Haunted house gives up its ghost.
The restless spirit of a tragic woman has finally been exorcised from a quiet council semi in Reading. After two visits by priests strange happenings at the house in Cressingham Road have ceased. But tenant Cheryl Leighton and her young son Nathan are reluctant to discuss the haunting for fear that mention of the tragic spirit may bring it back. Miss Leighton was told that a woman gassed herself in the kitchen and her daughter died as well. According to the story her husband had been having an affair.
Just a year ago, Mrs Leighton heard footsteps around the house, gas fires mysteriously went out, and young Nathan, then three, talked to unseen people. It was thought that the strange happenings stemmed from the suicide of a woman in the house 40 years previously. At the time Cheryl said: “I keep hearing strange noises and the pilot light keeps going out for no reason. A couple of times I have heard Nathan talking to someone upstairs. I ask him who it is and he says nobody,” said Cheryl.
The previous occupiers told Cheryl they too heard footsteps and banging noises.
A Roman Catholic priest came to the house and blessed it but to no avail. The phenomena continued until a second priest visited the house. “We had to put up with it for quite a long time. It is gone now and I am trying to forget about it,” said Cheryl.
Reading Evening Post, 14th December 1985.