Scared mum calls in vicar.
Spooked.
Family quits haunted home.
Strange goings-on at a Birmingham flat where a man was murdered five years ago have caused a young mother to abandon her home in terror – just two weeks after moving in. Now a vicar has been called in to try rid the home of what 20-year-old Donna Larkin is convinced is a ghost. Donna moved into the Mackadown Lane flat with six-month-old daughter, Sophia, unaware of its macabre history. In December 1986, 19-year-old Philip Butcher, of Chelmsley Wood, was stabbed to death in the bedroom of the Tile Cross flat. Dean Towert, the estranged husband of the woman who lived there was later sentenced to life imprisonment for murder.
Donna said today: “The whole place has been redecorated, i have had new furniture and new carpets fitted costing around £4,000 but now I all I want to do is move.”
Officers from Birmingham’s housing department are investigating the matter and talking to previous tenants of the flat to see if they too had spooky experiences in the property.
Donna, now staying with a friend, said strange things started happening as soon as she moved in before she knew anything about the murder. “I would tidy the bedroom and then find it all untidy again with drawers pulled out slightly and clothes disturbed,” she said. “Things would go missing completely and there were problems with electrical items. My vacuum cleaner, for instance, will not pick up any dirt in the flat – but works fine anywhere else.” Donna added that when they investigated why their new burglar alarm had gone off it indicated that there had been a disturbance in zone three – the bedroom where the murder took place. She said she called in the vicar of St Peter’s Church, Tile Cross, the Rev Neville Foster, who blessed the flat and has offered to visit it again as the problem still existed.
Rev Foster declined to comment.
Donna Larkin and Sophia inside the ‘haunted’ flat.
Birmingham Mail, 22nd April 1992.
Souled out.
Young mum Donna Larkin has fled a Birmingham flat after only two weeks – claiming it is haunted by the ghost of a murder victim.
Daily Mirror, 24th April 1992.