The evolution of supernatural drama out of paranormal reality is an unpredictable affair. Some cases give birth to fully formed entertainment almost immediately, while for others the gestation period is much longer. American writer Jay Anson’s controversial account of The Amityville Horror, published in September 1977, enjoyed big screen treatment less than two years after publication. Conversely, as a student at Georgetown University in 1949, future screenwriter William Blatty was well aware of contemporary reports of strange happenings in a house in Prince George’s County, Maryland, but it was over twenty years before he took the case of the Cottage City Poltergeist and crafted from it his ground-breaking masterwork, The Exorcist (1971). A number of British cases have similar histories.
Following major publicity by controversial ghost hunter Harry Price in the 1940s, Borley Rectory, famously cited as ‘the most haunted house in England’, was quickly optioned for post-war cinema in 1947, but a script prepared from Price’s books by author Upton Sinclair ultimately came to nothing. The ensuing years have been peppered with various Borley-related radio broadcasts and small screen docu-dramas, but it has taken an incredible seventy years for filmmaker’s to finally get their teeth into the rectory haunting: currently no less than three Borley films are in various stages of production – Borley Rectory (dir. Ashley Thorpe), The Haunting of Borley Rectory (dir. Anthony Hickox), and The Rectory (dir. Jonathan Chance) – proving that like the buses, following a long wait, the Borley ghosts all come at once.
The entertainment value of two important British poltergeist hauntings has, until very recently, also escaped the attention of film and television writers and directors.
The case of the Black Monk of Pontefract took place in an ordinary suburban house in West Yorkshire between September 1966 and May 1969, and was centred around two teenage children, initially fifteen-year-old Philip Pritchard and subsequently, and with far greater strength and menace, his twelve-year-old sister, Diane. During the course of several months, the Pritchard family bore the brunt of many inexplicable, violent and ultimately terrifying events: crockery and household ornaments were thrown and smashed, pools of water appeared on the kitchen floor, immense crashing noises shook the building, and a strange white dust drifted down from the ceiling covering the furniture. A tall unidentified apparition, dressed in black and with no discernible face, said to be the ghost of a long-dead sixteenth century monk from the nearby site of a now vanished Cluniac monastery, was seen inside the house, while Diane Pritchard was at one point physically dragged up the stairs as if by an invisible assailant.
Like many poltergeist incidents, the curious and violent Pontefract haunting ceased as suddenly and mysteriously as it began. Recognition of the case and subsequent dramatisation has been slow in the making. In 1981, the late Colin Wilson carried out an extensive retrospective investigation, published as part of his book Poltergeist!, on which practically all subsequent accounts of the case have been based. It was not until 2012, thirty years after Wilson’s study, that the case of the Black Monk finally reached the big screen. When the Lights Went Out, a British supernatural drama directed by Pat Holden and based on the events at East Drive, Pontefract, premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in January 2012 and was released to DVD the following year.
Unlike the Black Monk of Pontefract, which received only small scale local newspaper coverage at the time, the Enfield Poltergeist, arguably the most well-known British paranormal case of modern times, made national headlines right from the very start, courtesy of reporters and a photographer from the Daily Mirror. Beginning on 30 August 1977, a fortnight after the death of rock and roll legend Elvis Presley, the home of the Hodgson family – Peggy Hodgson, a single parent and her four children, thirteen-year-old Rose, eleven-year-old Janet, Peter aged ten, and his seven-year-old brother Jimmy – became the centre of a year-long paranormal investigation featuring members of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), a long established organisation whose origins date from the heyday of Victorian Spiritualism in the early 1880s. Maurice Grosse, a successful businessman and inventor, together with Guy Playfair, a freelance author and translator, spent many weeks at the house in Green Lane, Enfield. The results of their investigation, complete with lurid accounts of paranormal levitations, spontaneous fires, spirit possessions and smashed furniture, met with instant controversy when published by Playfair as This House is Haunted in 1980.
Surprisingly it has taken thirty-five years for these events to receive suitably dramatic treatment, courtesy of writer Joshua St Johnston and director Kristoffer Nyholm, whose small screen adaptation The Enfield Haunting, awash with 70s nostalgia and starring Timothy Spall and Matthew Macfadyen as Grosse and Playfair, is currently playing with much success on the Sky Living channel. Paranormal purists may question the accuracy of St Johnston’s script, but ultimately this, like any other ghostly drama, flourishes on the very nature of the paranormal which gave itself to exploitation even before Shakespeare’s times. It was after all the great Harry Price himself who said the public prefer ‘the bunk to the de-bunk’.
Paul Adams is one of the authors of Extreme Hauntings: Britain's Most Terrifying Ghosts, a unique and original compilation of spine-chilling true encounters both ancient and modern. Not for the faint of heart, this book contains over thirty compelling experiences that reveal a dark and disturbing reality to the realm of the paranormal – deadly curses and murderous ghosts, violent poltergeists, haunted relics and spirit possession – all unsettling insights into a frightening supernatural world. From the mysterious happenings at Hinton Ampner to the eerie Black Monk of Pontefract, the celebrated Enfield Poltergeist and the sinister power of the Hexham Heads, paranormal historian Paul Adams and writer and photographer Eddie Brazil have opened case files spanning over 250 years, from the eighteenth century to the present day, in order to carry out a detailed and chilling examination of the extreme hauntings of Britain.