Mother in haunted house explains…
Why I won’t give up the ghost.
A young Crowland mother is determined not to be driven out of her 18th century home by “spirits” which she believes haunt it. Mysterious rattling windows when there is no wind, keys that float across the room, doors that open on their own, and uncanny feelings of a ghostly presence are what the Stothard family are now accepting as everyday happenings. “I am getting used to it now and I don’t want it to drive me out. It has not done anything wicked,” Mrs Janet Stothard, the mother of two youngsters, said.
The family moved into their terraced home at 79 South Street, Crowland, a year ago. Before that it had stood empty for almost two years. “It started when we came here but I did not take any notice, at first,” said Janet. “Now my husband, Chris, has realised there is something wrong.” Her two daughters Caroline (six) and eight-month-old Rebecca seem largely unaffected by the unexplained phenomena. “Caroline’s window on the front rattles sometimes but the children don’t seem to take any notice. Sometimes it frightens me, though. I was on the stairs one day when the light suddenly went off and I nearly fell down. The switch would not come on and when my husband checked the bulb it was okay,” she said.
The house’s front door remains permanently bolted because, claims Mrs Stothard, if not it is likely to open and close, seemingly of its own will. “The door to the stairs often jams shut and sometimes I feel a strange cold in the front bedroom, even with the heater on. It feels like something watching me. I heard the door to the stairs shut once and it knocked over a large container full of water propped against it,” she added.
Mrs Stothard, aged 27, thinks some people would be worried, by these things, but she says she will stay there as long as “it” does not hurt people. One day recently she placed a bunch of keys on the kitchen mantelpiece and watched incredulously as they floated across the small room on to a cupboard.
Even the postman has been flummoxed on some occasions, she says, when for no apparent reason the letter box refused to open and he has to knock on the door. “I don’t know what it is. It does not break things and so far nothing terrifying has happened. I first thought I was imagining it but you can’t imagine doors opening and shutting all the time,” she said.
At the bottom of the garden is an old underground air-raid shelter and Mrs Stothard thinks this could have something to do with the mysterious happenings. “We have been told there was a murder there once and the baby wakes up screaming some nights, as though she is having nightmares. I don’t fantasise because my husband and a lot of friends have been here when it happens,” said Mrs Stothard, who thinks the house has been “unlucky” ever since they arrived. “Whatever it is cannot be in peace if it keeps opening and shutting doors all the time,” she added. And like the ghost in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, it could be doomed for a certain term to walk the night… ’till the foul crimes done in its days of nature are burnt and purg’d away.”
The bunch of keys which Mrs Stothard watched levitate from the mantelpiece to a cupboard in her home.
Mrs Janet Stothard and her baby, Rebecca, in the bedroom where they can often feel a “cold presence.”
Church man advises ‘Bless this house…’
Crowland’s former Rector for 16 years, the Rev. Francis Cutler, has advised Mrs Stothard to have her house blessed if she is still worried by the unexplained happenings. “I often visited South Street but never heard any mention or rumours of this before,” he said. Mr Cutler, who retired last year, added: “I would get a clergyman down there and bless the house. Every house I have lived in I have blessed.”
Canon Graham Jakeman, Vicar of Spalding, who as Rural Dean is in charge of the Crowland Parish during the absence of a rector, said he had not been approached by the family about the incidents.
Spalding Guardian, 17th October 1980.