Half a house haunted.
Ghostly rappings.
Half a house at Bow – the lower half – is reputed to be haunted in consequence of a nightly performance of ghostly rappings. In the top half of the house lives a man whose presence is said to inspire the rappings. Three hundred people stood last night in Sherwood-street watching the house. Some had stood there before – the rappings started 12 nights ago; some had even been in the house. But nobody was allowed inside last night.
Lights glowed in the first-floor windows; all was dark below. A woman who had spent two hours – from 11 pm till 1 am – in a room on the ground floor, said: “You may feel plucky when you go in, but you’re not plucky when you come out. It’s no laughing matter. I laughed before the knocking started, but then the tune was changed. There was no more joking. I wouldn’t like to be in there again.”
A Sherwood-street resident said that the rappings were only heard in the room in which the occupier of the house happened to be. “The back room where he sleeps in the place it is heard most,” he said, “but it travles from room to room as he goes. Sometimes there are five raps, sometimes seven and sometimes twelve – but never more than twelve. Sometimes a window-pane is rapped and sometimes the frame. Why, you can hear it in the backyard.” The man added that he took no notice of the rappings until his brother-in-law – a policeman – visited the house. “He was mystified,” said the resident.
Daily News (London), 17th February 1931.
Waiting for the taps.
Haunted house crowd.
Till midnight.
There was something resembling a siege at the house of the mysterious tappings in Sherwood-street, Bow, London, last night. More than 1000 people waited from four o’clock until they were dispersed shortly before midnight by police. They had hoped to hear the tappings which have “haunted” the house for the past 12 nights, but the occupants would allow no one to enter. Even a brother and sister of Mr Charlie Lloyd, the lodger whom the tappings are said to disturb, were refused entry.
Mr Lloyd’s brother-in-law told the “News Chronicle”: “The tappings only occur when Charlie is there. They sound on the second floor, which is occupied by a Mrs Dawson, her four sons, whose ages range from 12 to 19, and my brother-in-law. “As we were sitting in the room,” he said, “tappings started on the window sill. There were twelve knocks, then another seven on a wall, and again silence. When we moved towards the window the tapping stopped, but as soon as we turned away it started again on a cupboard. Whenever anybody raises a hand the noise stops. I held up my hand for five minutes and there was silence, but as soon as I dropped it the noise started again. The noise continued from one o’clock until seven o’clock in the morning.”
Daily News (London), 18th February 1931.