I photographed terrifying Enfield Haunting – I thought Halloween ghost stories were nonsense until chilling moment
AS a tornado of objects ‘flew around’ his head, Graham Morris couldn’t help but think: “This ghost is out to get me.”
The sceptical photographer had been sent down to snap an apparent haunting at a family home in Enfield – unaware that the story was soon to grip the nation and even inspire Hollywood films.
“I was told the police had been called and they’d seen weird things happening so I didn’t really know what to expect at the time,” Graham tells The Sun. “I initially thought it was going to be a load of rubbish.”
The 18-month ordeal began in August 1977 when single mum-of-four Peggy Hodgson, 47, and her kids started hearing loud noises and noticed items moving on their own at their home in 284 Green Street in North London.
Shortly after, the house was at the centre of a series of horrifying paranormal activities including flying objects, moving furniture, fires igniting on their own, and even levitation.
It even led to the apparent possession of daughter Janet, 11, who was “taken over” by the spirit of an old man who lived and died in the house.
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The petrifying ordeal of Peggy, and the three children who lived with her – Margaret, Janet, and Johnny – now features in a new Paramount+ documentary called Hauntings.
At the height of the supernatural happenings, Graham, 66, who was a photographer in his early 20s at the time, was sent with a reporter to investigate the house in September of that year.
After initially noticing how poor the family seemed to be, he quickly realised there was a terror lurking in the house when he positioned himself in a corner of their kitchen to take pictures.
Graham says: “The four children came in one after the other with adults but nothing happened until Janet walked in.
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“It was unbelievable as soon as she came in – things were just flying all over the room. Little things like toys, marbles, and Lego bricks. I tried to get a picture of something flying across the room but everything was moving so fast.
“You couldn’t pre-empt where the next object would come flying from. It was coming in from all angles.”
With so many things being moved by an unseen force, Graham was hit near the eye by an item – his sight was saved thanks to the fact that he was wearing glasses.
He adds: “I was hit in the eyebrow, and although it didn’t draw blood, I got one hell of a lump. Whatever this was, you had the feeling that it was out to get you.
“It didn’t like the fact that I was taking pictures. I could see the fear on the family’s face.”
National interest
When the family’s story hit the tabloids, it sparked huge national interest so Graham and his team were sent back to carry out more investigations.
The story was later dramatized and made into the Hollywood film The Conjuring 2.
Graham vividly remembers one incident that blew his mind.
“I was sitting there in the house waiting for hours and nothing was happening,” he says.
“All of a sudden I heard a bang and we all rushed upstairs. I went into a room and saw an enormous solid metal bed up on its side.
“No one was in the room – I was 6ft tall and in my early 20s and even I couldn’t have done that. I can tell you exactly what happened but I can’t explain it.”
As the forces became increasingly aggressive and unsettling, Graham feared that one of the kids would end up getting hurt.
He says: “One day Billy was sitting around playing and the metal fireplace came out of the wall and almost hit him. That could have been pretty serious. So many ridiculous things were happening in that house.”
In 2015 Janet said in an interview: “I felt used by a force that nobody understands. I really don’t like to think about it too much.”
She went on: “It lived off me, off my energy. Call me mad if you like. Those events did happen.”
Bizarre apparitions
Eventually, experts from the Society for Psychical Research, Maurice Grosse, who has since died, and Guy Lyon Playfair, were called in to investigate.
After his initial visit, Maurice said: “I found chaos, the whole family was congregated in the house together with the neighbours next door and there were a lot of very very frightened people there.”
As time went by, as many as 15 people said they witnessed bizarre apparitions in the house, including a police constable who witnessed a chair move on its own.
Also, a neighbour claimed to have seen an elderly woman from a window, while Janet’s brother Billy, said he saw an old man with big teeth staring at him.
One day, Maurice and a neighbour heard one of the Hodgson kids screaming that they couldn’t move and that “something” was “holding his leg.
On a number of occasions, many people said they witnessed Janet levitating – one such event was seemingly captured by Graham, who had a camera set up in the kids’ room as they slept.
He says: “When I brought back the pictures, people like Maurice told me, ‘Whoa, you’ve got a levitation sequence’. To me, it looked like a girl jumping from the bed but all these scientists were convinced it was levitation.”
After threatening messages were left around the house by the unknown entity, the investigator and his team decided to communicate with the spirit on December 13.
‘I’m a G.H.O.S.T.’
In their attempt to talk to the spirit, gruff voice which came out of Janet told them that it was the ghost of Bill Wilkins, a 77-year-old man who lived and died in the property before the family moved in.
Describing his death, the eerie voice said: “Just before I died, I went blind, and then I had [a] haemorrhage and I fell asleep and I died in the chair in the corner downstairs.”
When asked why he could not be seen, the it chillingly replied: “I’m invisible… because I’m a G.H.O.S.T.”
To establish whether Janet had been faking the voice, the team taped her mouth shut and was astonished when the voice continued to speak.
It was later discovered that Bill Wilkins had indeed lived in the house – his son, Terry, later confirmed that his father really did die the way the voice had described.
In the meantime, supernatural incidents continued at the house – on December 24, Janet was found by her mother with a curtain wrapped around her neck.
Peggy managed to free her daughter, ultimately saving her from being strangled.
Continued misfortunes
Janet later revealed that she and her siblings were severely bullied at school and were called “freaks from the Ghost House” and that the horror only weaned when a priest was called in.
She eventually left home at 16 and married young, but the family still continued to experience further misfortunes.
At 18, she suffered a devastating loss when her son died in his sleep.
Janet’s younger brother, Johnny, also tragically died of cancer aged 14, while her mother, who suffered a nervous breakdown developed breast cancer and died in 2003.
Following Peggy’s death, Clare Bennet and her four sons moved into the house but reportedly fled after one of the kids claimed a man came into his room.
And while many have expressed their doubts over the family’s experience, Graham, who is still a photographer, stands by what he saw in the house.
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“I’ve no idea what anyone out there is saying and they can say what they like,” he said.
“I don’t look [at doubters] as I know what I saw.”
Hauntings is available to steam now on Paramount+
