The Hayes and the Hobgoblin.
Cape Town Experience of Ex-Fulham Family.
A thirty-year-old newspaperman, Mr Robert Hayes and his wife, who until last October were living at Bishop’s Mansions, Bishop’s Park Road, are central figures in a remarkable poltergeist or hobgoblin story emanating from Cape Town where Mr Hayes now works for the “Cape Times.”
Mr and Mrs Hayes, who have a year-old son, have been living in a four-roomed bungalow, but because of the queer happenings that have been going on inside it they have returned to a hotel existence. Now the bungalow, in a city where accommodation is more valuable than gold, stands empty.
Telling the story of four weeks of “sheer hell,” Mr Hayes stated: “Before we moved our future neighbours warned us that we might have a night visitor, but after months of hotel life the thought of a home of our own was paramount in our minds. After we had been settled in a few weeks, about 1 a.m. our son, who slept in a room next to ours, began to scream. He became quiet as soon as we went in to him and switched on the light, but when we switched it off he began screaming again.”
“The next night we had been in bed for two hours when we heard deep rumbling noises from the sitting-room followed by hurried footsteps and the banging of doors which I had myself locked before retiring and which were still locked when I examined them a few seconds after the first of them had banged.
“Later that night our Great Dane, which slept in the kitchen, began to howl – long, unnerving howls. After ten minutes we heard the crash of glass. I ran into the kitchen only to find that in its terror the dog had jumped through the window and had fled. We never saw it again. In a few days we were living in an atmosphere so tense that we moved everything – beds, radio and cot – into the kitchen, leaving the rest of the house to the poltergeist, for that is what we decided our visitor was. Every night there were bangings on the walls and footsteps.
“The last straw came when the voice started. Nothing was understandable – just snatches of incoherent mutterings. Sometimes the voice seemed to come from the ceiling, sometimes from under a chair or table.”
Fulham Chronicle, 4th July 1947.
“Haunted” Flat.
A young Londoner and his wife have been driven from a flat on a farm eight miles from Capetown by what they declare is a ghost. Mr Robert Hayes, the husband, said they were warned by neighbours that they would be disturbed, but laughed. The trouble began one night when his year-old son began screaming for no apparent reason. Soon afterwards there were deep rumbling noises, hurried footsteps and the opening and shutting of doors which he had locked before going to bed.
The same night his great Dane, after howling for 10 minutes, jumped through a window and disappeared. The dog has not been seen since.
Mysterious tappings on doors at night became commonplace. There were also bangings on the doors of locked rooms from the inside, bangings so hard that pots and pans danced over tables, and Mr Hayes and his wife were unable to sleep.
The last straw was when a mysterious voice began muttering snatches of conversation in the room in which he and his wife were sitting. Now the family are back in a Capetown hotel.
Nottingham Evening Post, 23rd June 1947.