Family’s nightmare of ‘ghost’ house.
Nick Wormley meets the victims of a poltergeist.
A Berkhamsted family believe they are sharing their home with a poltergeist which hurls trays and cutlery across the kitchen, turns taps on at night, and has smashed an electric wall clock. And if your reaction to that is to suggest: “Take more water with it in future,” that is probably what Ken and Jenny Monger would have said too – until they began to experience uncanny happenings themselves last February.
Now they no longer laughingly dismiss such stories as crackpot nonsense. And while they light-heartedly nick-name the ghost “Barney”, it covers a deep worry about something they simply do not understand. The trouble started soon after Mr and Mrs Monger were temporarily moved out of their Briar Way council house, which was to be modernised, into their present council home in nearby Woodlands Avenue.
One evening, heavy trays, spoons and ladles were thrown across the kitchen, chipping a white-painted radiator at the opposite end of the room. This was witnessed by the Monger’s grandson, Paul. Mrs Monger nearly had hysterics after the kitchen clock was thrown from the wall, smashing the face, and she caught a fleeting glimpse of a faint hazy form in front of her, like a wisp of smoke. And Mr Monger has been really puzzled ever since he came down stairs shortly after 4 a.m., to find, when he switched on the kitchen light, various items arranged on the floor.
Laid out, apparently to represent a square or circle, were a butter dish, its cover, a packet of tea and a loaf of bread. In the centre, maybe to denote a pointer or clock hands, was a carving knife. The Mongers always tidy up the kitchen and put all utensils away before going to bed so there was no way they might have left these items out the previous evening, they said. All doors and windows had been locked and secured, no-one else had access to the house, and nobody else was there that night.
At the same time the clock, which had always kept perfect time, had inexplicably doubled its pace to gain four hours in four hours – Mr Monger had checked it just after midnight and when he found the items on the floor it had sped ahead to eight o’clock.
A 61-year-old school assistant caretaker, Ken frequently works alone at night and said he had n ever been at all nervous or afraid in eerie situations, but this experience was something he could not comprehend. Perhaps it was a mischievous spirit, or an unhappy one trying to get across a message, he wondered – and if the latter, he would greatly like to know the significance of what he saw. So would his wife, who said there was a “terribly cold dismal feeling” in the kitchen when the events occurred.
Barney’s activities, which seem to come and go periodically, have oddly been confined to the kitchen and an upstairs bedroom. People who have slept there have complained of pressure on their chests in bed – as though someone was kneeling on them and could not be pushed off. Another puzzle had been to hear the kitchen taps switched full on in the night – only to find them off again when Mr Monger had got up to investigate. This and bangings on the walls were nothing to do with the neighbours, who had thought the Mongers were banging on their walls, he said.
The Mongers are level-headed people who have lived in the town most of the lives – ordinary working class grandparents and not the type to dabble in witchcraft, Spiritualism or the supernatural. Nor are they the sort to make up the story as some kind of joke. Mrs Monger did not really want publicity because people might brand them as “nut cases” or come snooping round out of curiosity. But she was seriously worried enough to contact the Rev. Canon Edward Norfolk, who said prayers in the house and admitted that frankly he had no more idea of the cause of their experiences than they had. If necessary, an exorcist could be consulted, but he had advised them to let sleeping dogs lie for the present, she said.
Hemel Hempstead Gazette, 28th November 1980.