Night visitor was a ghost.
Priest is asked to bless a council house.
Western Daily Press Reporter.
A council house tenant in Newton-le-Willows, Lancs, fell and injured her jaw – after meeting a ghost outside her house. Now a Roman Catholic priest has been called in by the urban council, to bless the house and drive the ghost out. Council workmen had already lifted floorboards in a search for the cause of persistent wails and shrieks. They were putting back the last of the boards yesterday when Father Gerald Walker, of St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, arrived. Now the council is considering calling on the services of a psychic society to help solve what council clerk Mr Jack Roberts called “a real mystery.”
The present tenants of the house, in Fern Avenue, have appealed to the council to find them a new home. They cannot stand the noises in the night, they say. Two former tenants said yesterday that they had asked to be rehoused. They had lived in fear of nightly howls and mysterious sounds of breaking glass.
Council officials and staff of the county health authorities heard tape recordings taken by Mrs Christina Boulton, aged 35, of Chorley, whose mother lives next door to th ehouse. The tapes carry crying sounds and shrieks of laughter.
Mr Roberts said: “We are very concerned about the noises and we shall take all measures to eradicate them. It is a real mystery and we may be calling on the psychic societies to investigate. Mrs Boulton came face-to-face with the ghost on Saturday night. She saw it on the footpath and as she fell in excitement she seriously injured her jaw.”
Mr Gerald Burke, who occupied the house for four months, said: “I heard that the house was haunted before I moved into it but I just laughed. I am not laughing now.”
One of the previous tenants, Mrs Jean Boughey, said she had told the council that she and her husband wanted a garage – “it was not that at all. I knew the house was haunted, but the council would have thought I was mad if I had said so. My husband and I have heard the strange noises.”
Western Daily Press, 27th February 1968.
Council serve eviction notice on a ghost.
The urban council at Newton-le-Willows (Lancs.) called in a Roman Catholic priest yesterday to help them rid one of their houses of a “ghost.” Council workmen had already lifted floorboards in a search for the cause of wails and shrieks which have been terrifying one lot of tenants after another. They were putting back the last of the boards yesterday when Father Gerald Walker, of St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, arrived to bless the troubled house. Now the council are considering calling on the services of a psychic society to help solve what council clerk, Mr Jack Roberts, described as a “real mystery.”
The present tenants of the house in Fern-avenue have appealed to the council to find them a new home. Two former tenants said today that they had asked to be rehoused because they lived in fear of nightly howls and mysterious sounds of breaking glass. Officials of the council and staff of the county health authorities heard tape recordings taken by Mrs Christina Boulton (35), of Chorley, whose mother lives next door to the house. The tapes carry crying sounds, and shrieks.
Mr Roberts said: “Mrs Boulton came face to face with the ghost on Saturday night. She saw it on the footpath, and as she fell in excitement she seriously injured her jaw.” Mr Gerald Burke, who occupied the house for four months, said: “I heard that the house was haunted before I moved into it, but I just laughed. I am not laughing now.”
One of the previous occupiers, Mrs Jean Boughey, said she had told the council that she and her husband wanted a garage – “it was not that at all. I knew the house was haunted, but the council would have thought I was mad if I had said so. My husband and I heard the strange noises.”
Lincolnshire Echo, 27th February 1968.
Leigh spiritualist offers his help.
Family live in fear of ‘ghost’.
A family of eight are living in fear – a fear of the unknown that has led to one woman having a nervous breakdown and put a child in hospital. And it forced the family to quit their council house home in Fern Avenue, Newton-le-Willows, to stay with neighbours because of a child that is heard but not seen… and the “ghost” of an old bent woman.
Although Fr. G. Walker Parish Priest of SS. Mary and John’s Church has exorcised the house and blessed it, noises have since been heard – the latest was on Saturday. Now a Leigh spiritualist, Mr Joe Knowles, has offered to investigate the psychic phenomena. Now Newton Council are considering calling in a Psychic Research Society to get to the bottom of the “spooky” problem.
The house, number 14, has developed an unlucky reputation. “You can smell death,” said a former tenant, Mrs Rita Horan, 2 Valentine Road, who was driven so far by the mysterious noises that she had a nervous breakdown. She went on: “The atmosphere is terrible – it’s morbid. People say it’s not true but they want to spend a night in the house and experience it. I hated it.” But the noises are not just confined to the house. Neighbours have also heard them and they have been recorded on tape.
Maria (aged 9), the eldest daughter of the present tenants, Mr and Mrs Gerald Burke, woke up one mornign with a swollen face and is now in hospital suffering from shock. Her mother Mrs Audrey Burke explained that Maria had seen the apparition of a baby crawl from beneath her bed. Mrs Burke continued: “All we want to do is get out of here and forget all about it. It’s just like someone walking along the landing and down the stairs. You can sit down here (in the living room) and hear the bed move.” Added Mrs Horan: “I heard these noises repeatedly. I have heard footsteps on the stairs. They were like a tapping sound as if somebody had a cane.”
Mrs Christina Boulton, Wood Lane, Heskin, Chorley, the daughter of a neighbour, came face to face with the apparition on Thursday. “It was the vision of a woman at the window,” she said. “It was there for three or four seconds. I was dumbstruck and when I turned round I fainted and hurt my jaw.”
Mrs Boulton said yesterday that the apparition she saw was of an old woman dressed in a veil and an old fashioned wedding dress.
The Burke family held a seance in the haunted house with the Forresters, the next door neighbours. A medium discovered that the noises came from a baby and her mother, who had died there, but further psychic investigations revealed that the old woman was the child’s grandmother.
Mr Alan Burrows (aged 26), 2 Fern Avenue, who made the tape recording, also had an unusual experience. “There was a swirling wind, which blew some smoke into the street. I was coming out of Mrs Forresters (next door to the haunted house) when I saw a white cloud. I don’t believe in ghosts.” But he said that the tape recording contained sounds of “clomping” on the stairs, a baby crying and woman’s voice saying “come on.”
Neighbours believe that the avenue was built on a war grave which dates back to the battles between Cavaliers and Roundheads.
Now Jack Roberts, Clerk to Newton Council, said that the Housing department had carried out thorough investigations to see if the noises could be caused by the structure of the house.
More weird happenings occurred at the house after a party of journalists and staff from Red Bank school left at 1 am yesterday. When they left the box room they closed the curtains, but the Burke family moved back into the house – to find that they had been drawn back again!
The Red Bank School Staff have volunteered to stay in the house again on Saturday night to probe the “spooky” events.
Newton and Earlestown Guardian, 29th February 1968.
Family want to leave ‘haunted’ council house.
A Lancashire couple and their six children want to leave the council house they have been living in for four months, because they believe it is haunted. Two brothers – experts in ghost and poltergeist research – staged an eight-hour vigil at the home of Mr and Mrs Gerald Burke in Fern Avenue, Newton-le-Willows. Mr Alan Bell and Mr James Bell, who are chemists at Formby, near Liverpool, are calling for the immediate rehousing of the family because they say they are satisfied “that the noises we heard in the house are of paranormal forces.” Mr Alan Bell is prepared to rent the house from Newton-le-Willows Urban Council as a research station, while investigations continue.
Coventry Evening Telegraph, 5th March 1968.
Riddle of the ghost of Fern Avenue.
A couple and their four children have moved out of their council house in Newton-le-Willows, Lancashire, after having heard tappings, loud thumps and the breaking of glass in the boxroom of the house. They say they have also seen the ghost of an old lady who appeared wearing a white hat. Psychic experts who examined the mysterious happenings are satisfied that a supernatural phenomenon exists in the house in Fern Avenue. The experts were called in by the Newton-le-Willows urban council to get rid of the ghost. They were unsuccessful.
The couple are Mr Gerald Burke (34) and his wife Audrey (31). The family has now moved in with neighbours. “We shall be sleeping in chairs and settees but it will be better than sleeping in a haunted house,” said Mrs Burke. She added that, after settling with neighbours, she would write to the Prime Minister asking him to request Newton-le-Willows Urban Council to give her and her family another council house.
The housing committee of the council will consider at its next meeting whether there is sufficient evidence of hauntings to give the family tenancy of another house.
Aberdeen Evening Express, 13th March 1968.
Things that go bump in the night.
John Criddle meets a chemist who wants to rent a haunted house.
He isn’t a publicity-seeking crank. He isn’t a ghost hunter. And he certainly doesn’t allude to any miraculous powers. Mr Alan Fraser Bell, of 56 Andrews Lane, Formby, besides being a practising pharmacist, is a scientist anxious to study what we laymen call, for want of a better word, the supernatural. “If you talk about hauntings or ghosts, you miss the whole point,” says Mr Bell, who is married with two children. “To have a noise produced, to have an object moved or to have light produced you must have energy from somewhere. I and my brother James, who lives in Crosby, are attempting to find out how this energy is concentrated and where it is focused.”
Their latest expedition in their quest for this knowledge has been to a so-called “haunted house” in Fern Avenue, Newton-le-Willows. The occupants of the house, Mr and Mrs Gerald Burke, who have six children, have applied to the Newton-le-Willows Council to be rehoused. If their application is successful the Bell brothers want to rent the Fern Avenue house from the council for a short period so that they can carry out their researches. The unidentified happenings in the house have been tappings and bangings.
“When people have to live with these noises it is their natural reaction to want to get rid of it, hence attempts at exorcism,” said Mr Bell. “The family concerned at Newton-le-Willows had to approach the council to be rehoused. If the council grant their request then we would like to become the new tenants so that we would be able to set up a ‘research station’ to investigate the noises. there are so few genuine cases. This one at Newton-le-Willows in the first for 16 years which we have encountered.” The Bell brothers’ last experience with paranormal forces was at a house in Runcorn.
“During our investigations in this latest case,” he said, “we have experienced three bangs which cannot be attributed to everyday circumstances. There is something particularly odd about them. It is like a ‘reversed noise’. this is difficult to explain if you have not experienced it, but if you hit a drum you hear the initial impact and then the noise tails away. In this particular case the noise gradually builds up, so by the time it reaches the impact stage you know it’s going to happen. It’s rather like a tape recording of a drum beat being played backwards.
“At Runcorn, 16 years ago, we experienced a more vicious type of force. A dressing table was gradually pulled to pieces by vibrations. The police had been called in to this house and tried to find out the reasons for all the bangings but they were unable to do so. We attempted to obtain tape recordings of the noises but every time the tape recorder was switched on the noises stopped. From this we assumed that the force had an intelligence which pervaded the whole house.
“We were also unable to carry out truly scientific investigations there because there were too many people around from so-called societies who seemed intent on trying to get rid of it rather than on investigating it.” It was the natural reaction of mankind, he said, that if a thing isn’t understood, it should be destroyed.
Why in particular did the Bells want to rent this house in Newton-le-Willows? “This energy is impossible at present, to produce in a laboratory. If we were able to rent the house we would check changes in barometric pressure, changes in temperature, changes in the electrostatic fields, and we would relate these to external changes. We would also instal photographic equipment which would perhaps take pictures every half-second. We would have to investigate all the internal noises first from such things as plumbing and electrics so that we would be able to identify them.”
If there are these forces in existence, adn Mr Bell is a very convincing advocate, then it will be indeed interesting if the Newton-le-Willows Council have the foresight to grant him and his brother the right to use it for a short time as a research laboratory. Both he and his brother are scientists. They are reluctant about publicity. they work on their own with their own methods. But, most important of all, they believe quite sincerely in what they are doing.
Formby Times, 13th March 1968.
Does a ghost pose a health hazard?
A town’s medical officer of health is to be asked his views on whether a family who claims that its council home is haunted should be rehoused. After a four-hour meeting, Newton-le-Willows Urban Council’s House Letting Committee last night decided to ask the Medical Officer of Health, Dr R. Ellis-Jones for his views on the matter. If he reccommends that the ghost is affecting the family’s health, they will be rehoused.
The family, Mr and Mrs Gerald-burke and their six children, of Fern Avenue, Newton-le-Willows, moved out of the house after hearing tappings, loud thumps and the breaking of glass. They also claim to have seen the ghost of an old woman wearing a white hat. Psychic experts who examined the happenings are satisfied that a supernatural phenomenon exists in the house. The experts were called in by the council to get rid of the ghost, but were unsuccessful.
Nottingham Guardian, 28th March 1968.
New house for the ‘haunted’ family.
Members of Newton-le-Willows Urban, District Council do not believe a ghost in haunting a house in the town, but the chairman of the housing committee of the housing committee, Councillor Joseph Noon, has announced that the family living there would be rehoused as soon as accommodation became available.
Living in fear of the ghost are Mr and Mrs Gerald Burke and their six children, of 14 Fern Avenue. A statement said: “The Ministry of Health had stated that the family were under considerable strain and anxiety and the health of the family could deteriorate.” Mr Burke said later: “I am delighted. I know the house is definitely haunted.”
Liverpool Echo, 29th March 1968.