One of the most famous and well-documented cases of poltergeist activity is the Enfield Poltergeist Case of 1977. It was the basis for the sequel movie, The Conjuring 2 (2016). This case took place in England and involved two young sisters. The phenomena included furniture moving on its own, small objects (like Lego pieces) being thrown around, and disembodied voices being heard. One of the sisters, Janet, was thought to be possessed by someone (Bill) who had died in the house prior to the current residents. Recordings of an interview with Janet allegedly while being possessed can be accessed publicly. There is also a picture of Janet being “hurled” or “hovering” over her bed.
If this is one of the best evidence-based cases of poltergeist activity, then this should be somewhat impressive even if inconclusive. But it’s quite a bit worse than that. As for thrown objects, we’re just taking the sisters’ word for it. They lack credibility in that investigators found out (something the sisters themselves admitted) that they were occasionally, if not frequently, acting as pranksters. As for the picture of Janet in the air, the image of her posture is perfectly consistent with her jumping up at the time of the snapshot (legs curled, head forward, and long hair suspended as if affected by inertia). But never mind that. We have the preceding photos of her jumping off the bed and into position. And, despite the fact that having an audio recording of a possession seems impressive to have, Janet’s voice and what she says in the recordings are something manageable by someone pretending to be possessed or functioning as a medium. The content of the conversation sometimes involves silliness in how she answers some of the questions given by the interviewer. It certainly sounds like the kind of staged conversation an 11-year-old would have and not an old man (Bill) looking to sincerely divulge his nefarious objectives. And yet this is supposed to be one of the more “extensively documented” cases.
I don’t intend to give a point-by-point assessment of each case considered to be good evidence for poltergeist activity. But I did want to profile one instance—one heralded as significant—to show that they can be inherently fraught with the kinds of data no one ought to be inclined to think is truly evidence of a poltergeist. Even if we set aside the spoiler of the Enfield sisters being pranksters, the other “evidence” given in that case is suspicious and easily accounted for by more readily available explanations. It seems that the demand for something supernatural, and so unfamiliar, is far less warranted here. Thus, unlike previous paranormal subjects that have more impressive eyewitnesses, and for the reasons given, I’m more confident that genuine poltergeist activity does not take place.
(approximate Kindle location 6962, links to internet sources he cited added)
Regarding a photo sequence he mentions that's found on the web page here, Shandon writes:
If you direct your attention to the neighboring bed with the other children in it as well as Janet’s own bed, the photos are inconsistent with a singular set of shutter bursts. It looks like a hodgepodge of separate sets of photographs that were put into a singular sequence. This indicates that the scenario had more than one take and the photographs in the sequence were deliberately put in the sequence.
(n. 26 at 7271)
To his credit, Shandon allows the photograph he initially cites (and others, by implication) to involve "hurling" or "hovering". That's better than what you typically get from skeptics of the case, who assume a certain form of levitation and show no awareness of other possibilities.
However, he goes on to note that Janet's hair can be seen moving in a sequence he later cites. The hair movement isn't a problem, since these photos are of throwing incidents, which would be expected to involve the movement of hair. And the web site he appeals to for the photo sequence doesn't tell us where the sequence originated, as far as I can tell. So, who is he blaming for the "hodgepodge of separate sets of photographs that were put into a singular sequence"? Graham Morris, who took many of the photos associated with these throwing incidents, has shown some of the original sequences in public. For example, go to 30 minutes and just after in episode 2 of Apple TV's 2023 Enfield documentary. Go here for a still shot of two photos in one of the relevant sequences, apparently showing Janet going from lying in bed to an upright position over the bed in about a sixth of a second. That same page has links to discussions of many of the lines of evidence for these throwing incidents and levitation in the Enfield case more broadly. Graham appeared at an event earlier this year at which he discussed the Enfield case, and much of that discussion involved the photos of the throwing incidents. He mentioned that he used photosensitive beams and pressure switches in the process of taking some of his photos. Go here and here for a couple of posts in which I discuss Graham's comments.
Whether the photos show Janet "jumping off the bed and into position" is disputed, and Shandon has given us no reason to conclude that Janet was jumping. My material linked above provides a large amount of evidence to the contrary.
The events involving the throwing of objects don't require "just taking the sisters' word for it". Many others claimed to have witnessed the apparently paranormal throwing of objects (Graham Morris, Vic Nottingham, Maurice Grosse, etc.). Far more than the testimony of the Hodgson sisters is involved. Peggy Hodgson alone probably witnessed at least a triple-digit number of incidents involving throwing, sometimes without any of the children in the room or even in the house.
The occasional joking, hoaxing, and such done by the Hodgson children are common in other contexts in life (cheating on tests in schools, the use of banned substances in sports, etc.). It's a poor explanation of the case as a whole. It would be like dismissing all of the test results for every student in a school because some of the students were sometimes caught cheating. For more about the fraud issue in the Enfield context, see here, among other posts in our archives.
After briefly discussing the poltergeist voice, Shandon commented, "yet this is supposed to be one of the more 'extensively documented' cases". If he's going by little more than the video he cited that's about five minutes long, then whose fault is it that the evidence he's considering isn't "extensive"? There's much more evidence pertaining to the voice than Shandon addresses, which I've outlined here. The low intellectual content of much of what the voice said is consistent with multiple paranormal scenarios: a conscious manifestation of the mind(s) of one or more of the Hodgson children, an unconscious manifestation of one or more of their minds, the use of their minds by an independent source, an independent source with a malfunctioning mind, etc. The voice does seem similar to the children in some ways, but also different in other ways. The primary issue here is that the voice seems to be paranormal as well.
Since an article by Chris French is one of the sources Shandon cites, go here for a collection of my Enfield posts that includes responses to French and other skeptics. That page also discusses many lines of evidence for the authenticity of Enfield that Shandon doesn't get into (the scientific tests done on Janet Hodgson to evaluate her paranormal abilities, the acoustic properties of the knocking phenomena, etc.). The case involved a quadruple-digit number of events witnessed by a triple-digit number of individuals over a double-digit number of years, with around two hundred hours of audio recordings, dozens of signed witness statements, and so on. The documentation for the case is extensive, and explaining it in a normal manner isn't something that can be done "easily".
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