Fact Vs Fiction: ‘The Conjuring 2’ Film Compared To The Real Life Enfield Poltergeist [Spoilers]

WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FROM THE CONJURING 2 FILM.

DO NOT PROCEED TO READ THIS ARTICLE IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO READ SPOILERS.

The Conjuring 2 film, although has many similarities, has a number of differences compared to the real life Enfield haunting that took place in London.

The haunting began on August 30, 1977. Peggy Hodgson was living at the home with her four children, Janet, Margaret, Johnny, and Billy. That evening, Janet informed her mother that the bed her brother was sleeping in was wobbling. The next day, Peggy walked upstairs after noticing a loud noise. It was then that Peggy noticed a chest of drawers moving across her children’s bedroom. Janet recalled that very moment while speaking with Channel 4 during the Enfield Poltergeist documentary.

“It started in a back bedroom, the chest of drawers moved, and you could hear shuffling. We told her what was going on, and she came to see it for herself. She saw the chest of drawers moving. When she tried to push it back, she couldn’t.”

Eyewitness testimony, as well as the family’s recollection of the 1977 Enfield haunting, make it evident that some of the occurrences in the film were simply added for some extra thrill and fright. Janet, now 45, lives with her husband in Essex. She wasn’t very thrilled to hear that they were making a movie about their paranormal occurrences because her father had just passed away, and she simply didn’t want to have the memories brought back after all of these years. With that being said, Janet still agreed to the documentary.

So what were some differences between the Conjuring 2 film and the real life Enfield poltergeist? One scene from the film showed a room with upside-down crosses covering the walls. There was no evidence that this actually occurred during the Enfield haunting. In fact, upside-down crosses have never been a sign of evil.

Nothing could have prepared Ed and Lorraine Warren for this case. See #TheConjuring2 in theaters Friday.https://t.co/mFDXn3DBud

— The Conjuring (@TheConjuring) June 6, 2016

One of the most asked questions about the Conjuring 2 film is whether or not Janet actually did levitate in the real life Enfield haunting. Janet discusses her levitation in the Channel 4 documentary.

“The levitation was scary because you didn’t know where you were going to land. I remember a curtain being wound around my neck, I was screaming. I thought I was going to die. My mom had to use all her strength to rip it away. The man who spoke through me, Bill, seemed angry because we were in his house.”

Janet also made it evident that the Conjuring 2 film shows Ed and Lorraine Warren having much more involvement for the film than what they actually did during the Enfield haunting. According to Janet, Ed and Lorraine Warren were only two of the many paranormal investigators that looked into their case. Guy Lyon Playfair, one of the original paranormal investigators, claim that Ed and Lorraine Warren were only present for a brief one day.

“Inhuman spirit phenomena were in progress. Now, you couldn’t record the dangerous, threatening atmosphere inside that little house. But you could film the levitation’s, teleportation’s, and dematerialisation’s of people and objects that were happening there- not to mention the many hundreds of hours of tape recordings made of these spirit voices speaking out loud in the rooms.”

Janet admitted that she did, indeed, use a Ouija board prior to the paranormal events, as conveyed in the Conjuring 2 film. Another fact that deemed true in the film was the old man, Bill Wilkins, really did die in that chair after he suffered a brain hemorrhage.

Did Janet really become possessed by Bill, the dead guy who died in his armchair several years earlier? According to Janet and the audio recording from the actual event, she really did convey messages in a man’s voice that were supposedly that of Bill Wilkins’.

“Just before I died, I went blind, and then I had a hemorrhage, and I fell asleep and I died in the chair in the corner downstairs.”

Although the story was thought to be a hoax by many, it wasn’t such a hoax after all. It is hard to believe that an 11-year-old girl can change her voice that much just for some attention. Other eyewitnesses claim the story was as real as it gets, including the female cop that was shown in the film initially investigating the house when a chair moved itself across the room. The female cop at the time of the event really did see the chair move approximately four feet across the floor with no explanation. Others claim to have seen and heard Janet while she was in a trance, conveying messages as Bill. Even though not all instances of the Conjuring 2 film were real, the instances that were surely are frightening to think about.

[Image via Faiz Zaki/Shutterstock.com]