THE ENFIELD HAUNTING

REALLIFE

EXPERT: Maurice Grosse with Janet in the 1970s

LOCKDOWN has meant spending more time sat in front of the box for most of us.

And horror fans have been raving about re- watching The Enfield Haunting, a chilling three- part drama currently available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.

It’s got all the makings of a programme to give you sleepless nights – a desperate family plagued by supernatural forces, voices caught on tape, and screaming kids being flung around by an angry poltergeist.

Yet it’s a storyline that wasn’t penned by a team of writers – it’s a re- telling of very REAL events that had the nation gasping in the late 1970s, a gruesome tale that puzzles investigators to this day.

On a tree- lined street in the Brimsdown suburb of Enfield, north London, is a normal red- brick semi- detached house.

A satellite dish is attached to the front, like many other homes in well- kept Green Street, and a zebra crossing opposite leads to a primary school.

Some parents who drop their children off shuffle past this house quicker than any other on the lane, as a shiver of a memory down their spine.

And there’s a reason why the current occupants, who wish to remain anonymous, do not want

DRAMA: Stars of the popular Amazon Prime Video series on the haunting

HAUNTED HOUSE: The Hodgson home their own kids knowing about the history of the place they call home.

Because this building has a sinister past – and one that put it on the map for all the wrong reasons.

It all began on August 30, 1977, when single mum Peggy Hodgson became hysterical and contacted police after her children – Margaret, 12, Janet, 11, Johnny, 10, and Billy, seven – alerted her to banging noises and furniture moving on its own.

Cops must have rolled their eyes when the call came in, attributing the “paranormal activity” to the mischievous youngsters.

Even now, that’s how sceptics dismiss the creepy events that followed.

But from the first instance, police officers and investigators learned something was amiss.