Strange Noises Keeping Street Awake.
An entire Manchester street has protested about strange noises coming from one of the houses. The residents complain that the sounds are preventing them from sleeping at night. There was bewilderment in the house in Alderley Street, Hulme, which is occupied by Mr Alfred Miles, aged 53, his wife Anne, and daughter Joy, aged 12. Mr Miles said yesterday that the house was nearly 100 years old. The noises began six months ago.
“Sometimes there is a loud banging, as though someone was hammering away at something. Sometimes they last as little as ten minutes, but often as long as two hours. It doesn’t matter whether there is anyone in the house or not, the noises still occur. We often have to try sleeping downstairs on chairs. At other times we get no sleep at all. We cannot keep on with it much longer. It is getting us all down. Last night was one of the worst, and all the street was out complaining about it.”
The noise was so great that a pedestrian reported it 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 thought that it could have been the water mains, but the Water Department say it is not, and we have come to no conclusion. I do not believe in ghosts.”
Asked if he thought poltergeists might be the cause, Mr Miles said: “It is a matter of opinion as to whether anybody believes in poltergeists. I think there has got to be a logical answer.”
Birmingham Daily Post, 6th June 1963.
‘Ghost’ theory on mystery hammering.
While neighbours were obtaining signatures today for a petition to the Manchester City Council concerning persistent hammering noises in the four-roomed home of Mr Alfred Miles, in Alderley Street, Hulme, a theory was being put forward that there was a supernatural explanation for the sounds.
Mr E Thompson, who, in 1947, founded the Manchester Psychical Research Society, said there was a possibility that psychic phenomena was the cause of the noises heard by Mr Miles and his neighbours. The line of attack, he said, would be to discover whether any person in the family was, consciously or unconsciously, psychic and, secondly, to employ the services of 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 this might be released by some member of the family.
Asked what could be done to exorcise any reluctant spirit from the premises, Mr Thompson said water would help if it was sprayed around, because this tended to “earth” the energy, but how long it would take fro this to build up again he could not say. The best thing was for a deep trance medium to discover what the entity required and why it was creating the disturbances.
On the materialistic plane – neither Mr Miles nor City officials believe in “ghosts” – it is understood that further visits by the various service departments have been recommended. Meanwhile the petition is being canvassed but nobody seems to know which is the best department to which to send it.
Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 6th June 1963.