Poltergeist: A Classic Study in Destructive Haunting

  This kind of witchcraft can be found in primitive societies all over the world. In a book called Mitsinari, a Catholic priest, Father André Dupreyat, describes his years in Papua, New Guinea. When he clashed with local sorcerers, he was also placed under a “snake curse.” One day, walking toward a village, he was surprised to see a silvery-colored snake wriggling toward him. The villagers all scattered. Knowing it would have to lower its head to come closer, Dupreyat waited until it was no longer in a position to strike, and killed it with his stick. The next day, when he was lying in a hut, a snake lowered itself from the roof-beam and dropped on to his chest. He lay perfectly still until it slid down to the floor, when he was able to kill it with a stick. A few days later, as he lay in a hammock, a native warned him that two black snakes had writhed up the support of the hammock, and were close enough to bite him. They cautiously handed him a knife and told him when to strike; he succeeded in killing both snakes.

  Dupreyat also has a remarkable account of a local sorcerer named Isidoro who was able to turn himself into a cassowary (a kind of ostrich). One evening as they all sat talking of Isidoro, they heard the distinctive sound of a cassowary running, and Isidoro came into the hut. He talked with them for a while, then said he would be staying in a house in the village overnight, and went out. They again heard the sound of a cassowary running. Dupreyat checked, and found that Isidoro was not in the house where he had claimed he would be staying. The next day, he visited Isidoro’s village—five hours away on the other side of the mountain. There he was greeted by Isidoro. Villagers assured him that Isidoro had spent the early part of the previous evening in the communal hut, then gone away at seven o’clock. By nine o’clock he had been with Dupreyat, a five-hour journey away on the other side of the mountain. And at dawn, he had been observed in his own village again. Yet in the dark, it was at least an eight-hour journey away.

  James Neal’s own experiences of witchcraft in Ghana ended disastrously. Leaving his home in a hurry, on a morning when he intended to go to the Accra races—to capture a race-course gang—he left behind a protecting amulet that had been given him by the holy man. From an almost empty grandstand he watched the men being arrested by his own officers. Then, walking down from the grandstand, with no one within twenty yards of him, he was pushed violently, and fell. The multiple fractures he sustained kept him in hospital for months; and when he recovered, his broken bones prevented him from continuing his police work and he was forced to resign. The holy man, who came to see him in hospital, told him that he had been pushed by an “astral entity.” Neal insists that, as he was pushed, he twisted round to see who was responsible, and that there was no one there.

  On the evening of September 9, 1977, Guy Playfair attended a lecture on poltergeists at the Society for Psychical Research, and found himself sitting next to a man named Maurice Grosse. After the lecture, Grosse announced that he was in the middle of a case, and would be glad of some help. No one volunteered. A few days later, Playfair heard a broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in which Maurice Grosse described some of the amazing things that were happening in the house of the Harper family down at Enfield. Reluctantly—because he had just finished a book and was looking forward to a holiday—Playfair decided to offer some help.

  The Enfield poltergeist had put in its first appearance on the evening of August 30, 1977. There were four children in the house: Rose, thirteen, Janet, eleven, Pete, ten and Jimmy, seven; their mother was separated from her husband. Pete and Janet shared a bedroom. That evening, just after Pete and Janet had gone to bed, their beds began to shake in an odd way. They called their mother, but the shaking had stopped. She assumed they were “larking about” and told them to get to sleep. The next evening, the children heard a shuffling noise, like a chair moving. Mrs. Harper came in and asked them to be quiet. The room all seemed to be perfectly normal. But when she switched off the light, she also heard the shuffling noise. It sounded like someone shuffling across the room in slippers. Then there were four loud, clear knocks. And when Mrs. Harper put the light on again, she saw the heavy chest of drawers moving on its own. It slid a distance of about eighteen inches across the floor. She pushed it back. It slid back again. She tried to push it back, but it wouldn’t budge—it was as if someone was standing on the other side, preventing it from moving. Mrs. Harper began to shake with fear. “All right, downstairs everybody . . .” She went next door and asked the help of their neighbors. Vic Nottingham and his son went back to the Harpers’ house, and searched it from top to bottom. Then the knocking started. Vic Nottingham rushed outside, to see if it was some practical joker on the other side of the wall. There was no one there.

  They sent for the police. When the lights were switched off, the knocking started. Then, in the light from the kitchen, everyone saw a chair that was wobbling into motion. It slid toward the kitchen for three or four feet.

  The police could do nothing about ghosts, so they left. And the Harper family slept in the living-room.

  The next day, all was quiet until evening. Then the poltergeist began throwing things. Marbles and Lego bricks came zinging through the air as if shot from a catapult. When someone picked up one of the marbles, it was found to be burning hot.

  Wondering what to do, Mrs. Harper allowed her neighbor to phone the Daily Mirror. A reporter and photographer arrived, but saw nothing. They decided to go in the early hours of the morning. As soon as they were outside, the Lego bombardment began again. Mrs. Harper rushed out and told them. As the photographer came in, his camera raised, a Lego brick flew across the room and hit him over the right eye. It caused quite a bruise—one of the few examples of a poltergeist actually hurting someone. Yet the photograph showed no Lego brick flying towards him—it must have been just beyond the range of the camera. It was later to occur to Guy Playfair that the poltergeist seemed to go to great trouble not to be seen doing things.

  The Daily Mirror contacted the Society for Psychical Research, and the SPR contacted Maurice Grosse, a recent member who was looking for a case to investigate. A few days later, Guy Playfair made his way down to the house in Enfield. It was the beginning of a two-year involvement.

  Playfair was inclined to suspect Janet, an extremely lively little girl. He asked Mrs. Harper to keep a special watch on her, adding: “Even if Janet is playing tricks, it may not be her fault.” For he had come across a curious discovery made by earlier researchers like Nandor Fodor and William Roll: that the “focus”’ of a poltergeist case may throw things—in the ordinary way—without being aware of it. Through a one-way mirror Roll saw one of his “suspects” throwing things; yet a lie detector test showed the suspect was telling the truth when he denied throwing anything. The implication seems to be that a poltergeist can get inside someone and “make them do things.”

  While Playfair and a Mirror photographer waited in the dark in Janet’s bedroom, a marble landed with a bang on the floor. The odd thing was it did not roll, as a marble normally would. It stayed put; Playfair tried hard to duplicate this, but found it impossible; unless dropped from very close to the floor, a marble will roll, particularly on smooth linoleum.

  When the photographer tried taking a test picture, all three flash-guns on all three cameras failed to work. When he examined the guns, he found that they had all been drained of power—although he had charged them a few minutes before trying to take the photograph.

  Playfair tried tying the leg of Janet’s bedside chair to the leg of her bed. He used wire. Within minutes, the chair had fallen over; the wire had been snapped. He bound it with several twists of wire. Not long after, the chair fell over again—the wire had snapped. A big armchair tipped over, then the bed shot across the room. A book flew off the shelf, hit the door, proceeded on at right angles, and landed upright on the floor; it was called Fun and Games for Children. As they looked at one of the pillows on a bed, an indentation appeared on it, as if an invisible head was resting there. The head seemed to be a small one, which led Mrs. Harper to voice her suspi
cion that this was the ghost of a four-year-old girl who had been suffocated by her father in a nearby house; some of the furniture from the house had found its way into the Harper home, and Mrs. Harper had already thrown it out, suspecting it might be the cause of the trouble. Clearly, she was mistaken.

  There came a point when Guy Playfair began to feel that the “entity” wanted to communicate—it kept up its knocking on one occasion for two hours and a half. A medium named Annie Shaw came to the house with her husband George. Annie went into a trance, then suddenly screamed, “Go away,” and began to cackle. When her husband spoke to her, she spat at him. She moaned: “Gozer, Gozer, help me. Elvie, come here.” George spoke firmly to the “entity” that had taken over her body, advising it to go away and leave the Harper family alone. When Annie returned to normal, she stated that the haunting centered around Janet, and that there were several entities behind it, including an old woman. George added: “This Gozer is a nasty piece of work, a sort of Black Magic chap. The other one, Elvie, is an elemental.” Annie explained that the auric field around Janet and her mother was “leaking,” and that when this happens, poltergeists can use the energy for their manifestations. The Shaws “cleaned” their auras by a well-known technique—moving their hands from head to foot around the contours of the body, about six inches away. The trouble, said the Shaws, was due to the negative atmosphere in the house—and Mrs. Harper admitted that she did feel bitter about her ex-husband, and had been keeping the feeling bottled up for years. One way of preventing a poltergeist from manifesting itself, said Annie Shaw, was to learn to control one’s energies, so they stop “leaking.”

  For a few weeks after this healing session, the manifestations almost ceased. Then, in late October, they started up again—furniture flung around, beds shaking, blankets ripped off beds—Playfair and Grosse recorded about four hundred incidents in a brief space. Pools of water also began to appear on the kitchen floor—pools with very distinct outlines, as if made by pouring water from a jug immediately onto the linoleum. One puddle was shaped like a human figure.

  The entity began doing things that could have caused serious damage. One evening, an iron grille from the bottom of a fireplace sailed across the room and landed on Jimmy’s pillow—a little closer, and it could have killed him. The next evening, the heavy gas fire was ripped out of the wall—it had been cemented into the brickwork. (Poltergeists can display frightening strength; in The Flying Cow, Playfair records a poltergeist that lifted a Jeep forty yards through the air.)

  On the advice of the veteran researcher E. J. Dingwall, Playfair tried communicating with the “entity.” When it rapped, he rapped back. When he asked it to use the usual code—one rap for yes, two for no—there followed a volley of loud raps. Playfair asked: “Don’t you realize you are dead?” which seemed to infuriate it. Crashes came from a bedroom, and when they rushed up, the room was in chaos, with objects scattered all over. Evidently “Gozer” was not anxious to make polite conversation.

  Maurice Grosse was more successful a few weeks later. “Did you die in this house?” The rap-code indicated “Yes.” “Will you go away?” A loud thud said “No.” The entity indicated that it had lived in the house for a long time—more than thirty years. It had left fifty-three years ago. When the raps seemed to become nonsensical, Grosse asked: “Are you having a game with me?” A cardboard box containing cushions flew across the room and struck Grosse on the forehead. Guy Playfair, who was outside the door with his tape recorder (the poltergeist had taken a dislike to him), recorded all this on tape; the box made an odd, swishing noise. Yet no one actually saw the box flying across the room. It was as if it had vanished from its old position, and rematerialized as it struck Maurice Grosse on the head.

  Like most poltergeists, this one was getting into its stride as it became more skilled. The children began to see shadowy figures, and seven-year-old Jimmy was terrified when he looked toward the wall, and saw a disembodied face—an old man’s face with big white teeth—staring at him. In front of Grosse and several other witnesses, it threw Janet off her chair, across the room, a distance of eight feet. As Rose, the eldest girl, went upstairs, the ghost literally pulled her leg—the investigators found her standing on one leg, the other stretched out behind her, unable to move. She was only able to walk when Grosse twisted her sideways.

  They decided to ask the ghost to write out a message, and left a pencil and paper. A few minutes later, they found that someone had written: “I will stay in this house. Do not show this to anyone else or I will retaliate.” Another message read: “Can I have a tea bag.” Mrs. Harper placed one on the table and, a few moments later, a second tea bag appeared beside it.

  When Mrs. Harper’s husband came to call to pay his maintenance money, he expressed disbelief in all this, and Mrs. Harper showed him the message—forgetting that it had ordered her not to. She said out loud: “I’m sorry, I forgot.” Another piece of paper appeared on the table: “A misunderstanding. Don’t do it again.”

  A few days after this, the Society for Psychical Research sent a team of investigators to look at the place. They had evidently decided that the poltergeist activity was all due to the girls. Balloons full of water were placed under the beds for some reason; and, when they burst, water dripped through the ceiling. When the team had left, Grosse and Playfair—who had been present—had some irritable things to say about the SPR’s obsession with fraud.

  By now it was very clear that Janet was the poltergeist’s main target. She was often thrown out of bed seven or eight times before she succeeded in getting to sleep. When she fell asleep, she twitched and moaned; Playfair began to feel increasingly that she was “possessed.” He recalled the case of Maria Ferreira, the South American girl who had been driven to suicide by a poltergeist, and felt some misgiving. On one occasion, with a photographer in the bedroom, Janet was hurled out of bed—the event was photographed—and then, as the photographer and Maurice Grosse tried to hold her, she went into convulsions, screamed hysterically, and bit Grosse. When finally put back into bed, she fell asleep. Later, there was a crash, and they found her lying on top of the radio set, still fast asleep.

  The following night, Janet had more convulsions, and wandered around, talking aloud. “Where’s Gober. He’ll kill you.”

  Two of Playfair’s friends from Brazil, who happened to be in London, called at the Enfield house, and succeeded in bringing Janet out of one of her trance-like states. Their view was that Janet was a powerful medium and ought to be trained to use her powers. One of the two Brazilian mediums wrote on a sheet of paper: “I see this child, Janet, in the Middle Ages, a cruel and wanton woman who caused suffering to families of yeomen—some of these seem to have now to get even with the family.” Soon after this, Janet began producing drawings, in a state of semi-trance; one of them showed a woman with blood pouring out of her throat, with the name “Watson” written underneath. Other drawings continued this theme of blood, knives and death. When Playfair asked Mrs. Harper if she knew of a Watson, she replied that it was the name of the previous tenants of the house. Mrs. Watson had died of a tumor of the throat.

  Playfair asked Janet if she could bend a spoon like Uri Geller. He glanced away for a moment, as Mrs. Harper spoke to him; when he looked back, the spoon was bent in the middle—it was lying in the center of the table. Janet said she had experienced a sudden feeling of headache as the spoon bent.

  In December 1977, the poltergeist began making noises—whistling and barking sounds. Maurice Grosse decided to try asking it to speak. “Call out my name, Maurice Grosse.” He went out of the room, and a strange voice said: “Maurice . . . O . . .” Grosse asked it to say its own name. “Joe Watson.” When Guy Playfair asked: “Do you know you are dead?” the voice said angrily: “Shut up!” And to further requests that it go away, it replied: “Fuck off.” Joe seemed to be incapable of polite conversation. When another researcher, Anita Gregory, asked it questions she was told to bugger off.

  The i
nvestigators wondered whether Janet could be simulating this voice, although it seemed unlikely; it was a masculine growl, and had an odd quality, as if electronically produced. (I have one of Guy Playfair’s tape recordings of the voice, and it reminds me strongly of a record I have of an electronic brain singing “Daisy, Daisy.”) The voice would not speak if the investigators were in the room. But their attempts were rewarded with long sentences. The voice now identified itself as Bill, and said it had a dog called Gober the Ghost. Asked why it kept shaking Janet’s bed it replied: “I was sleeping here.” “Then why do you keep on shaking it?” “Get Janet out.” Rose asked: “Why do you use bad language?” “Fuck off you,” replied Bill. And when Janet asked why it played games with them it replied: “I like annoying you.” “Where do you come from?” “From the graveyard.” It even named the graveyard—Durant’s Park, which is in the area.