I've said a lot about the evidence for the Enfield levitations in other posts. For an overview, see here. And here's a lengthy discussion of the evidence for the famous December 15, 1977 levitations. Janet Hodgson produced some paranormal results in a scientific experiment conducted in 1982 that was related to levitation. Here's a discussion of that experiment, and here's a lengthy discussion I had with David Robertson (one of the researchers involved) about the experiment and other scientific testing that was done on Janet. You can watch Maurice Grosse discussing the experiment I'm focused on in a 1998 television program here. And there's some photographic evidence for some of the levitations. The post linked above that provides an overview of the levitation issue discusses some of the photographic evidence. Below is a photographic sequence that wasn't mentioned in that post, one that I got from Apple TV's Enfield documentary that came out last year. As Graham Morris explains starting a little after the 30:12 mark in the second part of the documentary, there was one-sixth of a second between the two photos in this sequence:
That's not as good as video evidence, but it's close. (For a discussion of the segment of the documentary featuring Morris' comments, go here and do a Ctrl F search for "30:12". For a discussion of the video evidence for some other Enfield phenomena, see this post. Regarding the common skeptical objection that there isn't more video evidence, start listening here in a 1978 documentary on the Enfield case. The relevant segment is less than three minutes long. You'll hear two professional camera operators, Ron Denney of Pye Business Communications and Graham Morris of the Daily Mirror, commenting on how their camera equipment malfunctioned in extremely unusual ways while they were in the Hodgsons' house and attempting to film the poltergeist's activities. They use the phrases "impossible", "absolutely impossible", and "one chance in a million" to describe the likelihood that these malfunctions would occur by normal means. Their testimony is important for multiple reasons. They're professionals whose jobs involved working with that camera equipment. So, that addresses their competence to assess what's involved and skeptical claims about a need to have professional analysis of such events. Furthermore, the events in question not only provide evidence that something paranormal was going on, but also provide evidence that the entity involved sometimes didn't want to be filmed. The researchers did attempt to film it, though, and were occasionally successful.) For a discussion of the evidential value of some of Morris' other levitation photos, see my overview post mentioned above.
The post here discusses some other levitations. Do a Ctrl F search for "One doctor's" to read about a levitation that occurred while Janet was incapacitated with Valium and, therefore, not in a condition to fake the event. During the course of the Enfield case, a double-digit number of witnesses reported seeing one or more levitations. Do a Ctrl F search for "Edwards" in the post just linked. Read on for a while, and you'll get to a transcript of a discussion between Maurice Grosse and another individual who witnessed some paranormal events, including some levitations. Another subject that comes up in that post and others is audio evidence for these levitations (how tapes of the events corroborate the testimony of the witnesses, a lack of creaking noises from beds and floorboards in circumstances in which those sounds are relevant to fraud, throwing incidents that involved landing with a louder noise than jumping produces, etc.).
I'm just giving several examples here. There's a lot more in the posts linked above and elsewhere. Keep these things in mind when you see skeptics making their typical claims about Enfield and the levitation photos.
To consider the significance of a photo sequence like the one I posted above, let's think of some problems with a potential argument that the second photo isn't depicting a levitation. Let's say somebody brought up the possibility that the camera malfunctioned. So, there was more than the usual one-sixth of a second between the two photos:
ReplyDelete- Cameras usually don't malfunction. You'd have to take the odds against such a malfunction into account.
- The camera would have to not only malfunction, but also malfunction in a particular way that would accommodate faking a levitation (e.g., enough time between each photo to allow Janet to do what was needed for the faking).
- Graham Morris would have to have not noticed the malfunctioning or been dishonest about it. That carries with it all of the problems with whichever of those scenarios the skeptic chooses (Morris' professional experience using such cameras, the evidence for his general trustworthiness, his willingness to express doubt about other Enfield phenomena, etc.).
- The undisturbed condition of most of the bed covers. Under normal circumstances, getting up in a bed you're lying in doesn't just disturb the covers in the area next to the pillow. The covers would be disturbed further down as well. If the critic is going to propose that Janet pulled her legs up toward the pillow before getting up, so as to make it look like she'd been pulled out of the bed near the pillow, that raises the question of why she'd do so. I don't recall ever coming across anything in coverage of paranormal issues (books, articles, etc.) suggesting that it's typical for a poltergeist or any other paranormal source to throw people from beds from the area of the pillow. In fact, I don't recall ever coming across that detail in any other paranormal case. Maybe there are some instances out there, but they're probably highly unusual, if they exist at all. It would be really dubious to suggest that Janet had been studying the paranormal literature (or whatever other source) and noticed that poltergeist throwing incidents should involve exiting the bed near the pillow. And Janet's leaving the bed in the area of the pillow isn't discussed much on the tapes. It doesn't seem that Janet would have thought there was any need to move herself to the area of the pillow before jumping, if she was faking the incidents by jumping. An argument that she was imitating what had happened during an earlier throwing incident would just push the question back a step. Why did that earlier incident involve leaving the bed near the pillow? As I've documented elsewhere, the beds and floorboards in the house creaked a lot, and multiple visitors to the house (including Morris) commented on how you could tell that there was movement upstairs that way. Remember, the camera was remote-controlled, and it could be set off by the person with the remote at any moment. Why would Janet take the time and effort to move her body to the top of the bed before jumping, with all of the noise or potential noise and other risks of getting caught, when leaving the bed from the top rather than further down was so unnecessary?
- Since there are so many photos to explain, not just the two in the sequence posted above, we should consider the cumulative effect involved. This point I'm making involves more than the two photos in the sequence posted above, but those two photos are part of the cumulative sum. Why didn't Janet (or Margaret, etc.) ever get filmed in the process of faking one of these incidents? Given how long it would take to move your legs to the top of the bed before getting up or walk to the top of the bed after getting up further down, get up from the lying position, and do all of the crouching and other motions involved in jumping, why would the photos never show any of that? Under the critic's scenario, there was a lot of movement on the bed, a creaky bed, before the jump, so there would have been a substantial amount of noise before the jump and during it at least a large percentage of the time, if not every time. You could propose that Morris did get some photos of one or more of the children faking things like that, but lied about it. That would have the problems mentioned above regarding his credibility. And he wasn't the only one who filmed these throwing incidents. Maurice Grosse took some levitation photos as well. Was he also lying? You'd also have to dismiss people who witnessed a levitation, not just people who took photos. See the photo at the top of the Psi Encyclopedia article here, for example. It shows Peggy Hodgson looking directly at Janet as she's in the air during one of these episodes, with her bed covers once again being disturbed near the pillow, but not further down. Are we supposed to think Peggy didn't notice Janet jumping from the bed right in front of her or saw Janet jump from the bed, but lied about it or didn't mention it later in any relevant context? Skeptics of anything can always resort to dismissing the relevant witnesses as liars, but that approach costs something. It's not free. You have to address the evidence for the credibility of the witnesses in question and the plausibility of dishonesty under the circumstances in question. And the more witnesses you dismiss as dishonest without significant evidence to that effect, the weaker your view is. These throwing incidents are just a small percentage of all that needs explained in the Enfield case. If there's a large cumulative list of people you have to dismiss as liars after you've gone through all of the relevant events, that's a big problem for your hypothesis.
ReplyDeleteMy points above are in response to the idea that Morris' camera malfunctioned. Not every response to that hypothesis is applicable to every other hypothesis. But some of my points have a wider application. The typical skeptical approach of just saying that Janet jumped from her bed, and leaving it at that, is highly inadequate.