In what has become one of the most defining British ghost stories of the last century, the seemingly remarkable events at a council house in north London has inspired films, stage plays and endless conspiracy theories.
During the 1970s, a family became the subject of national attention after a series of terrifying incidents at their home at 284 Green Street, Enfield.
Dubbed the Enfield Poltergeist, images showed a young girl levitating while a recording was taken of a raspy voice claiming to be the ghost of a man who had previously died at the property.
Speaking to The Independent, a Daily Mirror photographer who visited the house regularly between 1977 and 1979 has recalled his involvement with the Hodgson family, and his own theory behind the events at the property.
Graham Morris had been in his early twenties and had been working the night shift when the first call came into the newsroom. “The next door neighbour to the family called and said ‘Can you help us, we don’t know what to do about it, spooky things are happening next door. The family are beside themselves, can you help?’.”
It was only half an hour later after the neighbour mentioned that police officers had attended that Mr Morris and a reporter were dispatched to investigate.
After arriving at midnight in August 1977, he and his colleague were taken to the kitchen while Penny Hodgson and her children were brought into the room.
“Suddenly all these things started flying around the room, it was really unnerving. I got struck above my eyebrow with a lego brick with some force,” he said. “The kids were just in such a state, screaming and crying, it was horrible looking at the pictures.
Comedian and actress Catherine Tate is to star in a West End play about the Enfield poltergeist (Ian West/PA)— (PA Archive)
“I was looking out for it, there was no way any of them were doing it,” he said. “I was watching everybody through my camera and no one was doing that, they couldn’t have just flicked it with the force that propelled itself across the room.
“They would have had to swivel around and thrown it over their head, it definitely wasn’t them.”
After his pictures were published, Mr Morris spent the next 18 months visiting the property and photographing the strange goings on.
Their story soon attracted the attention of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), including investigator Maurice Grosse who recorded many hours of audio of the alleged poltergeist.
On some occasions, chairs would fall over in closed rooms while knockings could be heard on the wall. During overnight stays with members of the SPR, Mr Morris would leave his camera in the children’s bedroom with a long cable down to the kitchen while an audio recording was taken.
“As soon as you heard anything in the room, I’d take a lot of pictures,” he said. “You didn’t know until the next day what you’ve got.” It was through this approach that the images of Janet Hogson, 11, supposedly levitating in the air were taken.
During another incident, they overheard a crash in an upstairs bedroom and found an enormous cast-iron double bed on its side. “It was absolutely solid,” he said. “There was no way on earth that a child or even all the children on their own could have moved that bed let alone tipped it on its side. There were so many things in that house that are impossible to account for.”
An upcoming docu-drama on the Enfield Poltergeist is due to premiere on Apple TV+— (Apple TV+ )
Speaking of their stress, he said the mother was “beside herself” while her son Billy had “serious mental issues” and another was sent to a boarding school for behavioural problems.
Meanwhile, her other daughter Margaret was “so highly strung she’d cry if you spoke to her”, while the family lived in poverty.
Rather than believe it was the work of a ghostly presence, Mr Morris, now aged 69, believes that the incidents were connected to Janet, who was at the “epicentre” of the supernatural behaviour.
“My theory being an onlooker there was that it was coming out of Janet,” Mr Morris said. “She’d got to school and things would fly out of the classroom or she’d go to the shops and tins would come off the shelves.
“That was some kind of force that we don’t get yet and maybe we won’t in my lifetime. It was some kind of kinetic energy coming out around her, it sounds daft but that’s the theory.”
Several months after Mr Morris had begun attending the property, Janet began speaking in a low, gravelly voice, claiming to be Bill Wilkins, a former tenant who had died at the property.
Around 18 months after first becoming involved, the peculiar incidents began to stop and Mr Morris no longer was required to visit the Hodgson family.
“It was weird, it was the strangest thing. It was all true,” he said. “Absolutely everything that happened was true. They couldn’t have made it up.
“This wasn’t Dreamworks or Disney, they didn’t have CGI. They were a very poor household who were frightened to death and they didn’t understand what was happening and they wanted it to stop.”
Pictures of the bizarre incidents have inspired a number of adaptations, with The Enfield Haunting due to open in the West End next month.
Starring Catherine Tate and David Threlfall, it is the latest dramatisation after the fringe production The Enfield Poltergeist and a forthcoming Apple TV docu-drama. The infamous ghost story also served as the inspiration behind the Hollywood horror The Conjuring 2.
