Enfield Miscellany (Part 9)

(See part 1 here for an explanation of what this series is about. Go to the following links for the other parts in the series: two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. I'll be citing Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's tapes. "MG" will refer to a tape from Grosse's collection. "GP" will refer to one from Playfair's. So, MG99A refers to tape 99A in Grosse's collection, and GP20B refers to tape 20B in Playfair's.)

Some Enfield Photographs

Here's a photo of David Robertson (in the lower left) and John Hasted (in the lower right) doing some of their experimentation on metal bending (in a non-Enfield context). (I originally saw the photo on the Twitter account of the Society for Psychical Research.) Hasted advised Grosse and Playfair on how to handle the Enfield case, he visited the Hodgsons' house once, and it seems that some paranormal events occurred while he was there. (Do a Ctrl F search for "entry on John Hasted" here for a discussion of what happened during his visit.) Hasted is the one who sent Robertson to help Grosse and Playfair with their investigation of Enfield, and Robertson conducted his Enfield work under the guidance of Hasted. See the post here for some comments Robertson made to me a few years ago about his Enfield work, including the (successful) experiments he did on metal bending. Here's a segment in an Enfield documentary in which Robertson discusses Janet Hodgson's ability to bend metal without touching it.

One other photo I want to bring up here is this one. You sometimes see the man on the left identified as Playfair. But that's not him. The photograph was taken on February 16 of 1978, according to the information on the site linked above. See here for a video clip of Playfair from the same month. He looks significantly different than the man in the photo. I suspect the man is Bryan Rimmer of the Daily Mirror. The photos at the site linked above come from the Daily Mirror, and Graham Morris of the Mirror is featured in one of them. Rimmer visited the Hodgsons' house in February of 1978 in preparation for a story that would be published the next month, he talked to Grosse in the process of doing that story, and the presence of a second recorder on the table could be explained by the fact that Rimmer was a journalist. On a February 24, 1978 tape, John Burcombe refers to how it was "usual" for Rimmer to sit in a chair by the bay window, near the front door to the house, which is where the man in question is sitting in this photograph (GP98B, 26:29). The man in the photograph (also here) looks somewhat like the 2010 pictures of Rimmer in the story here. There aren't many photos I've seen that show Grosse and Playfair together in the Hodgsons' house. It would be good to have a photo of Grosse and Playfair together there, with their tape recorders next to each other as in the photo under consideration here, but I think the photo is of Grosse and Rimmer instead.

Compelled To Act By The Poltergeist

Alan Gauld and A.D. Cornell wrote, "In at least one recent [poltergeist] case (Newark, New Jersey, 1961) in which certain phenomena seem to have been genuine, the agent also perpetrated fraudulent phenomena of which he did not seem to be fully aware." (Poltergeists [United States: White Crow Books, 2017], approximate Kindle location 2753) For further details about that case, see chapter 6 by William Roll and Michael Persinger in James Houran and Rense Lange, edd., Hauntings And Poltergeists (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2001), especially approximate Kindle location 4555. There were some incidents of that nature in the Enfield case.

During one of the occasions when the Hodgson children were being filmed, Margaret pulled the camera's plug and did so in front of the camera, with no effort to conceal what she was doing (MG91Ai, 6:30). Initially, the poltergeist voice told her to pull the plug, and she ignored it. But, as she explained to Grosse on the tape just cited, she eventually felt "a terrific compulsion" to pull the plug and did so against her will at that point.

During the phase when the poltergeist was producing excrement and urine, Janet apparently was coerced into assisting it. She seems to have been in a trance state or something like it. Playfair writes in his book:

"The main cause of [Peggy Hodgson's] worry was seeing Janet come out of the bathroom with a strange expression on her face. As though she wasn't 'with it', she said. 'What are you doing in there, Janet?' she had asked. 'I don't know what to do with this. It was in the sink,' Janet replied. Mrs. [Hodgson] did not have to ask her what 'it' was. 'When I looked,' she told us, 'part of the excreta was in the sink, and the other part appeared to be in the [washcloth]. I can't say I saw her do it, because the door was shut, but I just got that feeling that she did it and afterwards realised there was something there, and she sort of didn't know what to do about it.' Even if Janet were capable of such disgusting behaviour, which I could not believe, would she allow herself to be caught so easily?" (This House Is Haunted [United States: White Crow Books, 2011], 230)

In another context, there's evidence of the poltergeist trying, but failing to get Janet blamed for something it did. At the opening of tape MG52Aii, Grosse wanted to get more clarity that some movements of some curtains in the bedroom were paranormal. He told Janet to keep her hands under the covers of her bed, so that it would be clearer that the curtains were moving without her touching them. The family - including Peggy, not just the children - explained to Grosse that the poltergeist kept moving the covers of Janet's bed toward her, so that she instinctively raised her hands to protect herself. Apparently, they were convinced that the poltergeist was trying to muddy the waters by getting Janet's hands near the curtains when they moved. Grosse then responded that "I know what he's [the poltergeist's] trying to do" (0:33). Shortly after, he instructed Janet to immediately move her hands away from the curtains as soon as she saw them or the covers of her bed moving. Just after, another incident occurred with the moving of the curtains, and Janet did what Grosse instructed her to do. Peggy then explained that the poltergeist moved Janet's covers toward her again, but that "Janet resisted it and swung around the opposite way…it was trying to make her do it, and she was resisting it". So, Peggy (and Margaret) saw both the curtains and the covers of Janet's bed move paranormally while Janet's hands were away from both.

On another occasion (MG48A, 3:25), a curtain that dematerialized reappeared in Janet's pillowcase, though Grosse had checked that pillowcase shortly before. It seems unlikely to be a coincidence that the curtain was rematerialized in that location. The poltergeist probably intended to get Janet blamed for faking the incident.

You can read my article on the voice and personality of the poltergeist for some potential explanations of why it behaved that way.

Incidents Involving Urine And Excrement

Poltergeists sometimes produce phenomena involving urine and excrement, like the episode cited from Playfair's book above. Or see my post here regarding an event involving cat urine. Other events of that nature happened from time to time. There's good evidence for the genuineness of many of those incidents. For example, there were multiple appearances of urine one particular evening in an area of the house with no pipes nearby, and John Burcombe and Grosse were watching the area closely after the first episode that evening (MG74B, 19:06). They're both confident that nobody was in that area of the house between the time when the first pool of urine was cleaned up and when the second one appeared. Burcombe, who worked in a hospital and had a lot of experience with the relevant medical issues, mentioned that the excrement in the apparent poltergeist incidents is always the same dark shade, whereas there should be more variation if the incidents were being faked (GP53A, 21:07). Shortly before the portion of the conversation just cited, other episodes unlikely to have been faked were discussed. Peggy mentioned an occasion when some excrement and urine were found in the bathroom, on top of the toilet seat. She went away for a moment, intending to clean it up, but heard the toilet flush, and the excrement and urine were gone. Nobody was in the bathroom at the time. Burcombe goes on to discuss another incident, in which some urine on the floor was in an unusual shape that couldn't have been produced by normal means.