The Enfield Poltergeist (2023) s01e02 Episode Script

1
Would you like to talk to me?
Don't forget.
One for no and two for yes.
284 Green Street.
Inexplicable events personally
experienced by Maurice Grosse.
One. Marbles and plastic pieces
seen in high-speed transit.
And there was a chest of drawers
moving towards the door.
Two. A chair in the bedroom
A chair which was standing
by Janet's bed appears to have moved.
I went up the stairs, and as I went
up the stairs, this knock followed me.
Banging on the side of the walls
and on the ceiling.
On the floor.
You know, I'm sure there's something in
this house trying to kill her. I swear it.
We have got
some entities here.
And we shall have to consider seriously
the possibility
of matter other than normal,
sources of energy other than normal,
and perhaps even creation ex nihilo
and a fourth dimension.
LBC on 261. Pass it on.
We're talking about poltergeists
because rather a spooky story
about the family
who's living in fear of strange goings-on
that are driving them from their home.
With me is Mr. Maurice Grosse.
And you're at pains to mention
that it's not an evil spirit,
but do you believe in the fact--
I mean, I'm thinking of films like
The Exorcist where an evil spirit
can get into a child and make it do
the most extraordinary things.
Does that sort of thing happen?
Round about the 1970s,
there was a gradual
buildup of interest in these phenomena.
On the entertainment side,
the subject was becoming more topical.
Somewhere between science and superstition,
there is another world.
The world of darkness.
It was The Exorcist movie
that's directly related,
I suppose, in some sense, to Enfield.
Something beyond comprehension is happening
to a little girl on this street,
in this house.
- No! Please, don't! No, please!
- Do it!
I wouldn't tell me wife to go
and see it anyway.
Well, I just found it really horrible.
I just had to come out.
I couldn't take anymore.
I believe.
But the mainstream view was still that
these phenomena couldn't really be real.
Let's go back to the calls.
We're talking to the people who've been
suffering from these poltergeists.
Next on the line is Hilda from Wandsworth.
When I came down the stairs,
I would be lifted up and placed down.
I was absolutely
terrified to mention it to--
The milk bottle lifted itself up and moved
two or three yards to
the settee and stood straight up on the--
It's quite possible that disasters such as
aircraft accidents could be inspired
by subconsciously
wanting something to happen.
Interesting call.
Maurice Grosse is with us.
He's a member of
the Society for Psychical Research.
We tried to investigate it
in scientific terms as far as possible.
And my personal view is
that it won't be very many years now
before people begin to accept
the paranormal as normal.
We're only just touching
the tip of the iceberg.
What sort of
a case is this in your experience?
Well, I think this is
probably the best case this century.
In fact,
as far as documentation is concerned,
it may be the best case of all time.
Fortunately, we have tape recorders.
Now tape recorders
for the assessment of evidence
is the best instrument you can possibly
have because it is non-selective.
You don't have to point it,
you don't have to stay with it,
you turn it on and you leave it.
And whatever you pick up, you hope
you picked up what you were looking for.
The Society for Psychical Research
were interested in the possibility
that there might be evidence
for some new force of nature.
Crikey!
As I asked the question, "Are you
having a game with me?"
The SPR was a wonderfully-- very friendly,
but very fuddy-duddy organization.
The vast majority of the people there
were elderly men interested
in finding evidence of the paranormal,
evidence of life after death,
evidence that spirits carry on.
When we talk about assessment of evidence,
I'm now talking about
the assessment of real phenomena.
Not theoretical phenomena. Real phenomena.
Because that's what I specialize in,
the real stuff.
Maurice was absolutely committed.
He really wanted people to know.
You might imagine
there are lots of poltergeists around,
but there aren't that many.
And when one comes up
that lasts more than a couple of days
and has things that can
potentially be tested,
people rushed off there.
From the SPR's point of view,
was this a genuine case?
November 1977.
Visit by Tony Cornell, Alan Gauld,
and Bernard Carr, of the SPR.
I'm not particularly
psychically sensitive,
so I'm not like a medium
that would go into a building
and immediately feel,
"Oh, there's something here."
I wasn't even an experienced
investigator of poltergeists.
I was very young. I was just a beginner.
On the other hand,
Tony Cornell and Alan Gauld
were the most experienced ghost hunters,
if you like, in the world.
Anyway, let's go upstairs, shall we?
Yes, you come up, boys.
As time went on,
you got this complete thoroughfare of
people coming to your home.
Tickets, please.
What do all these men do?
Well, you've got some fairly
eminent scientists here tonight.
Are they all staying?
No, they're not staying.
You got lots of people judging you.
Questioning you. Criticizing you, maybe.
"Well, you didn't see that."
"How did that happen?"
"You sure that happened?" Questioning.
That's gonna be wearing on anybody.
This is for the benefit
of my tape, if you don't mind.
So, you've got here--
you've got an infrared recorder
you've got a VHF recorder
and compasses put around the room.
and also a mirror for reflecting.
Now this can really go anywhere.
We could, in fact, put this here.
Now everybody keep absolutely still.
Try asking for a big movement.
Will you try a big movement for me
on the needle?
Come on. One, two, three.
Three big movements on the needle.
Come, you've done other things for me.
Try and move the needle quite far.
It's moving. Look at it.
It's Bernard hopping from one foot
to the other.
Is it? I see.
I think it's being a little bit inhibited
at the moment.
I'm fairly certain if we go out the room
and go downstairs, it'll start.
Now, you two gentlemen go
into the other room then.
And listen and see what happens.
You go to sleep, Billy.
Right.
What's happened then?
The pillow just jumped over me.
Janet was laying
Now how did that-- While you were
watching how did the pillow go?
Well, Janet moved,
and the pillow shot right over.
- Like this?
- Yes.
- This?
- Yes.
- We'll just go outside again
- Yes.
and listen and see what happens.
I'll stay here.
In a minute, I'm going to ask it
to have a go at me.
I like poltergeists.
They can do what they like to me.
Well here we are.
There's three of us in bed.
During the time I was there
with Tony and Alan, we did hear bumps.
The children were falling out of bed
and things were moving around,
but only when none of us were in the room
where the phenomena were occurring.
I don't believe in you.
I don't believe you can throw these girls
out of bed.
And so, we couldn't be sure
from the evening
we spent there,
that it wasn't just the children.
I don't believe you can do anything.
See what it says
Most of the senior members
of the society were academics.
In the opinion of many, only academics
were thought capable of carrying out
a decent, impartial investigation.
The academics were old money, if you like.
Maurice and Guy were,
as they called it in those days, trade.
The establishment
acts like three wise monkeys,
"I see nothing, I hear nothing,
I say nothing."
This time it's hit the light very hard,
and the light's gone out.
The reason Dad got involved
with the Society for Psychical Research
was because it was
the only scientific institution
that was trying to
look into these phenomena.
Dad was always very interested in science,
that's the career he wanted to follow.
And then, of course, the war
took away six very important years.
He was 20 when he joined up.
He was at Dunkirk.
He never really spoke
about what happened in the war.
And when he came out, he went to work
in one of his father's confectioner shops.
He managed to escape that life.
By chance,
he and two friends won the pools.
£3,000 each.
In the mid-1960s, it was a lot of money.
Enough for him to get out
of the shop and start his own business.
And that's what he did.
The dream of all poster advertisers is to
be able to sell one space more than once.
He created a poster advertising machine.
You could have 32 posters in this one box.
He's no fool.
My opinion is that,
if this was anything other than
a paranormal investigation,
the verdict would be overwhelmingly
in favor of activities of forces unknown.
And as this is a paranormal investigation,
we must press on for 101% proof.
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday, dear Janet
Happy birthday to you
Well, blow it out, blow 'em out.
- I saw that go.
- What was that?
- I believe the kettle.
- It's started.
- I'll wash out the kettle.
- Enfield, November the 10th, 1977.
- It's the--
- Now the chair gone over.
The red chair has turned over backwards.
Yeah, she was like this on it.
- Like that over it.
- Janet was sit--
Janet was sitting on it
at the time it was thrown over backwards.
I'll sort it out.
Janet was sitting on the chair,
and the chair moved across the room.
Steady on. Calm down.
And her feet did not touch the ground.
And she was really screaming.
It was really scary but unexplained.
It just threw Janet off
the chair, absolutely in front of me,
and I saw her go flying off the chair.
At the moment, the people in the room
are Mrs. Nottingham,
Margaret, Janet, Mrs. Hodgson,
Billy, Paul, and myself.
And it's activating like mad.
It just tipped over the settee
in front of us all in the room here.
Oh, Christ. Come on.
Let's all calm down, shall we?
It's so easy for someone
who's not experienced it
or seen it to say, "It's not real."
You, particularly.
I want you to calm down, right?
Listen, whatever you are,
we're not frightened of you.
We're gonna keep on putting everything
straight every time you do anything.
Well, it's definitely worse.
It's the worst I've ever seen.
- I've never No.
- I've never seen anything like it.
We have tried everything in our power
to stop the phenomena but to no avail.
The situations we are encountering
simply cannot be explained
when referred to
the accepted laws of physics.
Devious sod up there isn't it, this thing?
What are we gonna do about it?
I don't know.
It's got me absolutely mystified.
We've seen enough now
to write a hundred bloody books.
I don't care a sod whether anybody
believes me or not.
I know what I've seen.
Look, what about a complete change
of tactics?
There's a new man I can call on,
if you like.
See, I don't want anybody getting
involved in this case, Guy,
who is not what I call, completely,
What I would say a normal person.
Normal type of person.
We're gonna have a hard enough job
as it is
without people turning round and say,
"Oh, Christ, they've put
that bloody crank in."
It's like all type--
all sorts of things this life, Guy.
I've lived in it a bit longer than you,
and I can tell you
that it's always the same bloody story.
You always get the bloody talkers
and the doers.
See, they can't say that about Hasted
although I've heard people say,
you know, he's a bit weird.
But at least Hasted is--
He tries to do the thing correctly.
At the time of the Enfield case,
physicists, people like John Hasted
started getting interested
in the phenomena.
At least a few physicists began to think,
"Well, maybe some of
these anomalous interactions
involving mind and the physical world,
maybe they can be
described by physics after all."
John Hasted was Professor of Physics
at Birkbeck College
in the University of London.
I'm Hasted, physicist.
I work on these things,
and I can speak as a person
who thinks that many of these effects
are well on the way to validation.
I think it is going to be absolutely
central in the next 20, 30 years.
Professor Hasted, like me, wanted to know,
actually, what was going on,
what the physics was.
What is the nature of physical reality?
That was our key driving motivation.
John Hasted sprang
on the psychical research scene
with the appearance of the metal-benders.
So, the camera will see that there--
- You can see that there's no pressure.
- None whatsoever.
And I'm doing it
on the thin side of the fork,
that if it bends it will
In the early 1970s,
Uri Geller had surprised audiences
all around the world
with his paranormal metal bending.
Do you feel anything in yours,
under your fingers, happening now?
Uh-oh, wait.
- Wait, I already feel something.
- What's happening?
You can feel it
in your fingertips, can you?
Well, I can feel
the metal cracking slowly.
- Well. There it is.
- There it is.
- It's over there.
- Where is it?
The effect was very dramatic.
I mean, that led people like John Hasted
and other physicists to start
to investigate.
Not bad.
He thought that
if bending metal by the power of the mind
was possible-- if there is any telepathy,
clairvoyance, psychokinesis,
precognition, poltergeist,
any of these things--
that would be dramatic alteration in--
in our understanding of physics.
And I think that's what he was expecting
and hoping to find
with the Enfield poltergeist.
Now the other one.
Janet is clearly the epicenter.
Does her mind
have powers we have overlooked?
It was three days ago since Uri
was on Monday's Blue Peter
and calls are still coming in from people
about strange things
that have been happening to their knives,
forks and spoons.
We've got some people with us today
in the studio with some unusual spoons
and forks that
strange things have happened to,
like Allison down there at the end.
What have you got there, love?
You've got the fork?
What's happening after the program
Hasted asked whether I could
go up to the house
to be an extra hand
to assist with the case.
Come in, David.
We're in the living room now, in 284.
Janet claims she bent a spoon today.
- Two spoons today.
- One yesterday, one today.
You better stop doing that,
your mother won't have any spoons left.
I can't help it.
Most people do not
have experience of the paranormal.
It's very rare.
What, something like one in a million
can actually do physical things.
The other 999,000
have got no experience of it at all.
So, what reason have they got
to believe that it actually exists?
We took up a strain gauge
that was attached to a metal spoon,
then that goes to amplifiers
and then the amplifiers
go to a chart recorder.
It's basically measuring any bending.
Small changes in length of the metal.
What you do is encourage her
to bend the metal.
This went on for about 20, 25 minutes.
The signals built up in strength.
The sensor actually physically bent
then finally broke without any touch.
Janet could produce the signals
more or less on command.
My impression was that she
was sort of mentally
in touch with what was happening
with some of the physical phenomena.
It was sort of responsive
to her internal state.
Can the subconscious mind
actively affect its physical surroundings?
Throw things about?
Bend metal?
Is the mind just a product
of the biology of the brain?
Or is it a quite separate
spiritual entity?
How does mind fit in a world of matter?
That is the question I think
has threaded all through this.
I think I have studied
and listened to practically every theory
that's been put forward
over the last century.
But I do not find
any of them very convincing.
My father was a thinker,
something of a philosopher.
He was always interested
in the infinitely small,
the infinitely large.
For example, he created a box
which was only an inch-and-a-half thick,
and you would look into this box,
and you would see into infinity.
It's a mirror within a mirror
within a mirror within a mirror.
Going back and back
and back and back and back forever.
Just suppose the mind
could control matter.
The implications would be tremendous.
Imagine if you could
explode an enemy's atom bombs
merely by concentrating
on the trigger mechanism.
So, some scientists have
taken this subject seriously.
They've devised ingenious experiments
to find the truth.
Janet seemed to be
the center of everything.
There's this force that's following her
around and doing all this stuff.
And I was sort of thinking, well,
something has to be done definitively
to photograph whatever's
happening in that house.
A lot of the photographs I was taking
were quite mundane.
I wanted to get the thing moving,
flying, falling over, whatever.
It was almost as if whatever
this thing was was outsmarting you.
You just had to try
and get one step ahead,
but you never did.
I liken this to a game of chess,
where the poltergeist makes a move,
and we make a countermove.
The essence of the phenomena
is a mischievousness.
One night, I set up the cameras
in the corner of the room.
I'm downstairs, we're listening
to a live feed on a tape recorder.
And I've got a 25-meter cable
that I can hit and trigger the camera.
Suddenly we heard
and I'm thinking,
"What the fuck was that?"
I hit the button
and taken a sequence of pictures.
Janet!
Where is she?
It was only
by processing these the following day
that we got to realize
the true extent of what was happening.
Where she was actually
flying across the room
and crashing down just inside the door.
You could see that Janet
has come from prone in the bed,
covered up, to upright.
The thing just runs six frames a second.
So, when the pictures were taken,
they were at least a sixth of a second
between each frame.
There's not one picture of her climbing up
or moving the covers down
to get her legs out, or anything.
She's gone from that to that
in a sixth of a second.
All I know is I triggered the camera
remotely when I heard the noise.
I wasn't in the room at the time.
I didn't see it.
As to what it is, I've absolutely no idea.
Just have to let the pictures
speak for themselves.
Time, ten minutes past 1:00,
3rd of December.
This time, Janet was thrown
right out of the room, onto the stairs.
- Try and explain to me what happened.
- I was in bed, right, lying down.
And my arms went up like this.
So, then I felt something pull my arm.
- And I was pulled out of bed
- You were pulled up by your arms.
- dragged over there, and fe--
- You were dragged along the floor?
- Yeah, and I was lifting-- No.
- What, running? Were you running?
- How were you going?
- Dragged.
Dragged. Yeah. To where?
- Like this.
- Dragged out.
She's showing being
pulled forward with her hands together.
It was getting to the point
where they felt it was out of control.
They couldn't really handle it.
This evening I visited
Professor Hasted for advice.
Although it is very rare
for any person to be seriously hurt
from poltergeist incidents,
I'm concerned
that there could be an accident.
Hasted asked me to try
and find ways to help the family.
The poltergeist case is a situation
where this particular mental state
becomes intense.
Hasted suggested
that it can actually break through
into something
beyond our physical reality,
and the energy
from it manifests in a physical way.
- Interview with David Robertson.
- Okay.
Yesterday morning I took Janet
up to the top bedroom
where lots of phenomena
appeared to happen.
What's happened there?
The window!
She described how she
was floating about the room.
She's still going.
I could hear moving,
but I was outside the room, of course.
What's happening now?
I can't get in. There's a--
A really strong force pushing the door.
Of course, all this time,
there had been a group of people outside
who have actually witnessed
what was happening.
Some of the people outside the house
witnessed Janet levitating horizontally,
up in front of the window,
and the curtains were billowing
into the room.
Following is an interview
with Mrs. Hazel Short
the woman who looks after
crossing of the children.
Well, I always keep the lollipop stick
in Peggy's front garden.
All of a sudden, I heard a bang.
I see a book hit the window.
And that was followed by a pillow.
Then I see young Janet.
And I could see her going up and down,
up and down in front of the window.
She was curved, as though somebody--
- Picking her up?
- Yeah.
So she was actually curved. So--
Well, that's what she looked
like to me 'cause she could--
Remember,
I was standing down here, looking up.
The following is a statement made to me
by Mr. John Rainbow,
tradesman of Chatsworth Drive,
Enfield, Middlesex.
Would you just like
to repeat what you said, Mr. Rainbow?
So, all the windows were closed.
The child, she appeared to me
as if she was coming across the room,
and quite honestly,
I was fully expecting any moment
to see the child land in the street.
You thought
she'd come straight out of the window?
Yeah.
These are paranormal things
that are happening in the neighborhood.
There are actual independent witnesses
who saw physical phenomena.
This is evidence not just seen
by people involved in the case,
but by outsiders.
And it all begins to tie together.
Consider the idea
that we actually exist
in various dimensions.
Perhaps thousands, millions of dimensions.
I'm beginning to wonder if we live
in many worlds at the same time.
Well, we would have
to conceive of people's minds
being able to have contact
with these other dimensions.
Because if all of us believe only
in three dimensions,
then we'll never see
anything extraordinary.
But once we have contact
and can persuade other minds also
to see this other parallel universe
it may just be a very good formulation
for movement and disappearance of atoms.
If people could really spirit objects
merely by thinking about them,
surely, by this time,
spies and bank robbers would've
perfected the technique.
Yet if there's one thing we've learned,
nature never cheats, but some people do.
They bend the evidence, and that's
something that scientists often forget.
And there's no heat at all. Just touch it.
Saturday, December the 10th.
I arrived at 284 at 7:05 p.m.
to be greeted by whistling.
I went right up to Janet
and I'm sure it wasn't her.
It emulates from her, but it's not her.
I might be the trajectory.
This whistling that's going on now,
is paranormal whistling.
Absolutely nobody here
is whistling at all.
Billy can't whistle
and neither can Margaret.
I was 25 years old, a young lawyer.
And before I went off to work
in the morning,
I would come down to breakfast
and my mother and father would be there.
And my father,
every morning, would delight
in telling me what had
happened the night before.
And I went through day
after day of banging's,
and knocking's, and screaming,
and shouting, and things happening.
Time is 10:17.
If there's any entity here,
you're welcome.
Please talk directly into the microphone.
You're welcome.
Please talk directly into the microphone.
If you cannot do that,
please knock on the table
or make any other appropriate noise.
He kept on badgering me.
"Why don't you come?
Why aren't you interested in coming
to the house to see what's happening?"
I said, "Dad, I'm really not interested."
I was what you would call
a complete skeptic.
Then I made a concession to him.
I said, "Look, Dad,
if this thing ever talks,
and can talk to me, I will go."
So one morning, he triumphantly
switched on the tape recorder,
and he said to me, "Listen to this."
Time is 24 minutes past 10:00.
Saturday, December the 10th.
Right, are we all in bed?
Yes, we are all in bed.
Blimey.
Where'd that noise come from?
By the wall.
Where about?
Where Janet's sleeping.
- Under Janet's bed.
- Yeah.
Seems to be saying it to me.
Where'd that come from?
Over there. Near your tape recorder.
- Near the tape recorder?
- What it sounded like to me.
From that side of the room, definitely.
All right,
so it didn't go anywhere near Janet?
- No.
- Right then.
That last noise--
That bark came well away from Janet.
At least six foot away from Janet,
and six foot away from Margaret.
I don't like that noise.
Come on. You whistle. You can bark.
You can speak. I want to hear you speak.
No, come on,
you can do better than barking like a dog.
I want to hear you speak.
Let's have a name. Somebody's name.
Anybody here.
See if you can say my name, "Maurice."
Maurice!
Is that it?
Come on. Try "Maurice."
Maurice!
I heard this sound. It went,
"Maurice!" Just like that. "Maurice!"
Try again.
Grosse!
- It said, "Grosse."
- Did it say, "Grosse"?
Grosse!
It spoke.
Now can you tell me your name?
Tell me what your name is.
I'm Bill.
- Bill.
- Bill?
- I'm getting--
- Scared?
Have you got another name?
Wilkinson.
"Wilkinson."
Now,
I'm going to ask you another question.
Did you die in this house?
Yes!
I was dumbstruck.
And I said to him, "Okay, Dad. I'll go."
I arrived at this house in Enfield.
I was then invited to go upstairs.
The door to the room was slightly ajar.
I thought to myself,
"I'm gonna look through at Janet
and see what she's up to."
And as soon as that thought had gone
into my head, the voice said--
Shut the fucking door!
Read my mind.
And then it said to me,
"You can come in, but you must stand
by the wall and look at the wall."
I'm Bill Wilkinson
and I died 15 years ago.
I come from Durants Park graveyard.
I have come here to see my family.
And I thought, "I'm having a conversation
with a discarnate voice, which is strange,
but I suppose it behooves me as a lawyer
to ask him some questions."
Bill?
I want you to tell me
whether you remember what happened
to you when you died.
I had an hemorrhage, and I fell asleep,
and I died in a chair
in a corner downstairs.
And what do you make of that?
That I witnessed and spoke to a ghost.
- Your name?
- Shut up.
- No, your name?
- Shut up, you. Shut up.
Yeah.
Get out of here, you
It's not the children.
It's too quick. It's too sharp.
It just doesn't fit.
There's a certain change of tone,
from normal tone to this voice.
I come to see my wife
but then she weren't here
Though it appears to come from Janet,
and sometimes Margaret,
when we listen
to our recordings over and over again,
I get the strong impression
that there is another personality at work.
I don't know.
I'm doing exercises on Janet's bed.
When you hear the voice,
and it comes out, where does it come from?
- Here, your throat?
- No.
- Where do you feel it comes from?
- Back of the neck.
The back of the neck.
And so, it must be
as if it's somebody else speaking then
- when you hear it?
- Yeah. Behind us.
And do you get the feeling,
when you hear the voice,
that there is a person there?
Yes.
- Yeah.
- Is that the voice now?
Yeah.
Is anybody there?
- Nothing. No.
- No.
It doesn't always do it to order.
No, it doesn't. It goes in spasms.
Like, we're talking now.
It may not now, after you've said that,
but it won't do it when you want it to.
Is anybody there?
Who's there?
Ghost-chaser's here.
Tell me about that.
Professor John Hasted
and David Robinson recorded the voice
on a special thing called a laryngograph.
They found that the voices were produced
not in the normal way
as we are talking now,
but from what are called
the false vocals folds
which are a bit further up
from the larynx.
They discovered that
these voices were not produced normally.
Janet used to say, "It's doing this.
It's doing that." Something was using her.
I can go on for blinking hours.
Don't you ever get a sore throat, Janet?
- No.
- Sure?
Yeah.
You never get pain
in the back of the neck or something?
No.
To keep up this particular type of voice
for any length of time
without damage to the vocal cords
is absolutely impossible.
I mean, there must be some
hoarseness attached to it.
But don't forget, these children don't do
this for a couple of minutes or so.
They do it for lengths of periods
up to three hours.
And without any hoarseness
or sore throats whatsoever.
What we have done is amass good evidence
for activity that has no known physical
or psychological explanation.
We now have irrefutable proof
that the majority of the manifestations
encountered are of a nature not explicable
by orthodox science.
The international conference
at Cambridge on the Enfield poltergeist,
presented by Maurice Grosse
and Guy Playfair.
And it was an excellent presentation,
followed by much discussion
and controversy.
Now, Mr. Grosse is going to speak first.
Can you hear all right,
by the way? Can you all hear? Yes? Good.
I'm Maurice Grosse, and my colleague below
is Guy Lyon Playfair.
The annual SPR conferences were great.
I went to every one
for a couple of decades, at least.
is to give a brief, brief
And the Enfield poltergeist,
of course, was
you know, for a few years, was big deal.
On December the 10th,
one of the girls began to speak in a voice
resembling that of an old man.
Each of us subsequently recorded
many hours of what we tentatively term,
"automatic speech."
Now, can you tell me your name?
Tell me what your name is.
I'm Bill.
Do you know you're dead?
Shut up!
Now, tell me, what are you doing
here, and why are you here?
Shall I tell you really who I am?
I must remind you
that's an 11-year-old girl.
Yes, Id--
I wasn't so impressed with the voices
because, I mean, it was a deep voice.
It wasn't the normal voice of Janet,
for example,
but it wasn't clear to me that Janet
couldn't be producing the voice.
Could you tell me how many
of these incidents have occurred
in front of actual investigators?
Grosse and Playfair were convinced
this was the--
you know, the case of the century.
Some of the members
of the SPR were rather skeptical.
I'd like to answer that one.
We are observers and we are presenting
facts the only way we know.
And we believe this is the first time ever
that a poltergeist case
has been investigated in such depth.
I've got my diary, and it says,
"The symposium was boring.
What a shambles.
Tapes of little girls woofing
et cetera, et cetera.
A quick drink and then back to think
about my own paper for tomorrow."
I'm afraid it didn't make very much
impression on me.
In this case,
we have 1500, at least, episodes.
And I myself-- I will stick my chin out
and say 1490 of them cannot be called
into question at all
unless somebody is prepared to stand up
and call us either fools or liars.
That's is all.
It is very interesting in that clip
that Maurice says,
"Are you calling us
either fools or liars."
As far as he's concerned,
those are the only options.
The real point is you need investigators
who are going to ask pertinent questions.
And that's what Anita brought to it.
Question from Anita Gregory.
First of all,
I think it's very, very difficult
to be neutral about a case like this.
I find it very difficult.
I can't say, but I share a feeling
of our very devoted investigators.
I always got on really well with Anita.
She had an interest in psychology.
She had interests in all sorts of things.
But she was very open-minded.
So, look, for instance,
the little dialogue we heard
between Maurice and whatever it was.
It was an element of a game in this.
I feel that the investigators,
the subjects, that family
all play a part in somehow creating
this situation.
I have continually challenged everybody
to tell me
how this girl does it
if she does do it deliberately.
And nobody, nobody has been able
to come up with an answer.
I'd like to say as Maurice just said
that we are interested
in the genuine stuff,
and some of you simply must accept
the possibility that the phenomenon
for which this society was founded
do actually exist.
- We do.
- Now, if that changes your--
Well, it could be challenged.
Yes, couldn't we? I'm sick of it. Yeah.
stop it.
Anyway, we are running out of time.
And
Anita undoubtedly brought
the kind of psychology
that would be much more common nowadays,
but then, you know,
she was quite pioneering in a way.
And saying, "We've got to understand
what's going on in the family,
what's going on in the minds
of these kids."
And so we are faced
with the big problem of psychic research.
How do we convince the skeptic?
The answer may be that the only way
people can be thoroughly persuaded
of the existence of phenomena
is to experience the activity themselves.
This is a surprise.
- Hello.
- Hi. How are ya?
Be quiet now.
- Hello.
- Nice to be here.
This is Mrs. Hodgson and Anita Gregory.
"So Tuesday the 20th of December, 1977,
in the evening, I went to Enfield.
Anita Gregory came,
and events took a very interesting turn."
Right. Now let's go
from where we were before.
We know what your name is now.
Tell me something about yourself.
Anita was a lecturer in psychology.
Come on, you can talk now.
Bill.
She was the ultimate academic.
My name's Anita Gregory.
I'm interested in you.
What do you want?
What do you want? Tell us what you want.
Do you want me to go out?
Are you frightened of me?
No.
Tell me how you are.
Fuck off.
Well, that's very good, that's splendid,
but you haven't told me how you are.
You've told me where to go,
but you haven't told me how you are.
Tell me how you are.
I really want to know.
Shit off!
Didn't catch that.
Say it again. More distinctly.
Now you're doing very well.
Say it a bit more clearly, please.
You tell me how you are.
I really want to know how you are.
How you're feeling. I want to know
what it feels like to be you.
Shit you!
Really must say good night now. Bye-bye.
- Okay.
- Bye-bye.
When we went outside,
Anita gave me a look. Disbelieving look.
"Do you really believe that?"
I'm not doing it deliberately.
No,
I know you're not doing it deliberately
It's one of these things.
Well, I can't speak in that voice.
Janet, you must get that out of your head
that people think
you're doing it deliberately. They don't.
If I thought that I wouldn't be here,
would I?
You'd be locked up in some nuthouse,
and I would be back home.
Friday, December the 23rd.
Arrived at 7:50 p.m.
and was told that both
the goldfish died at the same time
this afternoon.
Oh, my God! Oh, my--
I came to torment you.