Ghost who is making a splash.
Herald Reporter.
Plumber John Kemp does not usually believe in ghosts. But the spooky goings-on in a council house are making him suspicious. Something is making the water overflow – and that something, says Mr Kemp, is nothing that a plumber can put right.
The trouble began in March when the water tank at Mrs Haidee Whittock-Knott’s home in Farmborough, Somerset, overflowed and flooded the house. Mr Kemp was called in. He could find nothing wrong. But the tank overflowed again – and kept on overflowing. A bewildered Mr Kemp fitted five new water tanks, but the overflow continued.
He said yesterday: “It only happened while nobody was in the house. People have watched the tank for four hours then left it for five minutes – and in that time the water splashed out. There was nothing to make it overflow naturally.”
Water has even splashed out of buckets left in the house, and plumbing experts from Bristol and Bath are mystified. Said Mr Kemp: “There must be some supernatural influence at work.”
What does Mrs Whittock-Knott think? “This sort of thing doesn’t bother me,” she said.
Daily Herald, 14th June 1963.
‘Ghost’ changes to fire.
Poison pen letters have again started falling through the letter box of Mrs Haidee Whittock-Knott, the Farmborough housewife who claims that she has been plagued by a poltergeist for more than nine months. Mrs Whittock-Knott’s council home in Hunstrete Road, Farmborough, which has been saturated time and time again by an overflowing water tank, now faces a new threat… fire.
Curtains and a table cloth have blazed. The flex of an electric kettle burst in flames although the power was switched off. The water sprite has turned fire-raiser, and with this new development have come the poison pen letters. Some writers accuse Mrs Whittock-Knott of being wicked, others claim she is staging a stunt. “Let them come and stay here for a night, then perhaps they will change their minds,” says Mrs Whittock-Knott who has handed over the letters to the police.
She claims that since the fire incidents started the poltergeist has abandoned his water-throwing activities. Mrs Whittock-Knott found the curtains alight after shutting all the doors and windows and going out. When she returned the curtains were a charred fragment and the walls were scorched. There were no signs that the house had been entered.
Next week-end Mr Tony Cornell, one of the country’s leading para-psychologists, is to pay a second visit to the house. “This is a most puzzling case and I am determined to get to the bottom of it,” he said at his home last night.
Bristol Evening Post, 7th January 1964.