Alderley Street was in a dense maze of terraced houses – the slums were demolished in the 60s and 70s and replaced by the infamous Hulme ‘Crescents’ (which were once again eventually replaced). Old maps show it in about the same place as Avenham Close today.
Ghostly knocks in night now baffle police.
Evening News Reporter.
Neighbours talking in Alderley-street, Hulme, about the banging and knocking they hear from the nearby corner croft home of Mrs Miles.
Distraught and exhausted after another night without sleep in the “haunted house” of Alderley Street, Hulme, Manchester, Mrs Anne Miles was to-day planning to have her 12-year-old daughter, Joy, looked after somewhere else until the mysterious tappings stop. A police “ghost hunt” took place in the street to-day led by an inspector and a sergeant. Police arrived in squad cars and a “Black Maria” to investigate the knockings, which have plagued the house – and the whole street – since New Year’s Eve. But, like Manchester Corporation officials before them, they were unable to find any rational explanation for the knocks.
Today I heard the “ghost” myself – a series of steady raps on the ceiling of the hallway. I went upstairs to the room in which the knocks appeared to be coming – but there was nothing there.
Joy told how the disturbances are interfering with her school attendance. “I sometimes fall asleep on the bus after a night of knocks,” she said.
The “ghost” was in a playful mood early to-day as about eight policemen played an unsuccessful game of hide and seek with it. Neighbours heard its knocks. One policeman banged a “tum-ti-ti-tum-tum” signal on the wall – and the “ghost” answered with an immediate “tum tum.” The source of the rappings appears to move about the house.
Today neighbours Mrs Kathleen Morrison and Mrs Mary Jones were organising a petition on behalf of the street to ask for quick action from Manchester Corporation. A Manchester Health Department official said: “We have [visited?] this house several times within the last week, and our inspector has heard the noise. He could not find an explanation for it. Unless we know what the cause is, there is nothing we can do.”
Manchester Evening News, 5th June 1963.
Bumps in the night ‘may be ghosts’
Psychic phenomena may be causing the persistent hammering noises in Mr Alfred Miles’s home in Alderley-street, Hulme, Manchester. This theory was put forward to-day by Mr E. Thompson, founder of Manchester Psychical Research Society. The line of attack, he said, would be to discover whether any person in the family was, consciously or unconsciously, psychic, and to employ the services of a deep-trance medium, who might be able to contact whatever entity was responsible.
Meanwhile, neighbours were getting signatures for a petition to Manchester City Council about the hammering.
Manchester Evening News, 6th June 1963.
Mystery of noises that keep street awake.
A whole street came out in protest last night. The residents complained bitterly about strange and loud noises coming from one of the houses. So much noise that they couldn’t sleep. And in the house – in Alderley Street, Hulme, Manchester, occupied by Mr Alfred Miles, aged 53, and his wife Anne, and daughter Joy, twelve – there was bewilderment. Mr Miles said yesterday that the house was nearly 100 years old. Queer noises started only in the last six months.
“It is difficult to describe them, except that sometimes there is a loud banging, as though someone was hammering away at something. Sometimes it lasts for as little as ten minutes, and often it goes on for as long as two hours. It doesn’t matter whether there is anyone in the house or not, the noises still happen, and often we have had to take to sleeping downstairs on chairs, or even not sleeping at all. It is terrific. We cannot keep on with it much longer. It is getting us all down. Last night, was one of the worst yet, and all the street were out complaining about it.”
The noise was so great, in fact, that a passer-by reported the matter to the police, who visited the house and are still investigating.
Mr H. Fellows, chief building surveyor to the City Architect’s Department, said: “We did think it could have been the water mains, but the Water Department say it is not, and we have come to no conclusion about the affair. I do not believe in ghosts.”
Asked if he thought poltergeists might be the cause, Mr Miles replied: “It is a matter of opinion as to whether anybody believes in poltergeists. I think there has got to be a logical answer.”
Liverpool Daily Post, 6th June 1963.
Stop noisy ghost, plead families.
Western Daily Press Reporter.
The weird hammerings in Mr Alfred Miles’s four-room house were investigated yesterday by a psychic research expert – a ghost hunter. At the same time neighbours in Alderley Street, Hume, started collecting signatures for a protest petition to Manchester city council.
The researcher, Mr E. Thompson, said “psychic phenomena” were causing the din that keeps Mr Miles and his family awake at night. He suggested calling in a deep trance medium, who might be able to contact whatever entity was responsible. The house itself, he said, could contain the necessary energy through which the entity could work, or it might be released by some member of the family.
What can be done to exorcise a reluctant spirit from the premises? Mr Thompson said water would help if it was sprayed around, because this tended to “earth” the energy. The best thing was for a deep-trance medium to discover what the entity required and why it was creating the disturbances.
Neither Mr Miles nor city officials believe in ghosts. Meanwhile organisers of the petition are not sure which department of the council to send it to.
Western Daily Press, 7th June 1963.
“Ghost Street”
After your front-page report on “Ghost Street,” concerning Alderley-street, Hulme, I wonder if it has been taken into account by the police and city fathers that only two streets away, a matter of 60 yards or so, an all-night refrigerator plant is in operation in Mulberry-street? – Shot in the Dark, Manchester 14
Manchester Evening News, 21st June 1963.
Ghost moves to new haunts.
Manchester’s haunted avenue, Alderley-street, Hulme, breathed again to-day. The ghost that brought fame to the street and weeks of disturbed nights to the residents seems to be moving to new hauntes.
The phantom began knocking on the walls of Mr and Mrs Allan Miles’s terraced house on New Year’s Eve. It forced Mr and Mrs Miles to move out of their bedroom and sleep downstairs, and everyone in the street heard the nocturnal bangings. Now the things that went bump in the night have suddenly dropped to a subdued tap-tap, said neighbour Mrs Betty Chadwick, and that is only irregular.
Mrs Chadwick, aged 64, said: “It seems to be going, and no-one will be sorry.” The Miles’ 12-year-old daughter Joy missed school because she lost sleep through the banging. Police inspected the house and heard the ghost at work. So did council experts and water engineers. Even the Health Department, talking of noise abatement orders sent a man along, but it seems unlikely that that alarmed the ghost.
Mrs Kathleen Morris, who lives opposite the Miles’ home and who organised a petition to a councillor about the noise, and to-day that tourists and amateur ghost-hunters had plagued the street since the phantom arrived. “They would stand in the middle of the street waving their arms and shouting ‘Whoooo’,” she said. “They would bang on walls, too.” Could it be that this was the ghost that was frightened to death?
Manchester Evening News, 26th June 1963.