Danny Robins' paranormal cold cases: the haunting behind The Conjuring 2

The case has been dramatised for TV and film, including Hollywood’s The Conjuring 2, where the scriptwriters added in a demonic nun for good measure. It feels hard to sift fact from fiction, but talking to Graham plunges me into the reality of that semi-detached suburban house in the late 1970s. When one of the family’s neighbours called the Mirror, Graham found himself on the scene, being bombarded by a shower of flying objects.

“I got hit in the head, just above the eyebrow – only a little Lego brick, but it must have been going at some speed. It gave me a lump for about four days.”

There’s something utterly convincing about the matter-of-fact way Graham describes being assaulted by supernatural forces. He became obsessed with trying to understand what was going on, spending as many as four nights a week at the house over a period of 18 months. During that time, he took a series of photographs that have become iconic. Type “Enfield levitation” into your search engine and you’ll find images of Janet in a vivid red nightie, seemingly floating above her bed.

For me, the pictures get to the heart of the debate over Enfield that’s raged for 45 years. Are we looking at an innocent girl tormented by paranormal forces, or a hoax perpetrated by an attention-seeking child? I’m fascinated to be talking to the man who took the photos. Surely, he must know the truth?

But here, Graham disappoints me. It turns out he rigged up a camera he could operate remotely, so he didn’t have to sit intrusively in the girls’ bedroom. On the night in question, Janet and Margaret had gone to bed and Graham was sitting downstairs. “Then crash, bang, scream, whatever, so I hit the button and this camera has just taken pictures.”

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What do you see when you look at the photographs? Is Janet levitating or jumping? As with any ghost story, it’s in the eye of the beholder. Enfield has become a battleground for sceptics and believers, with enough instances of potential fakery to cast doubt, but enough seemingly inexplicable incidents to allow the case to retain its mysteries.

The thing that sticks with Graham is the fear he saw in Janet and Margaret. “They were terrified,” he remembers. “At no point did I ever think that anyone was doing this, certainly not the children. They wanted it to stop and go away.”

I understand what he means from my own investigations into the paranormal. There’s nothing more convincing than looking into someone’s eyes and seeing pure, genuine, unadulterated fear.

This article was first published in the May 2022 issue of BBC History Revealed

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From ghostly phantoms to UFOs, The Battersea Poltergeist's Danny Robins investigates real-life stories of paranormal encounters on his BBC Radio 4 podcast Uncanny. Episodes available now on BBC Sounds