When things go bang and knock in the night
That’s the trouble with Charlie the ghost.
Charlie, a ghost that goes bang in the night, is terrorising families in three houses in Bristol Street, New Hartley, near Blyth. Strange knocking on walls and doors – sometimes far into the early morning – objects which moveby themselves – these are only some of Charlie’s antics.
Police and National Coal Board security officers have been called in to check the house, but can find nothing out of the ordinary. They too have heard the knocking.
The strange story began about a month ago when miner Thomas Bailey and his wife Jenny began hearing knocking on the wall of their house, No. 36. No. 37 has been empty for five years.
“There is a prowler going around the area trying doors and knocking on windows. At first we thought it was him,” said Mr Bailey. “But the knocking sometimes starts at nine in the morning and continues till two the next morning .No human being could keep it up.”
“We have had a terrifying time,” said Mr Bailey, who has stayed off work all this week because his wife, Jenny, is frightened to stay in the house by herself. “The other night it got so bad I wanted to move house straight away,” said Mrs Bailey. So terrified were the Baileys that they reported Charlie to the police and Coal Board.
The empty house is furnished. The occupant, Mrs Nora Middlemas, a widow, has been staying with her daughter for five years and returns only occasionally to clean up. At No. 38 lives Edward Tidbury and his wife Rita. “We are not Spiritualists and have nothing to do with them, but there have been some incredible happenings in our house,” said Mr Tidbury. “Objects move by themselves. Once my wife was almost struck by a pair of tongs, which she was using to pick clothes out of the washer. Another time coal was thrown over the wall and narrowly missed her.”
The last word came from Mr Bailey. “When I was in the Tidbury’s house I saw a marble jump out of a vase and roll across the floor… You just can’t explain things like that.”
Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 16th November 1961.
Priest tries to get rid of ghost.
By Journal reporter.
A priest has carried out an exorcism ceremony at a terraced house in New Hartley, near Blyth, in an effort to rid the building of a poltergeist which has driven out two families in 13 years. The priest, who refuses to be identified, claims he has spoken to the ghost of a soldier who hanged himself 60 years ago for love.
Strange happenings started in the late 1950s at Nos. 36, 37, and 38 Bristol Street, but it was not until 1961 that the families involved publicly spoke about the occurrences. Miner Thomas Bailey and his wife Jenny, lived at No. 36, and were terrorised by loud knocking on their walls from No. 37, which was empty.
Mr and Mrs Edward Tidbury lived at No. 38 until they could stand it no longer. Their grandparents, 79-year-old Mr James Mason and his 80-year-old wife, Rita, were witnesses to flying fruit, jumping marbles and hammering on the walls, and the situation finally got so bad that the whole family moved out. The poltergeist seemed to go too – until yesterday, 13 years later, mother of three Mrs Joyce Raper, living at No. 38, told of her seven years of strange happenings. Mrs Raper said: “Over this time we had nothing but bad luck and illness in the house, but the past three months have been hell.” The trouble she said, began with noises, which they at first took to be the crackling of new wallpaper. Then they got louder and moved to the chimney breast and under the floorboards.
“We heard bangings in various parts of the house,” said 35-year-old Mrs Raper. “Then there were footsteps, our pet bird used to go mad, and my 13-year-old daughter, Denise, refused to sleep alone in her bedroom out of sheer terror.” Nearing a nervous breakdown and unable to sleep or work, Mrs Raper finally decided that something positive would have to be done when the noises became so bad that the family had to take midnight refuge with neighbours. Her husband, Denis, said: “At first I was sceptical, but then I heard the noises and felt the evil myself, and so did neighbours. When a crucifix was taken upstairs, the evil spirit or whatever it was, went berserk.”
Mrs Raper said: “The priest said the figure of a man he saw wanted to confess that he had taken his own life and he wanted forgiveness. This fitted in with the story told to us by local people about a soldier who had committed suicide in the house when his girlfriend jilted him. The priest said, quite independently and not knowing this story, that the man was a soldier of the First World War.”
The footsteps continued to be heard and the priest was called in again. “This time, there was a woman in the room,” said Mrs Raper. “She was blaming herself for the death of the soldier, and she, too, wanted forgiveness.”
The family’s landlords, London and Tyneside Property Co., have moved them to another house, No. 46 in the same street. The priest involved said: “The ghosts were not evil. They just had to be prayed for. It was the demon, the real evil, that was exorcised. As far as I am concerned, the house is fine now.”
Newcastle Journal, 20th April 1974.