Leesburg, Virginia. 1872.

In terms of history, the house is built in an area which has experienced plenty of supernatural activity and warfare. Leesburg’s earliest occupants include the Algonquian Indians, who believed in the afterlife and practiced shamanic rituals. 

Perhaps their efforts to reconnect with the deceased are what have left portals to the hereafter still open. Two other tribes, the Catawba and the Lenape, frequently butted heads, and had a particularly bloody battle right by Leesburg. You can imagine that the spirits of these warring warriors have been unhappily disturbed by the influx of present day tourists.

In one of the most shocking cases of recent times, a New England family was surprised, disturbed and ultimately terrified by a series of apparitions that seemed intent on driving them from their home

The strange, horrifying events that took place in a New England home in the late 1970s and early 1980s have been documented and investigated, but never fully explained. They began as a series of benign if remarkable hauntings and escalated into terrifying poltergeist phenomena, making this one of the most astonishing cases of ghostly activity in recent American history.

Investigative Files

Joe Nickell

Volume 36.4, July/August 2012

In August 1977, a series of disturbances that were soon characterized as a case of poltergeist phenomena or even demonic possession began in Enfield, a northern suburb of London. The subject of a forthcoming movie, the occurrences, including the actions of an eleven-year-old girl who repeatedly “levitated” above her bed, “held the nation spellbound” for over a year, according to Britain’s Daily Mail; “no explanation other than the paranormal has ever been convincingly put forward” (Brennan 2011).

Suspicious Acts

The events began on August 30 in the Enfield home of Margaret Hodgson. The divorced Hodgson lived there with her four children—Peggy, thirteen; Janet, eleven; Johnny, ten; and Billy, seven—whose names, in early accounts, were fictionalized. Two of the children, Janet and Johnny, attempted to convince their mother that their beds were unaccountably shaking. The next night brought mysterious knocking sounds and the sliding of a chest of drawers in the girls’ room. There were more knockings, and soon Hodgson had a police car making a call to 284 Green Street (Playfair 1979; 1980, 12–33).

A paranormal investigator, Jayne Harris, claims that many people have reported symptoms, such as chest pains, nausea, and migraine headaches, after viewing photos and videos of a blonde doll called Peggy, believed to be possessed by an evil spirit.

According to Harris, who runs “Haunted Dolls,” an organization in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, that provides services in the area of paranormal phenomena, such as psychic mediumship, exorcism, and the occult, Peggy is evidently possessed by an evil spirit that causes people to have bad experiences when they see her image or come into contact with her.

Residual Haunting Activity:

Residual haunting activity can occur when something traumatic/stressful occurs, such as a murder or a rape.Negative energy is literally blasted into the atmosphere, causing the atmosphere to imprint or record the events. Like a recording tape, it will play the events over and over again. The entities involved in this residual haunting activity are unaware of their surroundings. This is not an intelligent haunting, there is no interaction between you and the entity.

Residual haunting activity can also be caused by positive energy blasted into the atmosphere. Many times you have heard ghost stories, where people can hear the sounds of a party. They hear music, singing, dancing, laughter and when they enter the room where they hear the party, there is no one there. Residual haunting activity can be the specters of living beings.