“Despatch” reporter goes on a Birmingham ghost hunt.
Brendan Clinch, Richard Walsh and John Forte pictured in the “haunted” bedroom. On the right is the chair said to have been hurled across the room.
By Harold Wanklyn.
Three young Irishmen, living in Birmingham, are so terrified by ghostly noises which they say have heard in their bedroom that they refuse to enter the room unaccompanied after midnight.
Last night I paid a visit to the house – in Ostler-street, Ladywood – and when I left they said nothing would persuade them to cross the threshold of the “haunted” room again before daylight. Incidents which are said to have disturbed their sleep include: The crash of a chair as it was hurled across the room; The extinguishing of a candle immediately after it had been lit; Ghostly sounds on the stairs; Weird knockings from every corner of the room; and Strange music, similar to that of a church organ, which suddenly filled the room and died away after a few seconds.
Three men went to bed shortly after midnight. I sat in the same room, and scarcely had we settled down when one, Brendan Clinch, a carpenter by trade, leapt from his bed and lay moaning on the floor. He was unable to speak for some moments; then he told me that something had grasped his leg. And nothing had approached that bed for the last ten minutes!
We waited… by now even I was convinced that there was something extraordinary in the air. Nothing moved for nearly an hour, then… three ghostly taps, plain and distinct. It was as much as I could do to prevent all three from dashing downstairs. We investigated, but found nothing. all the while there was a soft rumbling from the base of one of the walls, dimly lighted by a street lamp outside.
This was enough for me. Back again in the security of the kitchen I heard Clinch describe the happenings of previous nights. “The music was the most beautiful I have ever heard,” he said, “but the noises were ghastly. I have been on Army service in India and the sight of a corpse is nothing to me. I would sooner face 100 dead bodies than that room.”
Before my arrival Clinch and his companions, Richard Walsh, a metal worker, and John Forte, a polisher, had told me how they begged a Catholic priest to pray in the room. He had done so last night. Clinch was the only one to advance any explanation. “I am sure it’s a spirit… the spirit of someone who has died in that room,” he said.
The landlady, a widow, says she has lived in the house 60 years, and has never heard any noises, supernatural or otherwise. She did not hear the taps last night. But I did. I am not ashamed to admit that there are now four perfectly normal human beings to whom that room, in darkness, contains something uncanny. Ghosts i have chased before, but when they can almost be felt, and leave tangible evidence of their presence… both legs of that chair were smashed… no thank you.
Noises were heard on the stairs…
Weird knocking sounds came from this corner of the room…
Evening Despatch, 31st December 1938.