This Paranormal Life - #143 The Enfield Haunting - Part 2

Episode Date: December 17, 2019

In the second and part of our investigation into the Enfield Haunting, events reach boiling point as poltergeist activity becomes full blown possession, with levitation, summoning, and communication w...ith the dead. Kit and Rory must decide whether what happened was truly paranormal!Support us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to weekly bonus episodes!Buy Official TPL Merch! - thisparanormallife.com/storeFollow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunityIntro music by www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Last time on This Paranormal Life! We are in Enfield, North London, in 1977. Peggy hears some banging and shuffling about. It's coming from the drawers by the doorway. Before she could even get any closer, the drawers shuffled forward. Within days, the story was on the cover of the Daily Mirror. The House of Strange Happenings. So a senior reporter by the name of George Fallows went with photographer David Thorpe to the house. And not only that, they turned to the Society
Starting point is 00:00:37 for Psychical Research for help, and they sent newbie paranormal investigator Morris Gross along for the ride. Morris and Guy from the Society had decided that since the entity keeps knocking all over the house, that they would try and openly communicate with them through knocking. Knock once for no and twice for yes. Oh my god. Did you die in this house welcome back to this paranormal life we are talking about part two of the investigation into the anfield haunting i mean there's we are just such an exciting investigation ahead of us rory i can barely contain myself well i so, because not much happened in part one.
Starting point is 00:01:27 I don't know what you're talking about. Stuff was flying around the center, all over the house. Lots of people were dumbfounded, including our listeners. And just going to pull up here, see what they thought about last week. I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't read the comments. Listen, our fans, the customer's always right. Let's see what they had to say so uh arthur k says what a washer okay no i'm not gonna don't read that i wouldn't read that one but i bet there's others in here part two was unbelievable
Starting point is 00:01:57 it hasn't happened yet so unbelievably oh wow it gets kind of negative in the second half of that sentence come to think of it yeah you know what i'm just gonna put the phone down that seems smart uh put it to the back of my mind move on breeze past it uh so last week we heard about i can't move past it no uh you're like one of these is actually one of these is actually from you rory big mistake i picked a nerd to pod with that honestly hurts to see what also hurts to see is it has 4k likes yeah it's the top comment uh on our reddit is actually a post me threatening to go solo it says ad campaign 75 complete did you boost this post on facebook sure i boosted it i used a bit of the patreon money this month to boost the post it actually wow it looks like you use about six
Starting point is 00:02:44 six months revenue from from patreon you gotta invest it looks like you use about six six months revenue from from patreon you gotta invest i feel like you should have told me about that if you want to be the best last week we heard about peggy hodgson her four kids and the initial events of 1977 that would become known as the enfield haunting what started as just unexplained signs around peggy's house quickly escalated into moving furniture, toys, general poltergeist activity. The authorities quickly got involved alongside press and paranormal investigators, and virtually everyone who set foot in the house saw the paranormal with their very own eyes. Right as we finished last week, Morris and Guy were holding a kind of seance in the house,
Starting point is 00:03:25 trying for the first time to communicate directly with the ghost by asking it to make sounds in response to questions. Did you die in this house? Are there more here than just you. There's three people? You're right. He knocked three times. Despite Morris saying once for no
Starting point is 00:03:52 and twice for yes, everyone in the room was looking at each other like, what does this mean? Maybe he meant like, yeah, no. Are there more of you? Yeah, no. I know. There's no option for maybe god damn it yeah
Starting point is 00:04:07 morris says oh are you having a game with me and suddenly a cardboard box full of cushions flew across the room and hit morris in the face oh my god this thing is getting violent last week it was throwing legos around but this is like a ghost like a box that's a ghost right hook yeah that's not pulling a punch like a lego is like a little it's like you know it's a poltergeist it's a little kid messing around teasing you you're like hey stop it you little so-and-so ghosts are like members of the mafia all right they're tight-lipped right they've paid their dues on earth now they're in a place where they don't want to answer any questions yeah you know who are you how many ghosts are in this house you start prodding this little ghost and needling him he's gonna be like i ain't saying nothing and
Starting point is 00:04:55 he's gonna throw a box of pillows at you even when you get to the other side your snitches still get stitches just go to hell if you're already in purgatory, you don't want to risk your situation in purgatory. It's like being in prison. If you're there in good behavior, maybe you get upgraded to the bigger suite. It's true. A little more privileges.
Starting point is 00:05:19 Maybe you get an extra pudding at lunch and then eventually get up to heaven. That's how it works. If you start snitching on people, maybe even people that are still alive, best believe you're going downstairs. Even if you snitch on the devil, you're still going down.
Starting point is 00:05:34 He's like, I know it's my thing. I want to be bad. I want to be seen as bad, but that also wasn't cool. Yeah. So just a couple of days later, it was Janet's birthday. This is Peggy's daughter.
Starting point is 00:05:49 And obviously the kids have been really stressed out, insanely stressed out. They've had stranger after stranger visiting the house. Absolutely no proper sleep because of all the voices. They went on holiday. And if you remember, when they came back from holiday, they jumped right into a seance. Yeah, terrible idea. You need some time to detox so obviously to celebrate janet's birthday an argentinian psychic named eduardo balanovsky examined the kids with an emf reader and held an all-night investigation cake in one hand emf
Starting point is 00:06:22 scanner in the other it It's going all night. Janet didn't get a slice. Eduardo said it would interfere with the reader somehow. He ate the whole f***ing thing. And I don't know if there's a specific thing with pillows, but Eduardo reported that twice that night, Janet's pillow was thrown across the room, and each time the EMf reader popping off like crazy
Starting point is 00:06:45 new poltergeist activity was happening basically every night i think the next night at around 5 a.m uh janet was quote tipped out of bed and her mattress landed on top of her whoa and peggy was getting more exasperated so she thought back to to that first seance with Morris that he had held in the house. And he had actually told her to try communicating with the poltergeist herself. Try and open up a dialogue. See what this thing wants. See if you can come to terms with it. Maybe come to peace with it.
Starting point is 00:07:19 So she grabbed a bunch of pens and paper and just lay them in different places around the house it's actually a lot more straightforward than where i thought he was going with this i thought there was going to be crystals maybe like a radio tuned to the paranormal frequencies yeah pens and paper is it that is the assumption that he's going to write something on the paper oh yeah it's that simple oh yeah oh i thought like maybe the paper would roll in a certain way or the pens would leak or we know we've been over egging all these years yeah damn i punched a hole in a wall once and shoved in the tip of a dyson hoping to suck a ghoul out of the walls you're telling me this whole time all i needed was a sharpie and an a4 i put up a giant rat trap and inside put a little vial
Starting point is 00:08:07 of virgin's blood aka my own blood to see if the thing would bite and it did the rat trap did on my hand that's right i couldn't stay away from the bish so peggy laid out the paper, left out a bunch of sharpies, sat in the living room, and called out, Leave me a message! Please people, clip that out and use that as your answering machine for your phone. Beep! Leave me a message! You can get the polyphonic version for only five bucks a month. Then, in the silence silence she patiently waited i guess maybe
Starting point is 00:08:47 listening for the sound of pen on paper somewhere in the house this thing's been doing some pretty crazy stuff like she didn't know if it was gonna like matilda style just like everything starts swirling around the room yeah but nothing she starts walking around the house checking the paper she left on, but there was nothing written. Then she entered the kitchen. I guess she maybe wanted a midnight snack, a little glass of milk to get back to bed. But when she opened up the fridge, she saw a note in there. What? In the fridge? I will stay in the house. Don't read this to anyone or I will retaliate. Oh boy. For the first time Peggy is feeling a sense of threat or danger from this poltergeist and this was only about to get worse.
Starting point is 00:09:35 In the coming days a Brazilian psychic visited the house from the Sao Paulo State Spiritist Federation which is insane because the Brazilian paranormal community are sending their people now, apparently. To Enfield, yeah. To the UK, to a council flat. This is almost unbelievable. How is word getting around? How's it being spread?
Starting point is 00:09:56 What year is this, did you say? 1977. Okay, I guess that's a little further than I thought. There's no internet. What, in 1977? Was there not? Hey Siri, when was the internet invented? Internet was formed in 1969.
Starting point is 00:10:10 We need to look a little further into this, because I don't think the answer is quite as clear cut as that. Are you calling Siri a liar? Okay, when was the World Wide Web open to the public? When did it become publicly available? 1991. Oh, that's not what Siri says. When did it become publicly available? 1991. Oh, that's not what Siri says. Well, you didn't ask her that.
Starting point is 00:10:28 Siri, call Kit and ask. Hey, Siri, tell Rory that he's a piece of shit. Whoa! Watch it, all right? What's your message? Ready to send it? Yes. Siri, cancel!
Starting point is 00:10:41 Siri, no! It's sent. No! Oh, shit, man. Time to reply? shit man yeah tell kitty's a little bitch i'm gonna i'm gonna come in i'm gonna come into his room at night and kick his ass yes send it but take out a bunch of the stutters because i want to sound confident rory power said yeah tell kitty's a little bitch i'm gonna i'm gonna come in I'm gonna come into his room. She didn't take out the stutters. Wow not very eloquent buddy. She was
Starting point is 00:11:10 supposed to take out the stutters. This Brazilian medium's name was Luiz Gasparetto and he was a skilled spiritual artist. He would close his eyes enter a trance state where suddenly his hands would start moving quickly across paper and was able to communicate with spirits. Okay. But he didn't come to the Hodgson's just to do it himself, but rather to show Peggy and the kids how to do it. Which makes sense because they're the ones who have this relationship with the poltergeist. I suppose so, yeah. The next morning, Peggy's daughter, Janet, tried this method of spiritual drawing. Paranormal investigator Guy Lyon-Playfair, who's been on the scene for a few weeks at this point, he said, that morning, Janet began to draw while still not fully conscious, according to her mother.
Starting point is 00:12:05 She was quite peaceful, Mrs. Hodgson told me, but not quite with us. She just took a pad of paper and some felt-tip pens and drew nine drawings at great speed, giving the impression she was not consciously aware of what she was doing. The drawings were not very nice. The first was of a woman with blood pouring out of her throat. The blood was slashed onto the paper in red ink. The others were all on the theme of blood, knives, and death. One drawing just consisted of the word blood written several times over the page oh my god i would say at this point in the investigation everyone involved had started to realize that
Starting point is 00:12:52 janet 12 year old janet appeared to be the focal point for a lot of what was going on janet was the first child to notice that the furniture had been moving in the first place she was the one who got kicked out of bed and the mattress thrown on her. She was found sleeping in weird places all over the house. And now she's the one going into what seems like a demonic trance, drawing all kinds of disturbing things. This idea wasn't helped when on December 3rd, Morris, doing one of his all-night vigils, it seems like, saw not just Janet sleeping in a weird place, but sliding down the stairs, head first, still asleep.
Starting point is 00:13:34 What? Yeah. He's a human toboggan. Given that the poltergeist is pretty much now posing a real threat to Janet's safety, a few days later later two psychologists attended another kind of seance the fact that janet's being possessed and sliding down the stairs like a freaking bobsled and this happened during a all-night seance that's also taking place i'm assuming there's every single room in this house is full of some sort of investigator investigating something. I did see one figure getting bandied about. Okay.
Starting point is 00:14:08 That by the end of this investigation, I think like 40 people had been involved. That's way too many people. Way too many people. It's too many cooks for sure. Yeah. The broth is haunted. I do find it pretty funny that psychologists are brought in, which seems like a kind of grown-up adult sensible rational thing to do but they're only brought in to babysit the seance that takes place
Starting point is 00:14:30 they don't come in and just like call it all off and call like social services they're like that's cool we'll make sure janet doesn't hurt herself while she's sliding down the stairs face first i really like the idea of you know all these people in all these room doing these seances you know the truck full of psychologists walk in the front door and all the paranormal investigators like take off their earphones and they're like well well well looks like we've got a couple of bookworms boys and it's like well if it isn't the paranormal investigators still chasing the ghost cuckoo head where'd you get that degree guy over on crystal links.com you son of a bitch take that back you want to see ghosts i'll let you see ghosts
Starting point is 00:15:12 i'll kill you right here it's not worth it terry don't lose your cool this whole time the friggin daughters just sliding up and down the stairs so morris is leading another seance two psychologists sitting in on the session trying to make contact with the ghost but this time instead of just asking it to knock which we know went size pretty quick last time they're just saying cut to shit the games are over speak english asshole uh you're gonna pretend you can write fun little notes in the fridge but you can't speak yeah bull shite so like before they all sit around a table peggy the kids morris two psychologists another 38 or so investigators and they ask the poltergeist to speak. Let me hear you say my name. Come on, let me hear you say my name. That's not my name.
Starting point is 00:16:22 Ralph. Come on, my name's Boris, let me hear you say it. Say Dr Bello. Come on, let me hear you say that. Come on, let's hear you say Dr Bello. Say Dr Bello. Dr. Bello. Can I have you squeak in the bed?
Starting point is 00:16:58 I can't hear you talking. Now, say Dr. Bello. Come on. Come on, say it for me. Dr. Bellof. Come on. Come on, say it for me. Dr. Bellof. Dr. Bellof. Right, that's good. I have... ...safegnum. I'm 32 years old. I come from a Jewish-born grey child.
Starting point is 00:17:28 And I have a right near the church where Rena lives. And all my friends come from there as well. And we all make a game and got to the pub. And then we thought we'd pick your house because I used to live here. And I will tell this to the mob, and if you don't tell anyone else, the sexist trope of Mr. Playback.
Starting point is 00:18:05 If you don't take anyone out, the sex is broke, and Mr. Playback. I want you to tell me whether you remember what happened to you when you died. Just before you died, I went blind. Then I had an hemorrhage and I fell asleep and I died in a chair in the corner downstairs. Bill, if you're there, would you answer me the following question? What have you done with Denise's 30p? Hey, you can't survive, Joe. That's it. Sorry, Bill, can you say that again, please?
Starting point is 00:19:23 Hey, you can't survive, Joe. That's it. Well, Bill, I'd go downstairs. Well, that's a rock and roll. Thanks so, so much. Why can't Janet fill you? I'm invisible. You're invisible? Why are you invisible? Summer G-H-O-S-T Did any friends go with you?
Starting point is 00:19:59 Yes, told them. All the dogs. 68 dogs. And what do you got 68 dogs for? So that they can protect me from you killing me. That's a great riddle. How can we kill you, Bill? You say he has 69 dogs? You can shoot me, Earl. Nice.
Starting point is 00:20:23 Now how can we shoot you if we can't see you, Bill? By praying to God. Sorry, I didn't hear that, Bill. By praying to God. By praying to God. So, what you're saying is we could get rid of you by praying to God? Yes. He's run out of things to say. Or he's realized that he just told them how to get rid of him accidentally.
Starting point is 00:21:04 Sorry, what was that? We have to pray them how to get rid of him accidentally. Sorry, what was that? We have to pray to God to get rid of you? Rawr! Ooh! Um, no! They're like, fine, our father who art not... No, no, no! Rawr!
Starting point is 00:21:17 I meant the devil! Pray to the devil! We heard you the first time. No! You just coughed. All the voices you just heard were coming from Janet. Okay. That's disturbing.
Starting point is 00:21:30 Did you pick out any key phrases just now? Something about a radio? Yeah. Was that about the 30p? Yeah. That it was under the radio. Yeah. 30p under a radio.
Starting point is 00:21:40 Okay. Something about having 69 dogs. He started rapping it, almost rapping at one bit they were like why would you do that and it was like because i'm a g h o s t baby there was something about yeah about he was like you could kill me by praying to god they were like what we can get rid of you by praying to god he was like yeah really up front with that yeah i mean i don't is that the case with all ghosts i guess yeah if it's like talking about ghosts in the in a religious sense for sure if you're talking about casper the little atheist that big bang believe in son of a bitch he He's stuck for life. Right. Because guess what?
Starting point is 00:22:25 You don't believe in heaven? You don't believe in hell? Well, you believe in this world, and that's where you're stuck. Yeah, he's not going anywhere. No. If you don't believe in heaven or hell, you better keep believing and working 45 hours a week in the grind of the big city. AKA hell. Wow.
Starting point is 00:22:44 One of the key things he said here was that a his name was bill wilkins apparently the voice that came through janet actually was a number of different spirits on a number of different occasions but the character the person that was featured most often that we just heard now was bill wilkins okay and they asked him how did he die bill was very specific i went blind i had a hemorrhage i fell asleep and died on a chair downstairs in this house wow that's surprisingly not that exciting yeah very realistic though yeah bill was as it happens a real person and even a relation of Bill's got in touch over the course of this investigation. They must have looked him up in the phone book. He confirmed that
Starting point is 00:23:29 this was how Bill Wilkins went. So pretty interesting that this was factually correct. What are your initial impressions? I mean, it's pretty impressive that that noise came from a 12-year-old girl. Pretty alarming. I don't even think i could make that noise yeah that's that's terrifying yeah i don't if this is a if this is a lie i don't know what the point is in it to to talk about a story in such elaborate detail yeah i this is really strange i haven't seen yet how any one of the family members would benefit from making this up yeah aside from just the buzz the publicity of having a haunted flat right now all eyes are on janet like we said and she's the one who this voice is coming from so people are of course going to be saying especially
Starting point is 00:24:16 if they hadn't heard those recordings are going to say she's making it up she's a very clever very imaginative little girl. Yeah. A bit like we saw in the Jeff the Mongoose case, where voices were coming from the walls. It turned out to be one of the kids. Yeah. And right here, we've got a kid who this voice is coming from. But crucially, everyone, including Morris, the chief investigator here,
Starting point is 00:24:41 was very skeptical about how Janet could even be making this noise at one point he claims that he got her to hold water in her mouth and then taped up her mouth with duct tape this feels wrong and got her to try and hit her with a cattle prod longer upside down in a box said where'd you die now bill but he tried to get her to say uh difficult phrases like um even ventriloquists can't say such as apparently bottle of beer things like that oh um and according to him this didn't change the sound of the voice and janet said in recent years um i knew when the voices were happening of course it felt like something was behind me all the time they did all sorts of tests they filled my mouth with water and so on but the voices still came out i thought that was
Starting point is 00:25:36 kind of curious i mean in a sense the water duct tape thing proves something i guess but at the same time like we're so outside the realms of science right now that it's like how the sounds came out of her mouth is kind of the least of my worries yeah yeah to call that an experiment i think is is maybe overstating it a little bit still kind of interesting like i don't i mean i think we're so used now to in films and media, probably from this case, stuff like The Exorcist, we kind of get the concept that someone's possessed. It's like, cool, that's where it's coming from. Yeah. You're not really worried about how it's coming out. Yeah, it's a weird thing, possession, when you try and break it down in terms of how it could be happening physically.
Starting point is 00:26:26 break it down in terms of how it could be happening physically because it like from a you know from the definition of the word it's like okay someone their i don't know their spirit or their psyche or consciousness is possessed by um by a spirit or a demon but then how do you test that like from a scientific standpoint can you locate where the voice is coming from? Can you try and like analyze the waveforms and find out if it has anything unique about it? It's a very difficult thing. It's not just like, oh, there's frigging goo ectoplasm leaking down the walls. We can pop that up in a little test tube and run it to, I don't know, the night labs. Yeah. And get them to sort it out I don't know, the night labs. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:27:05 And get them to sort it out. This is like, this is audio. It's very hard to test audio. Like I say, now this investigation. We need to knock her out and chop her open. Okay, no. We gotta find the voice. She's a little girl.
Starting point is 00:27:19 Look, I. You can't do that. I've talked about kids a lot on this podcast before. Have you? I don't trust them. I don't think you've ever. They're're weak and they can't fight for shit so to have they are they're tiny having a 12 year old you know you were a kid once saying don't remind me you son of a bitch i've grown up and i've changed for the better now i could fight any kid. Any kid in the world.
Starting point is 00:27:45 But it should be about who could you fight. If you want to show how tough you are, it should be about who you could fight. Who's your peer? What other grown man could you fight? No, no, no. I don't know about that. That sounds really scary. Yeah, probably.
Starting point is 00:27:58 That sounds like I'd probably get an ass kicked. Have you ever watched UFC or boxing? UFC? The ultimate fighting child? i know where i don't even want to actually forget i don't want to know where you saw that that's insane it's a little known ukrainian uh pay-per-view tv show that i that i produce edit and host oh jesus you know what sometimes i get in the ring myself my point being it's hard to trust children in paranormal circumstances don't work with kids and animals yeah that's what they say in the paranormal you don't want to be looking into a haunted dog let me tell you that
Starting point is 00:28:39 but like i say the investigation became truly all about Janet. All eyes were on her. And that's good because at this point in the story, she starts levitating. What? On the 15th of December, 1977, local lollipop lady, Hazel Short, was walking past the Hodgson's house at 11.45am, coming back from a little lunchtime break. Out of the corner of her eye, she looked through the upstairs window of number 284 and saw, curiously, a red cushion on the roof of the building. Then she heard a bang as a book hit the upstairs window. Then she watched as Janet appeared to levitate inside the
Starting point is 00:29:21 window. Then that she, quote, started going up and down as though someone was tossing her in a horizontal position. What? Interestingly, it wasn't just Hazel that saw this. Because I know what you're saying, we can't trust lollipop ladies. A local worker called John Rainbow,
Starting point is 00:29:41 who reported seeing... F*** off. He reported seeing her... Hazel the lollipop lady and john rainbow what is he a oompa loompa it was the it was the 70s sir it was a time of free love and experimentation he reported seeing her floating around in her bedroom and banging up against the window and when hazel was asked the pertinent question whether janet was likely to be bouncing on a mattress in the way that kids do yeah she said there was no way because she was uh horizontal not jumping on her feet okay because if you're
Starting point is 00:30:18 bouncing on a bed you've got to be on your feet or your knees really that checks out she actually went to as much hassle as saying she's like no if you bounced on your stomach or your back you could bounce once or twice to a decent height but like you couldn't continuously bounce like that i'm a man who's bounced on a lot of beds in his life right um and you're completely correct yeah i once broke a hotel bed uh within the first 30 minutes of being there of course by. By trying to bounce on it. Actually, I've been with you when I was bouncing on a bed before. That's true.
Starting point is 00:30:50 Where I bounced up so high that I hit my head on the ceiling and then fell down onto the bed. I wish I could say that that's like a private story we shouldn't tell anyone, but it's a vlog. Yeah, I think it's on YouTube actually where I smashed my head. Yeah. So look, I'm a guy who's jumped on a lot of beds. Was I ever possessed?
Starting point is 00:31:06 No. But I also had to use my legs and ass to bounce. If I was lying horizontally, no bounce. It's not happening. It's true. Unless she's doing the old trampoline trick where you get people on all sides of you to kind of bounce while you bounce.
Starting point is 00:31:23 And then if anyone listening has ever had a trampoline you know exactly what i'm talking about oh yeah we called it the power bounce we call or the turbo jump we call it the widow maker because if you get enough children in the corners of the trampoline the kids go to the shadow realm little jimmy will slip the surly bonds of earth and escape into the unknown vast universe we always knew it would happen and yet we always did it imagine trying to get the ultimate turbo bounce and you just do it one time and the kid just disappears like into the vacuum of non-existence you nailed it that perfectly that it just just disappeared into the vacuum of non-existence you nailed it that perfectly that it just just disappeared into a different timeline you become a cloud face and join all the other
Starting point is 00:32:13 kids who have died doing the turtle jump timmy's mom comes around to pick him up later that day it's like i'm so sorry he's gone i do remember that like some kids would even have like the net, like this six foot high net. Oh yeah. People went over that. Did jack off. That net was not insured against the power bumps. Now, of course, these sightings of levitation had to be verified.
Starting point is 00:32:40 So the paranormal investigators, who presumably have not slept in weeks because they're doing all-night investigations 24-7, but they stayed in the house overnight yet again while the kids slept, waiting for the paranormal to occur. And Rory, they weren't disappointed. Now I can show you these famous-as-hell images of Janet mid-levitation. Whoa.
Starting point is 00:33:06 If you, sir, would like to key through some of these images on Google Image to the right. All right, all right, all right. We have something on a slideshow. Okay, guys, we've got some pretty weird pictures here. These are some old school developed photos that look like a child hovering in the air there's two beds uh in this little bedroom and in one bed i presume it's one of the other daughters who's you know sleeping pretty sound that's right whereas janet is mid-air almost neo style karate kick where it does the what do you call the bullet time like 360 thing hovering there i will i mean these look some things look pretty insane i will say a lot of
Starting point is 00:33:54 them do look like she's jumping off of the bed and the picture was taken right as she jumped yeah because despite the description that we had from the lollipop lady this is very much feet pointing down body kind of upright but crouched that's true this isn't what you're thinking when you think of levitation uh where the body's completely flat completely horizontal and just hovering there in the air but there are some weirder ones there's one where it almost looks like she's doing like a religious cross pose, which is kind of freaky. In a couple of them, her feet haven't even left the bed yet, which isn't a good sign. Like there's literally her feet are on the bed.
Starting point is 00:34:35 Right. Well, I mean, the levitation is going to start at some point. I guess. But why is she standing on her pillow? I mean, that must be some kind of photoshop or someone's i don't know it's part of the it's part of the collection okay well and it probably wasn't supposed to be there because that doesn't sound very convincing yeah you might have want to run through these images before you you threw them over to me okay well what we're
Starting point is 00:35:00 what we're always looking at is uh it is a gif. It is a gif. Someone... I did see this. Someone has arranged the photos. I think this is useful for us. Someone has arranged a few of these photos in gif form to show one fluid movement from bad to levitating. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:35:21 And it does look a bit like a jump. It does. I actually think this is misleading because they've obviously taken a collection of the pictures and tried to turn it into some sort of like fluid animation whereas if we we know the kind of cameras that they were working with back in these days they weren't presumably capable of taking these like shutter shot images uh back to back to try and get a stop motion image yeah i mean if we want to be pedantic if you look at the other kids in the room it doesn't line up with what's happening
Starting point is 00:35:50 there we go that's a better way of looking at it so but you do make a great point that what she's doing here isn't strictly levitating the researchers themselves such as morris and guy claimed that this was real they were there in the room they personally took these photos i think there's even a photo there where one of them is like reacting to what's happening and he's like freaking out in the room they say that janet was going from a horizontal position on the bed to this up upright vertical position in the air within a fraction of a second they actually i think timed it at one point they were claiming that this this thing was happening within like 0.6 of a second what so like faster the point being faster than
Starting point is 00:36:32 she could go from lying in her bed to upright jump off the bed she is turbo jumping straight out of bed and across the room now we know she does have three other siblings which would lead us to believe there's some power bounces going on under the covers yeah but at least one of the other kids is in bed in the same image so it's a good point it's a good point janet later said in an interview the levitation was scary because you didn't know where you were going to land i remember a curtain being wound around my neck i was screaming i thought i was gonna die my mom had to use all And now, paranormal events were firing on all cylinders. The family's pet goldfish died. No! Not bubbles!
Starting point is 00:37:25 Two of them, in fact. And Bill said, quote, I've done that. Claiming that he electrocuted them with spirit energy. What? Then, on Peggy's birthday, listen, the special days have not been going that well so far. On the day they came back from holiday,
Starting point is 00:37:43 there was a seance. Yeah. On Janet's birthday, Another seance holiday there was a seance yeah on janet's birthday another there was another seance i think yeah it got pretty violent i mean stop doing the seances at least on the special occasions so they did they didn't plan a seance for peggy's birthday peggy's like i needed i need a day to pamper myself sure just kick back big mistake the word shit had been written in shit on a wall that's not paranormal anymore paranormal but given everything else that's happening it's pretty alarming it's weird and by now different family members are claiming to see different shadowy figures around the house as if the ghosts themselves were starting to take physical form. It was around this time, in the melee of reporters and investigators coming to the house,
Starting point is 00:38:29 they were obviously and correctly worried about Janet's health, both mentally and physically, so she was checked into Maudsley Hospital for a number of days. And whilst nothing paranormal happened to her while she was there, as soon as she returned, she claimed to see the figure of a little boy in the house. And things were pretty much back to normal. Look, I know we throw this phrase around a lot on the podcast, but you got to burn it down and you got to move on. That's right.
Starting point is 00:38:57 That's the motto of the paranormal commune. All right, guys, burn it down and move on. We've already established that it's something to do with the house. When they left for vacation, everything was fine. burn it down and move on we've already established that it's something to do with the house when they left for vacation everything was fine when she left to be hospitalized and examined everything was fine it's true bill doesn't want you in the house he killed bubbles he wrote shit on the wall you gotta get out you gotta burn it down communication exorc, and hospital visits had clearly done nothing to help. Until the arrival of yet another expert.
Starting point is 00:39:29 Oh, God. Dono Gmele Gmele. I'm straight up going to apologize. I'm not exactly sure how you pronounce his name. A Dutch medium known for his healing skills. And he came to the house in 1978. Because we've run right through christmas into the new year at this point so in the new year uh he came to the house and guy said about him
Starting point is 00:39:52 i actually don't know what he did uh he didn't speak english he went up to the bedroom on his own didn't do any kind of ceremony came back down and implied that that was it after he left things definitely calmed down oh wow that's badass it's pretty cool what a cool dutch cowboy thing to do kind of roll into town yeah you know new place new problems new people just moseys up to the top one fires off a six shooter into the wall and he's like they won't be bothering you anymore it's a very mandalorian of him it is yeah just showing new he's probably left that house to go fly to another haunted house and do the same thing and solve their problems that's a member of the galactic 12 right there for sure i feel like if we had I feel like we jumped the gun with the first Galactic 12.
Starting point is 00:40:47 If we had waited for lots of subsequent episodes, we would have put together a really crack team. That's, well, we didn't assemble all of them, did we, in the first one? We just said Ryan Gosling. Oh, well, that's true. Ryan Gosling's really the looks. He isn't like particularly expert in anything. Morale as well. He's the face of it.
Starting point is 00:41:04 Right. isn't like particularly expert in anything morale as well he's the face of it right but this is good because you need obviously sure the galactic 12 implies that they are soldiers that will be exploring the galaxy but you don't know what you have out there you need people who are experts in different different industries you know ryan gosling great actor very handsome man that's a good quality in itself this guy he's a healer he can kill spirits apparently that's pretty good to have in case you go to a ghost planet i'm pretty sure we had the guy who invented the gun that's pretty smart to know weaponry maybe throw in like a doctor as well or something you know you need you need a diverse portfolio of action heroes
Starting point is 00:41:42 maybe throw in like uh i don't know someone who works at duncan donuts why not you gotta always do some with someone who knows his way around a pastry and if you're going to assemble a top tier of the most handsome charming men you're gonna need a podcaster in there at some point so sure you know i guess i volunteer the donut guy is gonna get pretty bored on a intergalactic flight. They all are, yeah. So it's one of each profession. So if they need a podcaster, sure, I'd take that. I'd take that role on.
Starting point is 00:42:12 Oh, I don't really see how that's obvious. I feel like there should at least be a vote with which I would probably win. Well, it's not really about the vote. It's like you're born with it. It's like the spirit of the Galactic 12. You just come out. You're branded for life as a brother about the vote. It's like you're born with it. It's like the spirit of the Galactic 12. You just come out. You're like branded for life as like a brother of the realm, you know? And I think I have that.
Starting point is 00:42:31 Okay. Well, I think that too. So maybe if like, I don't know if they wanted like someone who could like clean, like your room's pretty tidy. Maybe you could just like sweep and shit. Sweep and shit? Yeah. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:42:44 Like, I don't know what else you do except for this podcast you know what okay uh i guess they actually do need a clean ship and actually they don't need any podcasters no hold on a second that's not hold on this is both of us in front of the board arguing for our position look this little dickhead who couldn't podcast to save his life ryan gosling's like i don't think we need a cleaner or a podcaster who let them in there's already 12 of us i'm just gonna say guys galactic 13 it's got a good ring to it all right not 14 though don't let this little bastard kit on board the ship ryan gosling the rock and the dalai lama are all playing cards in the background ready to take off just ignore them yeah i made my own jacket
Starting point is 00:43:33 he spelt galactic wrong oh f**k it dono from the wild west rolls in and after he does things more or less did stop at number 284. The press still occasionally followed up and there were some outbursts from Janet and the family, but everyone was more or less able to get on with their lives and to try and piece together what happened over the last year or so. And once they started looking back and asking questions, one nugget of information did come out that i think is pretty important okay janet admitted that shortly before this all started her and her sister played
Starting point is 00:44:15 a ouija board oh no and they think they might have unleashed a demon in the house it's a bad it's a risk you you run and the rest of this is kind of history. The Enfield haunting went from being headline news in its time to being just one of the most famous paranormal cases in history. Many, many books were written about it. The likes of Guy and Morris went on to write about it and talk about it in their careers. I didn't even get into it, but two extremely famous investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren from the States, they looked into it. They're kind of the basis of the Conjuring movie about this case. Yeah, I saw that movie.
Starting point is 00:44:57 Yeah, it was a good movie. There's lots of movies made about this, it seems like. I just didn't mention them so much because I think they broadly thought this was true, but they didn't necessarily add anything more than the stamp of approval to it. the society for psychical research who sent their couple of investigators decided that there was quote good evidence for genuine poltergeist activity but declined to comment on specific instances so they wouldn't sign off on the levitation or any of that but looking at the case as a whole they thought it was pretty legit as i say guy lion playfair and morris cross both believe the case to be genuine despite also believing that janet and her sisters were playing tricks on them at one point in their all-night vigil you know they would see stuff like whilst janet was genuinely
Starting point is 00:45:57 getting woken up and thrown around there were other times when she would wake up and like creep downstairs and they'd be like she's obviously like trying to play a trick on us right but everything else so overshadowed those times when janet was being mischievous that they still believe the case to be true janet in a recent interview said it lived off me off my energy call me mad if you like. Those events did happen. The poltergeist was with me and I feel that, in a sense, he always will be. And interestingly for the house itself, after Peggy Hodgson, the mother in this story, sadly died of cancer, one Claire Bennett and her four sons moved into the house. In the last couple of years, Claire said,
Starting point is 00:46:44 moved into the house. In the last couple of years, Claire said, I didn't see anything, but I felt uncomfortable. There was always some kind of presence in the house. I always felt like someone was looking at me. She said that her sons would wake in the night hearing people talking and stuff. And then she found out about the house's history. She said, suddenly it all makes sense. And they moved out just a couple of months later. So Rory, over the last two episodes, I've thrown a lot of information at you. A lot of names, a lot of people
Starting point is 00:47:14 involved in this, a lot of paranormal occasions that happened over the course of a full year. What are your initial thoughts? What a case. This is a huge one. It's great to see so much physical evidence in a case. The audio recordings, the photographs,
Starting point is 00:47:31 all these testimonies from a number of different people, professionals in a number of different fields as well, especially paranormal activity that spans this amount of time. You know, this wasn't a night. This wasn't a week. This thing went on for the better part of a year. People practically moved in and just started working on it full time. Yeah, I mean, I can't even imagine what this house was like
Starting point is 00:47:54 during the season of seances. It sounds crazy. I'm a little... You know, I'm still a little skeptical because from my limited knowledge of this case, I don't think it was mentioned in your conclusion. Didn't Janet or the kids come out and admit that they faked a bunch of it? Listen. Because wasn't that in the movie as well?
Starting point is 00:48:18 Or am I imagining that? That's it. They were like, I mean, so the movie, it turned out it was a giant demon because I'm pretty sure they fought it at the end and had to banish it. Yeah, they did. No, it's a great point. Like I said, Guy and Morris were aware of Janet's mischievous pranks she would pull. And like I said there, Janet to this day's take on things is that it was all real. Okay.
Starting point is 00:48:44 But what she did admit to is playing pranks on guy and morris you can't be playing pranks while you're also claiming to be haunted 12 years old that's not how this works her quote was that she said two percent of what happened was pranks of course she said she's like all the shit that you got really mad about, that was actually Billy. That was Billy. I had no control over it. The shit on the wall, that was Billy. Honestly.
Starting point is 00:49:14 Unless, did you think it was funny? If you thought it was funny, that was me. You know? That was 100% Billy. The me sliding face first on the carpet, that was all me. That was me. Oh, you thought you didn't like? That was Billy. That was all me. That was me. Oh, you thought you didn't like... That was Billy.
Starting point is 00:49:25 That was Billy then. Billy pushed me. 2% of all the happenings. But yeah, it's a great point. These are my biggest holdups with the case is, one, the fact that the kids, you know, are little tricksters. And two, this house is crazy. When you've got a seance every night,
Starting point is 00:49:47 kids flying through the sky and shadows walking around your house. Sure. If the door creaks, that was a demon scream. If there's a mouse, that is a ghost. If the Domino's delivery guy knocks on the wall he's saying he's not saying let me in i have the pepperoni he's saying that is himself coming to take the souls of the living anything that that they're looking at in this house is gonna be perceived as paranormal it's like having beer goggles but for ghouls
Starting point is 00:50:27 beer googles no that's the wrong one ghoul googles googles i can't be any more clear than that kit for me this one becomes so borderline where there's a pretty storied evidenced convincing case and it for me it kind of comes down to like little things and what are our little giveaways uh for or against this being truly paranormal you know some of the kind of creepy things that might convince you to this being real are like the fact that janet made these noises which me and you agree don't come from a 12 year old girl yeah i mean not to mention like whenever you're 12 years old how are you making up these how are you researching and then retelling these stories of a guy who went blind had a hemorrhage and died and has since started haunting the house and the only way to get
Starting point is 00:51:26 rid of him is to pray for him yeah that's that's where's that coming from and i mean even if she's just like improvising all this shit off the dome how does she know she has that voice yeah and then morris claims to like tape up her mouth and make her drink water and she apparently can still do these voices um not only that but the researchers determined that the voice she was making was being created by a part of the voice box that allegedly we only really use when we've lost our voice we all know that when we've lost our voice we have this insanely low guttural kind of sound that most people can only use for a couple seconds or minutes at a time before it becomes too difficult to continue whereas janet was doing like three hour seances speaking as bill however there are holes in the case like you said the fact that the girls
Starting point is 00:52:17 admitted to and were caught playing tricks on the investigators more than one researcher pointed out the fact that uh the ghost of bill despite speaking so convincingly through janet seemed to pretty much have the vocabulary of a 12 year old girl right seemed to be kind of interested in the things that janet was interested in which you know raises up an interesting thing in its own right if you get possessed does, does the ghost have access to, like, words that the host doesn't understand? That's a good point. That's a really good point, yeah. You know, like, is the host going to be able to suddenly start speaking Portuguese if little Janet is English, you know? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:52:57 I don't know. But it's something to think about. But we don't get to think about it for too long. At the end of every episode, we have to come down on a conclusion as to whether this case is truly paranormal or not. Rory, are you saying yes? Are you saying no? What's it going to be today? Look, one of the other problems I have with this case is the fact that Janet, every time she leaves the house, Bill leaves too.
Starting point is 00:53:21 Sure. When they went on holiday, the voices stopped. The activities stopped. When she went to the voices stopped the activity stopped when she went to the hospital it all stopped as well yeah i mean if he is a spirit that's trapped in the house he should be able to communicate through other means that aren't just talking through a child okay granted there's some pillow tossing these those are the weird things i don't really know how to explain smearing yeah that's weird that one's really weird i don't really know how to explain. There's some shit smearing. Yeah, that's weird. That one's really weird. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:53:46 It's hard to tell whether this is a truly paranormal case or if this is a house of people who got very carried away and threw fuel on the fire by inviting people whose profession it is to believe in the paranormal to come and investigate this. Because we didn't see too... We saw like a number of people from a scientific background come and investigate it. But we didn't hear much about what their conclusions were. Yeah, we had a couple psychologists. I don't really know where they landed on it all. I know in some cases the investigators were saying, yo, you guys need to get an exorcism done.
Starting point is 00:54:25 You need to get a priest in here. Typical paranormal investigator stuff. I know that one investigator for sure said, listen, lay off the exorcisms and get a psychologist in here. Get some medical professionals in here. Which I thought was very pertinent because that's good science. which I thought was very pertinent because that's good science. Because at the very least, if you get in someone who's going to just de-escalate everything that's happening, you can at the very least work out the signal from the noise.
Starting point is 00:54:56 Yeah, exactly, exactly. And there wasn't a lot of that going on. People were mostly lighting a fire under everyone's ass. We're inviting Dutch cowboys to come and examine all the rooms it's it's really not going to help uh the situation the kids are probably getting excited because now there's all this buzz and fun people are paying more interest in janet than ever before all these little pranks are are fun she's having a great time i mean i didn't even get into it because there's so i mean there's documentaries made about this even at the time uh there's so much stuff that i couldn't show but you do see in interviews with the kids at the time they were loving it they're having a great time right they
Starting point is 00:55:35 were laughing about it i mean they were being serious too but they were enjoying themselves and you know at one point janet is kind of like having a laugh and she's like it's not really haunted and then her sister says shut up and she's like yeah it is haunted and it's like what there's this kind of like fun she got caught with a hot mic it's the paranormal scandal of the decade she had a radio mic on she was in the the goddamn bathroom. She said it was a joke. It's a mess, this whole thing. Right. And all that Morris and Guy could go on
Starting point is 00:56:11 is that there was more paranormal shit than not. And that's why they thought it happened. But hey, I'll give it to anyone who doesn't want to go there and believe. Yeah. All right. I think it's a great story. A lot of good stuff going on.
Starting point is 00:56:24 It's missing a couple bits for me i was a little disappointed in the levitation pictures okay i was hoping that was going to be the thing that that clutched it for me yeah but it really does look like a child jumping off of a bed okay folks i definitely recommend investigating these for yourself i'm sure they're probably not very hard to find you can google enfield hauntings levitation any of these pictures are going to come up a lot of spooky stuff but i gotta follow my heart and this week my heart says it's a no well you're a f***ing traitor and your heart uh might as well be staying on earth because i'm gonna be in the galactic 12 as a believer it's a yes this week it's a yes i get the jacket i'm going to space what you have a disagreement here on this
Starting point is 00:57:07 paranormal life it happens very occasionally maybe the third time we've ever disagreed uh something like that uh yeah for me i don't know what what is going on here i don't i like everyone involved in this i don't believe a hundred percent of it i don't think a hundred percent of it's supposed to be believed right um but i think something something inexplicable went on whenever you watch those videos you can hear the knock in the voices the weird shit that's happening all around them at every turn and i think there's something there uh but i'd love to know what what the listeners think because if they think i'm a giant dumbass uh i'd honestly love to hear it so send it over to this paranormal lifecast at gmail.com
Starting point is 00:57:45 wow insane story thank you to everyone who suggested that we cover that I really enjoyed investigating it round of applause everyone for Kit Greer that was a big case it was a big two parter really picked up at the end there I felt I was a little harsh on the first half
Starting point is 00:58:01 I put you on blast there because it wasn't too much but you really backloaded that bad boy that was a lot and i managed to uh keep all the negative comments in the back of my mind for the duration of that episode but wow they are just in a torrent just uh just barrage of waterboarding my psyche right now uh it's hard to think of anything else hopefully this can clean the slate hopefully yeah hopefully they won't blast me too much please don't uh blast me if somehow you've listened to part one and part two of the enfield haunting um and still somehow you are some uh hungry ghost some insatiable demon uh that cannot or maybe you're stuck on the galactic 12
Starting point is 00:58:39 flight to mars for the next six months and you need content. You need episodes. You forgot to set your phone to enable cellular downloads and uh-oh, you're stuck on the Starship Boring-terprise for the next six months. Log on to patreon.com forward slash thisparanormallife where from five bucks a month you get access to bonus episodes there's a lot of them in fact i don't know if it's going to make up six months on an intergalactic journey it'll uh it'll kill some time for sure you also don't really have to
Starting point is 00:59:16 worry about it because as a podcaster i'll be on the flight with you turn to your left that's right i'm saluting you right now as we gaze off into the distance of the galaxy because i'm guaranteeing i'm gonna make the galactic 12 mr gosling if you're listening i i just want to uh quick rattle off of my cv uh okay there's no way we have time for i'm brave i'm that's your cv i'm obedient i want to hear it now i I'm loyal to a goddamn tea, to a goddamn coffee. I can, I'm truthful. I'll never lie. But also, if you want me to lie for you, sir, I will lie my little ass off.
Starting point is 00:59:55 Don't say that. I can keep a secret, but I can also rat. I'll rat on anyone, any one of you. Don't say that. I'm just imagining Ryan is like like hey rory man i'm actually really enjoying enjoying the shows you think you could do a podcast tonight you're like once a week you gotta pay me more of you they're like this is the entire reason you're here is entertainment sorry what's your you on what's your you on patreon mrling, sir? He gets you in a headlock. Oh, is this one of your skills?
Starting point is 01:00:28 That's right. There is a treasure trove of bonus episodes just waiting for you over there. Above that 20 bucks tier, you can also get this Paranormal Life cult shirt. Hey, maybe in the future there will be a Galactic 12 jacket. We got to look into that. Did we ever give them a catchphrase i don't remember it wasn't to infinity and beyond but it wasn't something hey you know what if you can think of the perfect slogan for the galactic 12 why not email it into this paranormal
Starting point is 01:00:57 life podcast at gmail.com or hit us up on the twitter at this para life normally we end the show with uh shout outs but we've run crazy long this week. We're going to pick it up next week. Um, with some extras, we'll be back on Tuesday to investigate a brand new paranormal tale. Tune in then. See you next week.
Starting point is 01:01:17 Bye. Bye.

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