Summer Specials 2026: Summer Special 2: Cold Cases Live – The Enfield Poltergeist
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Hello!
Welcome to a very special evening, the first ever live recording of Uncanny Cold Cases, our new series exploring some of the strangest real-life hauntings from paranormal history. And here we are at the Crossed Wires Podcast Festival in Sheffield at the beautiful Lyceum Theatre. We have got quite a case to investigate together. We are going to witness flying objects hitting people, terrified police officers, apparent levitation, and a dead man who seems to speak through a 12-year-old girl. It could only be the Enfield poltergeist. Oh, yes, be excited. It starts in August 1977. Perfect for this, our Cold Cases summer special. But is it genuinely paranormal or can it be explained? Strap the heck in, Sheffield.
This is going to be quite a ride because I'm Danny Robbins and this is Uncanny Cold Cases.
CHEERING
Comes again in the cold where we lay. Secrets still remain. Secrets still.
Here we are. Hello. The Uncanny Cold Cases Summer Special. We're going to be going on a rollercoaster ride through the events that happened over 18 months in a council house in Enfield in North London. Give me a shout if you are feeling team sceptic. Oh, okay. All right. Interesting. Give me a shout if you are feeling team believer. They're raucous tonight, skeptics. Be careful. And give me a shout if you are feeling Team Switzerland. You're going to remain neutral. Okay, a few people. All right, good. Oh, wow, quite a big Swiss contingent. Well, let us meet the two people who always explain the unexplainable. It is the king of keeping it real, forensic psychologist Dr. Kieran O'Keefe.
Thank you.
And joining him, the Empress of the Unknown, writer and parapsychologist, Evelyn Hollow.
Look, Kieran, this is the big one, isn't it? For a sceptic, this must be like commentating on the World Cup final.
Yeah, absolutely. And I guess if you could come up with a sceptical explanation for the whole lot, your face would be on the front cover of the sceptic magazine. But there's a reason why this case has stood the test of time, and that's because there are parts of it that are hard to explain.
I love the idea of you on the cover of a sceptic magazine, like some sort of sceptic pin-up, a sceptic base. But, Evelyn, what is it about this story that has spellbound people ever since the 70s?
Well, I think so many cases that we have looked at this series rely heavily on witness testimony. But during this case, you had camera crews, you had radio reporters, newspaper journalists, all turning up at the house when the case was still ongoing, and they're all documenting it. And, I mean, the other thing is, it's scary as hell.
It really is. Well, look, let us get into it right now. Like with all of our cold cases, we're going to be bringing this story to life as we dive back and try and work out what actually happened. So, I want you to imagine yourselves on a very ordinary road called Green Street in the North London suburb of Enfield. It is 31st of August, 1977, the year of the Queen's Silver Jubilee. The Sex Pistols have just become famous, shocking the UK with their punk sound. But inside a boxy, pebble-dashed two-story house in the middle of the street, Peggy Hodgson is just trying to survive. She's 47, with prematurely grey hair, a single mum raising four kids alone since her husband left two years earlier. Peggy shares a room with her oldest daughter, Margaret, who's 13, and her youngest son, Billy, who is seven.
On that first night, they're just getting ready for bed when the three of them hear a soft shuffling sound like somebody is scuffing their slippers on the floor. It seems to be coming from the bedroom next door where the middle children, 11-year-old Janet and 10-year-old Johnny, sleep. Peggy goes in to check on them. Both kids are in bed, but Janet seems scared. She's heard the shuffling sound too and says it's coming from the chair next to the bed. Maybe it's mice. But Peggy takes the chair downstairs to reassure them and then comes back up to make sure that the kids settle.
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