The Enfield Poltergeist: The Voice That Shouldn't Exist
0:00 / 7:23
A single mum, two young sisters, and eighteen months of chairs sliding, Lego flying, and a grown man's voice coming out of an eleven-year-old's throat. Adam, Oz and Frank go through the Enfield Poltergeist case files -- and the real, unresolved argument between the investigators who were actually there.
The Grave Shift is a Ghost Haunt UK production. Hosted by Adam, Oz and Frank.
Full transcript
AdamA grown man's voice comes out of an eleven-year-old girl and says he came here to die.
AdamYou're listening to The Grave Shift podcast.
AdamAnd yeah -- we're now live on every major podcast platform. Link's in the bio below if you want to listen in bed, or in the car.
OzNo warm-up again.
AdamWe don't do warm-ups anymore, Oz, we do throats.
FrankI'm Frank.
OzI'm Oz. I bring the EMF meter, so one of us has a number instead of a feeling.
AdamAdam. Still the only one who reads.
OzOne book. One incident. Forever.
FrankLet the man talk.
AdamNineteen seventy-seven. Enfield, north London. Green Street.
AdamPeggy Hodgson. Single mum, four kids. Ordinary council house.
AdamOne night the two girls, Janet and Margaret, say their beds are moving on their own.
OzBeds do that. It's called children jumping on them.
AdamFair. Except then a chest of drawers slides across the room by itself.
FrankWith the mother stood right there watching it happen.
OzOr she's watching her kids push it and deciding not to say so.
AdamPolice get called. A WPC signs a statement saying she saw a chair slide a foot across the floor with nobody near it.
FrankA copper. On the record.
OzCoppers see all sorts on a nightshift, Frank.
AdamThat's oddly dark for you, Oz.
AdamEnter Maurice Grosse. Investigator for the Society for Psychical Research.
AdamAnd here's the bit that's real and genuinely sad. Grosse's own daughter, Janet, had died the year before. Motorbike accident.
FrankSame name as the girl in the house.
OzThat's a hell of a coincidence to walk into.
AdamHe never said it wasn't part of why he stayed on the case eighteen months.
AdamMarbles and Lego flying across rooms. Toys thrown so hard they leave dents. A voice recorder catches knocking nobody can explain.
OzKids throw Lego. I've got the bruises from nephews to prove it.
FrankNobody's denying kids throw things, Oz, it's the speed of it witnesses keep describing.
AdamThen Janet starts talking in a voice that isn't hers.
AdamLow. Gravelly. A man's voice, out of an eleven-year-old's throat.
FrankSays his name's Bill. Says he used to live in the house. Says he came back to die in the armchair in the corner.
OzOr she's got a knack for a voice and a captive audience.
AdamDoctors actually examined her throat afterwards. Said producing that voice normally would've damaged her vocal cords.
FrankThat's the bit that gets skipped in every retelling.
OzOr the doctors were wrong. Doctors are wrong about things, Frank, it's not a crime.
AdamGet the man a plaque. Doctor Oz, professionally unconvinced.
FrankTwenty-three years on the kit and still argues with a stethoscope.
AdamNow here's where it gets properly messy. Because not everyone on this case agreed.
AdamA second SPR investigator, Anita Gregory, comes in separately, writing her own PhD on the case.
OzFinally. Someone with sense.
AdamGregory catches Janet bending spoons by hand and hiding a tape recorder under a cushion to fake noises.
FrankThat part's not in dispute. Even Grosse admitted the girls faked some of it, later on, for attention.
OzThere it is. Case closed, everybody go home.
AdamNot so fast, Oz. Grosse's actual position was the girls faked bits when the real activity slowed down, because they liked the attention it brought -- not that the whole eighteen months was invented.
FrankAnd there's the photograph. Graham Morris, photographer, catches Janet mid-air, out of the bed, arms out.
OzPhoto everyone agrees could just be her bouncing off the mattress. Even Morris himself never claimed it proved levitation.
AdamWhich is the honest answer nobody puts in the title of the documentary.
FrankBad for ratings, that.
AdamThe Enfield Poltergeist: Actually Just A Bouncy Mattress, Probably.
OzI'd watch that one.
FrankHere's mine, though, and this bit's not disputed by anyone who was there.
FrankThe BBC film crew. Nineteen seventy-seven. Camera rolling, live, in the room.
FrankA chair, in frame, slides two feet across the carpet.
AdamOn camera. Not a witness statement. Actual footage.
OzFootage that's grainy seventies video with no audio sync and a chair on a hard floor.
FrankI've watched it forty times, Oz. Nobody's foot goes near it.
OzForty times. On your night off.
FrankIt's a good chair, Oz.
Adam'It's a good chair, Oz' is going on a t-shirt.
FrankFrank's Field. Frank's Chair. Building a franchise here.
OzFranchise built on furniture and grass that moves.
AdamNever a badger, though.
OzOne day. One day it'll be a badger and I win everything.
AdamHere's the honest close on this one. Grosse and Playfair both stayed convinced something genuine happened in that house, even accounting for the faking.
AdamGregory stayed convinced it was mostly two bored girls and a credulous mother.
FrankAnd Peggy Hodgson, the mum, never asked for a penny out of any of it. Lived in that house the rest of her life.
OzThat part I'll give you straight. No book deal, no telly money grab. That's not what a hoaxer usually does.
AdamWhich is maybe the most unsettling detail in the whole case. Not the voice. Not the chair.
AdamJust a woman who never profited from any of it, still swearing on her life it was real, right up to nineteen eighty-five when she died.
FrankAnd here's my bit, since we're on ordinary houses that don't sit right.
FrankStood outside a place like that myself. Recorder running. Three in the morning.
FrankCurtain moved. No wind that night.
AdamHere we go.
OzAlways a curtain. Never a badger.
FrankI've got the sound, Oz.
OzHad it since seventy-one.
AdamBetter tape than your personality, Oz.
OzFlat battery. Nothing's charging that.
FrankAnd you two are still arguing. Every single week.
AdamAlways something with you two.
FrankField's always got something in it. So does a council house in Enfield, apparently.
AdamFull case files. Grosse's own tapes. Frank's actual recording from outside that house. No cuts.
OzUnless it's a badger.
FrankNot a badger, Oz.
AdamThis is The Grave Shift.
AdamI'm Adam.
FrankFrank. Recording houses since before you were born, Adam.
OzOz. The one who checks the wiring before the ghost.
AdamNobody asked for wiring, Oz.
AdamA voice came out of a child that doctors couldn't explain, in a house a mother never made a penny from.
AdamNobody who was actually there ever fully agreed on what happened.
AdamFollow it. Make your own mind up.
AdamYou can listen to this episode and every other episode of The Grave Shift on all major podcast providers -- link's in the bio below.
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