In the late summer of 1977, the ordinary council house at 284 Green Street in Enfield, North London, turned into a living nightmare for Peggy Hodgson and her four children. Peggy, a divorced single mother barely holding things together, shared the cramped home with Margaret, thirteen; Janet, eleven; Johnny, ten; and little Billy, seven. Life was tough enough without the horrors that started creeping in.

At first, it was subtle. Strange knocks echoed from the walls after the kids went to bed. Peggy told herself it was the pipes or the neighbors. But on the night of August 30, everything shattered.

Peggy heard her daughters screaming from their upstairs bedroom. She bolted up the stairs to find Janet and Margaret cowering in the corner, faces pale with raw terror. A massive chest of drawers had slid across the floor on its own, blocking the door like a barricade. Peggy shoved it back, muscles straining, only for it to lurch forward again with impossible force, as if invisible hands pushed from the other side.

Then came the knocking.

Rapid, furious bangs thundered from inside the walls, the ceiling, the floorboards beneath their feet. It sounded like angry fists demanding entry, pounding harder and harder until the whole house vibrated.

The family huddled downstairs that first night, too scared to sleep. Peggy called the police in desperation. A constable arrived, skeptical at first, but his face drained of color when a chair suddenly wobbled and slid across the kitchen floor right in front of him. No one touched it. He reported the movement but could offer no explanation.

Word spread quickly. Neighbors whispered. Reporters from the Daily Mirror showed up, cameras ready. Photographer Graham Morris was hit square in the forehead by a flying Lego brick, hard enough to leave a bleeding welt. Toys whipped through the air like bullets. Books tore from shelves and slammed into walls, pages fluttering like dying birds.

As weeks dragged on, the activity grew vicious. Furniture overturned in empty rooms with crashes that shook the foundations. Beds flipped while the children slept, dumping them onto the cold floor in heaps of tangled sheets. One night, an entire cast-iron fireplace ripped from the wall with a grinding screech of metal and brick, crashing down in a cloud of dust and soot.

Small fires sparked out of nowhere. Matches ignited in drawers. Curtains burst into flames only to snuff out just as quickly, leaving charred fabric and the acrid stink of smoke hanging in the air.

But the true horror centered on Janet.

The eleven-year-old became the focus, as if whatever lurked in the house fed on her fear. She woke screaming as unseen forces dragged her from bed, pulling her across the carpet by her ankles. Her nightgown bunched up, exposing skin that burned from friction.

Deep scratches appeared on her body overnight. Long, bleeding welts raked across her torso, arms, and thighs, forming jagged patterns that oozed blood and pus. Some spelled crude words like “HELP” or “GO,” the skin splitting open as if clawed by razor-sharp nails from within.

Then came the levitations.

Witnesses—including police, reporters, and later investigators—watched in frozen horror as Janet’s small body lifted off the bed. Her limbs went rigid, eyes wide and unseeing. She rose several feet into the air, hovering like a broken doll before slamming back down with bone-jarring impact.

Bruises bloomed across her back and ribs, purple and swollen. One famous sequence of photographs captured her mid-flight, twisted in agony, hurtling across the room toward the wall. Neighbors peered through windows and saw her floating, suspended against gravity’s pull.

The worst nights brought the voice.

Janet would collapse into a trance, her young face contorting into something ancient and hateful. Her eyes rolled back, showing only whites veined with red. Then the growling started—low and guttural, bubbling up from her throat like gravel churned in mud.

It wasn’t her voice.

It belonged to a man.

Deep, rasping, full of malice.

He called himself Bill Wilkins, a previous tenant who died in the house years earlier.

“I went blind,” the voice snarled through Janet’s lips. “Then I had a hemorrhage. Blood poured from my mouth. I fell asleep and died right there in the corner chair downstairs.”

The descriptions were graphic and unrelenting. Bill ranted about his rotting body, the pain of his final moments, fluids choking his lungs. He cursed the family in foul language no child should know. He threatened to kill them. To burn the house down with them inside.

Janet’s mouth foamed as she barked these words, her small body convulsing on the floor. Sometimes the voice switched to other entities, howling obscenities, describing violent deaths in sickening detail—blood, gore, decay—all spewing from an eleven-year-old girl.

Investigators arrived in droves.

Maurice Grosse, a grieving inventor turned paranormal researcher, moved in practically full-time after losing his own daughter. He recorded over 180 hours of audio, capturing the knocks, the growls, the threats. Guy Lyon Playfair joined him, documenting thousands of incidents.

They witnessed toys hurling at their heads, doors slamming shut with explosive force. One night, Grosse felt a curtain snake around his neck, tightening like a noose until he clawed it free, gasping for air.

Even American demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren made brief visits late in the ordeal, convinced dark forces possessed Janet.

Swarms of flies infested the house in winter, buzzing madly around lights. Green slime oozed from walls. Water pooled on floors with no source.

The children, especially Janet, wasted away. Dark circles ringed their eyes. They barely ate, jumping at every shadow. Janet spent weeks in hospital after violent episodes left her arched backward impossibly far, her spine creaking as if ready to snap. Doctors found no medical cause for her contortions or the marks carving into her flesh.

For eighteen grueling months, the Hodgson home was hell on earth.

Peggy chain-smoked through sleepless nights, listening to crashes and screams. The kids refused to be alone, huddling together in terror. Reporters camped outside. Skeptics accused the girls of faking it—but too many outsiders saw the impossible with their own eyes.

Police reports. Photographs. Audio tapes that still chill listeners today.

Finally, as abruptly as it began, the fury faded. The knocks grew faint. The voice fell silent. Janet recovered, though faint scars lingered on her skin and in her mind. The house fell quiet.

But those who lived through it never forgot.

Peggy died years later, insisting to her last breath that it was real. Janet, now an adult, speaks openly about the trauma—the feeling of being used, violated by something unseen and hateful.

Walk past 284 Green Street today, and it looks like any other council house. Ordinary. Unassuming.

But dig into the records. Listen to those tapes.

You’ll feel it.

Whatever invaded that family didn’t just move furniture or play pranks. It tormented them. Scratched them bloody. Possessed a child to spew tales of death and decay.

It wanted suffering.

And for a time, it got exactly what it craved.

Some say poltergeists feed on chaos, on the raw energy of adolescence. Others whisper of restless dead, furious at the living.

Whatever the truth, the Enfield horror remains one of the most documented nightmares in history.

A reminder that sometimes the walls of a normal home hide something truly evil.

And once it wakes—

it doesn’t let go easily.