Where things go bump in the night.
Nottm. “Haunted House.”
Scare: couple’s ordeal.
Midnight is the hour feared by Mr and Mrs Frank Clarke, as with their eight-month-old baby Wendy and black puppy Lady, they cower in a bed-sitter in Sycamore-road, Nottingham. For it is then that things start to go bump in the night.
“Last night was the worst I have ever had. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep for a fortnight. We are now looking for somewhere else to go – I am not sticking this,” Mr Clarke, a 33-year-old packer at Boots, told a Post reporter today. This was after the sound of mysterious chopping of wood, in the room above them – padlocked, and unoccupied.
Mr Clarke says this is the latest development in a series of mysterious happenings in the house, which include: The shadow of a little man flitting from corner to corner of the room; A missile that dashed against a large mirror; Nocturnal footsteps and doors shutting; The £2-a-week bedsitter turning bitterly cold after 4 p.m. despite a blazing fire.
A week ago the couple called in a Roman Catholic priest to bless their little room. “But since he did this, it has been worse,” they said. They still hear noises, though at night time the whole family evacuate to the apartment next door belonging to Miss Nancy Brown. Miss Mary Handley, a friend of Miss Brown, claims to have seen a little man – without feet – flitting from corner to corner of the room. Mrs Clarke, 23, says she has been followed round the room by a double shadow, which Mr Clarke says he has also seen. The puppy will not sleep in the corner where the shadow appears. “We got the dog specially to see if there was anything there,” said Mr Clarke. “But she just howls at night” – and the baby screams.
The first few nights the family moved in were quiet. Then the noises started with weird creaks, which increased in volume and frequency until last night’s crescendo. While a Post reporter was in the house today the lodgers on the ground floor – Mr and Mrs Ron Keep – found soot had fallen down their chimney. As it spread on to the carpet, they said they heard a whine and a buzz.
Mr Clarke is thinking of getting a medium to investigate.
Nottingham Evening Post, 17th March 1958.
“Haunted” House.
A story of a “haunted house” which appeared in yesterday’s Post with the heading “Where things go bump in the night,” contained a statement said to have been made by Mrs Mary Handley, of Sycamore Road, Nottingham, that she claimed to have “seen a little man flitting from corner to corner of the room.” Mrs Handley has requested us to state that she did not make such a statement, and that at no time did she believe in the alleged “haunting.”
Nottingham Evening Post, 18th March 1958.