‘Ghosts’ drive woman from her home.
Families disturbed at night by mysterious noises.
Do you believe in ghosts? No! Then find some other explanation for phenomena which have driven a Chatham woman away from her own house at night-time, and for the noises here neighbours have heard over 14 years. These two small, four-roomed, terrace houses in Magpie Road, Luton, are one of the last places one would expect to go ghost hunting, yet the owner of one of them, Mrs June Fisher, will not sleep there at night and has asked the Vicar of All Saints’ (the Rev. D. E. Jarvis) to exorcise it for her. Mrs Fisher, tall, well-built and healthy, and the mother of a two-years-old son, Robert, is not the sort of person to take fright easily. She is not afraid of the dark nor of being in a house on her own.
Next door to her, Mr John Tidman and his wife, Doreen, take almost for granted the noises they have heard on and off for 14 years, both in their house and hers. But they are in no doubt about the noises and do not believe they can be explained by anything like mice, tricks of the wind or any of the more obvious causes. Mrs Fisher bought her house last September and was quite content there for seven or eight months, sleeping by herself in the front room, from which the stairs lead directly down to the back sitting room, with a door at their foot. The baby, Robert, slept in the back room, the door of which opens off at right-angles to the stairs.
One night last April, Mrs Fisher awoke with a start to hear a rapping on her bedroom door, quite distinct, like someone knocking to come in. When she switched on the light, the sound stopped and she searched the house, but could find no one and no other possible cause for the noise. From then on, the noises became more and more frequent, never occurring before 11 p.m. and never after 5 a.m., and always stopping as soon as the light was put on. On occasions she slept in the back room, and then the rapping on the door was replaced by rapping on the walls of the room.
On one occasion when she was ill, Mrs Tidman spent the night with her, sleeping in the front room. “I heard the sound of knocking on the wall and thought it was Mr Tidman knocking for his wife,” Mrs Fisher told a reporter. “I called her and we could both hear it, but Mr Tidman was fast asleep next door.”
About two months ago, the door knocking began to increase in violence, although there were many nights without it, sometimes the intervals being as long as a week, sometimes just one night. “One night,” said Mrs Fisher, “it became really violent, as though someone was angry at not being let in, yet it stopped as usual when I put on the light. It got so that I could not go to sleep until after five o’clock in the morning.”
From then on the manifestations began to increase. First a small winding knob off a clock began rolling about under her bed. It had been lying quite securely on her dressing table, from where it was most unlikely to roll by itself. Even if something could have dislodged it from there, it would have only fallen off and rolled across the floor and come to rest. But Mrs Fisher says she heard it rolling to and fro under the bed for five minutes until she switched on the light. The next morning she found it under the bed.
The next development was when she heard the sound as of the door at the foot of the stairs being opened and footsteps walking up to her door, followed by the familiar knocking. Again, putting on the light stopped the sounds, and again, there was no one and nothing about to account for them. Then, the rapping began to sound on the very head of Mrs Fisher’s bed, close to her ear. Finally, she experienced feelings as though a hand were pushing at the mattress beneath her, from below, and she heard a sound as though one of the bed springs were being plucked. “I could hear the sort of note you would get from that and actually feel a sort of vibration from the spring,” she said. “At last I could stand it no longer. It seemed to be getting worse and I got the feeling that, sooner or later, I would actually see something. Ten days ago I stopped sleeping in the house and now spend every night at my mother’s house.”
Whenever Mrs Fisher reported the noises to her neighbours, the Tidmans, they made light of them and suggested she was imagining things. Only recently did they admit to her that they have heard noises ever since they moved into their house when they were married. “We have both lain in bed and heard footsteps come up our stairs and stop outside our door,” said Mrs Tidman. “They can’t be explained by saying that it was the sound of someone walking upstairs in the next house, because our stairs and Mrs Fisher’s are not next to each other. Her stairs are on the far side of her house from us.” Mr Tidman said they had at times heard noises from Mrs Fisher’s house rather like the sound of furniture being moved. When previous tenants lived in her house they heard the noises, although their neighbour was in hospital and her husband and sons living temporarily at Gillingham.
“The middle stair on our flight squeaks distinctly,” said Mr Tidman, “and you can only make it squeak by treading firmly on it. Every time we have heard the footsteps on our stairs, we have also heard the squeak from that middle stair. We tried to jolly Mrs Fisher out of it when she complained of hearing noises, and it was only recently that we told her that we had heard noises ourselves. We have got so used to it that we don’t take much notice.”
About two years ago, a Mrs Fagan, who has now moved to Southampton, lived in Mrs Fisher’s house. One morning she complained to Mr Tidman that she had heard noises from time to time, and that the night before she thought she had seen something like a form in her room.
Only last Wednesday Mr and Mrs Tidman’s sons, John, aged 14, and Michael, aged eight, were terrified by an odd experience which may or may not have any connection with the other manifestations. “We went out to play in the evening while mother and father were out. We put out the sitting room light, but when we came back it was on. We were frightened and searched all over the house, but there was no one about and no one could have got in the back way,” he said. “We put the light out and went out to play again, and when we came in again, after about a quarter-of-an-hour, the light was on again, and we were even more frightened.” Mrs Tidman said the electric light switch was modern and in good condition, with a strong spring, so that it was unlikely to have dropped on by accident. There was no doubt that the boys had had a fright, she said.
These are not the sort of houses which lend themselves to having a ghost legend built round them, and the only sort of sinister connection with them which Mr and Mrs Tidman have heard from their parents is a rather vague story of a man having committed suicide in their house by cutting his throat in the cellar.
Tomorrow night, Mr Frederick Sanders, the well-known local ghost-hunter, is to spend the night in Mrs Fisher’s home with an assistant, in an effort to find some explanation.
Maidstone Telegraph, 12th August 1955.