Incidents Involving Music In The Enfield Poltergeist

Music didn't have much of a role in the Enfield case, but it was involved to some extent. And it's an aspect of the case that's been neglected.

As I discuss the subject, I'll be citing the tapes of Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair. I'll use "MG" to refer to one of Grosse's tapes and "GP" to refer to one of Playfair's. Therefore, MG1B is Grosse's tape 1B, GP70B is Playfair's tape 70B, etc.

Melvyn Willin recently published a book on music and the paranormal. There's only a small amount of material on Enfield in it, since it's a reference work that covers a lot of subjects. But it's a good resource that's worth getting for anybody interested in musical issues in paranormal contexts. Unlike Melvyn, I don't know much about music, so that lessens the value of my judgments about the musical issues involved in the Enfield case.

John Burcombe reported hearing some instrumental music that seems to have been produced by the poltergeist (MG99A, 6:59). He heard it at his house, down the street from the Hodgsons. The music sounded faint, as if it was off in the distance, and he describes the type of music as "early American". He whistles Dixieland and says it was "like that", so I don't know that it was Dixieland. It may have only been something similar. He said it sounded like a fife playing. As far as I know, it would be odd for that type of music to be playing in a neighborhood in England in the late twentieth century. And other details Burcombe provides also suggest that he was hearing something the poltergeist had produced. His wife was with him, and she didn't hear the music. (Poltergeists sometimes produce effects, such as apparitions, that aren't perceived by everybody who's present.) He mentions that the woman next door wasn't home, that no radio was on nearby, and that they couldn't find any other potential normal source for the music.

Peggy Nottingham referred to an occasion when she heard what sounded like a tambourine playing in her kitchen when there apparently was nobody there (MG57A, 2:57). She goes on to say that her son could hear it upstairs as well, so it wasn't just one person's imagination. She even says you could hear it "everywhere", though it's unclear whether she meant that the sound from the kitchen was loud enough to be heard throughout the house or that the sound of a tambourine was coming from every room of the house.

On another occasion, after the poltergeist voice claimed to want to play a trombone, Playfair offered to bring a flute to the house to play a duet with the poltergeist (GP22B, 34:00). They did sometimes find some small instrument around the house, I think it was always a flute belonging to one of the girls, that they'd set up for the voice to play. They'd leave it sitting next to a tape recorder on the floor, while the girls were in bed. If the girls had gotten out of bed and moved around, you might have heard it on the tapes, given how much the beds and floors creaked. There are rare occasions when you hear what sounds like somebody breathing into the flute and sometimes even a faint flute sound, or whatever instrument it was, for a brief moment. It doesn't sound like one of the girls or anybody else was moving around the room (GP23B, 26:57 and the few minutes that follow). This was one of the nights when Grosse and Playfair were both at the house and both had their tape recorders running simultaneously (Grosse's recording of these incidents is at MG40A, 25:10). During the last of the relevant noises, just before and just after 30:00 on GP23B, Janet wasn't even in the room. She'd gone to the bathroom downstairs. It doesn't seem to make sense for one of the girls to have taken the risk of getting out of bed and going all the way over to the flute on the floor, next to at least one of the tape recorders (which could easily pick up any noises they made in the process), with a second tape recorder also running, with Grosse and Playfair just outside the door, knowing that they would sometimes look in the room through the keyhole or through the open end of the door, with their mother in the room with them, only to then make faint noises with the flute after getting to it. The noises are much more discernable on Playfair's recording, so it seems that either the flute was closer to his recorder than Grosse's or Playfair got a better recording for some other reason. That illustrates how faint the noises are, but they sound noticeably like breathing and light flute noises. These seem to be genuine instances of the poltergeist trying to play a musical instrument. There isn't much evidence to go by, though, so we can't be confident. Given how often the poltergeist didn't respond to their requests for it to play music and how poor its results were on the few occasions just cited, it doesn't seem to have had much of an interest in and/or ability to play music on demand.

As far as I know, the episodes just described are the only occasions when the poltergeist (apparently) produced phenomena in the context of instrumental music. However, the poltergeist's voice, in its embodied form, did often sing or show interest in music in some other way.

Do a Ctrl F search here for " sing" (with a space before "sing") for a discussion of some examples and their significance. Go here to listen to the voice singing Row Your Boat, with some vulgarity added at the end. It often used its own lyrics for the songs it would sing, frequently vulgar or nonsensical lyrics. Grosse and Playfair initiated the practice of trying to get the voice to sing, to get it to sing along with the Hodgson children, so that its voice could be distinguished from the children's. At the time, the voice was thought to be disembodied. But the voice continued to sing at times even after it was known to be embodied. The singing of trivial songs, like Row Your Boat, originated in a context in which Grosse and Playfair were trying to come up with songs the children would be familiar with. As with other voice issues, it's often difficult or impossible to judge matters of authenticity and inauthenticity and to what extent the psychology of the Hodgson children was involved in determining the voice's behavior. What's most significant is whether at least some portion of the behavior seems to be paranormal. Even if the paranormal aspect is accompanied by fraud, joking, or something else of a nonparanormal nature, it's significant that something paranormal is involved. And it does seem that the voice's singing was paranormal to some extent, for reasons like the ones discussed in my article on the voice linked above.

The voice would sometimes express musical preferences, but inconsistently. And because of the nature of the poltergeist, it's probably impossible to tell which of its comments reflect the musical interests of the entity behind the poltergeist and which reflect its habitual dishonesty, drawing of information from people's minds, and so on. On the night the embodied voice originated (December 10, 1977, going into December 11), Anita Gregory asked it whether it likes music (GP21B, 7:37). "Yes," it said. She then asked what type of music it likes, and she got what would turn out to be the typical sort of vulgar, nonsensical answer you'd get from the voice on all sorts of subjects: "Shit music." She then asks the poltergeist whether it would like for them to play some music for it. "Yes" is the answer, again. And it would express interest in music, including having music played for it, on other occasions. Gregory goes on to ask it what it wants to do, and it responds, "Dance." (It would later refer to how it allegedly had been dancing recently, apparently when the Hodgson girls were playing music around the house.) John Burcombe then enters the room and takes over the conversation from Gregory. He tells the voice that he can go get some records to play for it. Later that week, it shows an interest in jazz, on its own initiative (GP22B, 20:15). That leads to the incident Playfair discusses in his book, when the voice says its favorite jazz musician is Scarlet Fever (21:33). As Grosse goes on to say, "You're not making very much sense, are you? You're just having a game with us, as usual." (22:59) Grosse then asks it what other types of music it likes, aside from jazz, and it refers to "dog music". It refers to "woof woof music" on another occasion, and it would sometimes make barking noises, occasionally in the form of singing.

Most of the musical comments made by the voice are of that kind of trivial or nonsensical nature. There are occasional exceptions, though, like a request to have classical music played for it, which it claimed to like "a lot" (GP24A, 12:07). There's then a discussion of how there's no classical music around to play. That reflects a difference between the voice's musical interests and those of the Hodgson children, though they could, of course, have faked such a difference in musical interests. And given the frequent dishonesty of the voice, there's not much reason to trust the sincerity of its comments.

There's another incident of a more ambiguous nature that warrants mentioning. The Brazilian medium Luiz Gasparetto visited the house on November 29, 1977. When he and a companion who came with him to the house are trying to get Janet out of one of her trance states, there's a segment, lasting about a minute, when you hear some faint singing in the background (GP17B, 25:21). It may be part of the exorcism process they were going through. It occurs while Janet's trance state is in the process of weakening, though it doesn't seem to cause the weakening. I don't know who's doing the singing or what role it has in what's going on in the surrounding context. It's worth mentioning, though, since Gasparetto was one of the mediums whose efforts seem to have been most successful. Whatever role the singing had, it was part of the process leading up to Janet's release from her trance state.