There is another case in Martin’s Close in 1991: I don’t know if it’s the same house.
Terror in the night for young couple.
In the early hours of a wintry morning late last year a terrified young couple moved out of their council-owned house in Martin’s Close, Barrow-upon-Humber. They had only been in the new house on the St Chad’s Estate for a matter of months, but that night they decided they could no longer live with the strange and weird happenings that went on there. The experience they underwent greatly disturbed them – to such an extent that the young woman had to have medical treatment – and for that reason they are not named in this article. But the clergyman they called in for help, Barrow’s Methodist minister, the Rev. Barrie Leah, agreed to recount their disturbing tale.
Susan and John moved into the three-bedroomed house as soon as it was built last April, and almost immediately went away for a holiday – that was when the unaccountable happenings began. When they came back from their vacation a neighbour greeted them with: “I thought you were going away on holiday.” They said they had just returned, but the neighbour replied: “We thought you hadn’t gone – the curtains in your house were being opened and closed.”
The couple settled into their new home, but were soon disturbed during the day and night by banging which seemed to come from the upstairs walls and ceilings. Whenever they located the source of the noise it changed its direction and came from somewhere else. Waking up in the middle of the night feeling cold and apprehensive was also common for Susan while she lived in the house. One night she dreamed of an old-fashioned soldier coming down the stairs of the house.
Mr Leah continued: “The couple had a little dog which was quite happy on the ground floor of the house, but it wouldn’t go upstairs, especially into the front bedroom which was the couple’s bedroom. If they took it in there it would make a bolt for the door.” One morning, while John was at work, Susan went to a neighbour’s for coffee after doing some laundry which she had taken upstairs out of the way. She shut the dog in the kitchen and locked the house up. When she returned half an hour later she was greeted at the front door by her dog – the kitchen door had been opened. She went into the living room and found the laundry from upstairs laid out tidily all over the floor. “The dog could not have done it,” said Mr Leah, because the washing was all neatly laid out. This incident upset her a great deal.”
Susan became increasingly disturbed by the goings-on, but John thought there must be realistic and practical explanations for the incidents and initially was irritated and angry by his wife’s reactions to the events. However, he gradually admitted the incidents were decidedly strange.
Often when the couple came home there would be a smell similar to putty inside the front door which seemed to lead upstairs. In the early hours one morning as the couple lay in bed the landing light was switched on. The room became cold and there were bangings and the noise of running water.
Susan decided she could live there no longer and that night they went to stay with John’s mother a few miles away. They put the house keys and a note through the letterbox of their neighbours, asking them to feed the dog. Mr Leah said those neighbours later told him what had occurred when they went into the house to feed the dog. The woman, a young mother, said: “On the second morning I went into the house there was a great bang which came from upstairs. I was frightened and went straight out. I never went in again. From then on my husband fed the dog. One evening he had just got in the front door when he heard a bang and the sound of footsteps. He said it was as if someone was standing on a stool at the window of their bedroom watching for someone, and when he arrived had got off the stool and moved away.”
Mr Leah said the neighbours also heard doors being opened and closed in the empty house. “On one occasion they thought a party was going on in the house, because there was so much noise coming from it. Also, while the neighbour was in her garden hanging out clothes, she looked back at the unoccupied house and thought she saw curtains being swished back and forth.”
Susan and John returned to the house but did not stay – as soon as they opened the front door a smell similar to that of cough lozenges greeted them. They returned again at a later date – this time they were accompanied by John’s mother and grandmother and Susan’s sister and brother-in-law. The family were sitting in the living room drinking coffee when there was a bang in the house. One of them said something about the ghost being back, to which John’s mother swore, telling the ghost to go away. “Immediately, the coffee in her cup was thrown into her face – they all saw it happen,” said Mr Leah. “The cup hadn’t been moved – the coffee just came out of it.”
John’s grandmother stayed the night, sleeping in the small back room. “The room had a bed facing the window and a little chest of drawers just a couple of feet from it,” said Mr Leah. “She had a good night, but when she woke in the morning the room seemed to be filled with mist – it was so bad she could not see the chest of drawers. The mist then seemed to roll away out of the window although it was tightly closed. Susan was terribly upset and concerned,” said Mr Leah. “They thought there was a ghost or something affecting the house.
“I take the view with a lot of these sort of things that there is a rational explanation for many of them, and so I tried to tackle it from that point of view. Here were people worried and concerned and it was my job to find the reason and put their minds at rest.” Mr Leah thought the source of the noises could be the central heating or water installation, but John said he had had them checked and there was nothing amiss. Mr Leah went to the house and found nothing untoward there. He wondered whether someon was playing a nasty trick on the couple and whether there was a way for a stranger to get into the house’s false roof. But he discovered the roofs of the terraced houses were separated by walls. Talks with the neighbours also verified what the couple had said.
Mr Leah visited the house one night with a policeman friend and John. They stayed until 2 am but nothing happened, and a tape recorder they had installed recorded no strange noises. Mr Leah did not perform any religious act or exorcism when he was at the house. “Nothing happened while I was there – I was in an awkward position because I didn’t know what I was dealing with – I would have preferred something to have happened. They then decided they did not want to stay there any more and moved their belongings out. I only ceased my direct interest because they moved out. The cause of what went on there is still a mystery.”
Mr Leah concluded: “I don’t know whether or not I believe in ghosts and hauntings – I think there are things which are inexplicable. I am not going to say there was anything at that house and I am not going to say there wasn’t – I am keeping an open mind.”
Susan and John now live several miles away from the Martin’s Close house.
Grimsby Daily Telegraph, 30th January 1981.