Ghost with a bugle!
Alarm at Lincoln.
A ghost with a bugle is stated to be haunting a Lincoln house, and so persistent have the visitations become that the occupants are terrified and dare not go to bed.
The house, in Kingsley-street, is occupied by Mr and Mrs Foster, who are nephew and niece of Mrs J.H. Winter, of Delhi-place, who died last week. Mrs Winter committed suicide by drinking disinfectant on Thursday of last week, but two days before her death, Mr Foster was surprised to hear, very faintly, the moaning sounds of a bugle, apparently in the house. Investigation failed to reveal any trace of a bugle or its blower, but the following day, the sound, it is said, was repeated somewhat louder.
Then, on Thursday, the day Mrs Winter died, the bugle notes rang out with terrifying clearness and volume near the front door. Still there was no sign of anyone who could have blown a bugle, and the occupants of the house, Mr and Mrs Foster and their three young children, became thoroughly alarmed.
On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights the bugle was sounded again, in different parts of the house, and at varying times, on one occasion at 2.30 in the morning.
A friend of the family, determined to discover whence the sound came, sat up all night on Sunday with Mr Foster, and was preparing to return to his home at 2.30 in the morning without having heard anything, when he heard the sound of the bugle, just behind him, as he was leaving the kitchen and entering the front room.
All was quiet on Monday, the day of Mrs Winter’s funeral, but last night, shortly before midnight, the bugle call came again with renewed strength.
Lincolnshire Echo, 13th January 1932.
Lincoln Phantom Mystery Deepens.
Ghost now plays drum!
Rat-tat-tat alarm after bugle call.
After a week of bugle blowing, with but one quiet night, the “ghost” which is reputed to be haunting a house in Kingsley-street, Lincoln, in the early hours of this morning startled the occupants with the rolling sound of a side-drum. For over a week, Mr and Mrs Foster and their children, and Mr Foster’s mother, have been terrified by uncanny manifestations which have taken the form of bugle blowing at all hours of the night – as early as 7.30 and as late as 3.30 a.m. – and in different parts of the house.
Commencing on Tuesday night of last week, with a sound as of a bugle blown in the far distance, the noise seemed to come nearer and nearer until on Thursday night, the bugle rang out with unnerving volume, apparently at the kitchen entrance to the front room. Mrs Foster is impressed by the strange coincidence that on that day her aunt was found dead at her home in Lincoln. From then until the funeral on Monday the bugle, in some ways resembling, according to Mrs Foster, senior, the notes of the “Last Post” was heard, and such an extent that the occupants of the house were afraid to go to bed. They have, indeed, spent the nights in the front room of the house, in the company of one or more relatives and friends.
All was quiet on Monday, but on Tuesday the bugle blowing was resumed and continued until last night, when, instead of a bugle, the rolling of a drum was heard near the door leading from the kitchen to the front room. “We were all too scared to move,” said Mrs Foster to a “Lincolnshire Echo” reporter this morning. “We dare not go upstairs to sleep. We are all terrified.”
This morning Mr Thomas Robinson, of 34, Cannon-street, called at the “Lincolnshire Echo” office on behalf of Mr Winter to disclaim any connection between the ghostly bugle and the death of Mrs Winter. “The death of Mrs Winter occurred at her home in Delhi-place,” said Mr Robinson. “The bugle has been heard uphill, a mile and more away, and before Mrs Winter died – how, then, can there be any connection? Mr Winter is much distressed that the two events have been associated.”
Lincolnshire Echo, 14th January 1932.
Rapping added to Ghost Bugle.
Policeman fails to solve Lincoln house mystery.
Events are developing rapidly in Lincoln’s “haunted house.” The mysterious midnight bugling has now quietened a little, but an extraordinary rapping has taken place. In the early hours of yesterday morning Mrs Foster, sitting up with a friend to keep her company, heard something rapping on the back door of the house. The friend rushed out but there was nothing there, and a moment later the ghostly bugle was heard again. So terrified was Mrs Foster and the rest of the family that a daughter was sent out of Kingsley street into Burton road to find a policeman.
The policeman came and made a thorough examination of the place but could find nothing. They implored the officer to stay with them, but he could not do so, and the family sat up most of the night in a state of morbid terror. The mysterious happenings have got such a hold over the Fosters that they now do not use the kitchen and scullery at the rear of the house and have moved all the furniture out of these places.
Mrs Foster, in an interview with a “Sheffield Independent” reporter yesterday, said that she cannot stand the continued nocturnal noises. “I shall go mad if it goes on,” she said, “It is upsetting my nerves. I shall leave the house as soon as I can get another.”
Sheffield Independent, 15th January 1932.
Origin of the “Phantom.”
Hole, boxes, bass and wind.
A bricklayer, with some plaster and a piece of wood, or a few small laths, writes a “Lincolnshire Echo” reporter, would, in my opinion, settle the “ghost” which has haunted a house in Kingsley-street, Lincoln, for the past ten days. Over a week ago the occupants of a house in Kingsley street were startled to hear, on several occasions, during the night, sounds as of a bugle being blown, and these later became the beatings on a drum, but despite the fact that they were terrified and could obtain no sleep, the occupants decided to remain in the house. In fact, last night they declined my offer to spend the night in the “haunted” house and endeavour to “lay” the “ghost.”
I did not stay in the house, but after scouting round a little I came to the conclusion that the mysterious sounds of bugles and drums were caused by the wind rushing down the passage at the side of the house, and through a hole in the roof of the passage. This hole, approximately a foot in diameter, coincides roughtly with the position occupied by the communicating door between the front room and kitchen in the house and near which the sound has most frequently been heard. Through the hole I could see one or two boxes, with a fish bass laid across the top.
In addition to these “discoveries” I spoke to a man who had heard the “bugle,” and when he demonstrated how it sounded, this was not inconsistent with the theory I had formed that the noise was caused through the wind fluting through the reeds of the empty fish bass.
I think if a bricklayer were called in we should hear no more of the Kingsley-street ghost.
Lincolnshire Echo, 15th January 1932.