrens were looking to make a buck. But I agree Jason that their decision to release Enfield material is creditable.
ReplyDeleteAs for Playfair, I am currently reading the new release of 'The South Shields Poltergeist'. I can't remember reading the comment first time round, but Playfair states that poltergeists are 'almost certainly not ghosts in the sense of spirits of specific dead people'. It is interesting that Playfair, who lived the Enfield poltergeist, takes this view, whereas you Jason, an assiduous student of the case, do provisionally think that the poltergeist was the disordered mind of a deceased human. And Mike Hallowell notes in 'The South Shields Poltergeist' that it's possible that the entity in the case was of someone who was mentally damaged while in their corporeal existence. He also initially thought that the poltergeist and some of the apparitions which were witnessed were separate, while Ritson took the view that they were one and the same.
In this new edition of the book, Ritson explains that due to ill-health and his reversion to Islam, Hallowell has decided that it is right that he withdraws his name from the book, though apparently he maintains the veracity of the case. It's interesting that Hallowell cites his reversion to Islam as one of the reasons, since in the follow-up book 'Contagion', it's through the Islamic concept of the Jinn that he comes to view the poltergeist. By good fortune, it has transpired that Ritson has relocated to my neighbourhood, so I hope to discuss this and other matters with him in the near future.
I should also have said that Playfair makes his comment in his Foreword to the book.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the information, Anthony. I don't know what distinction Playfair was making between the entity he had in mind and a deceased human. One of the potential explanations for poltergeists that Playfair put forward over the years was that some smaller portion of a person survived death rather than the more complete personality people normally have in mind when they refer to a ghost. So, it could be that, at the time Playfair wrote what you're citing, he was leaning toward a view involving a more partial survival and that he wanted to distinguish that from the fuller form of survival people typically think of when ghosts are discussed. His concept of partial survival may have been similar to my view of a deceased human with a disordered mind (i.e., framing the issue in terms of a partial mind rather than a disordered mind).
DeleteMy impression is that the people most involved in the Enfield case perceived the entity behind the poltergeist as a deceased human more than anything else. They were often undecided on the subject or changed their views from one occasion to another, but I think the view most commonly expressed by the Hodgsons, the Burcombes, the Nottinghams, Grosse, Playfair, and others who were prominent in the case was that a deceased human was involved (e.g., GP38A, 34:29). Grosse said in 2003, about three years before he died, that he thinks Enfield is a survival case, meaning a case involving a human who survived death. On a 2018 BBC Radio program, Richard Grosse said that his father viewed the poltergeist as both an independent entity and a manifestation of living agent psi (start listening at 31:52 here). In a recent YouTube video that I can't access any longer, since it's now marked as private, I believe John Fraser of the SPR referred to how both Grosse and Playfair viewed the entity in the Enfield case as a deceased human. Fraser knew both men and interacted with them at the SPR.
You've got a good opportunity to get some valuable information with Ritson moving to your neighborhood. I hope it goes well. Please keep me and the other readers informed if anything significant comes to light!
Thanks Jason. It appears then that Playfair's view of the poltergeist shifted over the years. He doesn't say in the Foreword what he thinks the poltergeist is if not the spirit of a deceased human. As I mentioned before, for many years I too thought that Enfield was a survival case, but now I believe that the phenomenon is a non-human agency that possibly sustains itself on fear as a source of energy. At one point in the Enfield case, someone remarked that it felt as if half of Durant's Park Cemetery had taken up residence in the Hodgson household. From the elderly men and women who were seen, to the child emerging from the fireplace, I don't doubt the authenticity of these sightings. But I believe they were will o' the wisps; the product of one non-human intelligence whose purpose was to mislead and confuse.
ReplyDeleteRitson has considerable hands-on experience in the field and I was impressed by the ratiocination shown by himself and Hallowell in their book 'Contagion', which apparently will also be reissued in the near future. I'll keep you updated as to my discussions with him and I'll be interested in your own thoughts on 'The South Shields Poltergeist' and 'Contagion, once you've read them. I believe both will be available in the States on Kindle, if they aren't already.
Thanks!
DeleteYes, Playfair's views on the entity behind the poltergeist changed over time. So did the views of others, like Grosse and Peggy Hodgson. My sense is that there was somewhat of a consensus that eventually developed around the deceased human hypothesis, but it isn't the view of every witness in the case, and even the ones who have held it weren't always consistent about it. Your view is a reasonable one. Unfortunately, we don't have as much information as we'd like to have on the matter of the identity of the poltergeist. But at least Enfield provides us with a lot more to go by than the typical case does.