The True Story of Enfield, the Haunting That Inspired The Conjuring 2

In a 2012 on-air interview, Janet Hodgson describes the first night the disturbance started:

The Daily Mail cites a quote from Janet's sister Margaret, in which she described "strange little noises in the house, you couldn't make out what was going on. None of us got slept. We put on our dressing gowns and slippers and went next door."

This all plays out the same way, more or less, in The Conjuring 2. There are a few sequences involving sleepwalking and children's toys, but an early scene has the girls' dresser sliding across the floor and hurtling into the bedroom door, slamming it shut. They run across the street to the neighbors and eventually call the police.

In the same aforementioned interview, the host cites a police report in which the female officer states, "A large armchair moved, unassisted, four feet across the floor." A matching scene appears in the film, with a kitchen chair used instead.

In the trailer for the film, young Janet describes how sometimes only she can hear the voice, except it doesn't feel like it's coming from inside her. The real Janet said the same thing: "I could hear them. It felt like it was behind me. Not within me." In an effort to prove this claim, there's a notable scene in the film during which Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson) talks to the spirit while Janet's mouth is filled with water. This is also pulled from actual testimony. "At one point," Janet recalled, "Maurice Grosse taped my mouth, and filled my mouth up with water, and it still spoke."

In terms of possession, the film hyperbolizes the story quite a bit. It would seem there was no malevolent demon clinging to the soul of the spirit. What's more, while Janet did mention the voices and levitation, there's no evidence to suggest she floated into the air and threw furniture at her own family. Plenty of tense moments in the film have the fictional Janet acting like a demon-child straight out of something like The Exorcist. The real Janet describes a more docile nature in a Channel 4 documentary about the haunting. "I felt used by a force that nobody understands," she says. "I really don't like to think about it too much. I'm not sure the poltergeist was truly 'evil.' It was almost as if it wanted to be part of our family . . . It didn't want to hurt us. It had died there and wanted to be at rest."

So, it's clear at this point that the Hodgsons weren't exactly dealing with a demon entity. But what about the spirit of Bill Wilkins? Actually, a lot of his story is pulled directly from the real-life events. During the end credits, you can hear the actual recording obtained by the Warrens during the investigation.

The recording — which is mirrored by a scene in the movie — has the ghost of Bill speaking, using Janet as his vessel. Through her, in a deep, raspy voice, he says, "'Just before I died, I went blind, and then I had an 'emorrhage and I fell asleep and I died in the chair in the corner downstairs.'" Bill Wilkins's son has reportedly confirmed these circumstances of his father's death.

During the same 2012 interview, Janet describes a particularly disturbing memory that made its way into The Conjuring 2. "Voices, levitation . . . at one point . . . a curtain wrapped itself around my neck next to my bed."

The heavy inclusion of the Warrens is perhaps the biggest change the filmmakers made in adapting the Enfield story. According to The Telegraph, Ed and Lorraine did, indeed, investigate the events of the Enfield haunting. Even so, their involvement in the case seems scarce at best.

There's no explicit mention of the Enfield case on the couple's official website, and many iterations of the story barely mention them at all. The Daily Mail does not note their involvement, and in her various interviews, Janet doesn't seem to pay particular attention to their being there as well. So, while they may have looked into the spooky occurrences, they certainly don't seem to have defeated the evil that clearly dwelt therein.

As a matter of fact, the evil presence can still be felt in the house to this day. The Daily Mail tells the story of a family who stayed only two months. In addition to the unsettling feeling of being watched at all times, one of the children claimed to see the manifested figure of an old man walking into his bedroom. They left the next day.

The house is reportedly occupied today by a family that wishes to remain anonymous. The mother says her children aren't aware of the home's infamous reputation, and she's keen on keeping it that way.