Religion & Spirituality
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EP-1 : the enfield poltergeist.
Investigations[edit]
Paranormal[edit]
Society for Psychical Research (SPR) members Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair reported "curious whistling and barking noises coming from Janet's general direction." Although Playfair maintained the paranormal activity was genuine and wrote in his later book This House Is Haunted: The True Story of a Poltergeist (1980) that an "entity" was to blame for the Enfield disturbances, he often doubted the children's veracity and wondered if they were playing tricks and exaggerating. Still, Grosse and Playfair believed that even though some of the alleged poltergeist activity was faked by the girls, other incidents were genuine.[3][7][8] Other paranormal investigators who studied the case included American demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, who visited the Enfield house in 1978 and were convinced that the events had a supernatural explanation.[3]
Janet was detected in trickery; a video camera in an adjoining room caught her bending spoons and attempting to bend an iron bar.[9][10] Grosse had observed Janet banging a broom handle on the ceiling and hiding his tape-recorder.[11] According to Playfair, one of Janet's voices, whom she called "Bill", displayed a "habit of suddenly changing the topic—it was a habit Janet also had".[4] When Janet and Margaret admitted "pranking" to journalists, Grosse and Playfair compelled the girls to retract their confessions.[3] The two men were mocked by other researchers for being easily duped.[12]
Psychical researcher Renée Haynes noted that doubts were raised about the alleged poltergeist voice at the SPR conference at Cambridge in 1978, where videocassettes from Enfield were examined.[13] SPR investigator Anita Gregory stated the Enfield case had been "overrated", characterising several episodes of the girls' behaviour as "suspicious" and speculated that the girls had "staged" some incidents for the benefit of journalists seeking a sensational story.[3][7] John Beloff, a former president of the SPR, investigated and suggested Janet was practising ventriloquism. Both Beloff and Gregory came to the conclusion that Janet and Margaret were playing tricks on the investigators.[14]