Medium Investigates Birmingham Cellar Raps.
Rappings on the floor of a house in Highfield-road, Washwood Heath, Birmingham, have led to excavations in the cellar, to see if there is evidence of a tragedy it is thought might have happened there many years ago. Some of the people who live there are stated to have been kept awake every night this week by the noises, coming from the cellar and the room above. Mr W. Brown, a spiritualist who lives in Washwood Heath-road, was called to the house. He told an Evening Despatch reporter: –
Four people from the house came at 11 p.m., and told me about queer happenings there. The police had been informed. It was suggested that a medium might help. I was told the rappings had been going on for three months. It had got to such a pitch that even the next-door neighbour came to ask what the noise was about.
At the house two women told me they had seen the figure of a man, arms outstretched, looking as if he was pleading for something. Just as they were going to speak it vanished. I sat for ten minutes, and under a trance I walked to the stairs, then to the cellar and down the steps. At the flagstones the control was so strong that when I came out of the trance I was exhausted.
It is thought, said Mr Brown, that tragedy occurred in the cellar many years ago. I understand from talking to people in the district that as long as 25 years ago an old lady in the vicinity was troubled by noises, he added.
Mrs Heeley, who lives in the house, told the Evening Despatch, “I have seen a form three times. We haven’t been to bed all this week. We are taking up the floor in the cellar to investigate.”
Evening Despatch, 26th August 1939.