Ghost Hunting as a Contemporary Folk Tradition: Blog 1: The Enfield Poltergeist Case

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.
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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:

• Audio recordings describing the happenings in real time and recordings of Janet speaking with a ghost voice.

Voice recordings of the ghost, ‘Bill Wilkins’ as heard (channelled) through Janet: ​

• Video and photographs.
  

Janet Hodgeson during the Enfield Poltergeist case. (13)

• Scientific experts: physicists, a psychiatrist, a neuropsychiatrist.
• Other experts: a hypnotist, various journalists, a magician (to see if there was trickery).
• Alternative experts: mediums, healers, psychics, clairvoyants. (14)

​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.
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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