TV Review: The Enfield Haunting (2015)

enfield-haunting

By Keri O’Shea

Do you believe in ghosts? Personally, I don’t, but I don’t think it’s any less of a big deal to acknowledge the incredible interplay between human imagination and perceived phenomena which gives rise to tales of ghostly goings-on. It doesn’t strip the magic out of it, for me, to suggest that electromagnetic sensitivity (for instance) can have a metaphysical impact on people; hey, the effects are no less important and no less terrifying, when it comes down to it. Like many sceptics, though, I’ve made a life’s habit of seeking out ghost stories, and supernatural horror is one of my favourite things. But why? Well, perhaps beyond the fact of these being some damn good stories, and the part of me that quite likes being scared within the safe-space of horror, part of me wants to be challenged. Not to quote a certain 90s TV show or anything, perhaps to an extent “I want to believe”, hence I’m so happy to pore over alleged ‘real life’ hauntings, wondering at how seemingly average folk can apparently find themselves under siege by something which doesn’t seem to operate according to any known laws. I may come out and dismiss what I’ve read, but still, by the next time it’s like a moth to a flame all over again.

This brings us to the series of phenomena occurring between 1977 and 1979 in an ordinary terraced house in Enfield, England; phenomena which seemed to focus chiefly on the eleven year old daughter of the family, Janet. Now known chiefly as the ‘Enfield poltergeist’ haunting, during this time the family heard ghostly rappings, were pelted by objects, and Janet bore the brunt of what seemed to be physical attacks before beginning to channel ‘voices’ of the dead. I first read an account of all of this is a compendium of ‘The Unexplained’ belonging to my grandmother: The Unexplained was divided up into chapters, with one for UFOs, one for Divination, and so on – until the chapter on Poltergeists, those ‘mischievous spirits’ associated with notorious cases worldwide – the Bell Witch, the Matthew Manning story, Borley Rectory. I remember feeling a tad underwhelmed by the photos of Janet ostensibly being flung across the room (had she been upside down instead of clearly springing into space, that would have really been something) but the finer details of the story were definitely intriguing. How far were Janet, and to a lesser extent her older sister, responsible for what was going on? Was there really some malignant entity perpetrating some of the phenomena in the house? And why were so many ordinarily po-faced adults so willing to go on record to say that they had witnessed the phenomena take place?

the-enfield-hauntingLooking into the case again, having just watched the enjoyable recent three-part series The Enfield Haunting and had my interest in the case rekindled, it seems to me that the real story in Enfield was an incredibly tangled, convoluted combination of elements: childhood trauma (the children’s father had walked out on them), adolescence, related adolescent attention seeking, credibility, group hysteria, various kinds of suggestibility, ulterior motives – and maybe, just maybe, a nub of something genuinely inexplicable, which gave rise to all of the above. The great thing about The Enfield Haunting is that it plays with several of these possibilities. Although of course giving credence to the events as recorded at the time, as well as adding extra elements to them (it wouldn’t be much of a supernatural story, in terms of entertainment, if it didn’t) it also takes a step back on occasion, and allows us to see children acting up to what was expected of ‘the poltergeist’, deliberately faking phenomena for effect. These moments keep you hovering as an audience member, because it reminds you that the ‘real life events’ (which are almost routinely vaunted at the beginning of any new horror yarn on-screen) are far from cut-and-dried here. You’re encouraged to question, as well as to immerse yourself in what is being presented.

Framed from the point of view of paranormal investigator Maurice Grosse (Timothy Spall), the larger-than-life real life character is played rather quieter here, with Grosse a man broken by the death of his daughter and evidently searching for tangible proof of the afterlife. He finds this in Enfield, when he picks up on the media buzz surrounding the alleged haunting (Mrs. Hodgson had called in the Daily Mirror newspaper as a first port-of-call when the haunting began). Soon installing himself in the family home alongside fellow investigator Guy Playfair (Matthew MacFadyen), Grosse forges a close relationship with the spirited, impertinent Janet (played brilliantly by Eleanor Worthington-Cox) but being a clever girl, Janet does manipulate Grosse: she’s depicted on several occasions as a rather needy pre-teen who has bottled up a lot of rage about her current circumstances, and enjoys the attention bestowed upon her. Maurice and Janet become rather symbiotic, each needing the other, with the phenomena increasing the more oblique encouragement Janet receives from the adults in her life. There does seem to have been an element of this in the original case, and it’s a credit to the series for debating the effects of this here. However, we are also shown a multitude of events from Janet’s point-of-view, which would imply that she isn’t simply faking what happens when she needs to do so: it’s no sober debunking, this series, and in fact it adds several elements to the story for the purposes of building some very effective dread.

The story diverges from the 70s case by becoming more of an investigation narrative; developing claims made by the real Janet that she was speaking for one entity in particular – an old man called Bill – we see psychic mediums, seances and detective work employed to find out who he is, what he wants and how to get rid of him. Some of the sequences involving The Enfield Haunting’s ‘Joe’ (with regards the name change, this is probably to break any links between the work of fiction and the very real former inhabitant of the Hodgson family home whom Janet allegedly channeled) are truly horrific – even if they move more towards Hollywood scares than the more understated style scenes. Where Janet plays with her sister Margaret’s View-Finder toy and sees the old man creep up on her via the pictures she’s looking at – well, it may resonate with Stephen King’s It to an extent, but it’s still bloody effective. Likewise, some of the more flashy, higher-action scenes are more derivative of the body of work which came before the new series, but they’re nicely handled here, and really drew me in. I wonder if some of the impact comes from the odd recognisability of the Hodgson home; I can remember a lot of the styles of furniture from my own home growing up, and even recognised a few pieces wholesale. I’ve definitely crept into very similar-looking rooms as a child, as equally petrified as Janet of whatever might be lurking in the dark there, and perhaps this evocative touch makes the series all the more successful for people of a similar age. And doesn’t that tie in with what many of us want from supernatural horror – to feel the type of enervating scares we felt as kids?

Doing a good job of honouring the source material whilst going somewhere new with it, not dwelling for too long on mainstream horror cliche, The Enfield Haunting balances a story of the effects of bereavement alongside its more visceral scares. Neither thing feels compromised by the other, and the end result definitely makes for engaging telly. Add to this an excellent and plausible cast, and this leads me to hope that more like this series may be on the way.