The summer of 1977 was distinctly cool and wet, particularly compared to the heatwave of the previous year. In August there were violent storms and heavy rainfall over much of the south east of England, leading to hot, clammy days under skies which sagged with rain. At the beginning of that month there was an abrupt and inexplicable fall of grass from the sky in Poole, Dorset. Toward the end, a fireball struck a house in Surrey, blowing up televisions in the process. Three days later, in a small semi-detached house in Enfield, North London, a chest of drawers would slide across the bedroom of eleven year old Janet Hodgson and begin a poltergeist haunting which still holds fascination over audiences today.
Polter-geist is a German word meaning ‘noisy spirit’. It deviates from a traditional haunting in many ways, most notably by the rapping, knocking and banging which accompanies it. Mostly, poltergeist hauntings occur in suburbia; in claustrophobic terraced homes or cramped flats, on housing estates that dead end onto scrubby woodland and undergrowth. They are distinctly domestic, the ghosts of staircases and kitchens and old metal pipes. They’ve been recorded smashing glasses and throwing marbles, slamming doors until the walls shake. It’s an invasion of sorts, a brittle, hostile energy that bounces around like a trapped, angry wasp.
Unlike other hauntings, poltergeists create disturbances on a large, noisy scale, thriving on disorder and panic. In stately homes and castles the resident ghosts are more refined; gliding grey ladies, titled lords, drowned lovers. In contrast, the poltergeists of the 70s and 80s erupted in messy homes filled with the smog of cigarette smoke and dirty tea-cups, woodchip wallpaper. These homes that are so familiar and lived-in, that bear witness to arguments and spot-picking and dirty trainers kicked off on worn carpets. It’s what makes the poltergeist most terrifying, in fiction and historical record—they seem to come out of nowhere, into homes just like yours. A malevolent ball of dark energy, they just need someone unhappy to attach to.
It has been noted that a large number of recorded poltergeist hauntings are centralized around teenage girls or young women. In a way, the hauntings mirror the turbulence of adolescence, all that heat and turmoil and repressed sexuality conjured into destructive energy. Look at Stephen King’s Carrie, a teenage girl living with a repressed mother whose telekinesis ignites into a lethal force once she begins menstruating. In the case of Annemarie Schaberl, a 19-year-old secretary in the town of Rosenheim in southern Bavaria, the outbreaks of power surges, exploding light fittings and heavy furniture moving of its own accord could be traced to her distress over a broken engagement. Teenage girls are trying to shed their skin, to fit in, to stand out, to make more noise and less noise and to be polite but draw boundaries and not draw attention to themselves because no-one likes a show-off. Perhaps a poltergeist is simply the energy of these confused and angry young women manifested as psychokinesis, repressed feelings rising to the surface like phantom hands that grab and tug and hurl, striking blows against the immovable object of their transition to adulthood.
“Our irrational, darker selves,” wrote novelist Elizabeth Bowen, “demand familiars.”
There is also the suggestion that a poltergeist event mirrors a turbulent or traumatic home environment. Back in Enfield, the ghost hunter Maurice Grosse who was sent to investigate the poltergeist hauntings, wrote of the Hodgson family: ‘Peggy Hodgson is a divorced mother of four children. Janet is reasonably bright, with a strong imagination. Her older sister Margaret is inclined to be over emotional. She cries a lot. Billy the youngest has a speech defect. The older brother Johnny was sent to a school for troubled children’.
It’s this chaotic home life that makes such fertile ground for the poltergeist, with its tricks and games. They like discord. Most recorded hauntings involve moving furniture and smashed crockery, usually in the presence of one or more of the family members. Sometimes the entity will develop a deep, gurgling voice that rants and swears and barks like a dog. You can still hear the recordings of ‘Bill’ speaking through Janet Hodgson, an eerie smoker’s cackle expelled from the mouth of an eleven year old girl. The Bell Witch, the infamous Tennessee poltergeist of 1817, targeted the youngest daughter, eleven year old Betsy Bell. It would pull her hair and slap her, often leaving welts on her face and body, telling her, ‘you know I can follow you anywhere’.
Our homes are—often, but not always—a safe space. I recently interviewed a woman who became agoraphobic in her thirties because: ‘home is the only place I don’t feel consumed with panic’. We raise children in our homes, putting safety handles on cupboard doors, covers over the plug sockets. We teach them not to touch hot surfaces or reach for heavy objects. We put parental controls on the televisions and computers and protect them, protect ourselves. So how frightening then to think that these walls could be breached by an entity so insidious it may already have been inside, waiting. Waiting. More frightening still to think that if—as is believed—the poltergeist is a manifestation of psychological trauma, then it is our children who are responsible for it, turning all that inner turmoil and violence on us. The call, as they say, is coming from inside the house.
We find comfort in ghost stories because the scare is safe and contained, held at a distance from the home you live in with its locked doors and fastened windows. Besides, ghosts and poltergeists are ambiguous, aren’t they? Sure, we’ve all heard stories, but there’s no scientific proof, not really. Most people have real things to be afraid of—illness and employment and civil unrest. Compared to a looming divorce or a dark shadow on a scan, a poltergeist is probably a welcome relief. Yet it is in exactly these times that we know belief in ghosts and spiritualism tends to spike. Perhaps it provides us with a sense of security, that there is something beyond our mortal power, however insubstantial the evidence. A 2024 RealClear Opinion Research poll showed us that 61.4 percent of Americans believe in ghosts. In the UK, this goes down to 42%, still an increase of previous years. We live in the long shadows of wars and pandemics, a frightening era that we are struggling to make sense of. It’s a time of frantic change and a constant flow of information, not all of it genuine. It’s into this environment that hauntings—particularly the kind which thrive on confusion and dread—take root.
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