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Dec. 19, 2022 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
56:34
Edition 688 - Paul Burcombe - Enfield Poltergeist
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Across the UK, across continental North America, and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes, and this is the Unexplained.
Well, I hope that you're bearing up.
In the Northern Hemisphere, we've had the big freeze, and as I'm recording these words, we are still in the grip of it.
Here in the United Kingdom, temperatures in some places, overnight, recently have been as low as minus 13 degrees Celsius, or centigrade, depending on how you want to put it.
In the neck of the woods that I live, near London, it's been down to as deep and cold as minus six, and there's more of this to come.
And then apparently, closer to Christmas, the temperatures increase and the weather gets a little bit better.
And all I can say as I sit here in my flat, with a scarf around my neck, a little zip-up coat on indoors, as I'm recording this, I just hope that the temperature improves very significantly very soon.
Because I'm only, I don't know what you're doing, but I think most of us are doing this, I'm only putting the heating on when I need to.
And lately, there have been days and nights where I've had to put it on.
But I'm trying to control it as much as I can because of the prices.
You've got to, haven't you?
Unless you're a millionaire, what else can you do?
Now, as I'm looking out the window now, I am seeing a very grey, wintry scene.
It kind of looks like it could snow, and it's, you know, it's not getting dark yet, but it's dusky.
Looks like it could snow at any moment.
So there's a little snapshot, a little picture of the weather here in London.
If you're in the southern hemisphere, where it's as sunny as anything in some places, it's going to sound like I'm not thousands of miles away, but probably millions of miles away.
But that's what we're going through right now.
Thank you very much, Adam, my webmaster, for his continued hard work on getting the unexplained out to you and maintaining the website, theunexplained.tv.
If you need to email me, you can do that through the website by following the email link there.
And I get to see and read all of the emails.
Thank you for those.
If your email specifically requires a response, please let me know.
If you have made a donation during 2022 to the unexplained, I'd like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for that.
It allows all of this to keep going.
You know, I didn't want this to be a great big razzle-dazzle commercial operation.
I wanted it to be personal and intimate because I think that's one of its strengths.
I don't always get it right.
Not at all.
But at least I still have control over this part of it.
And that is something that's very important to me.
You know, I made it.
And whatever it is, you know, whether it's good, bad or indifferent, that's down to me.
And to you for listening to it.
More than anything else.
Thank you very much.
And there's still plenty of 2022 still to go.
So more shows still to come.
And then I'm going to do some planning for 2023 and see how I can tweak things.
Now, this is going to be a very different edition of The Unexplained.
And I'll tell you exactly why.
Around about two months now, six weeks, whatever, time just flies now.
But around about that long ago, I did a TV interview for the TV show with Ros Morris, a BBC reporter at the time, who was involved in the Enfield-Poltergeist case.
First of all, she was sent there, I think reluctantly at the beginning, as a reporter, and then she made a documentary about this case, a very good documentary for radio in the UK.
This is a long time ago.
The documentary was 1978, and most of the events of the Enfield case were 78 into 79.
The Enfield-Poltergeist, if you've seen the movie or read anything about it, you know that it involved a family, a family that was in the grip of some remarkably mobile and energetic paranormality, the kind of thing that none of us really wants to experience unless we're deeply into paranormal research and we want to go through something like this.
I don't think I would want objects flying around the home and people supposedly levitating and people speaking in strange, gruff tones like the exorcist.
But this family at Enfield in North London went through exactly like that in 1977.
So much so that investigators were called in.
Maurice Gross, of course, very famous investigator, Society for Psychical Research, and Guy Lyon Playfair, wonderful man who I met and has been on this show.
Both of them sadly no longer with us.
They were part of this story, along with a cavalcade of media, starting with the Daily Merrow newspaper.
Remarkable story, of course, they made a movie out of it, The Conjuring 2, TV series, documentaries, and books, books, books.
On this show, I've spoken to people like Melvin J. Willen.
This is his specialist subject.
He has access to all of the tapes, the hours and hours of them.
It is a remarkable story.
So when I spoke with Ros Morris, who was a wonderful guest on the show, and it made a podcast, if you want to listen back to that before you listen to this, you know, I'd certainly advise that if you want to.
On that night, I was contacted by a number of people who enjoyed the conversation, wanted to hear more.
I was also contacted by a man called Paul Berkham, who turns out to be a relative, one of the family, who lived just down the street from where all of this happened and went through all of it.
And he wanted to speak with me.
And that is the conversation that you're about to hear now.
Paul Berkham, whose father, John Berkham, is the brother of the mother of the family directly involved in all of this.
If you see what I'm saying, it's all familial connections.
So somebody who was directly involved in this case is going to be on this show.
Now, just to tell you, there were problems with the phone connection.
We couldn't do a full digital connection.
There were too many technical issues.
So we did it by phone.
At the beginning, the phone is not as clear as it might be.
But then, and you won't hear me do this because I've cut that little bit out, I reconnect to a different phone.
And from then on in, it's about four or five minutes in, the quality of the line is far, far better.
So please bear with the first few minutes of this conversation with Paul Berkham.
I think it's going to be worth it.
So that's that.
Paul Berkham, the Enfield Poltergeist, a totally different take on that story, is what's going to be on this show.
Thank you very much for being part of my show.
Don't forget if you get in touch with me by email or whatever way you do that, tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use this show.
And it's lovely to hear from you as I sit here in the freezing cold.
All right, let's get to Paul Berkham now, and we're going to talk about the Enfield Poltergeist with a man who was there and part of it.
Paul, thank you very much for coming on my show.
Howard, it's an absolute pleasure to meet you.
Thank you very much for having me.
Well, listen, it's really good for me to be able to speak to somebody who was so directly involved in this.
I just want to explain to my listener: there may be some sound issues with this because we tried to do it digitally, it didn't work.
So now we're doing it on your mobile phone, on your cell phone.
And I think we're going to get there, Paul.
Thank you very much.
So listen, I did a show on the TV and also put it out as a podcast where I spoke with Ros Morris, the BBC reporter who was involved in the Enfield case, who I know that you would have met back then, even though you were a kid.
I'm sure you will have come across her doing her investigations there.
You saw that conversation and wanted to get in touch with me.
Why did you do that?
Well, I was just flicking through the channels because I sometimes watch the news on Talk TV.
And by chance, I come across your conversation.
And I was very taken by how clear and I thought honest and fair Ros was about her account of the situation.
And I also thought you were quite empathetic.
And I just felt just someone I could talk to, really, because I've not done many interviews over the years.
And I just, I don't know why I felt it was just the right time, I suppose.
Now, talk to me, just so we get this clear at the beginning, what your relationship with the family is.
Am I right that John Berkham, which was Peggy Hodgson's brother, that's your connection.
Your dad was John Berkham?
Yeah, John Berkham's my dad, and Peggy Hodgson was my aunt, and she is his sister.
And Janet, Margaret, Billy and Jolly are my first cousins.
So you were as close to all of this as it was possible to be without, you know, actually living in the house?
Yeah, I suppose for my age, I was involved as much as people allowed me to be.
My mother was never involved or my sister.
I know that the neighbours, the Duttons, were really supportive, as was the local volley pop lady, Hazel, was very supportive.
And also was a photographer from Daisy Miller who was involved.
And then obviously we got lots of support from Maurice Gross and Guy Leon Playfair.
Right.
I mean, that's a lot of people.
The ones that most people will be aware of are Maurice Gross, because he was like the principal investigator, wasn't he, from the Society for Psychical Research.
Also involved with him was Guy Lyon Playfair, who wrote the famous book, This House is Haunted.
And, you know, I met Guy Lyon Playfair, and I know people who knew the late Maurice Gross.
I mean, both of them have now left us.
And they both seemed to be very sincere people in the work that they were doing.
They weren't GeeWiz merchants, were they?
No.
And, you know, I think, I don't know if I could say this, that one of the first times I've ever met Morris is when he pulled up in his amazingly beautiful bright red E-type jaguar.
He had that amazing moustache.
And it's something I've never forgot.
He made such an impact on all of us.
And he was just a person who wanted to help.
I was totally unaware, and I didn't realise till the last few years, about his own personal tragedy leading up to his investigation with us, who we really trusted and believed in.
And he really wanted to understand and to understand what was going on and he wanted answers.
And I had a remote relationship with him, I believe.
So much so, he actually came to my, when my father passed away, he actually came to my dad's funeral.
He was a part of that.
So he was very much become part of our family.
Right.
This was a difficult time for everybody, clearly, because these events were unprecedented.
Who'd be ready for anything like this?
I'm just going to read something here that I found online that describes what this case was about.
Maybe there are some people listening to this, I can't imagine they would be, who haven't heard of the case.
But anyway, it all started in a quaint little home in Enfield, London in 1977, when Peggy Hodgson, a single mother of four children, heard loud noises coming from her daughter's bedroom.
When she went to tell her daughters, Margaret, who was 12, and Janet, who was 11, to settle down and go to sleep, instead of arguing back, she found them huddled in the corner with terrified expressions on their faces.
That sounds horrendous.
What was the first that you got to hear about it?
Because you lived, didn't you?
You lived down the street.
Yeah, I mean, we lived in semi-detached council houses.
They were built around the 1930s, very basic, about three bedrooms.
There's a small, very small lounge living room with a kitchen.
Initially, we had outside toilets, and the kitchen had a little bathroom area.
So I lived eight doors away.
I was 272, and I think they were 286.
I think I was remembering.
And I think it was a Sunday night, Peggy, my aunt, came to our house, fairly upset, hysterical, saying to my dad, John, you need to come down.
You're going to come to the house.
You know, it's really scaring us.
I mean, I'm only sort of, I can't remember the exact words, so bear with me.
So I went down with my dad.
I don't know why I went with my dad.
I don't know what I was going to do as a young boy, but I went with my dad.
Upstairs, in the bedroom, there was a really large oak double wardrobe.
That was the centre of the room, obviously booth.
It was very heavy.
And there was lots of, the children were very scared, hysterically coloured.
The atmosphere wasn't good.
There was definitely a really tense atmosphere.
It's funny, over all these years, Howard, I was really scared on a handful of occasions.
That night was my first time I was really scared.
And you would say, well, he's a young boy, you don't know what's going on, but I do remember that there was stuff in that house that wasn't right and there was enough stuff that happened a bit later on that I was even even scared of.
Um and then it started really, I just remember being involved in really trying to help the family, my dad and my mother quite supported them.
I just want to tell my listener that we've had to change phone lines here.
We're trying this on another phone.
We've had some real sound problems, but the sound should improve from here.
So I was asking you about the way that you were able to get an idea from the girls, from Janet in particular, who was said to be the focus of all of this, you know, how it was affecting them.
Yeah, I think, as I said, I was trying to say really was that obviously it had a major impact on them.
You've got two young girls going through adolescence, you know, dealing with growing up, being, you know, as we were then, just trying to be children, you know, growing up.
And then they become this center of chaos, fear.
You know, there was stuff happening, Howard, that I saw, felt, and can't explain.
And people say to me, oh, I don't believe.
That's fine.
I'm not here to try to change anybody's mind, but I'm on record in the book and what happened.
I know how I felt.
And I only saw a small amount.
So for the girls and for Billy, what they saw, sleeping with it, being terrorized, you know, woken up, what they went through, must have had a massive toll.
So I think it had a major impact on them.
What about Peggy, the mum?
You know, by herself, admittedly, with help from a couple of the neighbours and some local people, and you were just down the street, she did have a certain amount of help, but nevertheless, she had to live there, and she had to be mum for them all.
And there were four of them then, the two girls who were the focus of it all.
How did she bear up, as far as you can remember?
I think it was a relief when people started coming in to start with.
I think they're scared, don't know what's going on.
People from all sides start coming in.
She had great neighbours, as I said, in Nottingham, next door.
And people came to give her support.
Later on, Maurice, the guy, even the photographer from the mirror, they started to give her a sense of she's not alone.
You know, I mean, later on, Morris spent a lot of time in that house as the guy.
My dad and myself, we spent many nights being down there, being like, it may sound comical, but we'd be on the landing, just listening outside the room for making sure the girls were okay.
So I think Peggy was so stoic.
And I think for what I can remember, she dealt with it very well.
And if you listen to the tapings, she started to give really true, accurate, good accounts, reflections of what happened.
Why do you think they didn't want to get, I mean, and I know that you were very young then, so you wouldn't have known all of the ins and outs of it.
But why do you think they didn't want to get out of there?
You know, they were besieged by something, and they had investigators in their place doing their best, and the media trying to understand it and trying to be as fair as they could be, I guess.
Why did they just not want to get out of there?
That's a really valid question.
I don't know.
I really don't know.
Maybe it's because of the schools.
I mean, we live, our street is like, it's opposite our primary junior school.
So we would have gone there.
And literally five ten minutes a walk away is our local secondary school.
So perhaps that, I mean, she's got four children there.
There's roots down.
So perhaps that's why other people might say, I'm leaving that house, I'm never going back.
I don't know.
I don't know.
You said to me that you didn't see all of the stuff.
Of course you didn't, because you didn't live there.
You didn't see all the stuff that happened there, but you saw stuff in there that scared you.
What do you recall of that?
Yeah, okay.
The main things that were really clear to me are the night me and my dad were standing on the landing.
Now the landing is just a small, you come up the stairs, I'll try and make a picture.
You literally, as you walk in the front door of our houses, both, the Hodgson's house and the Birkenhouse, both the right side of the semi.
So we are exactly the same layout.
So you go through the front door and on your left you've got a door into a lounge and facing you is a set of stairs that goes upstairs.
So you go straight upstairs and literally you have three doors which goes into the bedrooms.
And me and my dad would stand on the landing area upstairs and the girls would be in the back bedroom and we would wait and stand there.
And also we had remote control access to some cameras that were left by the Daily Merrill photographer.
So if SANC happened we would take pictures and go in to make sure the girls were okay.
One particular night we were in the bedroom.
Sake Papa and me and my dad had gone in there, opened the door.
I think we're taking pictures and the flash was going off.
And we were standing there and the girls were really upset.
I think Janet may have been, there's been dispute about this from the psychic research people about levitation and that.
But the girls were at their beds saying they'd been thrown across the room.
And there was just one, it's really silly.
This is really silly, Howard, but there's these days.
I start asking how it was a massive TV show in those years.
And there was a picture of David's soul on the wall above Margaret's bed.
And I just remember standing there, feeling absolutely petrified and terrified.
Don't know why.
I don't know what I was experiencing.
I was looking at these posters, that particular poster, and it just felt really, really demonstrate now.
That's all I could feel.
But that is what I remember feeling at that time.
And that feeling has never left me.
I recollect, you know, over the years, I've forgotten details that, but that sense was a sense of real dread, definitely.
How was your dad?
I don't know what's going on.
I don't know why I felt that.
I didn't see anything.
Later on, I was in the lounge downstairs where I actually saw a sort of like orange sort of leverette sofa be turned upside down.
I also saw Janet in the lounge.
There was no carpet bed lying on.
Was sitting on this chair, a wooden chair.
And her feet, there's like the roots across the bottom to hold her legs together.
So Janet's feet were rested on those wooden supports.
So there were feet right on the wall.
So this is a kind of kitchen-style chair that's got struts holding the legs together.
Yeah, that's the thing, yeah.
And it's made out of wood.
And she shot across the room.
And I, clear as day, and I, there actually is taping of me saying, and it's in the book, a guy spoke to me about that.
I just remember saying, well, her feet were on the floor, so how could she move?
So they're really the three main things I remember.
And what was it, just, you know, you say it because, you know, you were there and you've probably told people many times about this, but let's not just glide over it.
You saw her catapulted across the room.
I don't think I'd use the word catapult.
I'd use the word right.
She sits on a chair.
We were all in a loud, in a small, it's a very small little area.
And she literally just glides across the floor on the chair.
And she's going, I'm moving.
I mean, I think it's fair to say to, I need to say to your listeners is that obviously there's in between these, I'm talking about different periods of time, like weeks, months have gone across.
And from the outset, the girls were really terrified.
But as things progressed, it's hard to say, they become not normalized, but they were getting desensitized to it.
It was, oh, the chairs moves.
Oh, there's a piece of Lego going across the room.
Or there's the voice again.
Do you know what I mean?
It became everybody's becoming, it became very, I don't know if we used the right word, Tower, but, oh, there's that front, oh, there's that big voice again.
And so everybody become a bit used to it.
Yeah, so you kind of become habituated to it because it's happening around you all the time.
Yeah, and it was like when she was on the chest, she goes, oh, I've moved.
My feet aren't on the ground.
I think there may be a recording of it as well.
Okay.
These are terrifying things.
And, you know, there was a great effort to try and understand what was going on there.
From your recollections, you know, you've got the media there.
The Daily Mirror was involved first.
You had Ros Morris from the BBC there, who was doing a very serious and sincere job in times when sometimes this stuff was laughed at.
She was doing a very fair job of reporting that.
But you still had to get on with an ordinary life, all of you, in the middle of all of this.
How was that for everybody?
For you down the street, your dad, John, who of course was Peggy's brother and had to support her.
What was it like for everybody?
I think what I remember is at the outset it sort of took over initially and my dad was really involved.
My dad was very good at describing.
He experienced a lot of things.
There's lots of recordings by Morris with my dad talking about what happened.
And I think, you know, I think we carried on school, family life, but it was there, a major part of, I don't know if Laura talked about this, but when it started, it was really intense.
But then I just remember it sort of petering out over a year or a year and a half.
It sort of just gradually just dissipated.
And it just, as quick as it came, it went.
And I think the fallout, the relationships, how it affects people, I think is still there today.
I think it caused a lot of damage to a lot of people, definitely.
I don't think the two sisters talk about it now, do they?
I mean, obviously they've done stuff, some stuff.
We haven't spoken for many years.
And that's not, we fell out.
It's just I left home when I was 17.
I became a nurse and they moved out of the area.
But we've actually, we've just started to reconnect.
And we've actually started texting.
And so we're gradually starting to build up a relationship because we are family.
And I have not spoken to them since the 70s.
And that's why I would never speak on their behalf because it's not fair for me to do that.
And, you know, we're interested in your experience of this and your dad's experience of this because you were close to it, but you weren't actually living in it, but you were living with it.
Now, listen, there was a great atmosphere of support.
You mentioned this in the local community.
The neighbours, the Nottinghams, were very kind from what I understand.
The local crossing patrol, the lollipop lady, as we call them in the UK, was also very kind.
You know, it seems to me that the community there, and maybe this hasn't been talked about as much as it should have been, really pulled together in the middle of all of this.
Yeah, I think it wasn't a very good time in the mid-70s.
It was very bleak.
I just remember it's being very, very, I should say, very black and white, wasn't very, life was very hard for a lot of people, real poor.
And I think people had more time for one another.
I mean, we had a real community.
It's like, the only way I could explain, I knew all of my neighbours and I knew them by their surnames.
So it'd be, if I spoke to them, go, hello, Mr. Shaw, or hello, Mrs. Nottingham.
It was like, it was a different era.
But neighbours looked after one another.
You know, we had long rear gardens, low fences, people would talk to one another.
We all went to local schools.
So there was a sense of community.
But no doubt, the Nottinghams were phenomenally supportive.
As was Hazel, the lollipop lady, and she saw stuff and was really supportive.
And obviously Morrison guy and people like Roz.
But there's a lot of people who weren't supportive.
Well, there were some people who said that some of it was being faked.
You must have heard those things.
How did everybody react to that?
I think from the outset, I think the girls, all of us were just simple people.
And we got into this centre of what was ever going on.
It was like for all that attention.
And for young children, they're children.
And they've admitted that some stuff they acted up on.
They are children, but they are not saying, they act up on everything.
And I think, you know, we have to respect that, is that they were honest about that.
And I believed them.
And why?
Because the sense of how you felt when you was in that house in the nighttime and it wasn't just your imagination running wild for me as a young boy.
There was stuff there that was unexplained.
It was scary and it was not normal.
But I suppose I've always put it to the back of my mind.
I've not really gone out and promoted that I'm Paul Burkham.
I've never done that because people will be sceptical, of course, because I would be skeptical of stuff.
And I'm skeptical of stuff that I didn't see.
I didn't see Janet or Margaret levitate.
So unless I saw it, perhaps I wouldn't believe it.
But I'm not going to, I can't say, but I heard the voices.
You know, we had the famous ventriloquist.
I can't say it.
I apologise.
Ventriloquist.
Ray Charles.
Ray Charles?
Yeah.
Do you remember Ray Charles?
I do.
Yeah, it was Lord Charles, wasn't it?
And Ray somebody.
Ray Allen, Lord Charles.
Very famous ventriloquist on TV.
That's right.
He came down.
I remember he was in the lounge and I walked in and he looked at me and I just remember him not being very friendly.
And I later was told that he was there on the news of the world and he was there to say that the girls were throwing their foot and it was all a fake.
And he said that there was evidence that the girls could do what were doing.
And I think Ross spoke to you about how deep the voice was.
Yeah, we have to say that Janet was making, I think both girls were making kind of noises, like, you know, kind of noises like that.
That, you know, I can do them, you can do them, but anybody trying to do that for a while, it hurts your throat.
So it doesn't seem like she would have been as a girl, you know, a young girl, capable of sustaining that for as long as she did.
No, no.
So I don't know who invited them down, but there was lots of people coming in, getting on the bandwagon, really.
And there was people from America.
The Warrens came, didn't they?
Evan Lorraine Warren, the famous investigators.
Do you remember them?
This is the thing.
I've been asked this recently.
Apparently, they took us to the local Wimpy for a meal.
That's like a kind of McDonald's-style fast food place.
Digitally, the old Wimpy.
I don't remember them at all, but they were quite savage about the whole thing.
I think I do recollect that my dad said something about they were coming across as not as friendly as initially they were supposed to be.
But there was people there who were definitely not acting in the interest of everybody.
And your dad, John, and of course Peggy, his sister, who's in the middle of all of that because she's the mum of the family, when all of these people were involved and there was all of this media attention and people were just appearing in the house who may or may not have been able to help with the investigation or may have just made lines in newspapers.
What were they all feeling?
Were they feeling a bit kind of not exploited?
That's a bad word.
But were they feeling a little bit exercised, used by it all?
Well, I think exploited might be a good word for some people.
I think there's a lot of university people there, but they were providing recording equipment.
You had the psychic people there.
You had the people like the Warrens.
So you had the reporters.
And it did feel, I mean, I know that my dad and Peggy did feel that there was too many people in the air, but I don't know who had control over that.
I don't know if Morris had that control or I think because he's representing the society, I think Morris was trying to, if I recollect, he was trying to produce evidence for the psychic research society.
And I don't know if they were really believing what he was saying.
I mean, I watched that program on Paramount recently.
And I think there's a lot of challenges for Maurice, because I think this was his first big case, wasn't it?
think there were some people who say or who imply that he was a little bit um you know he was a I think some people might have said that.
But where's the textbook on dealing with...
But, you know, it's like, thank God for people like Morris who, in moments of crisis, those families could say, help us and he wanted to help and there was things he did like I remember he taped up Janet put tape over her mouth and asked her like not to make to do voices and that you know technically wouldn't be allowed to do that today but he was trying his utmost with his you know he was he was you
You know, he was trying his best to understand what was going on.
Well, you're right.
I don't think anybody would be allowed to do that today, but I think I understand what he was trying to do.
He was trying to see if the voice was coming through her voice box or whether it was coming from around her.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think it's really easy for human nature in us to just be dismissive or say we don't know or understand.
And there are people out there like yourself who are prepared to say, well, what is this?
What's going on?
And to be honest and to be objective and to listen to those stories and to see what's going on.
And I think he was definitely doing that.
Sorry, I don't know if I'm rambling a bit.
I do apologise.
No, listen, this is fantastic background to it all, Paul, and I think we're coping with the difficult phone line.
It's fine.
But you were living down the street.
And you were seeing them often.
And your dad, of course, is going to be checking in on his sister at that house to see what's going on.
Did it...
You know, it's one thing to give a list of stuff that's happening and all of these well-intentioned or however-intentioned people who are in and out of that place.
It's another thing to talk about the effect that it had on everybody.
Did you get the sense at any point that it was beginning to, for example, Peggy mainly, was it wearing people down?
You know, it did wear it down.
And it had a major impact on relationships.
Unfortunately, the relationship between Peggy and my dad, that relationship broke down.
as a child, I don't know why.
So, I don't know, you know, that happened.
There was a breakdown relationship between my mum and the family.
I don't know why.
I, you know, it wasn't discussed with me.
And I think it had a real impact on people's lives.
You know?
So, that said, you know...
And did you get the idea at all there, and when you think back on it, that there were times when this stuff, the phenomena that were happening there, were more likely to happen?
In other words, I suppose I'm asking Janet in particular, but everybody there, were there times when they were maybe doing something or thinking something or going through something where the phenomena was more likely to happen, or did it just sort of ambush them at random?
Well, they do say there's a connection between puberty, don't they?
They do.
With the public guys.
And that was, there was a connection with that.
There was a connection with the previous person who, I can't remember the name, who actually lived in the house.
And there was a connection with that.
But I think we were all very vulnerable people.
We were, you know, working class.
And I think that maybe had, I don't know if that had it.
Who knows?
Why did people get chosen or picked?
Why?
I don't know.
And the question, look, I don't know how long you lived, you know, in that same street, in that same place.
But other people lived in that house, didn't they, after Peggy and the girls?
When they'd moved out, I think there was somebody called Claire Bennett and four sons moved into that house.
And, you know, there were, they heard things, didn't they?
There is, there is.
I don't know if Maurice was involved in that.
I do, I mean, I was aware of that, but I wasn't living in Green Street anymore.
But I do remember, definitely remember that name.
And yes, I do remember.
Because from what I read, those people who came in afterwards, they only stayed two months.
Yeah, it was council, it was council accommodation.
I don't know if it's been purchased there.
What was the council doing about it, Paul?
Were they doing anything?
I don't think they were.
No, no, no.
I don't, no.
I think the only thing the council did, and I don't want to speak out of turn, I think they actually did, in those days, you could do swaps, you could move to, and I think they moved to the Clapton area, and they probably swapped with someone else.
So you'd move to another rental accommodation with another council.
So I don't know if that was the decision to move eventually.
But to be honest, Howard, I don't even know, I don't even know when Peggy died.
And I don't know the time frame, if she was still living there, or if she'd moved, I don't know.
Do you know one thing I would think, if I lived in a place like that that have had occurrences of the kind that happened, and, you know, I believe that things like that do happen, okay?
I've known people who've experienced stuff, you know, not quite as dramatic, but they've experienced things.
So yeah, I note that there are places where such things happen.
After it had all died down, and it took 18 months for that to happen, if it was me living in a place, I would constantly be thinking, well, if the phenomenon is somehow centred around me or us, then it's going to come back, and you'd always be uneasy.
Yeah, and follow you, yeah.
And I suppose there, maybe when we, and I know me and Margaret, Janet and Billy, we will connect, and maybe sometimes, Alan and I will have that conversation, privately, and we'll talk about that.
It's never left me.
It's always been there.
I don't know if it made me the person I am, if it gave me the faults I have, or the career I chose, but it definitely helped, well, not helped, but it shaped me, and it must have shaped all of them.
And I know that, you know, they are very guarded about the whole thing and i think jell in particular has found it very very challenging to deal with it and janet i i jumped in here but janet produces the producing those voices the gruff kind of exorcist type voices yeah Were you ever there when that happened?
Did she ever talk to you about that?
No, I don't remember per se talking about it, but yes, I was there.
I heard the voices.
And, you know, that fixed why I connected to when Ross was talking to you, because someone talking about it, I'd never spoken about it for so many years, and it brought it all back.
It came flooding back.
And that's why I felt her account was, yeah, that's my account of those voices, how deep they were, and how it just was everywhere.
It was everywhere.
You couldn't pin it down to a person.
It just seemed to come out of the walls.
It was there.
And as far as you know, when it all stopped, and when all of the media attention died away, of course, it was rediscovered in later years, wasn't it?
As we know, that's why we're talking now.
But when it all stopped, did you get the sense that everybody, and that includes you and your dad, John, and his sister Peggy and the girls, and everybody, did you get the sense that they were all a bit relieved?
I think it's just a matter, because it was a gradual decline and it's all just petered out really, which is really strange.
If it started and it just peters out, I think it's sort of like by that stage it was just matter of fact, just moving on.
But how did it never did stop because we was pestered by press all the time?
We had interview requests.
My dad had interview requests from Japan, America.
He did shows on Esther Reds.
My dad and Morris did lots of TV stuff.
And there were loads of stuff where people wanted.
We see people going down, taking pictures of the house, you know, knocking on the door, knocking on our door, asking for anything.
So it happens for a long time after.
And there are two ways to react to that, aren't there?
One of them is, gee, I'm famous, look at me.
And the other one is, I want all of this to go away.
Yeah, I don't think we ever wanted fame.
Never saw anything like that.
Like we said, it's like none of us don't know what happened.
I mean, I watched the program that Ross was involved on, Paramount, and it was quite interesting.
The guy from Psychic Research had all the materials.
He had like the marbles, the Lego, some of the recordings.
And it was quite, and I thought, so there was a, for me, I never knew that there was all this going, all that research was going on.
I didn't understand it.
I didn't know what that meant when I was a child at that stage.
I just saw people coming in out with recorders.
So that was quite, I was quite intrigued by that.
So I was waffling.
And did it, you're not waffling at all.
No, I love the detail that you've got, Paul.
In later years, did you have any interest in this kind of stuff?
Or did it have the reverse impact on you?
Did it make you just want to knock, you know, if there's a horror movie on the telly or there's something in the paper you just don't want to know?
I think I blocked it out.
I mean, I can't talk, but the stuff that I've done recently, it was quite emotional and it's emotional talking about because it's quite, you know, you're talking about stuff that people are going to challenge, quite rightly.
And I think that leaves you open to that.
So I think it has, I mean, I've talked about it to family and, you know, the conjuring film was awful.
You know, that was appalling.
Why do you think that was?
Well, I mean, apart from all the American furniture in the house that's supposed to be in England, I just felt it was poorly made.
I thought this story was poor, inaccurate.
There was a series on ITV on top, wasn't there?
A four-part documentary.
And that was really weird, seeing an actress playing your mum.
So there's been stuff and I've watched it and I sort of see it a bit disconnected, really.
I've dismissed it.
Do you think that any of the representations of it in the media or dramatizations of it are any of them accurate, close to it?
Not really.
I think the problem is it all makes it very Halloween-ish, isn't it?
And it's also the language that, and I don't think, I think if Morris was alive and had that sort of like sincere, this is what happened, maybe, but I do find it a bit sensationalist, you know, release around Halloween and all that.
I just think, but that's probably just to get attention for it.
I don't know.
And when you look back, I mean, God, it's 41.
I'm trying to work out the number.
Is it 45 years now, 1977 through 45 years if my maths is right and my maths was all garbage?
But it's a long way to look back on something, but the clarity with which you have talked about it, bearing in mind, and we'll say it again, that you didn't live in the house, you lived near the house, it obviously made a lasting impact on you.
Yeah, you know, was it good or bad?
I don't know.
I mean, I'm 59 this year, a couple of weeks' time.
And, you know, I was born in 63, so I was 13, wasn't I around that age?
So, yeah, I mean, I don't know how.
Would my life been different if I hadn't experienced it?
Why was it there?
Why did I see what I saw?
Why did I experience what I experienced?
I don't know.
And your dad, John, I don't know when he died, but sadly he's also no longer with us.
Yeah, 2000, yeah.
Okay, so it's 20-odd years now.
How did it affect him long term?
Did he ever talk about it, or did you just was it something that was unspoken in the family?
Well, this is the thing, you see, I never had a really close relationship with my dad.
It was really strange.
It was funny, and that's why I find it strange that I went down the house with my dad because we never did anything together.
So I don't know if he wanted me as a crutch as well.
I don't know.
But I think it's something that we did connect about.
I mean, he had a lot of input into it.
I mean, I saw a recent interview he did with Morris and they talked and they got on so well.
And my dad saw a lot.
And I wouldn't say my dad enjoyed it, but he was happy to talk about his experiences and share those experiences because I think there's a responsibility to say what we saw as long as it's in the right arena forum.
And that's why I suppose I felt happy to talk to you because I felt that was a safe space.
I mean, I'm not going to look at social media.
People say, oh, Paul made it up or it's rubbish or this or that.
It doesn't matter, but I'm putting my account on record.
And my dad did that.
He did that a lot.
And it sounds to me like you're partly doing this for him.
Well, I mean, you know, it's very, very difficult when you're a young boy who's lost, well, a young boy who lost your dad 20 years ago and you're showing recordings or listen to, like, when you're a young boy talking to your dad in those sort of environments.
It's very weird to go that far back.
How many people have that record of history of themselves apart from the famous?
And if I told you, like, there's going to be, I don't know, some broadcasting organization in the UK is making yet another documentary about it.
And, you know, there's a possibility they might ring you, whatever.
Thinking about it now in 2022, nearly 2023, would you say, oh, great, here's another chance to set the record straight?
Or would you say, I really don't want to do this again?
I don't know.
It all depends who I'm speaking to.
I think I connect to people if I think they're sincere and honest, and they really want to understand or to talk about it.
And I don't mind that.
So, I don't have any interest in going on making films or TV.
No, of course I don't.
But I don't mind talking to people on that basis.
But I'm very much an open book.
I wear my heart on my sleeve.
I am a nerf.
I'm of that nature.
And I suppose that I have to be careful because I have to respect cousins for life.
I don't want to say anything that may offend them or puts them in it.
So I have to be careful of that.
Respect them.
And I have to respect the memory of Margaret, Peggy.
It's not walking on an episode, but there's a lot you have to think about.
And the one thing, talking to you, I mean, the life that you describe sounds to me very remarkably like a lot of the family that I grew up around in Liverpool.
That was the background.
This was a different era.
It was the same era that you were growing up in, and times were very, very different.
And the fact of the matter is that, by and large, extraordinary things did not happen to ordinary people.
And when they do, it's very hard, you know, especially in that era, and certainly from the background that I came from, sounds like the same with you.
If something really strange happens to you out of the ordinary, there's no one there to give you advice.
No, there isn't now.
That's the problem.
And I think it's like, but I have a type of dyslexia where I don't tell a, it's really strange.
They call it working memory dyslexia.
I don't tell a story well.
So you get like, like my partner's children growing up and they're quite into it.
You tell them a story because it sounds like a story.
But this was real to me.
This is part of my life.
And you want to say it the best way you can, but I don't have the skills or that talent.
Maybe like yourself who's a journalist who's good with words.
So you want to do justice to what you're trying to say, not because you want to convince people, but you want to give a true and accurate reflection.
But I don't want to give it, when I talk about what happened, I don't want to give it all the years of me being an adult, spin on it.
I want to stay as it was then.
That's what I try to do.
Do you tell people, you know, at work and people that you might meet in a pub, if they were to ask you, do you tell them about this?
No.
Because you're just opening yourself up to ridicule.
You're just opening up, oh, you don't read that rubbish, do you?
today, you think?
Yeah, I think people would be...
People have their opinions.
But why I don't need to put myself in that arena, I don't think.
Or maybe people might think I have a responsibility to put myself in that arena.
I don't know.
Let's get a bit philosophy.
Look at the philosophy a little.
But I do think it's in the book.
There's stuff that's been made.
I know that people do want to make stuff about it.
And I just, you know, I'm happy to talk about it, but I have to know people first, if that makes sense.
No, well, I think that is a very sensible way to do things, speaking from my knowledge of the media and stuff like that.
Do you think that just finally here.
And thanks for doing this, Paul.
And thanks for getting in touch.
Do you think that there is scope for anybody else to tell this story?
For another documentary, another screenplay to be done?
Or do you think it's time to let this particular sleeping dog lie?
What's your feeling?
Well, most of the players, the people involved, like the Nottingham, a lot of people like my family, a lot there.
I think there's a lot of material there, and I think there's not many people to talk about.
And I don't know what Janet or Margaret would do, but myself, I think probably best, it's on record now.
But, you know, I think, yeah.
All right.
Very last question.
I can speak to Ald.
I can't say there's stuff I know, but I can't say Els.
I'm sorry.
No, that's exactly where I was going to go with the last question.
There are aspects of this story you are telling me that have not been told.
I don't expect you to tell me what they are, but you're saying that there are aspects of this story that even now, after all has been said and written, that haven't been told yet.
Yeah, yeah.
And I just think that I think the story should be about now how it affected the families and how these things impact on people.
And I think it's about people need to know that people in these crises need support.
Now, I don't know anything about the psychic research people.
Never spoke to them.
I don't know where they are.
I don't know who they are.
No one's ever contacted me or tried to contact me.
But I do wonder, if it wasn't for them getting Morris to get down there, we would have been really stuffed, really, really.
And, you know.
So you were grateful for having Morrison?
And I must say, I saw Morris's son on that Paramount program, and I just like to say to him that that was amazing.
So isn't that interesting?
I'll get a bit emotional when I think about it.
Sorry.
No, that's totally understandable.
So that's a very important point, I think, to leave this on.
That I think what you're saying is that you were glad that you got the experts involved in because they were there for you.
That's Guy and that's Morris.
You were glad that they were there.
So I guess that is the very last question then, Paul.
It sounds to me like you would advise anybody who might be going through something like this now to call in, before they call the Daily Mirror or they call the media, get the experts involved.
Absolutely.
And I think it's about trust.
It's about, you know, it's about basically just someone being there.
And, you know, I don't know the mechanisms, how you do that.
I don't know what they offer, how they support.
But there must be people who've had, I know, had terrifying experiences.
And if you're on your own, it just, you know, it just compounds it.
So, yeah, we're very grateful for the support we had at that time.
So by the sounds of it all, it sounds to me that although you haven't done a lot of talking about this, Paul, and just very, very finally, it almost sounds to me that when you get the right person to talk to, you want to.
Yeah, I think, you know, and I think that's the case today.
It's very...
It's very...
And when things are held inside, or worries or anxieties, they can become much bigger than they actually are.
And I think when you've gone through life shit, like holding something that important in your life and you don't talk about it, it's never gone away.
And I think sometimes you do need to talk about it and you need to sort of let some of it go.
So perhaps that's what's happening today, maybe.
I don't know.
If it has helped even slightly, I'm glad about that.
It's a heck of a story.
It's an amazing thing to have been involved in.
You rightly, all of you went through the ringer, including your poor dad who's no longer with us.
Thank you very much for telling the story, Paul.
That's okay.
It's a real pleasure.
Thank you for talking to me.
Paul Burkham, and your thoughts on the conversation that I've just had gratefully received, you can go to the website theunexplained.tv, follow the link, and you can send me an email from there if you would like to.
And it's always nice to hear from you.
More great guests in the pipeline as we glide towards the end of 2022.
So until next, we meet, my name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained Online.
And please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm.
And above all, stay in touch and also stay warm in this.
Take care.
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