Family takes fright from ghostly home.
Spirits make lives a misery.
By Chris Baker.
Ghoulish goings-on in a quiet Derby neighbourhood have driven a terrified family from their home. Susan Jones and her three daughters fled in terror to Derby’s Full Street police station after seeing a spooky spectre in their council house. And now they are so scared they are refusing to stay in the house at night, and have even pledged to camp out in the garden rather than sleep inside. Susan (33) is convinced the house in Selkirk Street, Chaddesden, is haunted by demonic spirits. For the last 10 years she says she has lived in fear of an unseen poltergeist-like menace that lurks in the house and makes things go bump in the night.
And on Sunday they came face to face with their unwanted face to face with their unwanted guest – a phantom old woman with a bright shroud around her. Social services bosses found them a temporary bed for the night in a local hotel after they turned up on the police station doorstep. Now even the family’s cat, Black, is refusing to sleep in the house.
Mrs Jones’ 11-year-old daughter Shirani said she saw the apparition sitting on her bed, knitting. “It looked like an old woman, all I could see was her wrinkled face and her hands, she had a bright shroud around her. She was looking over her shoulder and smiling at me. I was terrified,” she said. Mrs Jones said the encounter was the latest in a long line of spine-chilling experiences in the house. “We have known for a long time that there is something abnormal about this place. All sorts of strange things happen, pictures fall off the walls for no reason and we hear terrible noises in the night,” she said.
“People say I should have the house exorcised, but I don’t know what to do. There are evil spirits here, they have made our lives miserable for years.”
Chris Boote, manager at the city council’s Chattesden housing office, said: “Whatever they have experienced in the house they are distressed and, without wishing to comment on whether the ghost exists, we are taking it seriousuly.” City ward councillor Martin Repton said he was going to contact a local vicar to exorcise the house if Mrs Jones agreed. “I want to help this family with a ‘Ghostbusters’ mission that will exorcise the house and get rid of the ghost once and for all, it has been most distressing,” he said.
Derby Daily Telegraph, 17th July 1990.