"'There was this girl, and her parents were always out." "'She didn't like it." "'She got frightened." "'So they bought her a dog." "'One night, the parents were out 'and she's lying in bed 'and she can hear this "Drip, drip, drip"." "'She gets out of bed and goes to the bathroom 'and turns off all the taps." "'Gets back into bed." "'A bit scared." "Sticks her hand under the bed and the dog licks it." "'But she can still hear it." "'"Drip..." "'"Drip..." "'"Drip."" "'So she gets up and goes to the kitchen." "'Makes sure the tap there is turned off properly." "'Gets back into bed." "'Sticks her hand under the bed." "'Dog licks it." "'But she can still hear it." "'"Drip, drip," "'"drip."" "'And now she realises it's coming from the wardrobe in her bedroom." "'Terrified, she gets up, 'goes over to the wardrobe 'and opens it.'" "The dog is hanging from the rail, blood dripping from its slit throat." "And written on the back of the wardrobe, in blood," ""Humans can lick, too."" "That's rubbish!" "It's not rubbish!" "You was terrified!" "Wasn't!" "I'm going to sleep." "Drip, drip, drip!" "Drip!" "Drip!" "Drip!" "Now I need the toilet!" "What if the dog's in there with his throat slit?" "We don't have a dog." "Oh, my God!" "What's that?" "Stop!" "Maybe she should take the day off." "I can look after her." "If people took a day off every time they got the curse, the whole bloomin' world would grind to a halt." "Margaret knows what to do." "I've given her the necessary." "Let's have a look!" "Have a nice term, Johnny." "See you at Christmas!" "That's only if you survive the first day of big school." "Cut it out, you two, or I'll bang your heads together!" "Stop!" "Monsters!" "Nervous?" "No." "I was just thinking." "Why wasn't there any clothes in the wardrobe?" "I mean, how come she could see the writing on the back?" "I dunno!" "Maybe the licker was wearing them!" "Eughh!" "Pervert!" "You can hang round with me, if you like." "I'll bloody kill you!" "It wasn't me!" "Billy uses it all the time." "I..." "Maybe it was Johnny." "Blame the one who isn't here!" "No more, do you hear me?" "I've got enough to deal with as it is!" "What does it feel like?" "Like someone's yanking on your insides." "You don't feel the bleeding." "You feel the pads getting heavy." "It's like having mud in your pants." "Eugh!" "Quiet in there!" "Night." "Sleep tight." "Don't let the bed bugs bite." "Stop it!" "I'm really tired." "YOU stop it!" "Jan, it's not funny!" "Mum'll flip!" "I'm not doing anything!" "Janet!" "Hold my hand." "I AM holding your bleedin' hand!" "That's not MY hand!" "Piss off!" "If this is you, I'll kill you." "It's inside the room!" "What is wrong with the both of you?" "Haven't we all had enough of a day already?" "The same bed!" "It's bad enough wearing your sails out." "Now..." "Mum!" "Watch me!" "Watch!" "Aghh!" "Oh..." "No!" "No." "Oh, dear, dear!" "Brave girl!" "That was a bit of a nasty shock, wasn't it, eh?" "It hurts!" "Let's have a look, shall we?" "Am I bleeding?" "Bad dreams?" "No." "Did you dream about her?" "No." "Any plans for the day?" "Uh..." "Hello?" "Yes, yes, it is." "This is Maurice Grosse, yes." "Oh." "Oh, right." "Thank you for thinking of me." "Yes, we are." "Well, I'll..." "No, of course." "Yes, I'll do my best." "Thank you very much." "Goodbye." "Something's come up." "You'll have to go, then, Maurice." "Yes, yes, of course." "Yes." "Well." "Thank you." "It's probably nothing." "No." "Right." "'Hello?" "' Ray?" "'Hello, Betty.' I have to see you." "That's a domino." "Hmm." "And there's a marble." "And that." "Look at their hands." "Has your paper published these yet?" "No." "They're waiting on more of a story." "We didn't know who else to call." "They'd already tried the police." "Here they are." "Margaret, Janet, Billy." "Maurice Grosse, from The Society of Psychical Research." "The cavalry's arrived!" "Janet." "What?" "And Margaret and Billy." "Have I got that right?" "Mr Bence was just telling me that you've had the police here." "For all the use that was." "They didn't believe us at first." "Then that chair come at the lady police officer." "Thought she was gonna piss herself!" "Janet!" "To be honest, our editor wouldn't have sent us if it wasn't for the police." "Gives the story credibility." "No offence." "Hmm." "Hmm." "You've been decorating." "It's been like that since Dad left." "I thought you said it was brand-new?" "I don't know what's wrong with it." "It was working fine." "What are you doing?" "Graham already photographed that." "I like to have a copy for my own files." "Is this what you do for a living?" "I have a business inventing things." "So what's the Society of Cyclical Research, then?" "Psychical research." "It's a group of people who are interested in this sort of thing." "How come we got you?" "Well, I've been pestering the secretary for some time for a case and I don't suppose everybody can afford to take the time off." "Are you rich?" "Janet Hodgson, what sort of question is that?" "You're going to your Nana's." "Get in that bath." "Kids, eh?" "Have you got any, Mr Grosse?" "Three." "That's nice." "I'm making Johnny's bed up for you if you ever want to kip down." "Very kind." "Piss off!" "Now..." "This knocking, Margaret." "How many at a time?" "Three." "No." "First it was in fours, then threes." "I'm interviewing Margaret now, Janet." "I'll do you later, if that's alright with you?" "Why does she get to go first?" "You were in the bath!" "Why do I always have to use her disgusting bath water?" "Because I'm the oldest." "Have a nice bath, Billy." "The water's lovely!" "Billy?" "Aghhh!" "Aghhhh!" "It's alright." "It's alright." "What happened?" "He was here." "A horrible old man." "I saw him through that." "No, it's..." "It's OK." "I saw it!" "It's cracked." "I saw something horrible!" "You shouldn't have been looking through it!" "It's not yours." "So, the night that it happened." "Are there lots of poltergeists around?" "No." "It's a pretty rare phenomenon." "How many have you seen?" "No, hold on a minute." "Who's asking the questions here?" "How can anybody get any sleep here with that canary going on all the time?" "He only sings when there's someone in the room." "At night, zip." "My turn." "What are your pills for?" "What pills?" "You rattle when you walk!" "Old bones." "Liar, liar!" "Your pants are on fire!" "I do have old bones." "But I've also got a thing called angina." "That's what the pills are for." "It's a tightening of the chest." "I get tight in my chest, sometimes." "Like the scream inside that can't come out." "Oh, dear me!" "What's happened here?" "I'm getting in with Mum." "Don't go!" "Maybe it won't happen again." "I was asleep and then the crashing was over there." "I was only doing it so you'd believe me." "And now you never will." "Just get some sleep." "Oh, damn!" "I'm getting a bit long in the tooth for grandmother's footsteps." "I saw it as clearly as I can see you now." "You're not just saying this because you broke the teapot?" "Janet!" "Oh, God!" "My first ever cover story!" "Oh!" "Thank you very much!" "Well." "Let's have a look!" "Ooh!" "I don't think they messed around with your quotes too much, Maurice." "And look." "There we are!" "Nice one of you, Jan, look!" "Look at you!" "Farah Fawcett, eat your heart out!" "Ooh, look." "It wasn't me - it was the poltergeist!" "Leave off!" "I'm not doing nothing!" "Must be the poltergeist!" "I didn't ask for it." "So why do you look so fucking pleased with yourself?" "That's you, innit." ""A strange happening"!" "Pick up your mess." "Ow!" "Why don't you get the poltergeist to help you?" "Where's Margaret?" "Ask Margaret." "Hi, Janet." "Don't!" "Shh, Billy." "Smash any more teapots?" "How are you feeling, Janet?" "Fine." "I was wondering if you had enough energy for us to try and make contact with the poltergeist?" "Just let your mind go blank." "What are you doing?" "Making contact with the poltergeist." "What do you wanna do that for?" "To see what it wants." "You can join us, if you like." "I've got homework." "So, relax, Janet." "Just..." "Just let the thoughts ebb from your mind." "Like, um..." "Like water going down a plughole." "If a new thought comes along, it's just passing through and it's all..." "It's all going down the plughole." "Mr Grosse, can I ask you something?" "Course you can, Janet." "How many poltergeists have you actually dealt with?" "None." "That's OK." "We can learn together!" "The front door!" "Hello." "Maurice Grosse?" "Yes." "Guy Playfair." "How do you do?" "I'm a colleague of yours at the SPR." "Yes, yes, of course." "I saw The Mirror." "Thought maybe you could use a hand." "Oh." "Guy Playfair." "Is that your real name or is that just for your books?" "For my books I use Guy Lyon Playfair." "You play fair with me, I'll play fair with you!" "OK?" "Playfair." "The girls' room." "So, are the poltergeists in Brazil different from the ones here?" "Well, let's just wait and see." "Will you pop the kettle on for us?" "He's a good guy." "A spirited thing, isn't she?" "I thought there were four of them?" "The elder boy is at residential school." "Boarding school?" "Behavioural problem." "Oh." "Right." "That little chap" " I can't make out a word he's saying." "Billy?" "He has a speech impediment." "Oh." "Good." "I thought it was me." "Listen, I hope you don't think I'm butting in." "No, no, no, no." "I'm glad for the help and the expertise." "What does it do?" "Oh, just imagine it isn't there." "Ow!" "Uh-oh!" "Ow!" "Stop that!" "Stop that!" "Hey!" "Oops!" "How does it get them to fall from that height and just stop dead?" ""It"?" "The poltergeist." "Oh, for goodness' sake!" "We saw it!" "I saw naughty children throwing marbles." "But did you, though?" "And tell me, how can it, or they, get one to go over that light and hit that lamp with such velocity, it destroyed it?" "You saw that!" "Now, forgive me, Guy." "One thing I know is trajectories." "I had six years in the Royal Artillery in the war." ""Hold the front page!" ""Marble behaves oddly." "Another strange happening."" "Well, it IS strange." "But you don't go running to the papers, bandying around the good name of the SPR the first time you can't explain something." "The papers came running to us!" "And who called them?" "THEY did." "They're in it for the money." "What money?" "And incidentally, they didn't call the papers." "The neighbours did, when they'd experienced something." "Right, so, that's me, the Hodgsons, three neighbours, the boys from The Mirror and a woman police officer." "I can tell you about the journalists!" "And who is this woman police officer?" "For all we know, she's as gullible as you are!" "You're not here to lend a hand, are you?" "Professor Beloff sent me." "He's worried that you're bringing the august society of which he is president into disrepute with your credulity and your Mirror headlines." "So you're here to close me down?" "I'm not looking to make friends, Maurice." "Alright." "Well, I'm going to bed." "You can have the put-me-up." "Margaret?" "It's OK." "Mwa!" "Mwa!" "It's alright." "Help!" "It's alright, Janet." "It's alright." "Come on, it's alright." "Up you come." "It's alright." "Shh, shh." "What happened?" "He was here!" "He put a hand over my mouth and I couldn't breathe!" "Who?" "What happened?" "She had a bad dream." "I was awake!" "It happened!" "A friend of mine is brilliant at creating sensor..." "Did I imagine the canary and all?" "I know what it wants." "It wants to hurt me." "You saw it?" "Can we see that again, please?" "It's not supposed to do that." "Oh." "Can you stop doing that?" "Stop doing that, please." "Take us back to the live feed." "She's gone!" "I don't like that thing looking at me." "Come on." "Let's..." "Let's pop you back into bed, shall we?" "Right." "Jump in there and get nice and tucked up." "That's it." "Just straighten..." "Yes, I see what you mean." "It's that one eye." "Maybe if there was two, it would be a bit friendlier, eh?" "Some sticky-out ears and a big smile!" "What was it like in the war?" "Well..." "Scary, exciting, boring." "Just like life, really." "That was a different age." "Food was rationed." "No sweets." "No chocolate." "Tell me a story from them times." "No, you don't want to hear about all that." "I do!" "Well... ..it wasn't all bad." "In the run-up to D-Day, I went to a tea dance." "And there was the most beautiful girl that I'd ever seen." "She was dancing with another girl and I just knew I had to go up and ask her to dance." "'She agreed to see me, same time, same place, next week.'" "It was the longest week of my life!" "Anyway, the time came, and I was there, and I waited and I waited." "Anyway..." "She didn't show up." "I hadn't got her name." "And I didn't know where she lived." "I mean, it's stupid." "That's what it was like in war time." "The girl I was meant to be with..." "The woman I was meant to be with..." "Whoosh." "Gone forever." "Just as I was walking away... ..she came running round the corner, apologising for being late!" "I proposed to her that day." "Cor!" "Then what happened?" "They said it wouldn't last." "Here we are, 33 years later!" "Come on." "I think it's time you got some sleep." "It's all my fault." "Right before it started, we were playing hide-and-seek." "It's out of bounds, but I hid in the graveyard at the end of the road." "Maybe something came home with me." "I'll look into it, but..." "I don't think that's anything to lose sleep over." "You haven't done anything wrong." "Don't leave me alone with it." "What, with that?" "It." "I won't." "Come on." "Tell me, how can a girl, asleep in her bed, do that?" "Of course, just because it's the whole street, doesn't mean it isn't the poltergeist." "The Government and the unions would love that!" "Give them a break from blaming each other!" "Hmm." "I get the impression that you don't want there to be a poltergeist." "No, it's not that." "It's not that at all, though I wouldn't wish a poltergeist on anyone." "It's just that what I don't want is people whipping themselves up into a frenzy over things that can be explained away quite easily." "Hmm." "Tell me, um..." "Tell me about one of your cases in Brazil." "There's a village, about 200 miles west of Sao Paolo." "Bucaral do Finial." "Right." "No power cuts there - there's no electricity!" "All there was, basically, was a house possessed by spirits." "Most of the attention was centred around this 13-year-old boy, Raulio." "And he had such a sort of wide-eyed innocence that of course I was instantly suspicious." "Even when I saw him nearly choke to death as he sicked up half a live frog." "Tears of shock in those wide eyes." "I thought, "It's a trick." "It's a conjuror's trick."" "But?" "Well, then I saw him levitate." "I saw him slam repeatedly against the wall." "And he would vomit up far worse things than a frog." "What happened?" "Um, he died." "How awful!" "I don't think we're dealing with anything like that here." "Because it's Enfield?" "No, because high-spirited girls have been pulling these sorts of pranks for centuries." "It's impossible to believe it till you see it for yourself." "That's what I always say." "So, how long have you been a member of the Society?" "Uh, just after our daughter died, so that's..." "That's just over a year, now." "Your daughter died a year ago?" "My God." "How ghastly." "Maurice, I'm so sorry." "Did you, uh..." "Did you know it was coming?" "No." "A bolt out of the blue." "Late night phone call." "Every parent's worst nightmare." "She'd been on the back of her boyfriend's motorbike." "Except there was an accident." "The thing is, almost immediately afterwards, we felt, and other members of the family, that Janet was trying to contact us." "Janet?" "Yeah, that was my daughter's name." "There we are." "How could you not mention that your daughter was called Janet?" "Well, it's not relevant." "Oh, it is!" "It is." "One might say it is THE relevant fact." "Good grief!" "Hang on a minute!" "When people scream "Poltergeist"" "the first question I always ask is, "What's the pay-off for them?"" "It couldn't be clearer!" "You're running away from your grief." "I saw a teapot move on its own accord, right there." "You see what you WANT to see." "And you see what YOU want to see." "A silly old man, and Guy Lyon Playfair, the great expert!" "I AM the expert!" "This is over." "You're a journalist." "If this is fraud, you should be able to find proof of fraud." "Alright." "Alright, I'll stay and find out what's really going on." "On one condition - you're not here." "I..." "I can't do that, no." "I've..." "I've promised Janet I wouldn't leave her alone." "You wouldn't be leaving her alone." "You'd be leaving her with me." "Alright." "It's..." "It's just for a bit." "Aghh!" "Janet!" "Janet!" "Alright, alright!" "We ought to be asking it questions." "Stop it!" "Speak!" "Sit in the corner, little bitch!"