If you go here, you can watch a twelve-minute BBC segment from 1983 that features Cornell, along with Alan Gauld, one of the other paranormal researchers who accompanied Cornell to the Hodgsons' house (where most of the Enfield events occurred) six years earlier, in 1977. The BBC segment doesn't mention Enfield, but it will give you some idea of Cornell's (and Gauld's) importance as a paranormal researcher and the quality of much of his work on the paranormal. I'll be criticizing his handling of Enfield, but I'm not denying that he's a significant figure in paranormal research who did a lot of good.
Cornell was one of the foremost skeptics of the Enfield case. Much of what he wrote about it was never released to the public. In the process of writing his book, Ben accessed the archives of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) at Cambridge University, and he refers to an Enfield folder within Cornell's files. Ben also mentions that Cornell wanted to publish another book shortly before his death and intended to address Enfield, among other topics, in that book. Ben reports that Cornell's earlier book, which came out in 2002, originally had a section on Enfield, but that the section was removed under legal threat from Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair. We're told by Ben that the Enfield material meant to be included in the 2002 book is still available on a floppy disk within Cornell's files at Cambridge. And one of Cornell's sons gave Ben a copy of that Enfield material. I knew about the removal of the material from the 2002 book and have written about it before. I'd contacted a couple of publishers about the possibility of issuing another edition of the book that would include that Enfield material, but to no avail. Ben makes some comments about how Cornell's book didn't sell many copies and how there wouldn't be any further editions of it. I hope more of Cornell's Enfield material will be made available to the public in the future, but, for now, Ben's chapter that's focused on Enfield (chapter 12) probably is as close as we're going to get anytime soon. It repeats much of what's been said elsewhere about Cornell and Enfield, but also contains some details that I don't recall having come across anywhere else.
Given all that Ben had access to, including the report on Enfield that Cornell submitted to the SPR and the unpublished material on Enfield for his 2002 book, I'd expect Ben's comments to reflect to a high degree what Cornell offered in those contexts. Grosse and Playfair are dead now, so what concern would somebody like Ben or sources who spoke to him recently have about legal threats from Grosse and Playfair? Many Enfield skeptics voiced their objections to the case while Grosse and Playfair were alive without any legal concerns that I'm aware of. There was talk for years about Anita Gregory's doctoral thesis that addresses Enfield being suppressed because of legal concerns related to Grosse and Playfair, but the thesis is available to the public now, is demonstrably wrong about many significant issues, and doesn't offer much of an argument against the case (as I've discussed in my responses to the thesis here and here). The SPR's Mary Rose Barrington went as far as to say "I thought that the Enfield chapter of Anita’s thesis was entirely unsuitable for publication". Cornell's unpublished Enfield material could be of poor quality. We shouldn't assume that there would have been a legal threat from Grosse and Playfair only if Cornell's material was good. Bad material could motivate a legal threat as well. My focus in this post will be on the quality of Ben's Enfield comments, which presumably were largely shaped by what he derived from Cornell. However, I don't know all of the details about where Ben agrees with Cornell and where he doesn't, what Ben included from Cornell's files and what he didn't include, etc. I'm just responding to Ben's book as it stands. He can add further qualifiers if he wants.
A few years ago, I wrote an article about what Enfield skeptics experienced when they visited the Hodgsons' house. That article includes some discussions of Tony Cornell, both his visit to the house in November of 1977 and his interactions with Grosse and Playfair in other contexts. The article is based largely on the Enfield tapes recorded by Grosse and Playfair, which Ben doesn't seem to have listened to.
Since I'll be citing those tapes below, I'll explain at this point that I'll be using "MG" to refer to tapes from Grosse's collection and "GP" to refer to ones from Playfair's. So, MG3B is Grosse's tape 3B, GP49A is tape 49A in Playfair's collection, etc.
In his chapter on Enfield, Ben repeats a variation of some popular false claims about the Hodgson sisters confessing to faking:
Adding a frisson to proceedings is the fact that the Hodgson girls have just confessed in the press to fakery, only to then withdraw this confession after an intervention by Grosse and Playfair themselves....
After their brief, recanted confession, the Hodgson sisters continue to maintain that what took place in their home was genuine. (approximate Kindle locations 2891, 2924, pp. 195, 197)
That alleged confession, which was discussed in a March 30, 1978 article in the Daily Mirror, only involved a confession on the part of Margaret, not both girls. It was only a confession that the voice was faked rather than a confession of faking phenomena more broadly or the case as a whole. And the use of the term "withdraw" is disputed. As far as I can tell, Margaret denied that she'd made such a confession from the start. Multiple eyewitnesses who were present at the house on the night of the alleged confession heard Margaret deny that she'd made a confession and didn't dispute what she said. Denying that you confessed isn't the same as withdrawing a confession you've admitted making. I'm not aware of any evidence - on Grosse and Playfair's tapes, in Playfair's book, in the Daily Mirror article, or anywhere else - that Grosse or Playfair pressured Margaret to withdraw a confession or deny that she'd ever confessed. Rather, all of the evidence I've seen, including interviews of the Hodgsons and others involved on the tapes, suggests that Grosse and Playfair wanted an honest answer from Margaret rather than pressuring her to give them an answer they wanted. There's substantial evidence that the supposed confession didn't happen. Do a Ctrl F search for "confessed" here to see my discussion of this subject in response to Joe Nickell several years ago.
Ben cites Cornell to the effect that Grosse had told him that there was no fraud on the part of the Hodgson children:
He [Grosse] “did not respond at all to the suggestion that there was any fraud, or even a mixture of fraud and genuine phenomena,” Cornell writes in his report. “In fact he rejected the idea of fraud altogether.”...
Twenty years earlier, Cornell and Alan [Gauld] had each tried to catch the other in the act of causing the rappings at Hannath Hall, so determined were they to eliminate the possibility of fraud. Today, Grosse and Playfair wave away the suggestion it could be the children themselves. (2758, 2838, pp. 186, 192)
The conversation Cornell had with Grosse about the fraud issue occurred shortly after Cornell arrived at the house on November 12 of 1977. But Grosse referred to the potential for fraud in poltergeist cases less than a month after starting his work on Enfield, commenting that poltergeist cases "usually" involve some degree of fraud "as time goes on" (MG4A, 11:17). Two weeks later, still multiple weeks before Cornell visited the house, Grosse responded to a claim that the poltergeist had moved Billy's bed: "The only thing that's pushing Billy's bed out is Janet. Now, pack it up, Janet, I'm telling you. I'll get very cross with you, Janet, I'm telling you. His bed's not moving at all. Now, get to sleep, both of you. Stop playing the fool." (MG6A, 19:09) In early November, shortly before Cornell's visit, Grosse commented: "I have, once or twice during the investigation, caught both Janet and Billy trying to simulate some of the phenomena, but, when they have done so, it has been more than apparent what they've been up to. I can safely say that over ninety-five percent of the phenomena that has taken place has been quite genuine. If anything, I have been over-cautious and over-careful in my approach, and I'm afraid I have been guilty sometimes of accusing them of doing things which, on reflection, they were certainly not responsible for." (MG14A, 17:46) Ben's book, relying to whatever extent on what Cornell claimed, leaves the reader with the impression that Grosse didn't think any fraud had occurred and was careless about watching for fraud when he had his conversation with Cornell on November 12. But there are multiple lines of evidence on tape that Grosse was aware of the potential for fraud, was watching for it, and had caught the children in it on multiple occasions already. As far as I know, we have no recording of Grosse's conversation with Cornell. Maybe Grosse misspoke, or maybe Cornell misinterpreted or misremembered what was said. But it's clear that Grosse wasn't as gullible or careless about these matters as Ben's book suggests.
After those comments on the fraud issue, Ben refers to how certain events happened "only" when the children were alone:
In fact, a great many of the phenomena reported by the children—the moving furniture, the knocking sounds, the unseen hands flinging them from their beds—only occur inside their bedroom when the door is shut and only the children are inside. (2762, p. 187)
Such events frequently happened when the children weren't alone, often when the children weren't even present. My article here discusses some examples of such events while Cornell was at the house, and the article here discusses events that occurred when none of the children were present during the case as a whole. It seems likely that Cornell didn't remember or didn't see some of the relevant events that happened while he was at the house, and he was ignorant of much of what happened on other occasions. We're not dependent on Cornell's memories alone here. We have tapes of the relevant events and the testimony of other witnesses, not just Cornell. Ben may just be repeating what he read in Cornell's records, but Cornell was mistaken.
As chapter 12 continues, Ben relays an incident in which something happened while Cornell was out of the bedroom where the Hodgsons were, and Cornell wanted to ask Peggy Hodgson what she witnessed. (Notice the conflict with the earlier claim that events "only" happened when nobody was watching the children.) Supposedly, though, Grosse prevented Cornell from questioning Peggy, saying that the poltergeist only acts when your back is turned. As my article linked earlier documents, there were multiple events that occurred while Cornell was at the house that were witnessed by somebody other than the Hodgson children, and it would be absurd to suggest that Grosse prevented Cornell (and the others with him, Alan Gauld and Bernard Carr) from speaking with any of those witnesses about what they experienced. Yet, Ben makes the point twice that Cornell supposedly was prevented from questioning Peggy:
When he enters the bedroom, Cornell sees that Mrs. Hodgson is lying in her single bed on her side, facing Janet’s bed. He wants to question her, but Grosse prevents him from doing so. But she might have seen what just took place, says Cornell. Grosse shakes his head. “Things do not happen,” he says, “unless your back is turned.” A little later, when Janet is again flung from her bed, Cornell makes a second attempt at asking the mother what she saw. Again, he writes in his notes, Grosse prevents him from doing so. “MG in charge and hustled us out of the room.” (2788, pp. 188-89)
I've relistened to the tapes of Cornell's visit since reading Ben's book, and I didn't notice any incident like these ones Ben describes. Even if such a thing occurred (perhaps while the tape recorders weren't running or outside the range of what the recorders picked up), Grosse would have had no ability to prevent Cornell and his colleagues from questioning any witnesses they wanted to question. If Grosse tried to prevent it, Cornell could have persisted anyway. Or he could have talked to Peggy while Grosse was away. As Ben acknowledges, Grosse left the house for the day shortly after the events described above. Cornell and his colleagues spent the night at the Hodgsons' house while Grosse and Playfair were away. It's unlikely that Grosse and Playfair would have left the house with Cornell and his colleagues there if they were trying to prevent them from doing things like asking Peggy questions. And Cornell had plenty of opportunity to question Peggy (and whoever else) while Grosse and Playfair were away. He had plenty of opportunity to do it while they were still at the house as well, as the tapes demonstrate. So, why object that Grosse interrupted Cornell on a couple of occasions, as if Cornell was prevented from asking Peggy questions? Or if Cornell or Ben didn't intend to criticize Grosse or leave the sort of impression I just referred to (that Cornell was prevented from asking questions), what's the point of bringing up these incidents a couple of times while not mentioning the other occasions when Cornell did ask questions and got answers?
It was a two-story house with several rooms in it. People often moved from one room to another or one floor to another or went outside for a while. On the tapes of Cornell's visit, Grosse is in the area where the recorder is running some of the time, but not all of the time. And when he's there, he's frequently not talking. There are many occasions when Peggy or somebody else takes the initiative to describe a paranormal event that just occurred or Grosse asks one or more of the witnesses about what happened. And there are times when Cornell is talking, including asking Peggy questions. Around 1:30 on MG19B, you start hearing Cornell asking people to do various things, such as tapping on a wall and keeping a bed a certain distance away from the wall. Later, he gets into one of the beds for a while, to see if the poltergeist will throw him out of the bed, as it allegedly had done with the girls earlier. So, the family and Grosse and Playfair were highly accommodating to Cornell. They gave him a lot of ability to experiment, to make use of the equipment he and his colleagues had brought with them, etc. At 2:53 on MG19B, Cornell asks the girls a series of questions about some alleged poltergeist knocking that had just occurred, and Grosse is nearby. Grosse doesn't interrupt at all. He lets Cornell question the girls. Over the next few minutes, Cornell asks other questions and makes other comments, such as challenging the poltergeist to "have a go" at him (4:28). Grosse talks as well and asks some questions of his own, but he also lets Cornell talk and do whatever he wants. And there are later occasions when Cornell asks Peggy and other family members questions without being interrupted (e.g., GP63A, 15:35).
Events that were claimed to be paranormal happened in front of people other than the children (Peggy Hodgson, John Burcombe, etc.), including while Cornell was at the house, and he had opportunity to discuss the subject with those witnesses. It would be difficult for the witnesses to have been honestly mistaken about some of the events that were reported while he was there. For more about those events, see the section discussing Cornell in my earlier post here. For example, a pillow moved in an apparently paranormal manner, and Peggy reported that none of the children were moving at the time (GP63A, 5:14). Peggy reported seeing a levitation sequence in which Janet was moved slowly by the poltergeist, went over top of Margaret, and was dropped on the floor (GP63A, 9:27). On the tape, Cornell offers no normal explanation of what happened during either of those incidents, and Ben doesn't say anything about any normal explanation Cornell offered anywhere else. As my post linked above explains, the cumulative effect of all of these events while Cornell was there is significant. Peggy witnessed a lot of what happened, with occasional corroboration from other individuals other than the children. It would be difficult to argue that all of them were lying or honestly mistaken every time.
But Ben mentions a suggestion Cornell made to the effect that Peggy may have known that the children were faking the case, but didn't want to admit it:
“The mother should have seen them doing things,” Cornell writes in his report. “But she, too, is in a way disturbed and may not want now to admit she knows they are doing it.”...
Cornell, in the same letter, tells Playfair it seems very strange that Mrs. Hodgson should make such a point of objecting to a second visit. “I would suggest that whilst you acknowledge her views, you should wonder why she expressed them so strongly. I think I can be forgiven for saying here that I am not a fool and not easily hoodwinked in these matters, neither is Alan Gauld and it may well be that she recognized this, perhaps more strongly than other people in this particular case.” (2847, 2884, pp. 192, 195)
Then why was Cornell so interested in interviewing Peggy, if she was so unreliable? Why make such an issue of being interrupted when you were trying to interview a witness if you're going to dismiss that witness in the manner Cornell does?
Ben gives us some examples of what Cornell did at the house after Playfair and Grosse had left:
With Grosse gone, he attempts to establish the kind of control conditions he would insist upon if the case were his, to exclude the possibility of any outside interference. At 2:15 a.m., he notes down a number of discreet precautions he has taken:
CHECK LIST
1. Two strands of black cotton strung across garden gate 4″ and 18″ high off ground with 4 drawing pins.
2. One strand of black cotton strung across right hand neighbor’s pathway 12″ off ground.
3. All windows checked to see if locked.
4. Back door—Bluetack and black cotton—check outside 12″ high.
5. Front door (locked)—Bluetack and black cotton strung across outside and inside of door 12″ high.
6. Sellotape check on front bedroom A. door handle side 3″ off floor—ditto top 12″; from top of door.
7. Tape recorder outside bedroom A. door.
The night passes without incident, and Cornell removes all of these security protocols at 6 a.m. (2796, pp. 189-90)
Those things are good as far as they go, but you wouldn't be able to do such things all the time. Doing them during a portion of one night is a lot easier than keeping them up for months or years on end. And while you're doing those things Cornell did, there will be other things you aren't doing. That's the nature of life. There are tradeoffs. Different investigators will take different approaches. And some of what Cornell lists are things Grosse and Playfair did, the setting up of tape recorders being an example.
Ben recounts an occasion when Cornell asked Playfair to go outside the house with him, to sit in Cornell's car and talk about some things. During that conversation, one of the matters Cornell brought up was the "nonexistence" of controls Grosse and Playfair were using to prevent fraud on the part of the Hodgson children:
Cornell understands from experience that attempts to directly observe poltergeist phenomena almost always cause their cessation.
Be that as it may, he politely tells Playfair that the control conditions within the house—which is to say, measures taken by investigators to limit the possibility of fraud—are “nonexistent.” (2773, pp. 187-88)
As my comments above illustrate, Cornell's assessment wasn't accurate even concerning the small amount of time he spent at the house with Grosse and Playfair that night. They had tape recorders running, Grosse had asked Peggy Hodgson (widely agreed to be an honest witness) to watch the children while the other adults were out of the room, and the presence of individuals like Cornell and his colleagues and the equipment they brought with them were arranged or allowed by Grosse and Playfair, among other steps they took to set some controls in place. More significantly, though, you can't judge a case much by examining what controls were present during a small amount of time you spent at the house after arriving unannounced.
Grosse and Playfair (and those who assisted them, like David Robertson) brought video cameras into the house, set up cameras operated by remote control, arranged scientific experiments for Janet to participate in, placed tape recorders around the house, gave Janet objects to relocate paranormally (e.g., by teleportation), etc. My post here discusses many examples of what Grosse and Playfair did to set some controls in place and in other ways carry out a more rigorous investigation than Cornell suggests they did. Given that Cornell only spent about a day at the house, unannounced, without interacting much with the evidence elsewhere for how the investigation was conducted, he wasn't in much of a position to judge the overall quality of the investigation. And, to my knowledge, he never offered an alternative explanation for the apparently positive results Grosse and Playfair got from the more rigorous aspects of their work (the scientific experiments on Janet, the photographs taken by Graham Morris that seem supportive of paranormal activity, etc.). There are some things you can fault Grosse and Playfair for, as I have in other posts. But they handled their investigation far better than Cornell suggested.
There's an example from Cornell's visit to the house that illustrates how Grosse and Playfair sometimes handled things better than Cornell and his colleagues did. You can read about it on page 79 of Playfair's book (This House Is Haunted [United States: White Crow Books, 2011]). After a table went over in the kitchen, allegedly as a result of poltergeist activity, one of Cornell's colleagues who was nearby (Alan Gauld) didn't do much to investigate the incident any further. But Grosse and Playfair did. They had a regular practice of trying to duplicate alleged paranormal events by normal means, to see how plausible a normal explanation would be (as discussed on page 70 of Playfair's book). And they had done that with the kitchen table, so they knew that it didn't make sense to think Janet (the only one of the children in the kitchen at the time) had moved the table.
Since paranormal research is large and complicated, and a variety of approaches can be justified in a given set of circumstances, I don't think there's any one approach we should expect every researcher or group of researchers to take. There are advantages to Cornell's way of handling things, but there are advantages to Grosse and Playfair's as well. Whichever approach would have been better on balance in the Enfield context, I think Cornell's negativity about what Grosse and Playfair did is excessive.
Concerning a turning over of the kitchen table while Cornell and his colleagues were at the house, probably the same one I discussed above, Ben writes:
The three men are preparing to leave the house, putting equipment back into their cars, when the kitchen table flips over. None of the investigators witness this. “I get the distinct impression that the children, who are aware that we are about to depart and return to Cambridge and Nottingham, do not wish us to leave and that this further incident has been created to keep us in the house,” Cornell writes in his notes. (2817, pp. 190-91)
Alan Gauld heard the table go over and looked up right away. What he reported seeing when he looked up suggests that the table incident was genuine. When you combine Gauld's testimony with the remainder of the evidence pertaining to this event, it seems very likely that it was authentic. Go to the post here and do a Ctrl F search for "Furthermore" to read more about it.
Regarding Cornell's final interactions with the Hodgsons before leaving their house, Ben writes:
The Hodgson siblings, their mother and the three investigators are all now in the kitchen. Cornell glances at Alan, and his friend gives him a small nod of approval. Cornell clears his throat and addresses the children. “You know, you could stop this poltergeist if you really wanted to,” he tells them gently. “I could get rid of it in twenty-four hours, but you could do so as well. Look at your mother: all this is making her ill. When you are young, all this can be funny, but when you are older, like your mother, it is a great trial. Now, why don’t you, all three of you, tell it to go away? You could stop it if you really wanted to.”
He turns to Mrs. Hodgson and tells her that nothing they have seen over their fourteen hours in the house suggests a supernatural cause. She appears uneasy, almost alarmed, and tells her children that these “important men” should not have their time wasted if, indeed, it is they who are responsible. The SPR men suggest that she keeps her own log of everything unusual that happens in the house, which she has not been doing. She looks tired and drawn, but is keen to cooperate. She tells Cornell that he and his colleagues are welcome to return any time. (2823, p. 191)
Cornell was in no position to render that sort of judgment about the case, given factors like how little time he had spent at the house, how many events occurred without any of the children around, and how unlikely it is that the children faked everything that happened when they were present. It doesn't seem that Cornell was just testing the family, to see how they'd react to such comments, even though he wasn't actually convinced of what he said to them. To my knowledge, neither Cornell nor his two colleagues who were with him at the time, who would later recount what happened, ever suggested that Cornell was just testing the family. And he persisted in being highly critical of the Enfield case until his death.
The comments of Peggy and the children on the tapes just before Cornell made his remarks (the tapes from the night of November 12, cited above) and just after Cornell's remarks (the tapes from later in the day on November 13 and after) give no indication that Peggy or the children considered the case inauthentic or had any significant doubts about it. Peggy would later refer to the absurdity of Cornell's suggestion that he could get rid of the poltergeist in less than a day (GP26B, 11:33). She described Cornell and his colleagues as "the worst of anybody who's ever been here" (GP34B, 21:00).
Apparently, judging by what Ben wrote in the passage of his book quoted above, Cornell and his colleagues suggested that Peggy start taking notes, something she supposedly hadn't done previously. But she was already taking notes long before Cornell visited the house. Playfair reports in his book that Grosse had told Peggy to take notes the first day he was there (20). On page 42, Playfair quotes some of the notes Peggy had taken in September of 1977, about two months before Cornell's visit.
Ben goes on to cite a letter Cornell wrote to Playfair, expressing skepticism that Peggy Hodgson had said that Cornell and his colleagues weren't allowed to return to the house:
Cornell writes Playfair a letter, telling him that he suspects the reality is that he and Grosse do not want anyone to visit who might criticize their actions. (2860, p. 193)
No, Playfair was right. Peggy did express disgust with Cornell and his colleagues at multiple points on the tapes (as cited above), and she probably did so on occasions not recorded on tape. And Playfair was in a much better position than Cornell to know whether Peggy had said that Cornell and his colleagues weren't allowed to return. Playfair reported that Peggy did say so, we have good reason to trust him on the matter, and there's no good reason I'm aware of to doubt him. Cornell's suggestion that Grosse and Playfair didn't want investigators at the house who would criticize them is ridiculous. Anita Gregory expressed skepticism about the case and was more of an opponent of it than Cornell was, but Gregory was allowed to visit the house seven times over more than half a year. Most of those visits occurred after she told Grosse and Playfair about her skepticism. Milbourne Christopher, another skeptic, not only visited the house, but was even brought there with Playfair's approval and assistance, in an attempt to see if a professional magician and known skeptic of the paranormal (Christopher) could catch the Hodgson children playing tricks. That happened more than a month after Cornell's visit. Many of the researchers who visited the house only did so once, with no ability for Grosse or Playfair to know ahead of time what they would conclude about the case. To my knowledge, Cornell and his colleagues were the only ones told they couldn't come back, because of their behavior while at the house, not because of their skepticism or potential for criticizing Grosse and Playfair.
While discussing the SPR's committee report on Enfield, Ben writes:
Certain inconsistencies are, however, pointed out: neighbors who had been reported as witnessing certain events, such as sofa levitation, later being unable to recall seeing such things. (2912, p. 197)
That seems to be a reference to how John Burcombe didn't remember whether one of the couch levitations he witnessed occurred on a particular day (November 10, 1977). He had seen the couch levitate multiple times. He didn't have trouble remembering whether he'd seen the couch levitate. Rather, he had trouble remembering whether one of those levitations occurred on the specific date he was asked about. Remembering whether you saw a couch levitate is a distinct issue from remembering when you saw it levitate. Go here and do a Ctrl F search for "couch" to read my response to Anita Gregory's formulation of this objection Ben is bringing up. The evidence for the couch levitation is very good. Enfield skeptics haven't come up with a good alternative explanation for what happened, and they never will. Since I wrote the article linked above, Paul Burcombe, John's son and another witness of the couch levitation under consideration here, spoke about witnessing that levitation in a television interview. You can watch it here. The only other neighbor who apparently witnessed the couch levitation in question, Peggy Nottingham, was one of several individuals who signed a statement saying that Playfair's book (which includes a recounting of the couch levitation) is accurate (This House Is Haunted [London, England: Souvenir Press, 1980], 11). John and Paul Burcombe and Peggy Nottingham were the only neighbors present when the couch was supposed to have levitated. Who are the neighbors Ben is referring to, and where's the evidence that they in some relevant way didn't remember the couch levitation?
Ben quotes some portions of a March 31, 1978 article in the Cambridge Evening News about a presentation on Enfield at a symposium of the SPR. The article is by John Alexander. I've read it. It's highly biased against the case, and it's inaccurate in a variety of ways, without making much of an effort to interact with the evidence provided by Grosse and Playfair at the symposium or elsewhere. Ben quotes a portion of Alexander's comments on a video played at the symposium, among other topics. Here's what Alexander said about the video:
In their [Grosse and Playfair's] view, this was the poltergeist activity to end all poltergeist activities and they played endless tape recordings, as well as a video tape of a cheeky young girl struggling to keep her lips closed and speak at the same time. ("Pitfalls facing psychic investigator", p. 18)
That gives you some idea of the nature of the article as a whole. Alexander doesn't interact with any of the "endless tape recordings" and the accompanying eyewitness testimony and other evidence. The video Alexander refers to was meant to show the poltergeist voice manifesting through Janet while her mouth was sealed. Here's what David Robertson, who filmed the video, told me about it in a July 18, 2018 email:
I do remember recording the video you mentioned. We did close up video because by that stage the voice [the embodied voice allegedly produced by the poltergeist through Janet Hodgson] was easy to get and Maurice was trying various means to find out if the sound changed when the mouth was sealed. He had some good sticky tape because he wanted to be certain there were no gaps. We had tried several times before, using insulating tape, this isn't quite as sticky. It was difficult removing the tape used for that video, I think he said it was medical tape, wide if I remember rightly. The problem is that a small gap will enable intonations from the mouth. I took the close up to show the details of tape adhesion more than anything else. I think this was why he moved on to water in the mouth. Maurice was very thorough and careful not to do anything that Janet was unhappy with. (You have to be a bit careful with water, but there weren't any problems.) If she were cheating she could easily have declined. I think the laryngograph came after that. We were trying to find the most definitive description of what was going on. In my opinion the agency can probably connect inside and outside regions similar to objects going through closed windows or a jet of blood from the air which I once saw much later on (not at Enfield)….
I do remember though that the [video] shots were about the best you could do with the tools available to show that her mouth was sealed and yet the voice was still able to speak clearly. It seems that with repetition the novelty wears off and we worked with it. It is a noteworthy change and I suppose accounts for how some of the TV film was made. That was easy, the mouth wasn't taped and the lips open.
The video did seem to surprise people, I suppose they must have been familiar with the difficulty of mouth closed talking. As I say, the novelty wore off for us.
That's significantly different than what Alexander describes ("a cheeky young girl struggling to keep her lips closed and speak at the same time"). But Ben cites a few parts of Alexander's article, including a portion of what I've quoted above, without any opposing commentary, probably leaving the large majority of Ben's readers with a highly inaccurate impression of what happened at the 1978 symposium. He refers to Alexander as a "reporter", though his article reads like a really bad opinion piece. I doubt that Ben has listened to the audio of the Enfield portion of the symposium Alexander was writing about. I have listened to it. I disagree with how Grosse and Playfair handled some of it, but their presentation was far more credible than John Alexander and Ben suggest.
Near the end of the book, there's a disparaging comment about Maurice Grosse, one that Ben seems to have brought up on his own initiative rather than citing it from Cornell:
His [Cornell's] days-long investigation into the RMS Queen Mary for NBC television yielded nothing. When the channel then flew in a gaggle of mediums to assist in the search for supernatural phenomena, he was able to politely disprove many of the claims these women made. It conjures the image of TV producers rubbing their temples and asking who, exactly, this man was again? Perhaps the booker had confused him with Maurice Grosse. (4006, p. 274)
Grosse rejected a lot of paranormal claims, including some of the ones made about Enfield, as I've documented above. For good reason, he held a far higher view of the paranormality of Enfield than Cornell did, but that doesn't warrant a comment like the one above from Ben. Grosse, like Cornell, was a significant paranormal researcher who did a lot of good. He doesn't deserve the disparagement he gets in Ben's book.
I hope Ben or somebody else will find a way to get some or all of Cornell's unpublished Enfield material released to the public. If Cornell's family has the ability to release the material, maybe they could ask the SPR to host it at their web site or make it available to the public in some other way.
Like I said at the start of this post, I think Ben's book is mostly good. I recommend it. Despite the problems with the parts about Enfield, there's a lot in the book that's worth reading about other cases and other paranormal issues and about Cornell.
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