Cousin of the Enfield Haunting girls recalls moment he saw Janet Hodgson, 11, levitate off her chair and ‘flip over’ and says the atmosphere in the house was ‘terrible’

• Paul Burcombe was only 13 on when he witnessed the ‘scary’ event in 1977
• READ MORE: What IS the truth about the Enfield Poltergeist?

One of the biggest horror mysteries to grip the nation has been revisited on today’s episode of This Morning.

The so-called Enfield Haunting occured in the summer of 1977, when two sisters Janet Hodgson, 11, and Margaret Hodgson, 13, were photographed flying through the air at their North London home, along with furniture, drawers, and even water.

Today their cousin Paul Burcombe – who was 13 at the time and lived around the corner – sat down with hosts Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary alongside news reporter Roz Morris, to retell the fearsome experience that changed their lives forever.

Both Paul and Roz will also reveal their encounters in a brand new Apple TV docuseries titled Enfield Poltergeist, a Halloween special which airs for the first time tomorrow.

Speaking on This Morning, Paul recounted the fateful night: ‘It was one evening that my aunt Peggy came down to ours quite hysterical and very upset and she said there was a noise going on in the upstairs of the house.

Paul Burcombe (pictured left) – who was 13 at the time and lived around the corner from the ‘haunted’ Enfield home – alongside news reporter Roz Morris (pictured right) sat down with hosts Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary , to retell the fearsome experience that changed their lives forever

‘And she asked if we could go down there. And I don’t know why but I went down there with my dad – I was 13 – and we only lived a few doors down from there. So I went down to the house and we went upstairs.

‘In the back bedroom there’s a very large oak wardrobe and it had been moved into the centre of the room and that was the start of it really. The whole house was just really – the atmosphere was terrible. It was very scary.

‘We didn’t know what was going on and we were skeptical of what was going on. But really we needed to know “what’s going on here” because obviously the girls are really scared, and so was Peggy, She was very upset. It was just a really cold atmosphere in the house’.

Peggy Hodgson, a single mother to both girls, lived at at 284 Green Street in Enfield, London with her children.

The mother-of-four called the Metropolitan Police to complain of moving furniture, while two of her  children said they’d heard strange sounds coming from the walls. Paul himself actually witnessed a sofa being ‘flipped’ around.

‘We were all in the lounge and the houses are very small,’ started Paul. ‘There was a leather two-seater and it literally flipped and turned itself upside down.

‘At that stage we were all trying to support the family and were trying to get answers to what was going on. That was the really important thing. I suppose what me and my dad was trying to do was support Margaret and that who didn’t have a dad.’

Paul also shared the moment he witnessed a scared Janet ‘moving across the room’, saying: ‘We were in the same area, the same lounge and she was on and old fashioned chair and she had her feet off the ground resting on the plinths at the bottom.

The eerie event now known as the Enfield Haunting occured in the summer of 1977, when two sisters Janet Hodgson (pictured), 11, and Margaret Hodgson, 13, were photographed flying through the air at their North London home, along with furniture, drawers, and even water. 

‘She literally moved across the room and then she flipped off the chair but her feet weren’t on the ground at all and she was fairly relaxed but she went across the room and then flipped over.’

Responding to Dermot who asked if he leapt away in fright, Paul replied: ‘I stayed there’. 

And although he couldn’t recount how many times this happened, he confirmed that peculiar events continued to occur beyond that one day.

Former BBC Radio 4 journalist Roz was handed the task of reporting on the event and met the girls after visiting their home.

‘After the girls went to sleep there was a massive bang upstairs,’ she recalled. ‘It appeared that while they were asleep a chair had moved across the room.

‘Now I didn’t see it, but it did sound fairly strange and I did a report about that and went back over several months doing a radio documentary about it.

‘I recorded the knocking on the walls and the strange voices the girls seemed to have produced.’

Roz said the ordeal was ‘scary’, however her resolve to focus on getting the recordings kept her going.

Paul also shared the life changing moment he witnessed a scared Janet ‘moving across the room’

The news comes as the photographer who took the infamous ‘levitating girl’ image of Janet said he believes she may have had telekinesis powers like Stephen King’s Carrie.

Photographer Graham Morris was in his 20s when in 1977, while working for the Daily Mirror, he was sent with a reporter to the semi-detached home at around midnight after their neighbours, Vic and Peggy Nottingham, called pleading for help when the terrified Hodgson family had sought refuge with them.

Keen to prove their theory, a camera was set up on a tripod in the corner of the children’s bedroom, which was triggered by a button on a long cable which ran down to the living room, with an audio recording also being taken.

‘As soon as I hear there’s anything, like a bed spring goes twang or somebody moans or screams, a bang or crash… anything. I hit the button,’ Mr Morris said.

It is through this that the famous picture seen across the world of Janet supposedly ‘levitating’ and ‘flying through the air’ was taken. Mr Morris recalled hearing a scream or a shout and then nothing for a second before a huge crash.

‘There is no way she was doing this for fun,’ he said. ‘You have got to be mad to actually want to do something like that. It was a completely darkened room.

‘If it were the case she were jumping she’d be launching herself at a brick wall or a door in pitch black.’

They ran upstairs to find Janet in a ‘mess’, crumpled on the floor on the other side of the bedroom.

He denies he ever said she was jumping and he left it to the experts at the Society for Psychic Research to decide whether she was levitating or not.

Mr Morris has his own theory behind it and openly admits he does not believe in ghosts.

Both Paul and Roz will also reveal their encounters in a brand new Apple TV docuseries titled Enfield Poltergeist, a Halloween special which airs for the first time tomorrow.

‘I think this girl has some sort of force,’ he said.

He believes the house wasn’t haunted as things would happen whenever Janet was there, whether it was at school, her neighbours’ homes, or at the shops.

Instead, he likened it to Stephen King’s character Carrie who can move things with her mind through harnessing her telekinesis powers.

‘[I think] Janet has got this sort of kinetic energy, she’s really bright,’ he said. ‘As I said, she can’t talk to her dad – he’s not here – mum’s too busy, her sister cries, one brother has a speech impediment so bad I doubt she can even understand what he says, and the other brother is at a special school.

‘And she is desperate to get this… whatever it is. This energy, this power, whatever she has, across and out to communicate with people. And it’s coming out in different ways in a sort of force. Like a kinetic energy where things are shifting around.’ 

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