A ‘ghost’ takes to council house.
By Ray King.
Heavy footsteps marched across the floor of a council house bedroom early today… but the room was empty. Downstairs 18-year-old Bob Stoker, who had been helping friends move into the house in Cavendish Road, Kirkholt, Rochdale, got more and more scared.
A scraping noise in the corner would be followed by the sound of footsteps – then more scraping. It went on for more than an hour, thud, thud, scrape, scrape, and in the end Bob lost his nerve. “I just couldn’t take any more,” he said, today. “I ran to the vicarage across the road but couldn’t raise anybody, then I rang the police. The policeman heard the noises too, but there was just no explanation. I’d never been so scared in my life.”
The incident went down officially on the message pad at Rochdale Police Station as “suspected poltergeist.”
The house’s new tenant, Mr Tony Dean, was out when things began to go thump in the night, but he said today: “I feel a bit apprehensive about sleeping there now.”
Meanwhile, Rochdale police had a strange manifestation of their own last night. At midnight all the lift[s] began to operate in their new HQ under construction, going up and down for an hour. A site engineer said: “We have no definite explanation, but dust could have affected the electricity contact points.”
Manchester Evening News, 20th October 1971.
Old haunt for a ghostbuster.
A councillor thought it spooky when families kept leaving a flat on the Kirkholt estate, Rochdale. When Coun. Vernon Earnshaw investigated he found out the latest family had gone because they claimed the place was haunted. The family, who have now left the district, said their teenage daughter saw ghosts around the house. Coun. Earnshaw said over the years several people had told him their houses on the estate were haunted.
“Usually it has turned out that a young girl has been living in the house and the presence is that of a poltergeist. I don’t know whether I believe in these things or not but there certainly was a lot of fuss going on from time to time about these incidents. Clergymen have been called in from time to time to exorcise the building and as far as I know it seems to have worked. I’ve had reports of things that leap around the room unexpectedly and doors which open for no apparent reason but I have an open mind on it.”
Mr Don Simpson, housing manager, said: “No one has reported to me about having ghosts in their houses. If they do I’m afraid we’ll have to charge them extra for the lodger.”
The flat has now been re-let but is not yet occupied.
Manchester Evening News, 19th April 1985.