The Enfield Poltergeist: How director of Apple TV’s new docudrama used the Hodgson sisters and 200 hours of tapes
More than 200 hours of audio tapes provide the best “evidence” for the Enfield poltergeist there is.
Screams and bangs; interviews with those who said they had just experienced the supernatural; the voice of a 72-year-old man purportedly coming out of an 11-year-old girl called Janet.
They form the basis of a four-part docuseries exploring a phenomenon that gripped the north London suburb of Enfield – and the rest of the country – in the 1970s.
Not that director Jerry Rothwell is setting out to prove or disprove any theories with The Enfield Poltergeist. He wants to keep audiences in the space between knowing and not knowing, he told Sky News.
“It’s about how do we know what’s real and what might be beyond our perceptions, beyond our senses?”
Janet, played by Olivia Booth-Ford, appeared to be the focus of the poltergeist. Pic: Apple TV+
Set in a reconstruction of the semi-detached council house where the Hodgson family was seemingly plagued by the paranormal for 18 months, the series weaves together audio recordings with contemporary interviews and photos from the time.
Paranormal investigator Maurice Grosse from the Society for Psychical Research was sent to investigate, spending months at the family home between 1977 and 1979. The audio he recorded there is central to the series. As well as interviewing people, he would leave the tape running for long periods.
“What you get out is a sense of the context of family life that’s going on. Sometimes you’ll hear a noise, a scream, a bang or a rap and people’s response to it,” Rothwell said.
But the origin of those noises is “incredibly ambiguous”.
“I don’t think there’s many incidents where we see the paranormal cause of something, what we see is the effects of this on people.
“If we see a kettle fall over, we catch it in the last inches of its flight rather than see how it started – which I think is consistent with people’s experience of the paranormal.”
Grosse (played by Ettridge) was sent to investigate the paranormal activities at the council house in Enfield. Pic: Apple TV+
Witnessing the unexplainable
Former Daily Mirror photographer Graham Morris was one of the first people at the Enfield home after the Hodgsons’ neighbours called the newspaper about the strange events.
“Up to 18 months I spent on and off in that house and saw so, so much happen, from the first night being hit by that Lego brick,” he told Sky News.
He said as soon as 11-year-old Janet entered the house, loose objects such as marbles and Lego pieces started to “whiz around the room” – with one of them hitting him above the eye and leaving a lump that lasted days.
From his vantage point through the camera lens, he could see nobody had thrown it, he said.
It was “unexplainable” he said – but he knew it was “true”.
“So, so much happened. It would have been impossible for the girls or any member of the family to have done it. It’s just too much. It was constant, it was relentless.”
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One of Mr Morris’s photos was used by the paranormal investigators as evidence of the supernatural; they said it showed Janet levitating.
The image of Janet “flying across the room” was taken in the dark, with Mr Morris operating the camera remotely from downstairs, primed to press the button at any noise.
“They [the paranormal investigators] are the experts. If they want to say she’s levitating, fine.
“I was there as a photographer. I’m not there to say what’s happening – I’ve got my own theories – but as a pure layman, I just left it to the experts.”
So as one of the few witnesses still alive, what is Mr Morris’ theory?
“I don’t believe in ghosts, I don’t believe that’s what it was.
“I believe that there was something that as yet we don’t know about, some sort of force that was centered on Janet.”
Janet was trying to relate to her family, who “for various reasons, weren’t that communicative”, he said.
“She must have found it so, so frustrating that for some reason this energy is being let off and things are happening – kinetic energy, so things are moving.”
Janet and Margaret’s bedroom was the centre of much of the paranormal activity. Pic: Apple TV+
Interviewing the Hodgson sisters
In the new Apple TV documentary, merging recreation with reality went as far as the set, which featured items from the Hodgson family home including pots and pans, a stack of Jackie magazines – and even some Lego.
They were provided by the Hodgson sisters, Janet and Margaret, who were 11 and 13 when the strange happenings started.
Both are interviewed in the series. Rothwell said he wanted to put them back at the heart of the story.
“For me, it is primarily their story and it was absolutely crucial to involve them in that because I think otherwise… you are making them public property without much control.
“These events at the time were very traumatic and have in many ways shaped the direction of their lives.
“Firstly, because of the events themselves, but also because of people’s fascination with those events and the ways in which that fascination, you know, fixes who they are.”
Christopher Ettridge as paranormal investigator Maurice Grosse. Pic: Apple TV+
Marrying past and present
Actors in the series also lip sync the recordings from the audio tapes – a skill that was easier for the younger TikTok generation to master than the older cast members, Rothwell said.
“You’re taking away one of the tools that an actor has in their armoury, which is how they deliver a line.”
A lot of the actors said the key was “finding the way the person breathed – and as soon as you got that, you could lip sync”.
The tapes also became something of a director in their own right, Rothwell said.
“The more we listened to the tapes, the more you’d realise about what it was telling you about things that were going on in the room.
“We’d be shooting a scene and we suddenly realised there’s no way that person can be in that position, they have to be over there.”
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The Enfield poltergeist has sometimes taken on something of a life of its own. It was front-page news in the 1970s – not always portrayed in ways the Hodgson family agreed with – and has spawned multiple documentaries as well as inspiring The Conjuring 2.
What is sometimes forgotten in retellings – and what Rothwell wanted to get back to – is that this is a real family, and their story.
“It was important to honour people’s experience,” he said. “You know, people are absolutely saying they have had these experiences, they’ve seen this, they’ve heard this – and I wasn’t there, so who am I to argue with it?
“This is essentially a working-class family with few resources who are beset by middle-class ghost hunters or physicists or academics, and whose house sort of came out of their control.”
The Enfield Poltergeist is available on Apple TV+ from 27 October.
UK
Mohamed al Fayed: Former royal security head says he warned Royal Family before Diana went on holiday with businessman
The former head of royal protection says he warned the Royal Family about Mohamed al Fayed’s reputation before Princess Diana took her sons on holiday with him.
The former Harrods owner, who died last year at the age of 94, was described as a “monster” earlier this week by lawyers representing 37 alleged sexual abuse victims.
The women say he raped and sexually assaulted them while they worked at the luxury department store, prowling the shop floor and “cherry-picking” women to be brought to his executive suite.
Now, Mr Davies says people were aware of the Egyptian businessman’s reputation as far back as the 1990s, and that he raised concerns about him to the Royal Family.
Princess Diana on the quay of the residence of Mohamed al Fayed in Saint Tropez on 20 July 1997. File pic: AP
“This was a man who I would be concerned [about] if a relative of mine was going on holiday with him, let alone the future king and his brother and their mother, Princess Diana,” Dai Davies told Sky News.
Mohamed al Fayed during a match at Craven Cottage stadium in 2013: File pic: PA
In July 1997, a month before she died, Princess Diana went on holiday with Fayed and his wife to their residence in St Tropez.
She took the two young princes with her – a holiday Prince Harry described as “heaven” in his 2023 memoir Spare.
“I was horrified because I was aware of some of the allegations even then that were going around,” said Mr Davies.
“I was aware that he had tried very hard to ingratiate himself with the Royal Family and obviously knowing, as I did, the reputation he was alleged [to have] then, I was concerned, and I took the opportunity to inform the Royal Family.”
Princess Diana, Prince William (right) and Prince Harry (left) in Saint Tropez on 14 July 1997. File pic: AP
Mr Davies says he was told: “Her Majesty is aware.”
“The rest is history,” he said.
Buckingham Palace told Sky News it had no comment on the allegations.
Fulham ‘deeply disturbed’ by allegations
Fulham FC, a football club that was owned by Fayed between 1997 and 2013, has said it is “deeply troubled” by the dozens of “disturbing” sexual abuse allegations against the businessman.
The Premier League club also said it is “in the process of establishing whether anyone at the club is or has been affected” by this alleged behaviour.
Mohamed al Fayed waves a Fulham scarf in front of supporters in 2012. Pic: Reuters
However, Gaute Haugenes, who managed the club’s women’s team between 2001 and 2003, told the BBC extra precautions were taken to protect female players from Fayed.
“We were aware he liked young, blonde girls. So we just made sure that situations couldn’t occur. We protected the players.”
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‘The door was locked behind me’
A former Harrods employee told Sky News she was summoned to Fayed’s apartment when she began working for the department store at 19 years old.
She was told the meeting was a “job review” before “the door was locked behind me”.
“I saw his bedroom door partially open – there were sex toys on view,” she said.
“I felt petrified. I perched myself at the very end of the sofa and then… my boss, the person I worked for, pushed himself onto me.”
Read more: ‘One of the worst cases of corporate sexual exploitation’
Harrods said in a statement on Thursday it was “utterly appalled” by the allegations of abuse and apologised to Fayed’s alleged victims.
The department store has also set up a page on its website inviting former employees to come forward if they have allegations.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
The legal team involved in a civil claim against Harrods for allegedly failing to provide a safe system of work for its employees said they aimed to seek justice for the victims of a “vast web of abuse”.
Lily Allen says she had her children “for all the wrong reasons,” at a “high pressure” point in her career when she felt “overwhelmed”.
The singer and actress had her two daughters, Marnie, 12 and Ethel, 11, with her ex-husband Sam Cooper when she was in her mid-20s.
By the time she became a mum, she’d already had hit singles including Smile and The Fear, released two studio albums and received a Brit Award for best British female solo artist.
Speaking about motherhood on the BBC podcast Miss Me?, which Allen hosts with her long-time friend Miquita Oliver, she said: “I think I had children for all the wrong reasons, really.
“Because I was yearning for unconditional love, which I haven’t felt in my life since I was a child.”
The now 39-year-old star added: “And also, my career was at such high speed, high pressure, and I felt like very overwhelmed by what was happening. I just didn’t get much respite you know?
“And I felt like the only way to stop people hassling me was to say, ‘It’s not about me, actually this is about this other person that’s inside me’.
When asked by Oliver if it worked, Allen says: “Yeah, they did leave me alone. I don’t think I really understood what was happening, what I got myself into.”
The daughter of actor Keith Allen and film producer Alison Owen, she went on to discuss her own childhood.
“My mum, bless her, had children really early as well, and she really struggled. But she doesn’t really talk about the struggle. And so… She inadvertently gaslit me into thinking it was, you know, easy.
“You just sort of throw the kid over your shoulder and you get on with it.
“Her job was very static, and in one place and went to an office and mine wasn’t like that at all. It wasn’t easy. It just wasn’t easy.”
Allen is married to Stranger Things star David Harbour
The ‘nasty scars’ caused by absent parents
Allen previously told the Radio Times podcast that while she loves her children, having them “ruined her career”.
She said her decision to prioritise them over her pop career was a decision she made so as not to inflict the “nasty scars” of being an “absent” parent onto them.
She also said the myth of having it all “really annoyed” as it simply was not true.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Allen, whose younger brother is Game Of Thrones actor Alfie Allen, married Stranger Things star David Harbour in 2020.
Away from her music career, Allen has branched out into acting over the last few years, starring in two plays in London’s West End, and winning a role in Sky drama Dreamland last year.
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