The Enfield Poltergeist: The Voice of a Dead Man in a Girl's Throat
There is a photograph, taken in a council house in north London in 1977, that has been argued over for half a century. It shows a girl of eleven in mid-air above her bed, arms flung out, hair lifted, caught by a motor-drive camera in the instant before she came down. Look at it long enough and you see a girl levitating. Look at it a little longer and you see a girl jumping. The whole of the Enfield case lives in that gap, and no amount of staring has ever closed it. What happened at 284 Green Street between August 1977 and the autumn of 1978 is the most thoroughly documented poltergeist case in British history and possibly in anyone's. It was witnessed not only by the family but by police officers, journalists, neighbors, and two investigators from the Society for Psychical Research who all but moved in. There are more than a hundred and eighty hours of tape recordings. There are sworn statements. There is a policewoman's signed account of a chair sliding across a floor with ...