“For now,” she said softly. “For now.”

“Soon.”

The winter of 1977 was the coldest England had seen in decades, but the chill inside 284 Green Street, Enfield, had nothing to do with the weather. Peggy Hodgson knew this the moment she tucked her daughters into bed and heard the floorboards in the hallway creak with footsteps that did not belong to any living soul.

That night, the children slept in the living room while the Warrens investigated upstairs. Janet lay rigid on the couch, her eyes open but unseeing. Then her spine arched. Her feet lifted two feet off the mattress. Her body hung in the air, limp as a doll on a nail, and the deep voice came again—but this time it was laughing.

The local newspaper dubbed it “the Enfield Poltergeist.” Reporters camped outside, their cameras flashing against the rain-streaked windows. But cameras cannot capture what Janet saw in the dark: an old man in a threadbare vest, sitting in the armchair at the foot of her bed. His face was gray, like spoiled milk. His eyes were hollow. He called himself Bill Wilkins. He had died in that very chair of a brain hemorrhage, and he wanted his house back.