Enfield Miscellany (Part 10)

(See part 1 here for an explanation of what this series is about. The other parts in the series can be accessed through the following links: two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine. I'll cite Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's tapes below. Tapes from Grosse's collection will be referred to with "MG" [e.g., MG7B is Grosse's tape 7B], and Playfair's tapes will be designated by "GP" [e.g., GP42B is Playfair's tape 42B].)

Events Involving Water

Some of the earliest apparently paranormal events we know of in the Enfield case involved water. They occurred before the Hodgsons knew that something paranormal was occurring in their house. Peggy initially thought the puddles of water she found around the house had a normal cause, though it seems likely in retrospect that they were paranormal. The family figured out that something paranormal was going on during the night of August 31, 1977. But earlier that month, she was finding puddles of water in places where you wouldn't expect to find them, like underneath one of the beds (MG65B, 0:53). There would be many other such incidents as the case went on. On tape GP5A, you hear Playfair and the family discussing a "funny" shape some water they found on the floor had (9:33). Playfair checked the slope of the floor and tried to duplicate the water pattern by normal means, but wasn't able to. John Burcombe heard a shuffling noise (a noise the poltergeist seems to have often produced) coming from the area of the Hodgsons' bathroom and found the floor flooded with water (MG6B, 14:17). Janet was the closest person at the time, but she was standing at the stove and stirring some soup she was heating up. Burcombe was convinced that she couldn't have faked the incident, because of the timing involved and the lack of any watery footprints. He mentions that anybody who produced that much water by normal means would have to get their shoes wet in the process. He also says the water was in the process of coming out from underneath the closed bathroom door when he got there, which provides further evidence that the water had just started to appear, with nobody near enough to explain the water's appearance by normal means. The toilet lid was down, and the toilet brush was lying diagonally across the top of the lid. Peggy Nottingham had seen the poltergeist do something similar on another occasion, as she explains in the video here. Notice that before she refers to the bathroom events, she refers to how a puddle of water appeared in the kitchen "from nowhere". There were at least a few episodes in which the poltergeist left the toilet brush lying diagonally across the toilet seat, as shown in the reenactment in the video linked above, so it was a pattern in the poltergeist's behavior. On another occasion, Margaret saw water falling out of the air, with no apparent source, as if coming from an invisible faucet (MG33A, 0:16). As late as August of 1979, about two years after the earliest water incidents reported, there was still some activity involving water (MG95B, 11:52). Peggy Hodgson even reported water coming through the bedroom ceiling (12:37). There were many events involving water. These are just some examples among a lot more that could be cited. Burcombe repeatedly checked the house for leaking pipes and other such problems and couldn't find any normal explanation for these incidents. Vic Nottingham often helped the family and was a professional builder, so he could easily have noticed any plumbing or other relevant problems if there were any. Besides, the water often appeared in places that would be irrelevant to something like a plumbing issue, and other aspects of these incidents make a normal explanation unlikely. On July 10, 1978, the bathroom was inspected for water leaks by some workmen with the local council, and no leaks were found (MG91B, 15:30).

Events Involving Smells

As with the water episodes, the ones involving smells seem to have originated before the Hodgsons were aware that anything paranormal was happening. Peggy Hodgson referred to a musty smell that she considered suspicious in the summer of 1977, shortly before they first noticed the poltergeist (MG65B, 18:12). John Burcombe reported a "pungent" smell in his house that he'd never noticed there before (MG2A, 9:58). Peggy Hodgson referred to a recurring smell of smoke they'd get in their house, with no apparent normal explanation (MG60A, 15:32). One of the mediums who visited the house asked if they'd noticed any unusual smells, like rotten vegetables, and one of the girls, apparently Janet, mentions that they had noticed a smell like rotten food (GP37A, 27:38).

Heated Apports

Stephen Braude makes a good point:

"Even if witnesses were biased or predisposed to experience paranormal phenomena, that would not explain why the biased misperceptions or reports are similar in so many peculiar details. One would need an elaborate psychological theory (to say the least) to explain why people of dissimilar backgrounds and cultures, with apparently no common needs to experience bizarre phenomena of any sort, independently report (for example) 'raining' stones inside a house or the intense heat of apports." (The Limits Of Influence [Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc., 1997], 26)

I've cited examples of multiple witnesses in the Enfield case reporting apports of the same unusual nature, such as the milk bottles and other objects that fell from the sky on May 30, 1978 and coins dropping from the ceiling inside the Hodgsons' house. See the examples discussed in the first section of the post here. The heat of apports referred to by Braude is also attested by multiple witnesses in the Enfield case. On one of Grosse's tapes, Peggy Nottingham takes the initiative to mention that a marble moved by the poltergeist was hot when she picked it up (MG2A, 29:22). Elsewhere, Grosse is talking to Peggy Hodgson about some events that occurred early in the case, and both of them refer to how Peggy Nottingham's father saw some marbles appear and move near him and how they were hot when he picked them up (MG2B, 24:32). Peggy then mentions that she had the same kind of experience. Go here to read a signed statement from Peggy Nottingham's father ("Mr. Richardson") about his experience with the marbles. And see here for a heated apport caught on video and documented with a thermal camera in another poltergeist case that occurred in 1998. Tape MG97B wasn't able to be digitized well and has poor audio quality in its current form, but Melvyn Willin took some notes on the contents of the original tape. In those notes, he refers to how "stones landed from unknown source but not where family were; big stone is warm and small stone is cold". Apparently, then, the Hodgsons reported an apport involving some stones, with one being heated and the other being cold.

The Most Significant Events Experienced By Guy Playfair And Vic Nottingham

In a previous post, I discussed the event John Burcombe said disturbed him more than anything else. Another post discussed Margaret's most frightening experience. Here's Playfair commenting on his "clearest" memory, a series of incidents that occurred on October 15, 1977. They're at 2:09 and 4:21 on tape GP6B. And here's a segment of a documentary in which Playfair uses the example of a chair following somebody, then falling over to describe a paranormal event that's unlikely to have been faked. He probably had that October 15, 1977 incident in mind when he made those comments. During a 1979 interview with some members of the Society for Psychical Research who were producing a report on the Enfield case, Vic Nottingham was asked, by John Stiles, what was "the best piece of evidence" he had of something paranormal during the case (MG98B, 28:22). Vic cited an incident in which he saw a chair thrown several feet across the middle bedroom upstairs. Janet was asleep in bed, and Grosse was sitting near her. Vic was in the room with them. They saw Janet getting restless in bed, then the chair was thrown several feet. It was thrown with enough force that the metal legs on it were bent. Vic was looking directly at it, but Grosse only saw it out of the corner of his eye. The event happened in September of 1977, and here's a video of Vic discussing it in November of that year.