tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post1163301641409073437..comments2024-03-27T17:15:37.606-04:00Comments on Triablogue: A Tribute To Maurice GrosseRyanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17809283662428917799noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-39578603301407852892020-07-14T19:18:00.623-04:002020-07-14T19:18:00.623-04:00There's only so much I can say. The SPR's ...There's only so much I can say. The SPR's Enfield report was digitized. I read it in March of this year. It has some significant content, and it changed my mind on some issues, but not on anything of major significance.<br /><br />You can get a lot of information about the report, including quite a few quotes from it, in Anita Gregory's doctoral thesis and Melvyn Willin's book on Enfield. Mary Rose Barrington and others who contributed to the report (committee members and others) commented publicly on some of their reasons for not accepting some or all of the phenomena, and I've interacted with many such comments. On Barrington's objections to the December 15, 1977 events, for example, go <a href="http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-enfield-poltergeist-chris-frenchs.html" rel="nofollow">here</a> and do a Ctrl F search for her name. And search for her name <a href="http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-voice-and-personality-of-enfield.html" rel="nofollow">here</a> to get my response to an objection she raised to the voice phenomena. My <a href="http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/06/a-response-to-anita-gregorys-doctoral.html" rel="nofollow">response to Gregory's doctoral thesis</a> interacts with much of what she cited from the SPR's report. Other posts (see <a href="http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/05/what-enfield-skeptics-actually.html" rel="nofollow">here</a> and <a href="http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/06/a-tribute-to-peggy-hodgson.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>) interact with some of what Willin's book says about the report.<br /><br />Keep in mind that the two sources I've cited on the report above, Gregory and Willin, aren't writing from a pro-Enfield perspective. Though Willin accepts the authenticity of the case, he didn't write his book to argue for that view. So, you can ask yourself how likely it is that there's some sort of major evidence against Enfield in the SPR's report that neither Gregory nor Willin mentioned.<br /><br />In her thesis (178-79), Gregory makes an issue of John Burcombe's failure to remember a couch levitation that's supposed to have occurred on November 10, 1977. She cites the SPR's report on the subject. I'll be addressing that couch levitation and Burcombe's not remembering it in my tribute to Burcombe later this year, which should be posted in September.Jason Engwerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17031011335190895123noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-62458053978940014062020-07-13T14:56:50.838-04:002020-07-13T14:56:50.838-04:00Yes, and indeed for all we know she may even be de...Yes, and indeed for all we know she may even be deceased. I would be very surprised to learn that the 2007 and Paranormal Channel programmes either did not attempt to locate her at all or, if they did, they couldn't find her. So one suspects that she's either dead or flatly refused to engage again with the subject. One sympathises with the teasing she must have received at her local police station following her TV interview. <br /><br />I hate to waylay you further, but I have also been wondering about the Enfield Poltergeist Investigation Committee Report. I seem to recall that you have not been able to read it, no doubt because for some reason it has not been digitized. Do you know why this is? Moreover, given the fact that Barrington says that EPIC partly concluded that a lot of the phenomena was 'at best unproved', do you feel that the report could contain revelations that could cause you to significantly revise some of your views on the case? <br /><br />Anthonyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00974704318403476689noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-85406641907434036092020-07-12T17:42:34.999-04:002020-07-12T17:42:34.999-04:00Thanks, Anthony!
Some complicating factors with H...Thanks, Anthony!<br /><br />Some complicating factors with Heeps are that she's a woman and was young at the start of the Enfield case and could easily have gotten married or divorced, with a last name change, or changed career fields later in life. I suspect some people, such as journalists who specialize in police issues, could track her down. I think the bigger issue is getting the relevant people to have enough motivation to carry out what they're capable of doing.Jason Engwerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17031011335190895123noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-77066112258151948162020-07-12T12:30:58.113-04:002020-07-12T12:30:58.113-04:00Thanks Jason, endlessly fascinating as always. You...Thanks Jason, endlessly fascinating as always. Your reasoning about witness availability and the other factors to consider make sense. I think I was just surprised that Melvyn Willin was not able to locate Heeps, since one assumes he did make quite an effort given her significance as a witness. But then, I've never tried to locate someone in this fashion and wouldn't quite know where to start either - so I make no judgements. It would be interesting simply to get a retrospective view from Heeps about her amazing experience, along with a number of other witnesses. For my own part, I very much need to reread Playfair and read Melvyn Willin for the first time. And of course, I then need to systematically read your own voluminous writings on this case - something which I will soon be able to do as I have now largely compiled them all as an EPUB book. <br /><br />Keep up the excellent work! Anthonyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00974704318403476689noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-89847194908820053182020-07-05T14:09:52.497-04:002020-07-05T14:09:52.497-04:00I want to add that during the April 21, 2018 editi...I want to add that during the April 21, 2018 edition of the Coast To Coast AM radio program, it was reported that Richard Grosse, the son of Maurice, wants to publish a memoir of his father. It was said that the memoir would include some material on Enfield, as you'd expect. I haven't gotten any updates since then. But I don't recall seeing anybody else discuss the topic, and I wanted to leave a record of it here. I hope the memoir does eventually get published.Jason Engwerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17031011335190895123noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-43534383329343622202020-07-04T14:02:53.634-04:002020-07-04T14:02:53.634-04:00It's commonplace for witnesses to be so uninvo...It's commonplace for witnesses to be so uninvolved. A lot of people don't want that kind of attention, scrutiny, complicating of their lives, and so on. They haven't thought much about paranormal issues, and they're often ignorant of the significance of certain aspects of their testimony, the value of making themselves available for further questioning, and so forth. If they hear that somebody like Guy Playfair has written a book on the case or that multiple documentaries have been produced, for example, they'd tend to think that those things must be sufficient. We need to remember that these people largely weren't asking to get involved in the first place and that their everyday lives were, and generally continue to be, distant from the concerns of paranormal research.<br /><br />And I wouldn't assume that the people involved in documentaries about Enfield, radio programs on the subject, books that address it, etc. have made much of an effort to find and contact people like Carolyn Heeps. The vast majority of Enfield coverage doesn't go much beyond reinventing the wheel, if it goes beyond that at all. I suspect that many people involved in such contexts either never have it even cross their minds to contact somebody like Heeps or don't do much to act on the thought if it does occur to them. Even if they found her, what's the chance that they'd know much about what to ask her and would get anything from her worth reporting? (The fact that we don't hear of such contact with a witness doesn't mean that the witness wasn't contacted.) My impression is that people often get assigned to covering something like Enfield, for a documentary or a radio program or whatever, without knowing much about the topic or having much interest in it. That's one of the reasons why something like a documentary on Enfield will get some of the facts wrong, even ones that are easy to get right.<br /><br />The fact that we aren't hearing much from some of the witnesses makes Enfield similar to other areas of life and diminishes the chance that the witnesses were lying for attention or money. For those who are interested, <a href="http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-credibility-of-enfield-witnesses.html" rel="nofollow">here's</a> a post I wrote discussing some of the principles involved in evaluating the testimony of witnesses.<br /><br />The lack of involvement of some witnesses should make us more appreciative of those who have been significantly more involved (e.g., Graham Morris, David Robertson).<br /><br />I haven't gotten around to looking further into the situation with the Bennetts. I intend to do it eventually. I'm not aware of any reason to reject their testimony, but there isn't much to go by that I'm aware of. I have one source in mind that I want to check up on in that context, but I haven't gotten to that yet.<br /><br />I do have further information on some of the issues you've brought up, but there are some things I shouldn't say at this point. I want to say more in the future if I can.Jason Engwerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17031011335190895123noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-85078956096585048282020-07-04T05:03:02.291-04:002020-07-04T05:03:02.291-04:00Thanks Jason. It is curious how difficult it seems...Thanks Jason. It is curious how difficult it seems to be able to track down some of the participants. I'm surprised that Carolyn Heeps proved so elusive. One wonders if she doesn't *want* to be found for some reason. I'm also assuming that the Nottinghams and the Burcombes are now deceased? And what has become of Billy? As far as I know, he has not given any retrospective interviews? I seem to recall reading that he essentially wants to forget about the whole affair. I agree also that we need to know more about events prior to the outbreak and exactly what happened in the home during the years Peggy Hodgson lived there alone. I seem to recall Janet telling Will Storr that doors would open of their own accord and footsteps would be heard. Are you also satisfied that the source for the reports of the phenomena experienced by the Bennetts is substantial?Anthonyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00974704318403476689noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-28981436840915420522020-07-03T22:06:04.340-04:002020-07-03T22:06:04.340-04:00Thanks, Anthony!
In Playfair's book, he comme...Thanks, Anthony!<br /><br />In Playfair's book, he comments that Grosse "had read widely on the subject of psychical research for forty years" in the timeframe just after his daughter's death (16). I've seen some people, like Anita Gregory, imply or state that Grosse was highly ignorant of paranormal matters before beginning the Enfield case, but that doesn't seem to be true.<br /><br />I think the motivation behind Grosse's commitment to Enfield was multifaceted. His daughter's death was part of it, but so were other factors, such as the quality of the case and the likeability of the Hodgsons.<br /><br />Regarding the Dutch medium, Dono Gmelig-Meyling, he's on the tapes, and I expect to be saying more about him in the future. But it's one of those issues I probably won't get to until 2021 or later. The conclusion of the Enfield case is large and complicated, and too little work has been done on it. Gmelig-Meyling does seem to have had some paranormal abilities, and, like other mediums, he does seem to have diminished the poltergeist's activities to some extent. But the later activity, after his visit, is much more substantial than is typically suggested. There's a lot of evidence of a lot of ongoing activity on Grosse's 1979 tapes, long after Gmelig-Meyling's October 1978 visit. The last 1979 tape, recorded in August, refers to quite a bit of activity around that time. The Warrens are problematic, but they reported paranormal activity when they visited in 1981. (The Burcombes reported that <i>some</i> of what happened when the Warrens visited in 1979 seemed genuine, which supports the notion that Ed Warren and his team witnessed some degree of genuine activity during that 1979 visit, at least.) Janet told Will Storr that activity continued in the house until the time of her mother's death, though apparently far less activity than when the poltergeist was at its height. The Bennetts, who moved in after Peggy Hodgson's death, reported further activity. Much more information needs to be gotten about what happened between the time Margaret saw an apparition when using a Ouija board, apparently in 1974, and the traditional starting dates for the case in late August of 1977. And much more information is needed on what happened after August of 1979. The focus on the two years from August of 1977 to August of 1979 makes some sense, but the timeframes before and after those two years have been far too neglected. I'm doing some work on that, but I wish other people with far better resources would get to it.<br /><br />Melvyn Willin mentioned in his book that he couldn't find any contact information for Gmelig-Meyling (117). Willin has been working with the SPR for a long time, he has contact information for a lot of other Enfield witnesses, and I suspect he got a lot of that information from Playfair. So, it looks to me like neither Playfair nor Willin has had contact information for Gmelig-Meyling, at least in recent years.Jason Engwerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17031011335190895123noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-36928829784196166372020-07-03T16:26:01.929-04:002020-07-03T16:26:01.929-04:00An interesting and moving tribute, and I look forw...An interesting and moving tribute, and I look forward to reading the others you have planned. I regard Grosse as a man of probity and commonsense and I completely agree that the Enfield case does not receive the serious attention it deserves. Some of the coincidences concerning Grosse's involvement in the Enfield case are curious indeed. I remember the birthday card that Richard Grosse sent to his sister shortly before her death. One wonders to what degree Grosse was interested in the paranormal before his daughter's death and to what extent her death caused him to become so attached and emotionally invested in the Enfield case. There is also the fascinating episode involving the Dutch medium's visit to the Hodgson home, as the tumult was subsiding. It appears that the medium may even have made contact with Janet Grosse. It would be interesting to know more about that medium, incidentally, but an internet search of his name I made some time ago didn't prove fruitful. Anthonyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00974704318403476689noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-51600059334826968462020-07-02T20:09:44.347-04:002020-07-02T20:09:44.347-04:00I appreciate the encouragement, Danny!I appreciate the encouragement, Danny!Jason Engwerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17031011335190895123noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-72863852175599759142020-07-02T15:20:52.737-04:002020-07-02T15:20:52.737-04:00I know one is often waving the pompoms in praise o...I know one is often waving the pompoms in praise of your work on Enfield, Jason, but one is truly appreciative of the amount of work you have done on this. It's outstanding. It seems it is no exaggeration to say you must have produced a good book's worth of material. It is one's continued wish that you would gather all your material in appropriate order and see if it can be published. It's that good. Dannyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03954530962872661952noreply@blogger.com