The Enfield Poltergeist

Quite possibly, one of the most fascinating paranormal cases I've run across is that of the Enfield case in North London. It revolved around a family of five. Peggy Harper, a divorced mother, and her four children. They lived in a three bedroom house in Enfield. The events began in August of 1977, when two of the children Janet and Pete complained that their beds were moving. When their mother went to investigate, however, the beds were still, leading Peggy to believe that the children were making the story up.

The next night, however, Peggy was once again called by the children to investigate a shuffling noise they heard in their room. When the sound was described as sounding like a chair was moving across the floor, Peggy removed the chair to stop the complaints. However, when she turned off the light to leave, she also heard the sound. It stopped when she turned the light on, but when the room was dark again, she heard it again. Things rapidly escalated from there, with Peggy there to witness it for herself. There were four loud knocks on the wall, and a chest of drawers moved by itself. Moving the chest back against the wall proved fruitless, as it moved away again on it's own when Peggy turned away. A second attempt to move it proved impossible, and Peggy finally lost her composure. Terrified, she ordered her children out of bed, and they ran to a neighbors' home for help.

The neighbors investigated, hearing the knocks for themselves. A search of the house and garden brought up nothing, and when the police arrived, they also witnessed the knocking on the walls. In a signed statement made by one officer, a chair moved across the floor of its' own accord.

The events continued and escalated. There were numerous witnesses to the phenomena of objects flying through the air, knockings on the walls, etc. A local vicar, the police, a local medium, reporters from the Daily Mirror numbered among the witnesses. Finally, the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) contacted Maurice Grosse, one of their members, to look into the case. He stayed at the Harper home for several days before experiencing any activity, which began with a chair in one of the children's' bedrooms being thrown across the room. One of the children were asleep in the room at the time. The chair was returned to where it belonged, and when it happened again an hour later, a photographer who was also staying in the house, captured it on film.

The case made the front page of the Daily Mirror, and was picked up by a London based radio station which resulted in a two and a half hour NIGHT LINE program. Peggy, Grosse, and a neighbor participated in the show, where they talked about the case. The Harper family was becoming famous, and the Enfield case was attracting more and more attention. Writer Guy Lyon joined Grosse in his investigations of the strange occurrences, which continued for two years before it finally ended.

It must have been a long two years. Knockings on walls and floors happened on an almost daily basis, furniture moved of it's own accord across the floor, and threw itself down the stairs; objects would fly across rooms and bedsheets and blankets would get pulled off the beds; there were unexplained puddles of water appearing on the floor, and the children made claims that they were being pulled out of bed, thrown across the room, and more. The children's mother, Peggy witnessed many of these events, and backed up her children's' claims.

Most of the activity seemed to center around one child in particular. 11 year old Janet. She would be seen being thrown about the room, the curtains would try to wrap themselves around her neck, threatening to strangle her. Janet also began speaking in a very rough male voice, claiming to be, among others, someone named Bill who had died in the house. This was verified later that it had indeed, happened, but at time time Janet was manifesting this, no one in the family was aware that this had actually happened.

Doctors and psychiatrists were brought in to examine the family, particularly Janet. While the gravelly voice was determined to indeed be coming from Janets' throat, no explanation could be given as to how her normal speaking voice was not damaged by using the rougher voice for hours on end. Janet was examined for mental problems, etc., going to Maudsley Hospital in South London for six weeks for observation and tests to check for any physical or mental abnormalities. None were found. However, during Janets' absence, the activity in the house stopped.

Suspicion centered on Janet. Hidden cameras were set up, which recorded her bending spoons with her hands and trying to bend an iron bar. Other researchers from the SPR came to investigate, but when they came into Janet's room to observe, they were made to stand facing away from the children, only to be hit with objects while the children giggled. The investigators felt that the children were producing the 'voices' themselves, and trying to hide it by burying their faces in sheets, etc, to disguise what they were doing. One researcher, Anita Gregory claimed that the children's uncle had told her he believed Janet had taught herself to talk in a deep voice, and that she had always been very athletic and mischievous, delighting in tricking strangers. He apparently believed that Janet was the cause of the phenomena.

In any event, the phenomena stopped, finally, after two long years. But the questions remain. Was it an actual paranormal case, or was it a hoax, perpetuated by the children? Or, could it have been a combination of both? I tend to believe that perhaps it may have started with some unexplained occurrences, and that the children then perpetuated a hoax for the attention it brought them. After all, they were photographed, people came to investigate, they received media attention...it must have been very tempting, indeed, to continue, if that is in fact the case. It seems unlikely to me that Peggy Harper, the mother, was a part of it, however. Another fact that seems to bear out it being a possible hoax was the sudden cessation of activity after two years, allowing the family to return to a normal life.

Hoax or not, the Enfield Case continues to be one of the most fascinating and intriguing paranormal events, worthy of further study. To read more details about this case, and to see photos, visit the link below:

Source: The Enfield Case by John Zaffis

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Moon Calendar

The oldest calendars in the world are all mooncalendars. Archeologists found carved bones dating back early as 11000 years B.C. (see the book Calendar). At present the Hindu, Chinese and Jewish people have so-called luni-solar calendars which are leaped calendars that remind one of the moonorder of the old Babylonians. Every 3-4 years a month is added to stay in line with the seasons according certain mathematical rules to cycles of time. Next to that do the Muslims have a purely lunar calendar which once in the 32 years is realigning with the solar calendar.

The Roman Empire before the julian reform of 45 B.C. also had a lunar calendar. Because it was subject to political/religious manipulation it was at the time abolished by Julius Caesar. But still our present gregorian calendar shows the signs of the old times: December is derived from the roman word for ten, meaning the tenth month. There were originally no more than ten lunar month's on our calendar which began 753 years B.C. at the Foundation of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita) A.U.C.

Did Zombies Roam Medieval Ireland?

Two early medieval skeletons were unearthed recently in Ireland with large stones wedged into their mouths -- evidence, archaeologists say, that it was feared the individuals would rise from their graves like zombies.

The skeletons, which were featured in a British documentary last week, emerged during a series of digs carried out between 2005 and 2009 at Kilteasheen, near Loch Key in Ireland by a team of archaeologists led by Chris Read from the Institute of Technology in Sligo, Ireland and Thomas Finan from the University of St. Louis.

The project recovered a total of 137 skeletons, although archaeologists believe that some 3,000 skeletons spanning from 700 to 1400 are still buried at the site.

The "deviant burials" were comprised of two men who were buried there at different times in the 700s.

One of the men was between 40 and 60 years old, and the other was a young adult, probably between 20 and 30 years old. The two men were laid side by side and each had a baseball-sized rock shoved in his mouth.

"One of them was lying with his head looking straight up. A large black stone had been deliberately thrust into his mouth," Chris Read, head of Applied Archaeology at IT Sligo, said.

"The other had his head turned to the side and had an even larger stone wedged quite violently into his mouth so that his jaws were almost dislocated," he added.

Initially, Read and colleagues thought they had found a Black Death-related burial ground. Remains of individuals buried at the end of the Middle Ages with stones stuck in their mouths have hinted at vampire-slaying rituals.

It was believed that these "vampire" individuals spread the plague by chewing on their shrouds after dying. In a time before germ theory, the stone in the mouth was then used as a disease-blocking trick.

Since the vampire phenomenon didn't emerge in European folklore until the 1500's, the archaeologists ruled out this theory for the 8th century skeletons.

"In this case, the stones in the mouth might have acted as a barrier to stop revenants from coming back from their graves," Read told Discovery News.

Revenants or the "walking dead" tended to be people who lived as outsiders in society, according to Read.

The two Irish men could have been considered potentially dangerous people, such as enemies, murderers, rapists or they could have been ordinary individuals who died suddenly from a strange illness or murder.

Anything outside the norm would have caused the community to fear that these people could have come back to life to harass their loved ones or others against whom they had a grudge.

The mouth was seen as a key part of the body for such a transformation.

"It was viewed as the main portal for the soul to leave the body upon death. Sometimes, the soul could come back to the body and re-animate it or else an evil spirit could enter the body through the mouth and bring it back to life," Read said.

According to Kristina Killgrove, a biological anthropologist at the University of North Carolina, the burials' dating is particularly interesting as it appears to predate historical records on revenants.

"I'm also intrigued by the fact that the two males were not buried at the same time but were nonetheless buried side-by-side in this non-traditional manner, which suggests these burials were not accidental or careless," Killgrove told Discovery News.

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