The Enfield Poltergeist (2023) s01e03 Episode Script

1
It might sound awfully stupid,
but I must say
Now, will you say,
frankly, what you think?
I've been in this house 13 years
the 14th of December.
As far as I can make out,
there was a Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins in here,
and I believe he died in here.
I don't know whether it was a heart attack
or what.
Here. We should have a little talk.
I come to see my wife
but then she weren't here
and I found out she was dead.
I'm Bill
I'm a G-H-O-S-T.
Mark it.
And action.
Think of yourselves as a jury now.
I come along to you, and I say,
"A girl has levitated.
She seemed to float round the room."
You say, "Right. You're hallucinating."
That's the usual thing.
"You're hallucinating."
You know? "You're going round the bend.
No such thing can happen."
But
What's happening now?
I can't get in. There's a
really strong force pushing the door.
What's happening? What? What?
Janet. Janet.
And I could see her going up and down,
up and down.
She's gone from that to that
in a sixth of a second.
Dragged. Like this. Like this.
She's showing being
pulled forward with her hands together.
The chair, which was standing
by Janet's bed, appears to have moved.
The chair's been thrown nine feet.
Help!
Now the chair gone over.
I'm Bill Wilkinson.
I come from Durants Park graveyard.
I had an hemorrhage, and I fell asleep,
and I died in a chair
in a corner downstairs.
Now, that is what I call
first-class evidence.
Maurice Grosse seems to imagine
that the often barely audible
and very noisy sound recordings,
of which he plays snatches at meetings,
constitute facts
that others have to disprove
if they are to challenge paranormality
at Enfield.
Now can you say, "Anita Gregory"?
Come on. "Anita Gregory."
I have visited the house
on four occasions.
Come on, try. I know it's hard.
Say, "Anita Gregory."
The extremely uncritical attitude
of Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair
seems to me to cast doubt
on their reliability
as interpreters of experience.
The cry that I so often hear is,
"You want to believe, so you believe."
We're talking about assessing the evidence
because this is very, very important.
First of all, a deep, gruff,
male staccato voice coming from the child,
Janet, 11 years--
The Enfield case had been going on
for about six months.
It was already very famous.
It had been reported
in the media and on television.
Quite a lot of people were critical
of the investigations,
and I know that Maurice and Guy
were certainly upset by that.
From their perspective, they were
spending all their time on this case.
And yet, here they saw these,
you know, rather dry,
academic types in the SPR
who were just expressing skepticism.
Janet didn't even know
what a poltergeist was.
How is it that she spoke
in the same manner as poltergeists
were reported two centuries ago?
How does a child of 11 years old cope
with this sort of voice?
Janet still maintains that
the only thing she feels when it talks
is a vibration
in the back of her head and neck.
I've explained to her
that she is talking in this voice,
but she maintains she is unaware of it.
I have, as yet, found no reason
to disbelieve what she says.
We've seen, quite clearly,
time and time again,
that the voice talks through her without
any movement of her lips whatsoever.
I mean, people who should know better say,
"Well, that's ventriloquism."
Well, you produce me the ventriloquist
who can talk without even a tremor
on his lips and articulate correctly.
I'd like to see it.
I mean, absolutely impossible.
I mean, if she was a ventriloquist,
she'd be world's number one.
Mr. Ray Alan.
Thank you so much for having me.
Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize.
I've had a couple.
One evening we're at the house.
I've looked out the window,
and this unbelievably expensive car
has pitched up outside.
This chap got out.
I thought "I recognize him."
Yes, it was TV ventriloquist Ray Alan.
Ventriloquist.
What is going on?
The managing editor
of the Mirror sent Ray Alan round.
I can only assume the motivation
was to discredit that whole saga.
I was horrified when I found out.
He was there to work out
whether it was physically possible
for Janet to make those voices.
Ray Alan was a very funny man,
but if you were choosing
a team of people to gather evidence,
you wouldn't put Ray Alan in the team.
He wouldn't have been sympathetic.
He took them off into a room on their own,
so no one ever knew what
was said in there.
I think the family were looked down on.
All national newspapers were skeptical,
I think, of paranormal stories.
The Mirror was under pressure.
If you want to knock it as a story,
you'll knock it.
The story was run that Ray Alan said
they put on the voices themselves.
They giggled and laughed about it.
You know, they'd play tricks.
Friday, March the 31st.
This morning, Mrs. Hodgson phoned me
about the article
in the Daily Mirror printed yesterday.
She said that Margaret
was most disturbed at the accusations.
I reached the family at 12:00 noon.
Now, Janet, please come over here.
Janet, please pay attention.
Come on. Look, this is very serious.
Now, listen. Did you, Janet, say to them
that you had faked the voices?
- So--
- No.
No, because they didn't ask me,
and I haven't faked 'em anyway.
How did he get that idea then?
I mean, what exactly happened?
Said that he'd been up here
and that you'd given them a long
confession to practically everything.
Margaret. Will you come over here,
Margaret dear?
What did he say to you, Margaret?
Come on, Margaret.
This is terribly important.
You must tell me.
Come on, don't worry about it.
What did he say to you?
He was saying--
I don't know what he was talking about.
He was just saying things
I didn't understand.
- What was he saying? Sa--
- Well, you see, words I didn't understand.
You didn't understand
what he was saying, Margaret?
- No.
- And so what did you say to him?
I was just daydreaming,
thinking about what I need
for school tomorrow.
I wasn't listening to him at all.
And I was thinking what I need.
And I'm going like this all the time.
- Yeah.
- Nodding, that's all.
Okay, so you were nodding your head?
- That's right.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, I was just daydreaming.
- I see.
Now, listen,
I'm going to ask you a question.
He said that you said you and Janet
had got together to fake the voices.
Now, is that true? Yes or no?
No.
- You definitely did not say it?
- I did not say that even if I nodded.
- You definitely didn't say it?
- I didn't say it with my own mouth, no.
- You didn't say it with your own mouth.
- No.
Do you think the voice might have said it?
As far as you know--
My voice didn't speak once while they
was in here,
so I don't know why they picked on me.
Well, listen, Mr. Grosse and I have got
to know absolutely everything
that wasn't quite genuine, you know?
Otherwise, it's gonna make
a lot of mess in our work.
You must understand it from
our point of view, you know?
That we're trying to defend you
against these people,
so we've got to be absolutely certain.
I was always a nervous child.
I was never that strong.
I always cry at a bat of an eyelid
if someone said something wrong to me.
I remember approaching teenage years
and being very scared and frightened.
And I couldn't understand why this
was going on and what it could be.
And that really emotionally upset me.
Now, Margaret, have you at any time
faked the voice at all?
No. Never.
- You absolutely never? You have not?
- Yeah, I'm quite sure.
Now, do you think that Janet
has ever faked the voice?
- Not that I know of, no. No.
- Not that you know of.
Have you ever faked any of the physical
things that have happened?
No.
- Definitely not?
- Definitely not.
Not even one of them?
No. On my life.
On your life. Right. Thank you.
Why would I say it was a fake?
How could I say it was a fake? I can't.
Come on, Margaret.
I said you can go to sleep as well.
Go on then. Good girl.
My father had three children,
and we were all quite naughty.
And we played games, and he knew--
knew perfectly well when a child
was playing a game.
No, thank you.
I don't want you turning my tape recorder
as far as
For someone to come along
and say that everything was a game.
That Janet was
the greatest ventriloquist in the world.
That she was the greatest magician
in the world.
That the two of these girls
were so brilliant
at their deception capabilities,
that they could fool,
you know, professionals in--
Of every standing is, frankly, laughable.
Things escalated
with the press quite fast.
It was disturbing.
Papers were coming after us.
They were saying different things.
Some was okay, some weren't.
There was all different people coming
in the house, and that scared me.
Hello?
No, I'm speaking from the uncle's house,
which is about five houses along.
There's no telephone in the other house.
When the story became
more well-known in the United States,
there was a lot of pressure,
and they were very fragile, this family.
Mrs. Hodgson?
Peggy, there's a million people
waiting for you
This is Mrs. Hodgson speaking.
There was something strange
and unknown had come into the house.
Something that we didn't understand
at first.
Before we knew it,
different countries were phoning us.
People from all over the world
just wanted to know what was going on.
The more it escalated, the more press,
the more people wanted to come and see.
This is what they're saying
in the paper today.
"The guttural voice
like that of an old man,
swears, threats and growls like an animal.
'It is the voice of the devil'"--
The Warrens
were a couple of ghost hunters.
For those
who lived through The Amityville Horror,
the emotional shock still lingers.
The Warrens have investigated
many disturbed houses.
And they examined the empty house
Whenever you got
these odd things reported,
They would be banging on the door.
If we say that we hear voices
of a supernatural nature,
such as in the Enfield home in England,
- they can't go to the police.
- All on a level. No baloney.
- When we say somebody levitates
- You'll have to find out.
there's no scientist in the world today
who could dispute the evidence
that we have
in regards to the preternatural
and the supernatural
and possession of individuals.
Let's face it.
So, whatever I say is only conjecture.
When I came on this case,
it was obvious to me it was genuine.
It had all the hallmarks
of a poltergeist case
as soon as I walked into the house.
And of course, first thing we looked for
is fraud, but I didn't find any.
- Right.
- But we certainly have had
the children motivated,
apparently motivated,
to do things against their will.
- Now-- Yes, instructed.
- Instructed.
Now, I believe
that in lots of poltergeist cases
where people have walked in and seen
children do the things, they've said,
-"That's a fake. That's a f"--
- Well, we call it oppression.
- The child is oppressed.
- Being instructed--
Their thoughts are oppressed
to explain something
and immediately they are the culprit.
The inexperienced investigator will say,
-"Well, it's all fraud."
- Fraud.
That's it. Good.
I'm delighted to hear you say this.
- We've seen this time and time again.
- Oh, yes, we've heard it many times.
- Of course not.
- We understand--
Well, I'm glad you do because I have had
rather a few arguments here
with people I should've thought
would know better.
Of course. But the man who will say
that it is not so, Mr. Grosse,
we find to be a man who spends most
of the time in the lab
and very little time in the field.
Psychic phenomena are elusive.
They do not conform to the dictates
of our very limited knowledge
of the universe.
The hardened skeptics
may dismiss the evidence out of hand,
but if anything, I've been over-cautious
and over-careful in my approach.
If you're looking at a poltergeist case,
it's no good taking this bit and saying,
"The kids played around here."
And this bit saying,
"Mr. what's-name did this
and Mrs. what's-name"--
You gotta look at the whole area.
Can I ask you on the ethical front,
how far are you willing to go?
You're in this girl's bedrooms--
You know, how far are you going here?
If you say this happened,
and then someone says it didn't,
that's a challenge to your integrity.
With respect,
you can pull each scene apart,
but you gotta take
the whole thing collectively.
What are we looking for?
He could argue.
At the end of the day, you have got to say
whether you think it's a genuine case
or not a genuine case.
It's as simple and as difficult as that.
And if he felt someone affronted him
he would fight his corner.
I may be too dogmatic,
but I-- All right, then you give me
somebody who can speak
with their mouths closed,
and I'll give you £500. In my d--
Dad was quite opinionated
and quite argumentative.
I've offered £1,000 to anybody
who can produce a girl
under similar circumstances,
and it's never been taken up.
He's confident, he's tenacious,
and he's pugnacious.
Undaunted. Single-minded.
All right, time is ten o'clock.
What's that for?
As far as I can see,
the tape is absolutely,
completely sealed over her mouth.
Now, just a minute,
before we do anything else, Janet,
try and say, "Daisy, Daisy,
give me your answer do."
- Try.
- Just try.
Why can't you do it?
'Cause the plaster
is sticking your lips together?
Right. And that's why I used
this particular type of plaster.
Mr. Grosse, don't you think
you should put some holes in that?
'Cause it could block her air coming out.
No, she can breathe
through her mouth all right.
We're going to try and record the voice.
Are you there, Bill?
Bill, can't you talk
when Janet's got her mouth taped up?
Janet, don't you say anything.
Just let him talk.
Come on, Bill. Come on.
What have you got to say for yourself?
I'm facing the wall now, like you--
What's that? What did you say?
Listen,
can you say something clearly to me?
Can you say to me, "Shut the door"?
No, that's not very good.
You can do better than that. Say it.
Shut the door.
That was good. Okay, say something else.
What else can you say?
Say, "Hello, Mr. Grosse."
Hello, Mr. Grosse.
Well, that's impossible, isn't it?
That is fantastic.
The voice was pretty clear there.
So, I'm going to try something else now.
Right, take the water into your mouth.
I want to see how much water you take,
all right?
Now hold that amount of water
in your mouth, all right? Right.
Now, off we go again.
I challenge you to talk.
Come on. I'm waiting for you.
What's the matter? What does that mean?
You can't do it, hey? I'm surprised.
I thought you could do it.
What'd you say? You can? Well, do it then.
I remember feeling uncomfortable
but as a kid,
you don't know what's going on.
Say, "Daisy, Daisy,
give me your answer do."
Or something else.
I don't mind what you say.
Anything you like,
but I want proper words.
Bill, you know that you're famous,
don't you?
You're very famous now.
Will you say a sentence for me?
Come on now.
I say that you can't talk
when Janet's got her mouth full of water.
Go on then. I'm wondering
if you can say it now. Come on.
Bill.
Daisy. Daisy.
Janet.
No. Janet, why didn't you
spit the water out until I told you?
- You always--
- No, I don't want you to do anything
until I tell you.
You spat the water out too soon.
He made me.
I know he made you do it,
but you mustn't do it--
You must wait until I get in. You--
I can't help it.
Janet, please try and cooperate
with me, all right?
You did very, very well then.
You did very well indeed, and so did he.
He did very well.
I'm not gonna go with hindsight.
I'm saying at the time,
to me, it was real.
In a field where deception
and self-deception
are the rule.
A field where the imagination may,
in fact,
play an active and creative part
in producing
that which is being investigated.
How does one justify a claim to knowledge?
To reasonable belief?
What degree of certainty
is it reasonable to demand?
The SPR was full of people
who were hunting for phenomena
to prove psychic things happen,
without being really interested in
how we could understand the phenomena
in other ways.
Anita Gregory was very intelligent.
And she valued openness and honesty,
and listening to the evidence in science.
Right, back into bed.
She's on the bed this time.
- You didn't get that?
- Stop where you are.
- Anita Gregory.
- Hi.
Go on, in you go.
Saw with your eyes,
she was right on the bed that time.
Billy, I don't want any more crying.
God, I was pulled out that time.
- Were you there when she was--
- Yes.
Janet, how do you feel this time?
Is it doing the same to you this time
as it does before?
- Yeah.
- Tell them how it gets hold of you.
It holds me by the hip.
First of all, when I lay in bed,
it pulls me up by the hands, right?
It pulls you up by the hands?
Before long, I'm sitting out like that.
I just go to sit down again, and out I go.
Does it feel as if
it's holding you all the way
- when you go through the air?
- Yes.
- Yes. Yes.
- Are you sure?
And then it drops me.
What about the blankets?
- What does it do about those?
- What do you mean about them?
Well, they push you back
quite a bit, don't they?
Does it push them along with you?
Nah.
Get out. You old slut.
That old cow, I don't like her.
Who's that?
Anita Gregory.
- Why don't you like her?
- 'Cause she don't believe me.
She will when I pull her pants down.
I think it is not at all surprising
that when Anita went there,
much less happened
than when Maurice was there.
If you ask me what a poltergeist is,
I--
I don't know, a collection of phenomena
driven by, usually, a family situation.
I mean, there's usually children involved,
not always.
There's usually all kinds of tensions
and things going on.
The trouble is
that this sort of case
is an unwholesome and painful mixture
of personal and social pathology
play-acting, group interaction,
self-deception, trickery, ego-tripping,
and conceivably,
some authentic paranormality.
The real problem is disentangling them.
- I saw you banging on the floor, Janet.
- I didn't.
- I saw you.
- I had to put my covers in.
- I saw you bang.
- I didn't bang.
I had the covers out like that,
and I had to put them in.
I saw you bang.
I didn't bang.
I saw you bang.
You may not have known you banged,
but I know you banged 'cause I saw you.
- All right?
- No, I'm not all right.
Control yourself.
- I can't control myself.
- Or control it.
- Control it to stop you banging.
- I'm not gonna control.
I'm not gonna control it.
- It's not my fault.
- It is if you don't control it.
I can't!
Can't what?
Can't say.
All right.
Silly old sod.
Silly old sod. Fucking old bastard.
I've often wondered
how many paranormal cases
have failed to be recognized
because the investigator
saw a childish prank?
Did anybody touch this tape recorder?
- No.
- Nope.
I personally would be surprised
if the children from time to time
had not attempted to copy events.
Will you all close your eyes
and go to sleep now, please.
Stop looking for things.
The more you look for things,
the more they're gonna happen.
Because they're so boisterous
at the moment,
I'm ignoring all present phenomena
as evidence.
I was definitely on the alert.
I didn't automatically believe everything.
But then I didn't
automatically dismiss it.
- Did you just write this?
- What?
Janet used to say,
"it's doing this," "it's doing that."
- Did you just write it?
- You couldn't tell
whether some of it was coming from
the conscious or unconscious minds
of Janet and Margaret.
You just couldn't tell.
What's the matter?
Tell me.
I don't wanna sleep in here.
Do you know why that is,
'cause she's being watched.
I wanna get out of here!
I'm going to run away in a minute!
Somebody's gonna make me
kill someone in a minute.
I wanna get out of here.
What's the matter with Janet?
She said she's gonna
kill someone in a minute.
Excuse me, Janet. Excuse me, Janet.
Come out, Janet.
As it happens,
there's one knife missing downstairs.
Janet.
I can't hear what you're saying, darling.
No good talking like that.
Now, tell me what you're saying.
I don't wanna sleep in here.
Why not, Janet?
I'm being watched all the time.
Who's watching you?
- Who's watching you?
- I will fucking kill him.
Here, stop swearing.
Janet, turn round
and let me look at you, come on.
Come on, get your head up. Come on.
Nobody's watching you
and nobody's blaming you.
Goodness me, Janet,
you've known me long enough now.
Nobody's blaming you at all.
I'm fed up of being in here.
Being where?
In here, I'm fed up.
Now listen. Well, because it's using you,
you're the only one who can try
and stop it doing this. All right?
I'm trying to make it
so that it doesn't worry you all the time,
that's what I'm trying to do.
And it's a very hard job, Janet,
I'm trying to do.
I know it's very nasty for you as well.
It's very nasty for your mum,
it's very nasty for Margaret and Billy.
Do you understand that?
I'm doing it to help you, Janet.
- Mom.
- Christ! What's the matter?
What's the matter?
I can't tell you.
Sit down.
I remember being very, very
scared for Janet, you know.
- I can't tell you!
- Just tell us.
When the things was happening,
I didn't understand fully
what was going on.
And then we had questions at school.
Children coming after Janet.
Some kids coming round the house
shouting outside the window.
Pointing at us in the streets,
some calling Janet possessed,
some calling me a witch.
"Ghosty, are you in there?"
and run off and all that.
I get very tearful over it,
even now and I get very upset.
- There was nowhere--
- To run.
'Cause inside you've experienced all this,
I wasn't getting
in my mind, anywhere away from it.
Can you tell Mr. Grosse
what you actually saw, Janet?
You said you saw a face on the wall.
Okay, what sort of face?
A man's face.
Can you describe it?
Yeah.
- He had gray hair.
- Yeah?
And he was all wrinkled.
And he had brown eyes.
Is it the sort of face you'd seen before?
Have you seen him before?
No.
Bill wants to come now.
Turn around.
Try not to be frightened by it.
- Some of the-- You have--
- I'm not frightened for myself.
No, you're frightened for Janet,
and I appreciate that.
Myself. I'm more frightened for Janet.
Margaret said to me the other day,
and then she said there's
something wrong with Janet.
She's very peculiar lately.
Janet's full of hate.
And this is her when she's on her own.
I'll show you.
She never does it when anyone's here.
Continually.
Mrs. Hodgson is sitting on the settee.
She's rocking backwards and forwards
and rubbing her hands round and round.
- This is Janet. She's like this.
- Yes, I've seen Janet do that.
- I've seen Janet do that.
- Yeah.
She did say to me the other week,
she said "this thing, this thing"
she kept saying.
She knows there's something there.
"In the evening I went to Enfield
by the Piccadilly line and 1-0-7 bus.
Maurice Grosse, Guy Playfair
and David Robertson were there.
The talking poltergeist, in quotes,
was much improved. Very fluent."
Bill, can David Robertson come in?
Can he come in?
Yeah.
The girls were getting still
quite a lot of disturbances at night,
being thrown out of bed,
that kind of thing.
And the voice was
very strong at that time.
David, come in.
Hello, Davey boy.
- Hello.
- Hello.
Can I turn around to face you?
No, you'll scare me.
I want you to tell me something.
Go on then.
I wanna know
about periods for girls.
Would you like to talk with someone else?
No, you. You're a boy, you'll know.
- When you earl-earlier on--
- Don't change the subject!
I wanna talk about periods!
Being dirty,
why can't you stop being dirty?
Do you want to take over?
Come on, it's all right.
- All right, I will, if you want.
- Great.
He's being a bit dirty now.
So we heard it, yeah.
Why do girls have periods?
Let me see if I can explain.
You probably know that
inside little girls--
Big girls.
Or big girls, yes.
There is a little egg and it comes out
of a certain part of the body.
And this happens every month.
And you can't keep these eggs there
permanently because they go stale.
So what you have to do
is to provide a new one every month.
Does that help about the periods?
Why
Do
Why do what?
Men
Why do men what?
Wear
Those things?
What things?
What things?
What things, Bill?
Those things.
What do they look like?
What do you mean clothes?
No.
What then?
Plastic things.
Plastic things?
In bed with a woman.
Yes. Well, that's fairly simple.
Is my tape going? The one on the wall.
Yes. Righto.
Don't go away, will you?
We'll do our best to answer.
They were mostly men
who did these investigations.
And I think they didn't take enough
account of the psychology of children.
How do girls have babies?
Now never mind about babies.
Will you forget about sex?
Is there anything else you want to know?
There must be something else.
Well, I'll tell you what,
I'll ask you a question.
Bill? Bill, stop bouncing on the bed,
Bill. Come on, Bill. Pack it up.
On the whole, women then,
especially talking that long ago,
when most children
were looked after mostly by their mothers,
and most mothers didn't work,
and most women would have been
much more familiar with 'kids play'
and why and what they're like and so on.
Pack it up. All right, okay.
- Okay, Bill.
- And these were
well-educated male scientists
with very little experience of young kids.
Not realizing that that was relevant.
You know that there are people
who consider that you don't exist at all,
you're simply a fragment
of Janet's subconscious.
What do you think of that sort of theory?
What do you mean?
Well, as we know,
people have a consciousness
and some people think that people like you
are, in fact, part of the
consciousness of, in this case, Janet.
Are you Janet?
There was always a feeling like,
before anything really sort of
surfaced properly, I think, you know?
Yeah, looking back, yeah.
It was like there was something there,
but you couldn't explain it.
And I was at that age
where you're just finding yourself.
Mum and Dad had divorced.
I'd left primary school
and I was starting secondary school.
And that is an unsettling time.
It is difficult to work out
who you are then.
And then when you were at school,
you think "what am I going home to?
I don't know where I wanna be."
You just feel so confused in what's
gonna happen when I do get home.
I felt used and possessed.
The voice was using me.
It was a feeling like it was behind me.
And it was like a gruff--
Very gruff deep voice.
Horrible experience.
Janet, tell me what's the matter.
Janet.
Tell me what's the matter.
- Janet?
- Listen to me.
- No, it's only me.
- Janet.
I think she's angry.
She gets violent, she scratches and bites.
Now when I saw-- Go over
in my mind the things that did happen,
it makes me go cold.
And it was like a force.
It's all right, I can handle her,
- but she gets-- She's very, very strong.
- We need a doctor.
Janet was totally
in a different place. It was frightening.
And one evening we couldn't get her back.
Yes?
Get off me!
- Who do you want?
- Graham.
Graham's here. He's here.
She was thrashing about,
and she was gonna hurt herself.
Christ.
Steady. Steady.
Steady on. Steady on.
There's a good girl. There's a good girl.
Maurice was doing everything he could,
and my mum was crying. I was scared.
Is Dad there?
Yes, Daddy's here.
I don't know what she needs.
You ought to get a doctor out here.
You know, she needs a shot of whatnot.
I don't know what doctors
can do for trances though.
Well, it'll probably have to be
an emergency at this time of night.
But if I could get hold of him
- We got through.
- I-- We're here.
- We are-- I'm here.
- We phoned, yeah.
Now, how are we going to explain this
to the doctor when he comes in?
All right, all right. Nobody's--
Yes, yes. All right, it's all right.
Nobody is hurting you,
Janet. Nobody is hurting you.
That's the impression
she's giving me. That she's being hurt.
The doctor was called and
he ended up giving her a tranquilizer
which he said would knock out a horse.
You're hurting me.
I just remember the doctor being there
and giving her this shot and it--
it didn't work. It was horrible.
Yeah, she calmed down eventually.
All right. Yes. All right.
If anybody should ask me
if I was frightened
in the course of my investigations,
I would definitely say "yes" to this
phenomenon of apparent possession.
Especially when it is accompanied
by a show of violence
that verges on the self-destructive.
The first time I saw this
at Enfield, I was really scared.
Not for myself, but for what
might happen to that child.
Who's that child--
It's Janet. Now, here you are.
Janet, Janet Hodgson.
Later, I'm downstairs.
I heard a crash from upstairs.
First person in there
was John Burcombe, her uncle.
And there's a big old radio.
And Janet is up on top of the whole thing,
lying across it.
Asleep or just coming round.
Look, we have a problem.
We arrived there and we found the girl
screaming, yelling, lying on the floor.
The local psychiatrist decided that all
this was complete imagination,
and he would not give permission for
the girl to go to the Maudsley.
Now this man ought to be
imprisoned, in my opinion.
- I mean he's--
- Maurice cared about us.
- he's a danger to the public--
- He did come to try and help
but he probably never experienced
anything on this scale before.
Everything had gone,
normality and normal life.
Because of what was happening.
That's the only thing. Well, I mean,
you have to make it--
Do what we can to try and stop it.
And if that fails,
the only way that never fails is to--
is to split up, you know,
because then only one of you can get it.
I should think probably it would be Janet.
She seems to be more susceptible
because she was more susceptible than
Margaret to begin with I think.
- Much more.
- Definitely.
Yes, this just won't stop. We just
have to use drastic methods, you know?
It's gonna be a bit rough on everybody.
It gets a bit dicey.
It means separating the family, you know.
It's the only way.
I'll be honest with you,
I don't think this is gonna stop.
I think it's just gonna go on,
and on, and on.
We will have to separate
the children, this is my opinion.
Yeah, but where do we go?
Well, if it won't stop, you would have
to be taken to a special home.
What sticks out in me mind now,
in my later years, is my mum.
She did what she could,
but it wasn't easy for her.
Mum and Dad weren't together anymore.
The upset of me brother
Johnny going away to school.
Poor Johnny.
There was only a year between me and him.
Mum wouldn't really say
too much about the problem.
But I know he was quite a handful
and I think they thought it would be best
if he went away.
And then the family sort of split up.
You know there was six of us
and then suddenly there was, like,
just Mum and the three of us.
Now, you know, she had to make a choice
for me to go into a children's home.
The time is now ten past nine
and this is Peggy Nottingham.
And she's just going to tell about
Mrs. Hodgson coming into her house
this morning and how she felt.
She's really gone through
a lot, ain't she?
She really has.
And I think she's put up with a lot.
Too much for anyone.
She just sat there and broke down.
And she said, "I got up this morning
and I see some tablets in the cupboard,
bottle of tablets,"
she said, "and I got hold of them in
me hand and I thought of the children."
she said, otherwise, she said,
"If it hadn't been for my children,"
she said, "I would have
took the lot of them."
I always find it's always the bad things
that stick in your mind.
Strangest part about it, I can always
remember the bad things
more than anything else.
Johnny going away was
the biggest heartbreak of the lot,
I'll never forget that day.
You don't know what a wrench it is.
A seven-year-old child,
going away like that.
I can see him now on that coach.
I'll never forget that.
I don't know, I never thought we'd wind up
like we are, a really broken family.
For me, it was like, "Oh, my God,
where am I gonna land, you know?"
"What's going to happen to me?"
"Am I gonna be left alone
after this, you know?"