Girl’s game calls up ‘ghost’.
By David Wright.
A twelve-year-old girl tried to “summon up spirits” in a lunchtime game with two school pals. And strange things started to happen. Doors at her home opened and closed eerily… windows rattled… and there were mysterious sounds of someone breathing. Finally the girl’s frightened family called in their vicar… to exorcise a ghost.
“I think it was probably a poltergeist,” the Rev. Richard Watson, vicar of St Andrew’s, Hornchurch, Essex, said last night. “I said some prayers and blessed the house, and now I think all is well.”
The trouble at the girl’s home in Elm Park, Essex, began after a game with a makeshift ouija board. The three girls used a glass which “moved” around a circle of paper letters to spell out a “spirit message.” They told their parents that they had contacted the spirit of a boy who died in 1804.
The girl’s mother said: “We were frightened to death. There were uncanny noises in the house. Later my daughter and I heard the sound of breathing in her bedroom. There were sounds of muttering, and even our two cats sensed something.”
The girl’s headmistress at a Hornchurch secondary school said: “All three girls assured me they had not had nightmares. I regard it as silly childish nonsense, and I am not taking it seriously.”
Daily Mirror, 23rd January 1969.