Lead storyThe Enfield poltergeist: the case behind The Conjuring 2
The Enfield poltergeist, 1977 to 1979: the Hodgson family, the SPR investigators, Janet's later admission, the Warrens' brief visit, and Maurice Grosse's tapes.
More in this sectionHauntings · 03 filed
Hauntings: the cases and the houses
The hauntings behind the films and the ones that never got one: what the witnesses said, what the record shows, who investigated, and what happened to the house.
Every haunting is an address before it is a story. A farmhouse in Rhode Island, a council house in north London, a colonial on Long Island with quarter-moon windows. Someone lived there, someone said something moved, and then a chain of people arrived: police, priests, reporters, investigators with tape recorders, and eventually a screenwriter.
This section goes to the address. Each case is told in the order it happened, with the witnesses named as the record names them, the investigators’ own words where they left any, and a clear line between what was documented and what was told afterward. It also covers the equipment, the terms and the practice of looking for ghosts, so a reader knows what an EMF meter measures before deciding what a reading means.
Articles in this section
Lead story
Ghost hunting equipment explained: what each device actually measures
EMF meters, spirit boxes, EVP recorders, thermal cameras, REM pods: what each ghost hunting device physically measures and what ordinary things set it off.
What is a ghost? Apparitions, poltergeists and what the record shows
What people mean by a ghost, from Pliny's chained old man to the 1894 Census of Hallucinations, and the ordinary causes that have been studied and measured.