‘Ghost’ drives family out of council house.
A family of four have been moved to another council house because they claimed their house was haunted. The trouble began a few months ago when Mrs Gladys Tucker saw a man’s shadow on the landing of the house in Renhill-drive, Swindon, Wilts. Her daughter, Beryl, 29, saw strange lights on her bed and bedroom wall. The Tuckers’ son, Victor, 22, became so scared that he went to live with a married sister.
Mrs Tucker said yesterday: “Articles moved mysteriously; windows that we shut were found open and the door handles raised and lowered without anyone holding them.”
In the end her husband, Herbert, 67, a storekeeper, wrote to the council. The police were called in and electricity board men checked wires and lights in the terrace house, which was built two years ago. Then the family were moved to another house two miles away.
Alderman Arthur Camden, chairman of Swindon housing committee, said: “The family were in a terrible state mentally and the wife kept crying. Something had obviously scared them.”
The local vicar, the Rev. H.A. Allen, is planning to visit the house soon to try to exorcise the ghost.
Daily Mirror, 4th April 1966.
Queue to live in haunted house.
Ghosts hold no fears for several families in Swindon, Wilts. The families would rather live in a haunted house than remain on the corporation’s 1,215-strong housing list. So they have asked if they can have th ehouse.
A corporation spokesman said yesterday that the house will be exorcised by a local clergyman before the new tenants move in. The house, 323 Penhill-drive, was built in the 1950s to take over-spill from Birmingham.
Two years ago Mr Herbert Tucker and his family moved in. They reported seeing strange lights, shadows of a man and ornaments and doorhandles that moved of their own accord.
Swindon’s housing committee decided to give the Tuckers a new home.
Daily Mirror, 6th April 1966.