Poltergeist Photographer Recalls Case That Inspired Horror Movie

A photographer who spent months trying to capture a poltergeist in the late 1970s has talked about his experiences for a new television show.

Graham Morris appears in Hauntings to talk about his experience covering The Enfield Poltergeist story, a claim of supernatural activity that took place in a family home in London and inspired The Conjuring 2 movie.

Newspaper photographer Morris tells the Metro that he was initially skeptical but came to believe that something was happening inside the house.

“I got struck on the head with a Lego brick that was flying through the air and I knew that no one was throwing anything because I could see everybody in the room,” he says.

“I could see everyone in front of me and no one was throwing anything. So I was convinced that something was happening, and then I stayed on night after night and all sorts of things happened.

“Chairs moved, cupboards opened, drawers opened, beds turned over, all sorts of things. So it convinced me there was something happening.”

Morris was working for the Daily Mirror newspaper and he wanted to capture a photo that showed what was happening inside the house.

“We were there just about every night. It was too fascinating not to,” Morris says on the TV show.

“We’d be sitting in the sitting room for hours and hours just waiting for something to happen. And then, bang. Got upstairs to find this bed had turned itself sidewards and was stood up against the wall and we couldn’t have done that between us, let alone children.”

The case centered around two children, 11-year-old Janet Hodgson and her sister 13-year-old Margaret. One night, Morris heard another bang and found Janet on the floor who claimed she had been thrown out of her bed.

Picturing the Poltergeist

In a bid to photograph an encounter, Morris set up his film camera on a tripod with a flashgun with a long cable trigger. There was also a tape recorder set up.

“As soon as we heard a noise, I pressed the button, it would take lots of pictures,” he says.

Morris captured a photo of Janet “levitating” which some point to as proof of the haunting while others say that the child was merely jumping from her bed.

For his part, Morris denies to the Metro that he believes in ghosts and is not convinced that Janet was levitating.

“When I started at the house, it was very spooky and very frightening what was happening, but after a while, I learned or I’d convinced myself that it wasn’t anything to do with sort of ghosts or anything like that, it was something purely scientific that we just didn’t know what was happening, one day we’ll find out.”

Hauntings is available to watch on Paramount+.