The Pyderrairme people were the traditional owners of the area that is now known as Port Arthur. Middens and other cultural sites remain from many thousands of years of occupation. Port Arthur penal station was established in 1830 as a timber-getting camp, produciing sawn logs for government projects. After 1833 it became a punishment station for repeat offenders from all the Australian colonies. It also managed a number of outstations that produced raw material like timber and food.
By 1840 over 2000 convicts, soldiers and civil staff lived here. It had become a major industrial settlement, producing ships and shoes, clothing and bells, furniture and worked stone, brooms and bricks. When the probation system was introduced in 1841, many convicts were sent to outstations around the Peninsula to work in timber-getting and agriculture. Port Arthur became a punishment station for serious repeat offenders.
Transportation to Van Diemen’s Land ended in 1853 and Port Arthur began to enter its welfare phase. Increasingly it housed the wreckage of the convict system, men too physically or mentally disabled to look after themselves. Again Port Arthur became the administrative centre of a system of outstations that now housed invalids who worked at agriculture if they could, or who simply served out their time.
The penal settlement finally closed in 1877. Many of the settlement’s buildings were pulled down or gutted by fire. Others were sold to private settlers and gradually a small town, named Carnarvon, was established. Tourists began to pour in immediately the settlement closed. Some of the buildings became hotels, guest houses and museums. Almost 100 years ago, the government began to acquire and manage town lots for their historic value. The Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority is now responsible for the site’s management and conservation as a place of international significance. Port Arthur is Tasmania’s premier tourist attraction and stories continue to abound of the restless spirits who still inhabit this historic site.
Watch the documentary below ” The ghosts of Port Arthur”
Anneliese Michel (September 21, 1952 – July 1, 1976) was a German Catholic woman who was said to be possessed by demons and subsequently underwent an exorcism. Two motion pictures, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Requiem are loosely based on Anneliese’s story.
Anneliese experienced what is recognized by medical professionals as severe psychiatric disturbances from the age of 16 to her death, at age 23, as a direct or indirect result of an exorcism ritual. Both priests who performed the exorcism and Anneliese’s parents were convicted of manslaughter. The Roman Catholic Church, which had authorized the exorcism, reversed its position and later declared Anneliese Michel a case of mental illness. Many people believe she was genuinely possessed by demons, and today her grave site is a destination for pilgrims to this day.
Was this a case of possession that defies the answers given by medicine and science or nothing more than an act of negligence ? Whatever your beliefs, this is one of the most interesting stories of possession ever recorded..
Hitler founded far more than a political regime - the Third Reich was an Occult-based Order using Magical and Esoteric practices. Everything which defined the Nazi Party was Magical. From the Swastika to the Order of the SS, all elements were driven by Esoteric teachings. Inspired by the occult writings of Helena Blavatsky, Aleister Crowley, Eliphas Levi, Nosradamus and John Dee to name but a few, along with the magical elements contained within the music of Richard Wagner and Wolfgang Mozart, the Third Reich sought to usher in a New World Order through overwhelming physical strength and might. This was their divine mission. In the eyes of the Third Reich, it was time for the world to change.
Even at the age of fifteen years old, Hitler was convinced he was the One to lead humanity into a new world…. He had just finished listening to Wagner’s Rienzie play with his childhood friend, Gustl Kubizek. Kubizek watched with horror as a being began speaking out of Hitler’s mouth in a most unusual voice. This voice began speaking visions of how Hitler was going to change European history, that one day, he would receive a Mandate from his people to lead them “from servitude to the heights of freedom, a special mission which would one day be entrusted to him.” Though the realization of this vision would not be fulfilled for many years, this vision came remarkably true. Against all odds, Hitler climbed to the pinnacle of power in Germany, backed by Magical Powers.
Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in 1933. Most occult leaders believed Hitler was The Great One. The Nazi sacred symbols and concepts of the swastika or “gamma cross”, the eagle, the red/black/white color scheme, and ancient Nordic runes (one of which became the insignia of the SS), were all adopted from esoteric traditions going back centuries, shared by Brahmins, Scottish Masons, Rosicrucians, the Knights Templars and other esoteric societies. The Nazi motto, “One Reich, One Folk, One Fuehrer”, reflected the standard threefold power circles of the occult. The Reich was the psychic adepts of the Nazi Party, which would build the bridge between the Folk (the masses which unite into a cosmic Entity greater than its parts) and the Fuehrer (the initiates in the elite leadership which unite with Hitler, the divine incarnation). The outer fringe, the Folk, are taught what they can handle: blind obedience, group service, a new history and identity. The Party elite such as the SS are taught something different: psychic knowledge, tapping into the “Vril Force”, self-denial, brotherhood mission, medieval lore, fearlessness of death. The innermost circle was privy to the hard-core Gnostic teaching on the Grail, immortality and godhood. Many neo-Nazi groups continue to pursue these topics with devotion. But under it all was the invisible presence of “Unknown Superiors” who taught Hitler himself and who were assumed by his associates to endow him with his uncanny hypnotic power.
For those unaware, the Earth and all its associated spirits hold immense power, which when harnessed, can be used for whatever means you choose. Magic is neither good or evil.. It is your intention behind the magic which makes it ‘white magic’ or ‘black magic’. To hold this power gives you power and dominance over those who do not. And Magic works solely within the laws of nature and what we have seen happening around the world is the knowledge of Nature’s Laws being eradicated from practically every culture on the planet. One thing is probable - the dismissal and ultimately destruction of every native culture is deliberate action, thought out and implemented by people who are fully aware of the powers of the Ether. As Hitler himself said, “How fortunate for leaders, that the masses do not think.”
The Spear of Destiny
Hitler coveted possession of the Spear of Destiny, supposedly THE spear with which the Roman soldier pierced the side of Jesus Christ. Anyone trained in the esoteric arts know that certain relics, monuments and physical places inherently possess power and that power can be harnessed and used for whatever means you choose.
The Spear of Destiny is also known as the Spear of Longinus. Supposedly, the leader who “possessed it and understood the powers it served, held the destiny of the world in his hands for good or evil.” This spear has been held in the House of Hapsburg, in Vienna, Austria, for centuries, and is on public display in a museum. One of Hitler’s first official acts, once he annexed Austria, was to drive to Vienna in a motorcade, go to the museum, and take physical possession of the Spear of Destiny. At that point, Hitler believed he possessed the power to overcome all odds and conquer the world. At that point, World War II became inevitable. A new age and a New World Order steered by the Third Reich was waiting to happen.
The Holy Grail
Hitler devoted his life to pursuit of the legendary Holy Grail. The Holy Grail is supposedly the cup or dish used by Jesus at the Last Supper, preserved by Joseph of Arimathea, who brought it to Spain or Britain, and quested for by numerous knights. In occult terms, The Holy Grail came to represent a path to transcendent consciousness. The word, ‘Grail’, was derived from the word, ‘graduate’, which means gradually, step by step, degree by degree. This concept of gradualism underlies the entire effort to achieve the New World Order, and it is definitely the underpinning of the Hegelian theory of controlled change through controlled conflict.
The Supermen
Hitler firmly believed in the coming of a new race, the ‘Supermen’. He expected them to be a literal “mutation” of Homo Sapiens, achieved by arriving at “higher levels of consciousness”. The composer and occultist, Richard Wagner was obsessed with the ‘Master Race’ and Hitler was hugely inspired by him. Hitler once said, “In order to understand the Nazi Party, you must understand Wagner”. Hitler also believed that the new humanity would be free of “the dirty and degrading chimera called conscience and morality,” as well as “the burden of free will” and “personal responsibility” which should rightly be borne only by the few with the fortitude to make the awful decisions necessary for the good of humanity. All the world’s problems would be put right by the new order of subservient masses ruled by the Supermen.
Hitler communicated with his masters and became totally driven by them. Concerning Hitler’s relationship with these Unknowns, there is not much known besides his reference to a guiding voice of “Providence”. However, we do have a vivid account related by an unnamed associate of Hitler to Rauschning (both were not sure what to make of it), in which Hitler wakes up in the middle of the night in total panic at some unseen visitation: “Hitler was standing there in his bedroom, stumbling about, looking around him with a distraught look. He was muttering: ‘It’s him! It’s him! He’s here!’ His lips had turned blue. He was dripping with sweat. Suddenly he uttered some numbers which made no sense, then some words, then bits of sentences. It was frightening. He used terms which were strung together in the strangest way and which were absolutely weird. Then, he again became silent, although his lips continued to move. He was given a massage and something to drink. Then all of a sudden, he screamed: ‘There! Over there! In the corner! Who is it?’ He was jumping up and down, and he was howling.”
Hitler’s personal aide, Hermann Rauschning wrote In 1939, an eye witness account of the madness of the Third Reich: “What will the social order of the future be like? Comrade, I will tell you. There will be a class of overlords, after them the rank and file of the party members in hierarchical order, and then the great mass of anonymous followers, servants and workers in perpetuity, and beneath them again all the conquered foreign races, the modern slaves. And over and above all these will reign a new and exalted nobility of whom I cannot speak. But of all these plans the militant members will know nothing. The new man is living amongst us now! He is here. Isn’t that enough for you? I will tell you a secret. I have seen the new man. He is intrepid and cruel. I was afraid of him” - Adolf Hitler quoted from “Hitler Speaks” by Hermann Rauschning.
Hitler could not have expressed the aims of the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” or the “Hieron du Val d’Or” more eloquently. Today the agenda of the power elite continues using its network of Occult and political structures - from the unaccountable “Bilderberg Group” to the elite of the “Dragon Court”, from the undemocratic “Trilateral Commission” to the transnational “Knights of Malta”. Through their influence and control the Synarchists continue to stay on top of the power pyramid, regardless of how much global suffering and misery is caused, and maintain the anti-democratic structures of a hidden (the word “occult” means “hidden worship”) feudalist system. The new head of the European Council of Princes HRH Prince Michael Stewart recently replaced HSH Prince Otto von Habsburg of Austria as chief representative of thirty three Royal Houses of Europe. These are the thirty three Holy Grail bloodline aristocratic families, who bizarrely claim descent from Jesus Christ, and their historical goal remains the same.
Wewelsburg Castle
The Wewelsburg is situated between the German cities of Hamm and Paderborn. Shortly after Hitler had come into power in January 1933, the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, became interested in the Wewelsburg. What Himmler wanted was a religious centre for the SS and the Nazi ideals…. something like St.Peter’s in Rome or the Temple of Jerusalem. He referred to Wewelsburg as “the centre of the world”. This ancient castle was to become the spiritual home for the New World Order.
The Ahnenerbe, an arm of the SS commissioned in the mid-1930s to research the ancestral heritage of the Aryan race, roamed far and wide to find proof that only one race was meant to rule the world and that the Nazi vision of purification and world domination was supported by mythic forces. They were to provide scientific documentation that would unite their ancient past with their destiny. Heinrich Himmler saw the men in his army as the reincarnation of Teutonic knights and kings, in particular the knights of King Arthur’s round table. He designed Wewelsburg Castle to be their Camelot. On one floor of Wewelsburg Castle was a dark mosaic star that marked this center and over which magical rituals were performed by twelve Nazi officers known as ‘The Twelve Knights’
The Thule Society
Dietrich EckartHitler was trained to be a supreme adept in the arts and ritual of Black Magic by Dietrich Eckart. the leader of a powerful, secret society called the Thule Society. Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorf, an avid fan of Helena Blavatsky, founded the “Thule Society”, a spiritualist group which borrowed heavily from Blavatsky’s “The Secret Doctrine”. Thule in occultic, Greek and Viking lore was the capital of an ancient ice-island called Hyperborea (known in Hindu legend as the “White Isle”), inhabited by superhumans with psychic powers who eventually founded the Aryan race. After an unexplained disaster, survivors of Hyperborea took refuge first in the “West” [meaning west of India, perhaps Babylon?], then in the Gobi desert, and later in Tibet; their spirit mentors retreated to a hidden spiritual center called “Asgard”, located in a subterranean city. These beings, headed by one known in Hindu/Buddhist tradition as “the Lama of lamas” or “King of the world”, can only be contacted on the spiritual plane. The symbol of this “Master” is the swastika, “symbol of the central power of the gem of Heaven”.
The goal of Thule members was to break the barrier of the “small self” - consisting of physical reality and (upon promotion to their inner circle) moral constraints - so as to merge with the “divine self” in the unseen spirit realm. That in turn allowed the initiate to reach the “universal energy fields” which would “awaken the sleeping powers within” and access superhuman psychic abilities which had once belonged to the proud Aryan race. Thule discipline required blind, unquestioning obedience to the enlightened master in whatever he may ask, which would create conditions for personal transformation. Sebottendorf called this the “Fuehrerprinzip” (”the Fuehrer principle”), and he concocted a formal response by which to salute such a god-man: “Sieg, Heil!” (”Glory, Hail!”). Thule initiates fervently awaited someone worthy of that title to whom they could submit. When Hitler joined the Society, Thule member Dietrich Eckart prophesied that the day had come; he began introducing him in Munich occult circles as “the long-awaited savior”. To Alfred Rosenberg he said: “I believe in Hitler; above him there hovers a star.” Eckart was following his own mission revealed to him in a seance: that when “Lord Maitreya” would soon make his appearance as a German messiah to “lead the Aryan race to final victory over the Jews”, he, Eckart, was charged with the responsibility of “nurturing” him.
Hitler’s Solution….The Thule Society considered the Jew (”Juda”) their cosmic enemy. As early as 1920, Sebottendorf advocated a “Final Goal” of “cleaning out the Jews once and for all”, using “the most ruthless measures, including Sammellager [concentration camps] and sweeping out the Jewish vermin with an iron broom.” Interestingly, this Thule Society was part of the international “Brotherhood of Death” secret societies. The dominant American “Brotherhood of Death” society is the “Skull and Bones” group at Yale University, an identical society to Hitler’s Thule Group. The most famous adept from this “Skull and Bones” group is President George W Bush and his father, George. The Thule Group’s leader was Dietrich Eckart. He told his adherents in the late 1910’s that “he had personally received a kind of satanic annunciation that he was destined to prepare the vessel of the Anti-Christ, the man inspired by Lucifer to conquer the world and lead the Aryan race to glory.” Eckart perceived his role to be that of a forerunner, a John the Baptist to the Great One. Eckart trained Hitler well. As Eckart lay dying, he boasted, “Follow Hitler! He will dance, but it is I who have called the tune! I have initiated him into the ‘Secret Doctrine’, opened his centres in vision and given him the means to communicate with the Powers …”
As part of his training, Hitler was alledgedly taken through a monstrous ceremony, specifically designed to totally pervert, twist, and char his sexual mindset, to where he could never be satisfied by normal sexual intercourse again. Rather, he could be satisfied only through Sado-Masochism, where he was whipped and tortured by a woman. This was the role Eva Braun fulfilled. This ceremony so tortured Hitler’s mind that it released a steady torrent of rage and hatred against the rest of the human race. You need look no further to discover the real reason Hitler was so inhumanely sadistic, and so capable of the greatest, darkest crimes against humanity ever seen on planet earth. This ceremony had the effect of “Being Smooth Between The Legs”, a psychological wounding that had the effect of mental castration.
Mass Mind Control
Hitler possessed a manner of speaking to large masses of people that absolutely captured their imaginations and stimulated within them a tremendously powerful emotion. “… when Hitler was elated, his normal halting awkward style was transformed into a magical flow of words, delivered with spellbinding effect. On these occasions it was as though Hitler himself was listening to the extraneous intelligence which had temporarily taken over his soul … The strange transformation … would later be described by others who saw this Luciferic possession take place yet more concretely as Hitler rose step by step to the very pinnacle of power. ‘Listen to Hitler and one suddenly has a vision of one who will lead mankind to glory’, Gregor Strasser, a defected Nazi, recounted twenty years later. ‘A light appears in a dark window. A gentleman with a comic mustache turns into an Archangel. Then the Archangel flies away and there is Hitler sitting down bathed in sweat with glassy eyes.’
In the book, Satan and the Swastika, Francis King says: ” Hitler’s public appearances, particularly those associated with the Nazi Party’s Nuremburg rallies, were excellent examples of this sort of magical ceremony. The fanfares, military marches, and Wagnerian music, all emphasised the idea of German military glory. The mass swastika banners in black, white and red, filled the consciousness of the particaipants in the rally with national socialist ideology. The ballet-like precision of the movement of the uniformed party members, all acting in unison, evoked from the unconscious, the principles of war and violence which the ancients symbolised as Mars. And the prime ritual of the rallies - Hitler clasping to other banners, the ‘blood banner’ carried in the Munich Putsch of 1923 - was a quasi-magical ceremony designed to link up with minds of living Nazis with the archetypal images symbolised bt the dead national socialist heroes of the past. The religio-magical aspects of the rallies were emphasised by the fact that their high points were reached after dusk and took place in a ‘Cathedral of Light’ - an open space surrounded by pillars of light coming from electric searchlights pointed upwards to the sky. If a modern ritual magician of the utmost expertise had designed a ritual intended to ‘invoke Mars’ he could not have come up with anything more effective than the ceremonies used at Nuremburg.
Hitler’s Death
Dachau….Hitler’s personal devotion to occult principles was proven ultimately by his self-inflicted death. His choice of April 30 for his suicide may well have been meant as a sacrifice; it was the eve of Beltane (known in Germany as Walpurgisnacht), identified on popular Wiccan websites as a Druid feast in honor of the deity Bel. In witchcraft, this “power-point” day is regarded as a “great sabbat” equal in potency to Halloween. According to Wiccans, Bel is derived from the Canaanite Baal; but Helena Blavatsky goes farther in “The Secret Doctrine”(vol.2), reconstructing an astrological trinity of Bel/Baal (sun-god, father), Christos (Mercury, son) and Lucifer (Venus, holy spirit). As for Hitler’s suicide itself, this was not a cowardly act from an occultist viewpoint, but rather an honorable practice known among the Druids, as well as among the Cathari “Perfects”, those medieval guardians of the Grail, who called it the rite of “Endura”. A curious requirement of the “Endura” was that it was always to be done by pairs of intimate friends, a detail known by the Nazis which makes sense of Hitler’s joint suicide with his new wife Eva Braun. Incidentally, Hitler’s associates Karl Haushofer and Goebbels also killed themselves in ceremonial fashion along with their wives.
Watch Below the Documentary - The Occult History of the Third Reich
Tom Harrison, son of materialization medium Minnie Harrison, narrates the development of his mothers mediumship from trance mediumship to actual direct voice communication with the so-called dead to the apex of mediumship, materialization - full form, solid bodied, temporarily materialized spirit people returning to us from the next stage of existence beyond nature’s great illusion we call death.
Aleister (Alexander Edward) Crowley was born on the 12th of October 1875 in Leamington Spa, England, into a family of Plymouth Brethren, a strict Christian sect. During his 72 years on this Earth, he managed to indelibly imprint himself on the Western Magickal Tradition, indeed, to many he was the western magickal tradition.
Poet, Author, Magician, Yogi, Philosopher, Mountain Climber, Drug User and Satyr, Crowley’s output was prolific, and his life hedonistic. His legacy still attracts many new converts, and he commands considerable loyalty even from beyond the grave.
Watch below a documentary depicting the life of the worlds most widely known master of darkness ……
In 1929 stories of the happenings at a remote house in an isolated part of England caught the public imagination and for nearly eighty years Borley Rectory has proved to be one of the most enduring and controversial cases of haunting ever recorded.
Below is a short two part piece of the groundbreaking BBC documentary made in 1975. This first clip features Borley Rectory and Church,including an interview with legendary paranormal investigator Peter Underwood, Chairman of the Ghost Club of Great Britain. and a fascinating account of the hauntings with a local investigator. The second clip contains the ghostly audio recordings and experiences taken in the church.
If you would like to read more about the history of Borley Rectory please go to the articles section click here
Nothing on that balmy August evening seemed even slightly out of the ordinary. Peggy Hodgson was busily tidying up her terrace house in Enfield, North London, after her four boisterous children had once again left it looking like a pigsty.
Mrs Hodgson’s daughters were upstairs getting ready for bed. As usual, 11-year old Janet was playfighting with her elder sister, Margaret.
Then, as the pair rolled around and giggled on the bed, something most peculiar happened: a chest of drawers began sliding slowly across the floor towards them.
The two sisters watched aghast as the chest shuffled across the room as if dragged by a pair of powerful but invisible hands. They were even more afraid when they realised that the piece of oak furniture was about to block their bedroom door - their only means of escape.
Luckily for the children, their mother burst into the room to complain about the noise.
She grabbed the chest and shoved it back against the wall. But the invisible force continued. Peggy watched in terror as the chest once again began sliding across the room.
This time, the piece of furniture moved far quicker and Peggy could do nothing to stop it.
She tried again to shove the chest back against the wall but failed. And this time she could feel an inhumanly strong force in the room.
Objects would miraculously appear and disappear before the eyes of terrified onlookers.
Confused and terrified at what she was witnessing, Peggy gathered up her children and fled the bedroom in panic. And thus began one of the strangest cases of alleged haunting ever recorded in Britain.
Over the following months the so-called “Enfield Poltergeist” turned the lives of the Hodgson family upside down. Toys, plates, cutlery, books and pictures would all inexplicably fly across the room.
Such encounters may sound utterly absurd. But what makes the Enfield case so remarkable is that the events were exhaustively investigated by respected academic researchers and - more pertinently - were witnessed by more than 30 independent witnesses, including police officers.
Although the haunting happened 30 years ago, Janet and Margaret have not spoken publicly about it since childhood. They are still wary about discussing the incident in depth, as their lives have moved on.
But in a documentary to be shown tomorrow they will break their silence for the first time - and what they reveal sheds new light on one of the most remarkable paranormal incidents ever to take place in Britain.
“I felt used by a force that nobody understands,” says Janet. “I really don’t like to think about it too much.”
“I’m not sure the poltergeist was truly ‘evil’. It was almost as if it wanted to be part of our family. It didn’t want to hurt us. It had died there and wanted to be at rest. The only way it could communicate was through me and my sister.”
Hard-bitten sceptics, of course, scoff at such suggestions and claim that poltergeist stories are simply the result of hoaxing and trickery.
They point out that pre-teen girls are hardly reliable witnesses - and, crucially, Janet and her sister have admitted to playing tricks on some of those who were sent to investigate their haunting.
This has made it easy for rationalists to dismiss the whole tale as hokum.
And yet a close examination of the story reveals the truth is rather more complex, intriguing and perplexing.
Above all, those who witnessed the events at Enfield were left in no doubt that they were involved in a genuine case of haunting, and while their testimony may seem far-fetched, it is equally improbable to suggest that so many adult witnesses could have been hoaxed.
Key among the independent witnesses were the police officers, who were called to the Hodgsons’ home, soon after the poltergeist first made its presence felt in August 1977.
They took statements and noted the family’s sincere terror, but in the absence of any hard evidence were sceptical about what might have taken place.
It was only as the officers were preparing to leave that they were forced to take the case more seriously: quite suddenly, a sitting room chair levitated off the carpet before their eyes and started moving slowly across the room.
“It came off the floor nearly half an inch,” recalls WPC Carolyn Heeps, one of the Metropolitan Police officers sent to investigate the haunting.
“I saw it slide off to the right about four feet before it came to rest. I checked to see if it could have slid along the floor by itself.
“I even placed a marble on the floor to see whether it would roll in the same direction as the chair. It didn’t.
“I checked for wires under the cushions and chairs and I could not see any. I couldn’t find any explanation at all.”
But, of course, no actual crime had been committed, so the police were unable to assist further.
Desperate for an explanation about what could be taking place in their home, the family turned to the Society for Psychical Research, a respected scientific body that examines cases of alleged haunting from an academic perspective.
It sent two investigators, Guy Lyon Playfair and Maurice Grosse, to examine the evidence. And to avert any claims of trickery, the society drafted in an independent barrister, Mary Rose Barrington, to doublecheck all of their work.
This would ensure that there could be no credible claims that the pair were being anything other than meticulous, honest and impartial in their investigations.
Sure enough, over the following 14 months they spent on the case, the two researchers catalogued a range of inexplicable phenomena.
Boxes flew across rooms, ornaments floated in mid-air, books mysteriously appeared and disappeared. Strange knocking sounds were heard inside walls.
It was all very peculiar. But there was worse to come. One morning when Guy Playfair was working at the house, he heard a “tremendous vibrating noise”.
“I really thought someone was drilling a great big hole in the wall of the house,” he says. “I tore into the bedroom and there was quite a commotion. The whole fireplace had been ripped out.
“It was one of those old Victorian cast-iron fires that must have weighed at least 60lb. It was so heavy even I couldn’t pick it up.
“The children couldn’t have possibly ripped it out of the wall. It just wasn’t possible. We caught the incident on audio tape, including the fireplace being ripped out of the wall.”
Events were soon to take an even more disturbing course. Late one evening, when the children were asleep in their rooms and Maurice Grosse was downstairs compiling his day’s findings, he was disturbed by the sound of Janet screaming.
Maurice ran to the foot of the stairs only to see the 12-year-old apparently being dragged through her bedroom door by an unseen force. Janet was then hauled down the stairs and dumped unceremoniously at Maurice’s feet.
This incident was also caught on tape and was just the first of several incidents in which the poltergeist apparently picked up Janet and tried to carry her off.
Soon afterwards Janet was even seen floating in mid-air - and this time there were two independent witnesses. A lollipop lady and a passing baker both glanced up at the house and through a top-floor window saw Janet apparently hovering above her bed.
As Janet herself recalls it: “The lady saw me spinning around and banging against the window. I thought I might actually break the window and go through it.
“A lot of children fantasise about flying, but it wasn’t like that. When you’re levitated with force and you don’t know where you’re going to land it’s very frightening. I still don’t know how it happened.”
And that wasn’t all. Apparently in the grip of some disturbed force, Janet began swearing and hurling insults at those in the room in a disembodied voice quite unlike her own. So was this proof of a poltergeist, or simply a child playing pranks?
The investigators began interrogating “the spirit” - and the answers they got were decidedly sinister.
The poltergeist identified itself as a man named Bill, who explained that “I had a haemorrhage and then I fell asleep and I died in a chair in the corner downstairs.”
What could this mean? Astonishingly, subsequent research showed that long before the Hodgsons had moved in to the house, an old man called Bill Wilkins had indeed lived there. And he had died of a brain haemorrhage while sitting in a living room chair.
It’s certainly an intriguing tale. But is it really a proven case of a poltergeist?
If you dig deep beneath the surface, doubts soon begin to emerge. On several occasions the girls at the centre of the case were caught playing hoaxes on their investigators.
In one instance, they were caught hiding Guy’s tape recorder. They planned to pretend that the poltergeist had whisked it away.
Unfortunately for the girls, the recorder was running and caught their plotting on tape.
“They weren’t very good at playing tricks,” recalls Guy. “We always caught them out. What do you expect children to do?
“I would have been more worried if they hadn’t played around from time to time. It means they were behaving like normal kids.”
Asked about such pranks today, Janet explains that she and her sister did indeed play practical jokes - because they were so fed up of being tested all the time. They had become like animals trapped in a zoo, constantly being asked to perform tricks for gawping onlookers.
People would turn up expecting inexplicable things to happen, and when nothing happened, the girls decided to play the occasional prank.
But, crucially, Janet estimates that only about one or two per cent of the many hundreds of separate paranormal phenomena that took place in the house were faked by her and Margaret - and these were minor things like balancing a chair on top of a door and pretending that the poltergeist had done it.
Besides, in many cases, it would have been physically impossible for the two young girls to have faked the evidence. How does a 12-year old girl rip out a fireplace, or make a chair levitate in front of police officers?
The barrister, Mary Rose Barrington, who reviewed the case on behalf of the Society for Psychical Research, is in no doubt that the investigators did a thorough and honest job.
She re-interviewed and cross-examined many of the witnesses and double-checked the evidence.
Nothing she found suggested a wider conspiracy.
Equally, the 30 or so other witnesses who saw the hauntings - including police officers, journalists and passers-by - all seem convinced by what they saw.
Nevertheless, some experts remain unconvinced. Professor Chris French, a psychologist at London University, is in no doubt that the girls were mischievous and enterprising:
“Children can be very ingenious. I don’t buy the idea that kids can’t outwit intelligent investigators.
“There are undoubtedly some things in the case that defy rational explanation, but that does not mean that they are real phenomena.
“When you also consider the fact that people, no matter how sincere, are notoriously unreliable witnesses then you have to take this case with a very big pinch of salt.”
Perhaps so. But incredible though the events of Enfield were, they are far from unique.
Professor David Fontana, a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, has investigated similar hauntings.
He says: “From my own studies I know of accounts of poltergeists pulling people’s hair, causing objects to disappear before returning them in the most unlikely places, starting small fires, throwing water about, upsetting furniture, scribbling on walls, breaking objects and generally discomforting the hapless owners of the property they choose to haunt.”
Are they all hoaxes? It seems unlikely.
But perhaps the last word should go to Janet herself. Now aged 41, and eager to keep details of her present-day life private for fear of attracting ridicule, she is adamant that what she experienced was a genuine paranormal entity.
“I know from my own experience that it was real,” she says. “It lived off me, off my energy. Call me mad or a prankster if you like. Those events did happen. The poltergeist was with me - and I feel in a sense that he always will be.
The Pyderrairme people were the traditional owners of the area that is now known as Port Arthur. Middens and other cultural sites remain from many thousands of years of occupation. Port Arthur penal station was established in 1830 as a timber-getting camp, produciing sawn logs for government projects. After 1833 it became a punishment station for repeat offenders from all the Australian colonies. It also managed a number of outstations that produced raw material like timber and food.
Wewelsburg Castle
