Enfield Miscellany (Part 12)

(See part 1 here for an explanation of the series. The other parts can be accessed through the following links: two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, and eleven. I'll be citing Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's tapes. The ones from Grosse's collection will be referred to with "MG". Playfair's tapes will be designated by "GP". For example, MG13A is tape 13A in Grosse's collection, GP2A is tape 2A in Playfair's, and so on.)

A Skeptic's Concessions About The Enfield Poltergeist

The Uncanny podcast recently did an episode on Enfield. The podcast is hosted by Danny Robins and includes analysis from a couple of paranormal researchers, Ciaran O'Keeffe (representing the skeptical perspective) and Evelyn Hollow (representing belief in the paranormal). There was a segment with Graham Morris as well, a photographer who covered the Enfield case for the Daily Mirror and witnessed some paranormal events. He made some significant comments, including ones I hadn't heard before, from him or any other source.

I'll be responding to several aspects of the program and other people's responses to it, but I want to begin where the video linked above does. It begins with a clip of some of O'Keeffe's concessions. He didn't even come close to offering a good skeptical explanation of the case, and he made some significant concessions about the quality of the evidence for it.

Resources For Evaluating The Enfield Levitations

The BBC recently reaired a television program about the Enfield Poltergeist that came out a couple of years ago. So, there's been another round of media coverage of the Enfield case (e.g., here and here). One of the issues that's come up, as usual, is levitation, including discussion of the levitation photos.

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.

Evidence For The December 15, 1977 Enfield Levitations

There's widespread agreement that the events of December 15, 1977 are among the most significant ones in the Enfield case. I've discussed much of the evidence for those events in previous posts, like this one that provides an overview of the day as a whole and this one focusing on an interview with one of the witnesses, John Rainbow. See here for a discussion I had with David Robertson in 2018 that was partly about the background to the events of that day. He explains what he was trying to accomplish and the reasoning behind it. Contrary to what people often suggest, there were more than two people outside the house who saw Janet Hodgson levitating that day. There were at least four who saw the levitation, and David told me, as quoted in the post linked above, that he suspects there were more than four. Keep in mind that the Hodgsons' house was directly across from a school, that the children were being let out of the school around the time of at least one of the levitations, and that the street the house is on is a very busy one. Anybody who's interested can read the posts linked above and other relevant ones in our archives for more about these issues. I don't want to reinvent the wheel here. What I want to do in this post is add some further lines of evidence for these December 15 events, including some that I don't recall having seen discussed before.

The Enfield Levitations

Levitations are a prominent part of the Enfield case, and I've discussed some of them in other posts. I've said a lot about Janet Hodgson's levitation on December 15, 1977, for example, such as here and here. In another post, I discussed the famous photographs of Janet moving through the air in her bedroom, which skeptics often dismiss as Janet jumping off her bed. And I've occasionally addressed other levitation issues. But there's a lot more that ought to be said.

As I've explained before, people often apply the language of levitation to events that some people wouldn't place under that term. Some of the events might be classified as throwing instead, for example. But since these categories are so closely related, and they're often lumped together, I'll address all of them under the banner of levitation. And my focus here is on the levitation of people, not objects.

When I refer to Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's Enfield tapes, I'll use "MG" to cite Grosse's tapes and "GP" to cite Playfair's. For example, MG12B is tape 12B in Grosse's collection, and GP50B is tape 50B in Playfair's.

Maurice Grosse's Interview Of John Rainbow

I recently listened to an interview Maurice Grosse conducted with John Rainbow on April 9, 1978. Rainbow was a witness of what happened on December 15, 1977, one of the most eventful days in the Enfield Poltergeist. The interview is highly significant and includes some material I haven't seen discussed publicly.

Before I get to the interview, those who are unfamiliar with the December 15 events can go here for a brief overview from a documentary. It's mostly accurate, but not entirely. It gives the date as December 14, which is wrong. Go here to listen to Rainbow briefly describing his experience in a 1978 documentary. And here he is in a video produced many years later.

The interview between Grosse and Rainbow is about 18 minutes long, and it consists mostly of comments from Rainbow. His wife occasionally joins the conversation. Most of my citations that follow are from tape 84B in Grosse's Enfield collection.

The Authenticity Of The Enfield Levitation Photos

People's memories of and impressions about the Enfield Poltergeist are often connected to the iconic photographs of Janet Hodgson wearing red pajamas and going through the air in her bedroom, allegedly in the process of levitating. Watch here until 34:15 for more information about those levitation incidents and to see some of the photographs and a skeptic's reaction to them. Most skeptics I've come across are even more critical than the one in the video I just linked. The photos are quickly dismissed as obvious frauds. They're just pictures of Janet jumping from her bed. In an article on Enfield, Joe Nickell includes a drawing in which he illustrates how the photos supposedly were faked.

I recently listened to one of Maurice Grosse's Enfield tapes that's highly relevant to this subject (tape 13B). It was recorded during a night when the poltergeist was unusually active, on November 7, 1977. During that night, a doppelganger of Grosse was seen, several levitations of Janet and Margaret occurred, and Janet, Margaret, and their brother Billy seemed to experience a shared nightmare, among other paranormal events that occurred. This post will focus on the levitations. It should be noted, though, that the context in which the levitations occurred, involving so many witnesses reporting so many paranormal events of such significance, adds credibility to the levitation reports.

I've been referring to levitations, since that's the term that's normally used. As I've explained before, though, some of the incidents in question would be better described as throwing instead of levitation. As we'll see, there's some of each in the November 7 events.

Scientific Experiments On Janet Hodgson's Paranormality

Guy Playfair and Maurice Grosse wrote:

Carrying out fully controlled experiments in somebody else's home is not easy, especially when the home is suffering from poltergeist activity. However, at least one fully instrumented experimental PK [psychokinesis] session was held under the supervision of David Robertson with Grosse as witness. Janet was asked to deform a piece of 'unbendable' eutectic alloy without contact. On separate occasions, a pulse counter and a three-channel chart recorder produced readings that could not be accounted for. The metal sample broke while under observation. (Playfair 1980, ch. 9).

With the cooperation of Professor J. B. Hasted, it was possible to carry out a fully controlled experiment in a laboratory. Janet was taken to Birkbeck College for an experiment in which she was seated on a specially constructed weighing platform and asked to alter her weight. She was one of three subjects out of more than 20 tested who managed to produce anomalous chart readings. (Journal Of The Society For Psychical Research, vol. 55, 1988-9, "Enfield Revisited: The Evaporation Of Positive Evidence", p. 213)

I've already discussed the experiments on Janet's ability to bend metal. Watch here until 19:13. But what about the "fully controlled experiment in a laboratory"?