Enfield Miscellany (Part 7)

(See part 1 here for an explanation of what this series is about. The other parts in the series: two, three, four, five, and six. When I make reference to the Enfield tapes of Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair, I'll use "MG" to cite a tape from Grosse's collection and "GP" to refer to one from Playfair's. So, MG38B refers to tape 38B in Grosse's collection, and GP5A refers to 5A in Playfair's.)

The Death Of Vic Nottingham

A lot of the Enfield witnesses haven't been discussing the case publicly in recent years, and it's sometimes difficult to find out whether they're still alive. I came across a 2016 article that refers to Vic Nottingham as deceased, so I want to mention it. There are some errors in the article, and it could be wrong about Nottingham's death even if there were no errors on other subjects. But there's nothing in the article that makes me doubt what it reports about his death, and it would make sense for him to be dead by now given his age.

From what I know of him, including hearing him a lot on Grosse and Playfair's tapes, I find Nottingham likeable and honest. He was a good witness who added a lot to the case. I've been recommending the twelve-minute video here, from November of 1977, as an introduction to Enfield. Nottingham has a prominent role in that video. It serves as a good tribute to him. The video refers to how Peggy Hodgson was "ill in bed" at the time of the filming. That's an understatement. See the post here to get some idea of how difficult the events of November of 1977 were and what state Peggy was in at the time. I suspect one of the reasons why the Nottinghams are so prominent in that 1977 program is that they were trying to cover for Peggy, to help her in a difficult situation. They often did that sort of thing. One of the reasons why the Enfield case is of such an unusually high quality is that the Nottinghams were such unusually good neighbors. As Grosse commented on one occasion, "I think that in some respects this case has been remarkable for the amazing way that the people involved in it - the Hodgson family, the Burcombes, and the Nottinghams - have behaved during the whole of the investigation. They have behaved with an enormous amount of common sense. The incredible lack of hysteria at any time has been quite remarkable, considering that some of the things that have happened have been very frightening indeed." (MG14A, 18:42) In his book on Enfield, Playfair wrote, "Nobody could ask for better neighbors in a crisis, or indeed at any time, than the Nottinghams." (This House Is Haunted [United States: White Crow Books, 2011], 3) "They've always been good neighbors….I think a lot about Peggy and Vic. They'd do anything for you." (Peggy Hodgson, MG59A, 30:31, 33:21)

Changes In The Poltergeist's Behavior Over Time

The poltergeist seemed to learn over time. It would gradually get better at doing things, behave differently after getting some information it didn't have previously, and so on. That's one of the problems with thinking that the entity behind the poltergeist was the sort of highly intelligent being people often imagine. A highly intelligent poltergeist makes for a better book or movie, and people's expectations for a poltergeist are often shaped by such sources. But the intelligence of the entity behind a poltergeist can be far from maximal, and the entities sometimes even seem to be inferior to living humans in some ways. (I know the phrase "living humans" is awkward, but I'm using it to distinguish people who are alive from the deceased, since one of the explanatory options for poltergeists is that they're manifestations of one or more dead humans.) A more intelligent poltergeist might sell more books or get more money for a movie, but real life is under no obligation to accommodate people's fictional preferences.

John Burcombe made a significant comment in this context on one of the tapes. He mentioned, "See, and in the early days, when we saw things go, when you actually saw things go, they went [whistling noise], like that, not sort of take off, like they seemed to rise and go like that." (MG87B, 30:26) I'll use the example of a book shooting across a room to illustrate what I think Burcombe is saying. Apparently, he's saying that the book didn't just shoot across the room, with people not noticing until after it had started its flight. Instead, the book would first rise into the air, then shoot across the room, and the poltergeist would let people see the beginning of the process. Later on, however, the event wouldn't start out like that, and/or the poltergeist wouldn't let people view the beginning of an event as much as it had in the early days of the case. Burcombe seems to be trying to expand on what others present, namely Peggy Hodgson and Maurice Grosse, have said, and they don't voice any objections to his comment. So, they seem to agree with him. And I remember hearing at least one other person make a comment of a similar nature elsewhere on the tapes, though I don't recall where.

The poltergeist's motives in this context may have been multifaceted. It was mischievous, so there could have been an element of wanting to frustrate people, anger them, and so on. It would be appealing to a poltergeist with such a mischievous nature to allow people to see something early on, then withhold it from them when they were more attentive and wanted to see more. But the poltergeist also seemed to want to conceal its activities to some extent, like a magician not wanting people to know how he does his tricks or a military trying to conceal information from a rival. That desire to conceal probably explains a lot of what the poltergeist did in this case and what other poltergeists have done. The efforts to conceal are often unnecessary. But if poltergeists want to conceal something, they may make an effort to do it even when they don't need to. And poltergeists aren't necessarily reasonable in everything they do. They're intelligent, efficient, and such in some ways, but not in others. They have a combination of strengths and weaknesses, as living humans do. The poltergeist may have developed more of an interest in concealing its activities over time, or it may have gotten better at concealment as time went on.

My article on the poltergeist's voice and personality provides other examples of how the poltergeist's behavior changed over time.

Additional Content On Playfair's Copies Of Grosse's Tapes

A large percentage of Playfair's tapes are copies of Grosse's. I suspect that's because Playfair wanted copies of many of Grosse's tapes for the purpose of using them in the process of writing his (Playfair's) book on Enfield. I've mentioned before that Playfair's copies of Grosse's tapes are useful in that he has some good copies of tapes that were broken or of poor audio quality in Grosse's collection. But another advantage to Playfair's duplicates of Grosse's tapes is that Playfair's copies sometimes have content no longer included in Grosse's version of the tape. Both of them had reason for editing their tapes over time. You'd have to weed out insignificant content, for example. If you ran a recorder for a few hours one day and didn't pick up anything significant, why keep the tapes? And something that seemed significant initially may not have later. As tapes got used more or wore down with the passage of time, duplicates would be made. A tape that originally had fifty minutes of content might be edited to forty-five minutes, since the last five minutes didn't seem to be worth keeping. It's now impossible to trace the process the two collections of tapes went through over time. We're left with the two collections as they stood at the time of each investigator's death, without, as far as I know, much explanation of what led up to that final form each collection took. But there are occasional glimpses of what the process must have looked like.

One striking example is found on GP69B. It's a tape from the early morning of December 3, 1977. I've written about two dragging incidents that occurred that morning, around 1:20. Grosse's tape of those two incidents (MG32B) begins at 1:10 A.M. The first side of that tape, MG32A, ends sometime shortly before that. But Playfair's copy includes some material between those two timeframes. And something significant happens in that context.

Playfair's copies of Grosse's tapes often have brief pauses at certain points, presumably where Playfair started and stopped the segments of Grosse's tapes that he wanted to copy. At 30:23 on GP69B, there's a sudden silence shortly after John Burcombe makes some comments to Janet. It sounds like Playfair ended his copy of one segment of Grosse's tapes and is starting another segment. That next segment begins at 30:25. Just after, you hear what seems to be Janet gasping and Peggy Hodgson yelling, followed by a loud thump and Peggy calling out "Janet!" (30:38) Peggy then explains, "Janet has been transported across the room to the door." Grosse announces the time as 1:05, so this segment on Playfair's tape must have been between tapes 32A and 32B in Grosse's collection, but was subsequently removed from that collection, for whatever reason. Grosse goes on to comment that the thump of Janet hitting the floor caused a "terrific" and "tremendous" bang that they heard downstairs. Janet and Peggy explain what happened, and one of the details they mention is that Janet hit Peggy's bed in the process of being dragged, which woke Peggy up. It's unlikely that Janet would have done that if she was faking the incident. Peggy comments on how quickly it happened, the unusually high speed at which the poltergeist operated, as it did on other occasions. She goes on to explain that she saw Janet being pulled across the floor ("slipping across the room"), apparently stopping just before getting to the door.

Something noteworthy about this incident is how it illustrates something that can be seen in other contexts as well. The poltergeist would sometimes get better at doing things over time, as discussed earlier in this post. The next dragging incident, which would happen about fifteen minutes later and is one of the ones still found in Grosse's collection and discussed in Playfair's book and other places, is more impressive than this first one that's found only on Playfair's tapes. That may be why Grosse didn't retain it in his collection. Or there may have been some other reason why it was removed or lost.