Just in time for Easter, a holiday about resurrection and springtime, the trailer for The Conjuring 2 hit the web.
The film explores the Enfield Poltergeist haunting which took place in the late 70s in London. If you can get past the idea that maybe these people should have rented a hotel room for a few weeks until a proper exorcism was performed, you can enjoy the floating attack by a nun-demon featured in the promo. But it’s not just the extreme ghouls in the trailer that make you wonder how “true” the story is, there are also the facts (or lack thereof) that make this a tall tale.
The story involves a single mom Peggy Hodgson and her four kids who experienced supernatural phenomena in their North London home. Her daughter Janet, an 11-year-old, was supposedly possessed by an old guy named Bill Wilkins who died there. She spoke in his voice, but only right after an investigator suggested that was the creepy thing that would be coming next.
Years later, the real life Janet told reporters she didn’t think the ghost was evil, something you’d never know from The Conjuring 2 trailer. “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. The only way it could communicate was through me and my sister.” The Daily Mail reported she told the UK’s Channel 4. Also, the only paper covering this was The Daily Mail.
Janet later admitted to faking some of the supernatural occurrences and being caught. The only thing that was actually probably true is that there was likely moving furniture, flying objects, cold breezes, assaults, and random puddles of water on the floor. Or at least 30 witnesses claimed there was, including one police officer.
The movie is based around the idea that the case was heavily investigated by demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, but in fact, they were barely involved in the affair. There were, however, other paranormal experts who were more hands on in the process.
Peggy lived in the house with one of her sons until she died and supposedly the next couple that moved in had some seriously creepy experiences too. But not quite as nuts as the movie seems to suggest.
Source: https://www.inverse.com/article/13392-the-conjuring-2-trailer-reveals-the-story-is-not-all-that-true