Everything Good But Yourself

"It grieves them more to own a bad house than a bad life, as if it were man's greatest good to have everything good but himself." (Augustine, The City Of God, 3:1)

Reformation Day

"'Go, inquire of the Lord for me and the people and all Judah concerning the words of this book that has been found, for great is the wrath of the Lord that burns against us, because our fathers have not listened to the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us.'…'But to the king of Judah who sent you to inquire of the Lord thus shall you say to him, 'Thus says the Lord God of Israel, 'Regarding the words which you have heard, because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants that they should become a desolation and a curse, and you have torn your clothes and wept before Me, I truly have heard you,' declares the Lord.'" (2 Kings 22:13, 22:18-19)

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.