A Review Of The New Enfield Documentary

Apple TV+ recently released a new four-part, four-hour documentary on the Enfield Poltergeist. They designed some sets to reconstruct the house where the poltergeist occurred, to recreate the look the house had in the 1970s, selected some of the audio recordings from the case, and had actors lyp-sinc and act out the scenarios as they were recorded. It's a good idea and well executed. So many of the audio, visual, and other components of the documentary are handled well, far too many for me to mention here (using the audio from the September 8, 1977 meeting where Guy Playfair offered to help Maurice Grosse with the Enfield case, going back and forth between Janet Hodgson as a child and Janet as an adult in the closing scene, etc.). Much of the audio included in the documentary is being made available to the general public for the first time. That alone is an important accomplishment. The reenactments are accompanied by a lot of interviews, clips from early media coverage of the case, and other material. They interviewed some people who hadn't participated in any previous Enfield documentaries, as far as I know, such as Paul Burcombe (the son of John Burcombe) and Hugh Pincott. (Go here for a brief video of Paul discussing a levitation of a couch that he witnessed, probably the levitation that occurred on November 10, 1977.) They aired some photographs I'd never seen before, including ones of people I'd never seen any images of previously, such as Tony Hodgson, the ex-husband of Peggy and the father of the Hodgson children, and Dono Gmelig-Meyling, the medium who's thought to have been the most effective at reducing the poltergeist's activities. The director of the documentary, Jerry Rothwell, has done a lot of interviews, which you can find on YouTube and elsewhere. Go here for a post at his web site that explains what he was trying to accomplish. It's the best Enfield documentary produced so far. It's very good. I disagree with some parts of it, some of which I'll discuss below, but I highly recommend it.

The documentary addresses the evidence for the authenticity of the case to some extent, but gives the subject much less attention than I have in my own work on Enfield. For those who are interested in more of a discussion of evidential matters, see here on the levitations of December 15, 1977, here on the ripping out of the fireplace, and here on events involving the operation of machinery, for example. One of the more evidential segments of the documentary featured an interview with David Robertson in which he goes into some detail about a metal-bending experiment he did with Janet Hodgson. If you go here, you can read about that experiment and David's other scientific testing of Janet in a lot more depth. The first link in this paragraph will take you to a page listing many other articles of a similar nature. To summarize, the case involves a quadruple-digit number of events witnessed by a triple-digit number of people over a double-digit number of years. Much could be said about how to assess the evidence, and I've discussed those issues elsewhere, but one of the most important principles to keep in mind is that our scrutiny needs to be a two-way street. For example, if you're going to consider the possibility that witnesses lied in support of the paranormality of the case in order to get attention or money, you also need to ask why the witnesses haven't retracted their claims (after nearly half a century) for the same reasons (to get attention or money). If eight people witnessed the December 15 events mentioned above, for instance, any one of those individuals would likely get more attention or money through separating himself from the others by claiming that the events were hoaxed and explaining how it was done. Singling yourself out gets you more attention or money than splitting the attention or money with several other people. If factors like a desire for attention and a desire for money are as significant as skeptics often make them out to be, we should be asking what implications those factors have for the skeptics' theories. We should be skeptical of the skeptics, as Jerry Rothwell put it in one of his interviews. (Go here for a good expression of this principle from Mary Rose Barrington in an earlier documentary.) And so on. Again, I've discussed subjects like these in a lot more depth elsewhere.

The documentary periodically features comments from Susan Blackmore, an Enfield skeptic who was a member of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), attended the SPR symposium in March of 1978 that focused on Enfield, knew some of the people who participated in the original Enfield events, etc. The third episode in the documentary focuses on skepticism of the case, especially Anita Gregory's. And Blackmore largely appeals to Gregory and repeats objections Gregory had raised. I didn't notice any significant way in which Blackmore advanced the skeptical case against Enfield. Her dependence on Gregory is a problem, since there's so much wrong with Gregory's work in this context.

You can find two responses I've written to Gregory's doctoral thesis (part of which addresses Enfield) here and here. Earlier, I referred to Mary Rose Barrington, a paranormal researcher (now deceased) who led the SPR's committee that reinvestigated the Enfield case. She went as far as to say that "the Enfield chapter of Anita's thesis was entirely unsuitable for publication". At the opening of this post, I linked a recent video in which Paul Burcombe discusses a couch levitation that he witnessed. If he was referring to the November 10, 1977 incident, which is likely, then it's an event his father witnessed as well, and Gregory egregiously misrepresented his father's testimony about that episode. Go to my tribute to John Burcombe here and do a Ctrl F search for "couch" to read about it. I've provided many examples of such problems with Gregory's work on Enfield, and anybody who's interested can find a lot about the topic in our archives.

In the documentary I'm reviewing in this post, Blackmore repeats an objection Gregory had raised to the effect that the pro-Enfield investigators lacked experience with children and knowledge of and interest in child psychology. Of course, all of us have the experience of being a child, and even a person who's never had children of his own can be significantly knowledgeable of such issues by other means. Maurice Grosse was the father of a few children. David Robertson had experience specifically in the area of working with children on paranormal issues. That's what he did with John Hasted. That's likely one of the reasons why Hasted sent Robertson to help with the case. And Hasted, who advised Grosse and Playfair, was a father, in addition to doing the paranormal work with children just referred to. I don't know if the people behind the documentary did this on purpose, but they included a highly appropriate clip from the Enfield tapes just after Blackmore made one of these comments (episode 3, 40:00). It's a segment in which Playfair is having a discussion with the poltergeist voice as it's manifesting through Janet. He explains that some people think poltergeists are produced by the mind of a living person, and he asks the poltergeist, "Are you Janet?". He and Grosse (and others who were pro-Enfield) frequently discussed psychological issues: apparent similarities between the poltergeist voice and Janet, potential motives Janet (and the other children) could have for faking things, what impact the divorce of the parents likely had on the children, what might have motivated the voice to make some of its comments, etc. Playfair and Grosse (and Robertson, Hasted, etc.) were well aware of such psychological factors in the case, and they frequently brought them up, on the tapes, in Playfair's book, etc. The placement of Playfair's comments at the point where they are in the documentary, just after Blackmore's comments, is great. I hope a lot of viewers will pick up on it.

And that raises one of the problems I have with the documentary. It's overly subtle in some ways. As I said above, Playfair's comments come just after Blackmore's. You could interpret the comments in that context. But his comments also come just before the adult Janet enters the documentary, meaning that Playfair's comments could be interpreted as an introduction to what follows. Or both. Jerry Rothwell has said that he wanted the documentary to be somewhat ambiguous, to balance on a knife's edge, as he put it in one of his interviews. He apparently believes in the authenticity of the case, but not to the extent of somebody like Grosse or Playfair (or me). I think there's some merit in having so little narration in a documentary and letting the audience make up its own mind to some extent, but there are points where the documentary is too hard to follow as a result. This is one of those documentaries that will be much more beneficial if you have a significant knowledge of the subject matter going into it. You can get some benefit from it if you don't know much about Enfield, but you should expect to have some trouble following what's going on at times, and don't expect much help from the documentary in sifting through some of the issues involved. I'd prefer a documentary that argues explicitly and in depth for the authenticity of the case (while presenting the skeptical side in depth and allowing them a voice as well). But this isn't a major objection, and the documentary still has a lot of value anyway.

There are places where they seem to go too far in throwing the skeptics some bones. I'll discuss a few examples.

A segment on the events of November 5, 1977 (e.g., episode 1, 55:36) highlights the fact that there were fireworks going off that night (in celebration of Guy Fawkes Day). But judging by sources like the Enfield tapes and Playfair's book, it doesn't seem that the fireworks can offer much of an explanation for the knocking and other phenomena that were experienced that night.

A segment about John Burcombe's experience of seeing an orb in the Hodgsons' stairway (discussed in the post here under the title "John Burcombe's Worst Experience") significantly misrepresents what happened (episode 1, 36:31). It depicts Burcombe with his back against the landing on the steps, facing the bottom of the stairway. But on the tapes (see my post linked above for documentation), he explicitly says that he was at the bottom of the stairs looking up at the time. See, also, page 43 in Playfair's book, which also says he was at the bottom of the stairs (This House Is Haunted [United States: White Crow Books, 2011]). By having him face the opposite way, the documentary opens the door somewhat to a skeptical explanation in which Burcombe mistook the shining of the light above the landing for something paranormal. But it's clear from the tapes that he was facing the opposite direction of what the documentary portrays, and he mentions multiple other lines of evidence that something paranormal happened (again, see my post linked above for the details). He describes the light as being at waist height (apparently at the waist of somebody standing on the landing), which would distinguish it from the light above the landing if he was looking up the stairs rather than at the wall above the bottom. And I don't know if the light above the landing in the documentary accurately depicts the light in the Hodgsons' house. The one in the documentary is shaped like an orb, about the size of what Burcombe said he witnessed. Maybe all of these things are accidental. Maybe the documentary didn't intend to open the door to a skeptical interpretation, but it looks like they did, especially given that they apparently did so with the Guy Fawkes Day segment.

Elsewhere (episode 3, 33:17), Janet is portrayed as scraping at the wallpaper in a bedroom. I'd like to know if there's evidence for that. There were poltergeist phenomena involving the removing of wallpaper. If the documentary is suggesting that Janet produced those phenomena and did so in a normal rather than paranormal manner, I'd like to know the basis for that. Maybe there is a basis for it, but I don't recall ever coming across it if so. Or maybe the documentary didn't intend to suggest that her scraping of the wall is the explanation for what the poltergeist was reported to have done. At a minimum, the segment seems to create some unnecessary confusion that should have been avoided. I want to be careful here, though, because there's a good chance that they have some information that I don't have. They had access to Grosse's notes, for example, which I don't have, and the segment of the documentary shows Grosse watching Janet scrape the wall. Maybe he mentions it in his notes.

The documentary addresses the famous scenario in which the poltergeist voice asks why girls have periods (episode 3, 36:32). They don't mention, though, that the poltergeist kept asking the question even after an answer was provided. In other words, the motive doesn't seem to have been, or to have merely been, to get information about periods. Rather, something else was going on. And they don't discuss how much the voice showed male rather than female characteristics on other occasions.

That brings up a larger point I should make here. The documentary doesn't go into much depth about the voice in general. If you want a lengthy treatment of it, including an explanation of what seems to have been going on with the discussion of periods and how the voice seemed more male than female overall, go here. I also followed that post up with more thoughts about the voice here. As far as I recall, the documentary doesn't address the many occasions on which the voice manifested in a disembodied way, nor does it discuss the occasions when it manifested through Peggy Hodgson, through a dog, with voices other than the deep and raspy one usually discussed, etc. Again, see my posts linked above for further details. The evidence for the voice is substantially better than you'd think from watching this documentary. On the other hand, the conceptual content of the voice was significantly more immature than what's included in the documentary. As Playfair wrote in his book, "the Voice was a tremendous bore most of the time…a good ninety-five percent of what it uttered was trivial rubbish" (164). What the documentary conveys is less evidential, but also more mature (and more disturbing in some ways), than what the voice was like on balance. So, what the documentary portrays is a mix, making the voice look partly worse than it actually was and partly better.

The issues surrounding Bill Wilkins are brought up. For reasons explained in my first article on the voice linked above, the idea that the poltergeist was Wilkins seems highly unlikely. And the alleged evidence that the poltergeist had paranormal knowledge about Wilkins' death is problematic, for reasons explained in my article. The large number and variety of identities the voice claimed for itself and the implausibility of its being Bill Wilkins aren't portrayed well in this documentary. There's much better evidence for the voice in contexts other than its alleged knowledge of the details surrounding Wilkins' death. Thankfully, the documentary does address some of that evidence, such as the occasion when the voice seemed to read Richard Grosse's mind. I wish there had been more of that sort of material and less about Bill Wilkins.

I want to address some miscellaneous issues before concluding with some other points:

- The documentary occasionally provides examples of various theories people proposed to explain the poltergeist as the case developed (Grosse's comments about events beginning around the time when the Hodgsons received their pet bird from a neighbor, the possibility that the poltergeist was connected to a murder that occurred in the neighborhood, etc.). There was a lot of that sort of hypothesizing throughout the case. There was no one view that was widely agreed upon throughout. That's one of the reasons why it's problematic to suggest that Grosse or others went into the case with a particular view in mind and insisted on maintaining it regardless of the facts. Actually, Grosse, Playfair, Peggy Hodgson, and others involved proposed a variety of potential explanations of the poltergeist and often showed openness to other explanations and sometimes expressed agnosticism. There was a lot of development and variation in their views over time. Near the beginning of episode 2, the documentary plays a clip of an interviewer asking Grosse about the identity of the entity behind the poltergeist. I think it's a clip from a September 10, 1977 radio program. Unfortunately, the documentary doesn't play Grosse's answer. But it does play the interviewer's comment that Grosse was "at pains to mention that it's not an evil spirit" (episode 2, 3:05). During the September 10 interview, Grosse explained that he currently held a living agent psi view of the poltergeist, meaning that it was being produced by the mind of one or more living individuals. Here are his exact words in response to a caller on the program: "In other words, I don't believe, at the moment, that it is a discarnate entity or a spirit, as you would like to call it. I believe that this is one of the cases where the power is coming from the people involved themselves." (0:41 on tape 35A in Playfair's collection of tapes) As far as I know, that was Grosse's earliest view of the poltergeist, which doesn't go well with the notion (which gets a lot of attention in this documentary) that he went into the case intent on finding evidence of contact with the deceased. Grosse's views (and Playfair's, Robertson's, etc.) developed a lot over time.

- The documentary's inclusion of some examples of Janet and Margaret arguing with each other is good. That's not only historically accurate, but also significant in evaluating the typical skeptical claim that the sisters worked together to fake the case. Do a Ctrl F search for "angrily" here for documentation of some of the more significant examples of how they criticized each other at times. That happened somewhat often with the children in general, not just with Janet and Margaret.

- There's an important segment at 30:12 in episode 2. It features archive footage from the 1970s, showing Graham Morris talking about his photos of Janet allegedly being thrown from her bed by the poltergeist. He says there's only one-sixth of a second between a photo showing Janet lying in bed and the next photo, showing her upright in the air. He makes the point multiple times, both in the 1970s footage and in the more recent footage. If he's right, and he ought to be, that seems to be really good evidence for something paranormal on film. It's not as good as video evidence, but it's close. It's a series of photos in rapid succession, which is somewhat similar to video. If what Graham says, multiple times, is correct, why hasn't that sequence of photos been discussed more over the years? Is there, perhaps, some reason to doubt that the two photos are actually part of one rapid-succession sequence? But if that were the case, you'd expect Graham to know it. He was the photographer, and he's made the claim in question multiple times, in the 1970s and more recently. Jerry Rothwell, the producer of the documentary, noticed this also. Go here to see him raise the issue in a recent interview. He says he tried to get the original film, but wasn't able to. Apparently, the BBC had it at some point and never returned it to Graham. But there's footage of him showing it on video and pointing out its features. I should add that the photo sequence Graham discusses in this video is consistent with the testimony of eyewitnesses who saw Janet being thrown from her bed by the poltergeist. They described it as happening rapidly and in the manner suggested by the photos. See here for documentation of their testimony. The poltergeist had a tendency to pull Janet out of bed at the area next to her pillow, meaning that she would be pulled up in a way that likely wouldn't disturb the covers much. That's what the second photo depicts. The bed covers aren't moved much, but they are moved near the pillow. And the poltergeist would move her rapidly. As my post here documents, John Burcombe, after witnessing these throwing incidents, described her as being moved out of the bed "like a rocket". So, the photo sequence Graham is discussing is consistent with the testimony of eyewitnesses in that manner as well. The best step to take at this point might be to ask Graham if he has any reason for doubting what he said about these photos in the past and if he has any normal explanation for what the photos depict. If he stands by what he said previously about these photos, then that seems to be strong evidence for a poltergeist throwing incident on film. I recommend going to 27:18 in episode 2 of the documentary to watch the whole segment in which Graham discusses these photos. However, even if Graham stands by what he said in the past about these photos, skeptics could suggest that he's lying in an attempt to cover up a mistake he made in the 1970s, that he's honestly mistaken in some way, etc. Whatever we make of the photo sequence I've been discussing here, it does seem likely that at least some of Graham's photos of Janet allegedly being thrown by the poltergeist involve genuine paranormal events. The positioning of Janet's feet in some of the photos suggests that, for example. For further discussion of the subject, go here. Notice that my argument doesn't depend on the accuracy of what Graham says about the photo sequence mentioned in the documentary. Even if he's mistaken for some reason in that context, my argument doesn't depend on his being correct on that point.

- At the end of episode 3 and in episode 4, there's a lot of material about the time Janet spent away from home in 1978 (at the Maudsley Hospital, etc.). Janet, as an adult, refers to how she wasn't wanted at home, was viewed as the black sheep of the family, how her mother looked like she didn't want Janet to be there when she returned home, etc. For example, start watching at 18:52 in episode 4. Obviously, Janet knows more about her experiences and feelings, her interactions with her mother, and other such issues than I do. But the people working on the documentary played some of the Enfield audio for her, and I wonder how much it may have been misinterpreted by her. Her mother does refer on the tapes to thinking that Janet shouldn't return home, but not in the way Janet describes. There's a lot of talk on the tapes around that time about moving to another house. Peggy was leaning toward relocating the family at that point in time, though they ultimately didn't move. I discuss this subject in my post about how the case ended. Peggy often commented on how much she loved Janet, and she referred to how much she missed Janet while she was away in 1978. Some of that audio is included in the documentary, thankfully. Janet refers to how she thinks her mother may not have wanted her around because of a concern that the poltergeist would become active again if she returned to the house. But it had remained active there while Janet was away. That's clear from the tapes and from Playfair's book. On the tapes and in Playfair's book, it's stated repeatedly that multiple people noticed that Janet seemed to be doing better (looking better, being happier, etc.) away from the house. The documentary plays some of the audio of people commenting on how much Janet seemed to be benefiting from being away from the house. What may have happened was that Peggy thought it was in Janet's interests (and whoever else's) for her to remain away from home longer, perhaps until they found a new house to move into. As I said above, there was a lot of talk around this time about trying to find a new home. It wasn't a matter of not wanting Janet around. Rather, it was a matter of trying to find the best way to handle things in the short term in a highly complicated and unstable situation. At 12:40 on tape 92B in Grosse's collection of tapes, Peggy refers to how "if I hadn't have stepped in", Janet would have remained at the hospital longer. Apparently, Peggy took the initiative to try to get Janet home sooner. So, all of the talk in the documentary about Peggy not wanting Janet to come home, an effort to find another children's home to put Janet in, etc. seems to either be inaccurate or to have been initiated by somebody other than Peggy. There's discussion on the tape I just cited about having to go through a social worker to get things done, so it's possible that a social worker, not Peggy, was responsible for trying to find another children's home for Janet. In fact, at 13:20 on the tape, Peggy comments on how the social worker was already making arrangements to put Janet back in St. Joseph's, the children's home Janet had been in prior to going to Maudsley. In other words, the social worker was trying to keep Janet away longer while her mother was working to get her brought home instead. Shortly afterward, Peggy comments, "If she's away for too long, you're not going to tell me that child won't feel rejected" (13:43). Peggy goes on to explain that they mistakenly took Janet to St. Joseph's after her time in Maudsley, but that she told them that was a mistake and that Janet was supposed to be brought home. They then did bring her back home. So, Peggy didn't have the sentiment attributed to her in the documentary, and she was trying to avoid giving Janet the impression that she wasn't wanted. On the tape cited above, Peggy goes on to mention that poltergeist activity was continuing while Janet was away, so that it wouldn't even make sense to keep Janet away in an attempt to stop the poltergeist. Why, then, did Peggy make the comment about how it might be better if Janet didn't come home? The comment is found at 12:58 on tape 91B in Grosse's collection. Right after the audio played in the documentary, in which Peggy says she thinks it would be better for Janet not to come home, she explains that she doesn't mean that Janet should be away all the time, then she refers to finding a new home. In other words, it wasn't a matter of keeping Janet away. It was a matter of finding a new, better home for the whole family to live in. Again, it looks to me like Janet might be making some false assumptions about what happened in this 1978 context. I have no way of evaluating everything she commented on (e.g., the expression on her mother's face when she returned home), but I do know that at least some of what Janet says about the situation either isn't accurate or at least can easily be interpreted in a way that isn't accurate. I don't think the people behind the documentary had any bad intentions, and I'm glad they included some of the relevant audio in the documentary (e.g., Peggy commenting on how much she missed Janet). But I wish they'd included more material on how the poltergeist continued to be active in the home while Janet was away, how any placing of Janet in children's homes was likely just a short-term measure, etc. We should be sympathetic to Janet, but we also should be sympathetic to Peggy, who was in a really difficult situation and can't defend herself, since she's dead. Under the circumstances, what Peggy did made a lot of sense. That doesn't mean she handled everything the right way. But I think what she did was more defensible than the documentary suggests, and I don't know that she mishandled anything in this context. The tapes are clear that she wanted Janet home sooner rather than later, perhaps with a brief delay as they looked for a new house for the family, and was trying to override the social worker's efforts to keep Janet away longer.

- The documentary's credits thank William Hodgson for his help. If that's a reference to Billy of the Hodgson family at the center of the Enfield case, then I wonder if he'd be willing to provide some kind of written statement about his experiences related to the case, a statement for the SPR's archives or for whatever other context. Billy may not want to participate in documentaries, interviews, and such because of his speech impediment or for whatever other reason. In the future, it would be good if documentary producers and others working on the Enfield case would allow the option, for Billy and others, to participate in writing rather than having to appear in front of a camera or provide audio. That might help in getting more people to participate. As far as I know, we don't have any record of Billy's testimony as an adult about the poltergeist. I hope he'll provide a record of some type, and there may be other people involved in the Enfield case who would be willing to say more if they were given the option of participating in a written format. And there are ways that something like a documentary could include written testimony (placing the text on the screen, having somebody read the text). Just because it originates as text, that doesn't mean it has to remain in a text format. And if an individual doesn't want to write either, you can offer to have somebody write it for him (e.g., Janet or Margaret working with Billy to write something on his behalf). There ought to be some effort to accommodate people like Billy.

- As far as I remember, the documentary didn't include any of the most significant tape segments that have poor audio quality (e.g., the recording of the ripping out of the fireplace, the recording of Playfair's conversation with Milbourne Christopher while driving Christopher back to his hotel). Jerry Rothwell has said that they cleaned up some of the audio, so I suspect that the tapes with worse audio quality weren't able to be improved enough to be worth including in the documentary. But if Jerry and his team or anybody else in the future finds a way to clean up recordings like the ones I mentioned above to a significant extent, I hope they'll provide the SPR with the cleaned-up audio. It would have to be kept separate from the original audio, of course, but it would be useful to have versions of some of the recordings that are significantly cleaned up if possible. I've tried cleaning up the audio on my own, but I don't know much about acoustic issues, and I didn't accomplish much. Some of the recordings may be beyond repair. I don't know. I hope somebody with more knowledge of the subject will work on it.

I want to close by making some points about a few other issues.

It's often suggested, including by some of the participants in this documentary, that the investigators went too far in gathering data, that they were too focused on proving the paranormal at the expense of the Hodgsons and others involved, and so forth. It's a perennial issue that's been coming up since the earliest years of the case. We need to keep in mind that these issues, studying the paranormal and helping the people involved in paranormal cases, are connected. Much like studying medical issues is connected to helping people with health problems. One of the reasons why Grosse was able to help the Hodgsons so much at the beginning of the case, by calming them down and giving them hope, for example, was because he could draw from the work of previous paranormal researchers to give the family information about poltergeists (what they are, what they do, how long they last, how to best deal with them, etc.). Individuals involved in poltergeist cases and other paranormal phenomena in the future will benefit from what was learned through what the Hodgsons experienced. And there are benefits, in a wide variety of contexts, for people not involved in paranormal cases (what we know about the world around us, how we relate to other people, evidence for the paranormal, etc.). Grosse and Playfair explained these things to the Hodgsons many times. There are examples on the tapes, in Playfair's book, etc. They took many steps not only to explain these things to the Hodgsons and others involved, but also to keep getting the family's permission before carrying out the relevant activities, to give the family things like privacy and rest where appropriate, to try to get the poltergeist to go away by various means, even when doing so would result in less research being conducted, and so on.

Near the end of the documentary, there are some brief references to potentially paranormal activity that went on after 1978. Margaret refers to something apparently paranormal that occurred when she visited the house recently, as an adult. And the documentary ends with Janet apparently saying that she thinks the poltergeist is still with her. But the large majority of the documentary is about the poltergeist activity from August of 1977 to October of 1978. However, there's evidence for a lot of other activity both before the traditional start date of the case in August of 1977 and after October of 1978. For a detailed discussion of that evidence, see here regarding the conclusion of the case. My comments about the beginning of the case have been more scattered. I don't remember where all of the relevant posts are. See the second hyphenated section here for some of the material. There are other relevant events as well. I may write a post on the subject in the future. It's an area that needs a lot more research and discussion. The documentary I'm reviewing here says nothing of these earlier events, as far as I remember. The psychological explanations it so often refers to for the poltergeist's origins need to be balanced by what we know of Janet and Margaret's Ouija board experiences, the early paranormal activity at the Nottinghams' house, etc. Regarding the popular notion that the Hodgsons' family problems brought about the poltergeist (the parents' divorce, etc.), a theme that comes up often in the documentary, see here for a discussion of some problems with that sort of view. There is a psychological aspect to the case, but I still think an independent entity (independent of the Hodgsons), probably the spirit of a deceased human, was involved as well. We don't have much evidence to go by, though, and any conclusion we reach has to be held with a loose grip. The sort of psychological explanation favored by the documentary is plausible, but I think it's less likely.

And I want to make an observation about the behavior of the Enfield skeptics. They've had about half a century now to offer equal or better explanations for what most needs explained about the case (the ripping out of the fireplace, the December 15 levitations, the events of May 30, 1978, etc.). They still haven't done it. The foremost skeptics of the past, like Anita Gregory, didn't even attempt to explain most of what they needed to explain. After you watch this documentary, ask yourself if the successors of those original skeptics, like Susan Blackmore, have done anything significant to advance the discussion. And if you haven't already done so, read my article about what the original Enfield skeptics actually experienced when they visited the Hodgsons' house.

I'm grateful to Jerry Rothwell and his team for making such a valuable contribution to our understanding of the Enfield case. It means a lot to those who care about the case and the people involved in it.