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In 1977, the UK was gripped by a live poltergeist case unfolding in the news. It wasn’t in a creepy old manor house in the countryside, but a council house in Enfield, North London. As supernatural investigator Maurice Grosse said in a BBC news feature: As far as documentation is concerned, it may be the best case of all time. (1) Ghosts, ghost hunting and communication with ghosts appears to be a longstanding folk tradition that has gone back at least as far as 4,000 years. The Guinness World Records website boasts the oldest depiction of a ghost engraved on a Babylonian clay tablet.  The tablet depicts a male ghost being led back to the afterlife, curator Irving Finkel says. Photo: British Museum / Line drawing: James Fraser and Chris Cobb for The First Ghosts (2) Dr Irving Finkel who discovered the find explained ‘If you had a ghost and it wouldn’t go away, then you’d have to get professional help. The man who wrote it was one of these professional exorcists.’ (3) The phrase ‘ghost hunter’ appears in a 1798 work of fiction entitled The Animated Skeleton. (4) The Victorians famously loved a séance and in 1882, the Society of Psychical Research was formed ‘to conduct scholarly research into human experiences that challenge contemporary scientific models’. (5) One of the first notable ghost hunters was Harry Price, Honorary Secretary of the University of London Council for Psychical Research. This is a film of him explaining the concept of ghost hunting to the Movietone News Theatre channel in 1936: We can see a rich tradition in ghost hunting throughout history, though until the British catalyst of the Enfield poltergeist case, the job was left to professional mediums, exorcists and paranormal investigators to take on the hunt. I believe that this case incepted a contemporary folkloric tradition. Dundes is quoted by Trubshaw in his discussion of contemporary folklore, noting that ‘The ‘folk’ of contemporary folklore are:’ …any group of people whatsoever who share at least one common factor. It does not matter what the linking factor is - it could be a common occupation, language or religion - but what is important is that a group formed for whatever reason will have some traditions which it calls its own. (6) In this tradition, the group comprises those who have an interest in the paranormal and who follow the narrative of haunting investigations. At the time of Enfield, interest was sparked and fed by newspapers and television. Reporter and author of This House is Haunted, Guy Lyon Playfair, notes that ‘The Enfield poltergeist made the front page of a national newspaper 10 days after it began in 1977.’ (7) It was a two-year horror story of flying furniture, sleep deprivation, levitation, possession and injury in a council house of four kids and their single mum. At the time, the nation was experiencing class divides with labour strikes and inflation at 70%. There was a feeling of national instability and fear with the IRA bombings and National Front demonstrations and counter-demonstrations. Accusations of a hoax were constantly dogging the haunted family. Journalist Will Storr looks back at the case in 2007; ‘The endless battle between sceptics and the believers raged around [Janet] when she was eleven years old…’ (8) A self-described sceptic I interviewed with many years of ghost hunting experience volunteered that ‘press coverage in the past was quite sensationalist about these cases.’ (9) James Hogg reported for the BBC in 1977: ‘In every story of things that go bump in the night, there are two possibilities; one, that it is a hoax, two, that there is something going on beyond the grasp of the human mind’ (10) as if there were only two possible answers. BBC archive report from Enfield, video:  An article from the Cambridge Evening News in 1978 discusses how much of the Enfield case was a hoax and whether the methods of Grosse and Playfair were scientifically sound: When attempts were made to challenge the two intrepid investigators… Mssrs Grosse and Playfair made it quite clear that they did not want to waste time considering the possibilities of “fraud” or “cheating” (11) Maurice Grosse was using a ghost hunting methodology that had likely evolved from other members of the SPR (12), namely using any technology and expertise available to try and explain the phenomena. I propose that these methods go on to become part of the ghost hunting tradition:
 Janet Hodgeson during the Enfield Poltergeist case. (13)
This case endures, even today (for example, in the Conjuring 2 (15) movie and The Battersea Poltergeist podcast (16)) and I propose that this case and its methods of ghost hunting start to make the framework of a ghost hunt a tradition in itself. Despite this case being far from the only coverage of a haunting, it was the one that gained the most commercial attention. More people had TVs, more people were primed to understand the concepts of poltergeists and ghost hunting and it was covered widely in the press. Enfield is when people could really start to ‘join in’ with the case; to share their views and look at the collected evidence. This is what Koven regards as ostension. (17) In this instance, people are still looking at the case from a distance, while Grosse and others act as the ghost hunters. However, in the next decades, the involvement of the public gets closer and closer to the source.  Cambridge Evening News & Daily Mirror newspaper images from 1978. (1) Maurice Grosse speaking in a report by Hogg, James. “The Enfield Poltergeist”. BBC. 1977. Accessed 19th April 2024 https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/the-enfield-poltergeist-1977/z6xnrmn (2) Gershon, Livia. “3,500-Year-Old Babylonian Tablet May Contain Earliest Known Depiction of a Ghost“ Smithsonian Mag. 2021. Accessed 24th April 2024 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/3500-year-old-babylonian-tablet-may-hold-earliest-known-ghost-image-180978923/ Creative Commons (3) Atwal, Sanj. “Ancient tablet with world’s oldest ghost drawing explained by man who deciphered it”. Guinness World Records. 2023. Accessed 9th April 2024 https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2023/10/ancient-tablet-with-worlds-oldest-ghost-drawing-explained-by-man-who-deciphered-760305 (4) Vasa, Gustavus. The Animated Skeleton. Printed at the Minerva-Press, for William Lane. 1798. https://data.historicaltexts.jisc.ac.uk/view?pubId=ecco-0128200101&terms=%22ghost%20hunter%22&sort=date%2Basc (5) Society for Psychical Research. Accessed 2nd April 2024 https://www.spr.ac.uk/ (6) (Dundes 1980: 6-7; emphasis in original), quoted in Trubshaw, Rob. Contemporary Folklore. House of Albion. 2002. p 73 (7) Playfair, Guy Lyon. This House Is Haunted: Investigation of the Enfield Poltergeist. London, England: Souvenir Press. 1980. p ix (8) Storr, Will. Will Storr versus the Supernatural: One Man’s Search for the Truth about Ghosts. London: Ebury Press. 2006 p 186 (9) Appendix 1. (10) Hogg, James. “The Enfield Poltergeist”. BBC. 1977. Accessed 19th April 2024 https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/the-enfield-poltergeist-1977/z6xnrmn (11) Alexander, John. “Pitfalls Facing Psychic Investigator”. Cambridge Evening News. 31st March 1978. p 18 https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0003740/19780331/018/0018 (12) The Society for Psychical Research. (13) Accessed 5th April 2024. https://deliria.it/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/enfield-janet-hodgson.jpg Free to share and use. (14) Willin, Melvin. “The Enfield Poltergeist”. PSI Encyclopedia. 2015. Accessed 18th April 2024 https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/enfield-poltergeist#Methods_of_Investigation (15) James Wan. The Conjuring 2. USA. Warner Bros. 2016. (16) Danny Robins, The Battersea Poltergeist. UK. BBC Radio 4. 2022. (17) Koven, Mikel J. “Most Haunted and the Convergence of Traditional Belief and Popular Television”. Folklore, Vol. 118, No. 2 (2007), p 184 https://www.jstor.org/stable/30035420
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Ghostwatch was a 1992 mockumentary written by Steven Volk and broadcast to 11 million viewers in the UK on Halloween after the watershed time of 9pm. Many of the viewers believed Ghostwatch to be a real, live investigation. We know this because of the one million callers (18) who tried the phone-in number during the broadcast, because of tens of thousands of complaints to Ofcom (19) and the newspaper coverage after the event. Authenticity was added to the show by using well-known and trusted TV presenters of the era. These presenters delivered a script that used the narrative of the Enfield poltergeist case (see previous blog) as a legend text. Koven might suggest that the story was being told ostensibly, as if it were unfolding live on television. The term ostension, at least within folkloristics, refers to the presentation (as opposed to the representation) of a legend text (Dégh 1995, 237); instead of a legendary narrative being told (that is, represented through storytelling), it is shown as direct action (that is, presented). (20) The audience weren’t just watching it, we were living it. The viewers calling in believed they were participating in the show, kids all over the UK couldn’t sleep for fear of child-molester ghost Pipes (me included) and - as above - complaints were lodged about how the nation was deceived and traumatised by the program. (21) Stith Thompson’s motif-index names some of the broader tropes of a haunting story; ‘abode of the dead’, ‘ghosts haunt buildings’, ‘ghost summoned’, ‘ghost seen by two or more persons…’ (22) Combined with these, the legend text of the Enfield poltergeist case of 15 years previous must also have stayed with the nation. Indeed, the writer of Ghostwatch settled out of court for his liberal use of the Enfield story as the backbone of his screenplay. (23) In the instance of Ghostwatch, the performers are enacting a ‘text’ based on the happenings at Enfield, something Tom Burns describes in Folklore in the Mass Media: ...the folklore item when considered as a message transmitted by a sender (performer) is a fusion of traditional cognitive codes (texts) and traditional paralinguistic and non-verbal codes (loosely referred to as performance style), the whole process of which is both delineated by a traditional physical and social situation and complicated by the continual feedback of the traditional audience. (24) The ‘cognitive codes’ of Ghostwatch include thousands of years of beliefs and traditions around ghosts and hauntings. However, ‘The continual feedback of the traditional audience’ in Ghostwatch was unanticipated - phoning in during the broadcast, registering complaints afterwards, living with PTSD and so forth. Ghostwatch galvanised an appetite for ostension and Most Haunted arrived eight years later to deliver. Most Haunted Most Haunted was a British television show that ran from 2002-2010 on Living TV and has been revived since. The framework of the investigation follows the SPR blueprint that was made famous in broadcast media by the Enfield poltergeist case. Most Haunted combined this with the broadcast feel of the fictional Ghostwatch at the start of the reality television era. Despite an Ofcom ruling declaring Most Haunted an ‘entertainment’ show to clear it of fraud allegations, it sought to broadcast legitimate paranormal investigations. (25)  Most Haunted image from TheTVDB website (free to use and share). Most Haunted and especially its live broadcasts brought UK viewers closer to the legend-trip experience for its viewers. Kinsella posits that: Legend-trippers are practicing the basics of magic— they are using techniques that artfully merge the rhetoric of supernatural legends with ritual behavior outlined by these same legends to effectively alter consciousness… (26) The makeup of the investigative team is important: the presenter delivers the text (the history of the venue) using a presentational approach to the stories by living the experience in the location and perhaps experiencing something of the past. The psychic/medium employs their own ritualistic approaches to contacting spirits and satisfies the believer. The parapsychologist/sceptic brings modern-day science-based equipment.
The lights are low (or off, with night vision cameras) and there is a lot of waiting for things to happen. A liminal time and space is held and our - also liminal - guide, the psychic medium, stands at the intersection between worlds. Trubshaw refers to some of these concepts as ‘placeless places’ and ‘liminal journeys’. (27) More than just entertainment, Most Haunted taught the world how to ghost hunt. We could play along, use terminology like ‘orbs’, see paranormal equipment being set up and triggered and imagine ourselves in the show. There is nothing to suggest that we must have a psychic, a sceptic and a presenter as a ghost hunting team, but that is how it has been done since at least the 1950s which can be seen from Pathé news reports. (28) Neither has any particular scientific equipment been able to prove the existence of a ghost, but from radar and tape recorders in the 1950’s to cutting-edge imaging in 2024, technology must be part of the equation. Games of connection too must be used, such as calling the name of a ‘spirit’ and/or getting it to communicate through a ouija board, dowsing, table-tipping and such. Now we know how to ghost hunt and along with many copycat shows and youtube channels, we pack up our kit and move to the modern day investigation. (18) ‘During the show viewers were asked to ring in with their own ghost sightings on 081 811 8181 - the standard number for BBC phone-ins at the time, used on shows including Crimewatch and Going Live! The idea was that when people called up they were greeted with a message that told them the show was fiction. But the lines were deluged by what was later estimated to have been around 1 million calls to the BBC switchboard. And with only five operators answering the phones most people could only hear an engaged line, which only convinced them the show might be real.’Wilkinson, Damon. Grimsditch. White, Steven. “The TV show so terrifying it left children with PTSD and has never been allowed to air again in 30 years”. Manchester Evening News. 21st October 2023. Accessed 18th April 2024 https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/nostalgia/terrifying-ghostwatch-left-children-ptsd-27937687 (19) Ghostwatch had an estimated 20,000 to 50,000 complaints. Barnett, David. “Ghostwatch: The 1992 paranormal investigation that just had to be true, because it was on the BBC“ Independent. 30th October 2017. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/halloween-ghostwatch-bbc-1992-supernatural-ghosts-michael-parkinson-a8021341.html (20) Koven, Mikel J. “Most Haunted and the Convergence of Traditional Belief and Popular Television”. Folklore, Vol. 118, No. 2 (2007), p 184 https://www.jstor.org/stable/30035420 (21) The Mirror comments that viewers suffered with PTSD. Delaney, Zoe. “BBC show Ghostwatch left viewers so terrified that it has never been aired again” The Mirror. 31st October 2023. Accessed 15th March https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/bbc-show-ghostwatch-left-viewers-31315985 (22) Thompson, Stith. Motif-Index of Folk-Literature; a Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books, and Local Legends. Bloomington :Indiana University Press, 1955-58. E480, E280, E380, E421.5 (23) Playfair, Guy Lyon. This House Is Haunted: Investigation of the Enfield Poltergeist. London, England: Souvenir Press. 1980. p 272 (24) Burns, Tom. "Folklore in the Mass Media: Television." Folklore Forum 2(4):90-106. 1969. (25) “Ghost show cleared of deception” BBC News. 5th December 2005. Accessed 24th April 2024. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4500322.stm (26) Kinsella, Michael. Legend-Tripping Online : Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong's Hat, University Press of Mississippi, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/herts/detail.action?docID=746925 Created from herts on 2024-04-17. p 55 (27) Trubshaw, Bob. The metaphors and rituals of place and time-an introduction to liminality. Mercian Mysteries 22 (1995). Accessed 24th April 2024 (28) Ghost Hunters (1953) Pathé https://cutt.ly/kw3hmnQ7 Pathé Probes that Ghost (1957) https://cutt.ly/Uw3hk3J5 Dig that Ghost (1964) Pathé https://cutt.ly/0w3hTuMH I recently searched Google for ‘most haunted places in Britain’ and the results were telling: the top hit was Parkdean Resorts, offering a list of 10 most haunted places and ghost hunting days out. (29) It’s clear that now, ghost hunting is a pastime for many people in the UK. In fact, statistics from YouGov (2018) report that ‘1% of the UK population… say that they communicate with ghosts or take part in paranormal investigations’. (30) Mark A. Eaton suggests that ghost hunting may be a modern-day ‘quest for authentic spiritual experiences’, a symptom of the decline in confidence in organised religion. (31) Indeed, The Guardian newspaper reports that ‘Religion is even less likely to provide comfort and answers now – in the latest British census, less than half were expected to say they were Christian, (32) a fall from 71.6% 20 years ago.’ (33) Ghost hunting for fun is a big departure from the hoax versus real debate in the newspapers from the 1970s surrounding the Enfield poltergeist case and a step through the screen into our own Most Haunted fantasies. Far from the SPR’s ‘scholarly research’ (34) goals, a ghost hunt in the UK today is a night out, a hobby and a social gathering. A presenter ghost hunter I interviewed told me that he got into ghost hunting after a suicide attempt, ‘one doctor just said, kind of bluntly, you need to get out the house more’. (35) Certainly my experience of a ghost hunt in Nottingham involved a kind and supportive community of people and fits perfectly with Hobsbawm’s description of an ‘invented tradition’: ...a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past. (36) On my UK Ghost Hunts experience, the tradition and practices are followed thus:
A legend-trip involves a journey to a specific location and/or the performance of certain prescribed actions that, according to local legend, have the potential to elicit a supernatural experience… [with the] belief that the legend could be more than just a fictional story. (37)
The terminology used in the ghost hunt was notable. ‘Vigil’ was used to describe sitting in the dark and watching and waiting which has spiritual or religious overtones. It could have been a ‘session’, a ‘gathering’, an ‘observation’ or anything else. Likewise ‘spirit’ is used in connection to the ghosts that are being hunted and is suggestive of afterlife. Although the ghost hunt asks the participant to make their own assumptions around what is occurring, we are led via the terminology of positive assumption. A hypnotist friend who attended the ghost hunt with me drew my attention to the verbal ‘framing’ by our hosts. (38) In pointing out when sounds or movements weren’t spirits, they actually implied that other occurrences were spirits. Trubshaw is in accord, noting that ‘Vocal emphasis and numerous ‘framing techniques’ in the narrative style are employed (more-or-less self-consciously) by the teller to enliven the narrative’. (39) We cannot yet discover solid evidence that ghosts are or are not spirits of the dead, so to have a ghost hunting experience and allow our confirmation bias is gratifying. Linda Degh suggests a possible reason for the lure of the supernatural in contemporary culture: While their lives become technologically and scientifically more efficient, people turn to the unresolvable mysteries of life and death, and they crave more religious miracles and supernatural verifications than ever before. (40) Self-described sceptic Hayley Stevens also noted that ‘...people who participate in Ghost hunting like this are more primed to find meaning in randomness…’ (41) I was born in 1979 and when I read about ghost hunting, I asked a friend if I could stay in her haunted pub and if we could use a ouija board and recording equipment to look for ghosts. I didn’t have access to the internet until years later. Stevens says that the online connection initially helped potential ghost hunters to find one another, but ‘If you tried to [do a private ghost hunt] now, you probably wouldn't be able to. A lot of places require you to have public liability insurance, quite rightly.’ (42) A timeline of a growing contemporary ghost hunting tradition The recognisable methodology of ghost hunting appeared in the mid 1900s and was later popularised in the UK by the Enfield poltergeist case of the 1970s. The case was broad-reaching via newspapers and on television and analysed in a hoax/real dichotomy. In the 1990s, the Ghostwatch accidental hoax in popular culture galvanised a nation in their fear and excitement around ghosts in a time when TV was sparse in its channels and 11 million viewers saw the same show in real time. In the early 2000s we got to see the ‘real’ version of this event on Living TV’s Most Haunted and experience the methodology through the presenter and her team. Now, we get to partake in ghost hunting ourselves for the price of a ticket.  Image taken at my participant observation in Nottingham (with faces obscured for anonymity) and posted on the UKGE Facebook group after the event. In taking part in a legend-trip with no possible conclusion apart from those we draw ourselves, we are satisfying our need for fun, connection and acknowledgement of death. With our disappearing faith, we have invented a growing folk tradition of ghost hunting that involves ritual, belief, science and community to celebrate our lives. (29) 10 Most Haunted Places in England | Ghost Hunting Days Out Accessed 29th February 2024 (30) https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/21446-who-are-people-communicate-spirits Accessed 14th March 2024. This is public data. (31) Eaton, Marc A. “‘Give Us a Sign of Your Presence’: Paranormal Investigation as a Spiritual Practice.” Sociology of Religion 76, no. 4 (2015): 389–412. P 390 http://www.jstor.org/stable/24580020 (32) Sherwood, Harriet. “Less than half of Britons expected to tick ‘Christian’ in UK census“. The Guardian. Accessed 23rd April 2024 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/20/less-that-half-of-britons-expected-to-tick-christian-in-uk-census (33) Saner, Emine. “Spooky Britain: how ghosts became a national obsession”. The Guardian. 2022. Accessed 23rd April 2024 https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/apr/06/spooky-britain-how-ghosts-became-a-national-obsession (34) Society for Psychical Research. Accessed 2nd April 2024 https://www.spr.ac.uk/ (35) Appendix 2. (36) Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition. of Canto Classics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. p 1 (37) Kinsella, Michael. Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong's Hat, University Press of Mississippi, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/herts/detail.action?docID=746925 Created from Herts on 2024-04-17. (38) Appendix 3. (39) Trubshaw, Rob. Contemporary Folklore. House of Albion. 2002. p 76 (40) Degh, Linda. 1991. “What Is the Legend After All?”. Contemporary Legend 1 (December):11-38. https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/cl/article/view/33555 p 28 (41) Stevens, Hayley. “The Worst Ghosts of 2003”. Hayley is a Ghost. Accessed 7th March 2024 https://hayleyisaghost.co.uk/the-worst-ghosts-of-2023/ (42) Appendix 1. BibliographyJournals:
Books:
Online Source
Images:
TV:
Radio:
Appendices: Appendix 1: Transcription of interview with Hayley Stephens Appendix 2: Transcription of interview with Paul Gannon Appendix 3: Transcription of interview with Lloydie James Lloyd Note: All agreed to have their names used herein. Contact author for appendices. |
AuthorKaty is an improviser, writer, theatre maker and folklorist-in-training. ArchivesCategories |
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