The not-so-sweet smell of fear that haunts Bob and Margaret.
A malevolent spirit haunting the upper rooms and hallway of a cottage in Chesham is forcing a recently married couple to look for somewhere else to live. Bob and Margaret Le Tissier, who rent the 300-year-old cottage in The Vale, even fear that the ghost – or ghosts – may force them to break up their three-month-old marriage if they don’t find somewhere else to live soon.
Bob, aged 40, and Margaret, aged 32, married in October but strange and frightening things began to happen at their home in November. Last weekend, they stopped using the two bedrooms upstairs and moved their bed into the sitting room and they have called a priest in to pray with them.
Margaret claims to be psychic and said that her mother and grandmother also had similar powers but Bob, who is manager of the Topdec paint shop in Amersham, never had any reason to believe in ghosts until he moved to 234 The Vale. Now he is convinced that the cottage is haunted.
One night in mid-November he and his wife heard the clop of a horse’s hooves on the road outside. Margaret also heard a sound as if a person had dismounted. Bob looked out of the window but there was no horse to be seen. When he went downstairs for a better look, he found that a picture had fallen from the wall in the sitting room.
Since then they both claim to have smelled a strange, sweet odour in the hallway and bedrooms. They began to have difficulty sleeping and Margaret said: “I couldn’t breathe and I could feel a sharp object pushing into my back. In my mind’s eye I see a dagger or a sword. I am convinced there was a murder or a suicide here once.”
They tried moving from the main to the spare bedroom but the strange happenings continued. One night Margaret woke up to find that the top corner of the blanket on her husband’s side of the bed was soaking wet. “I thought there was a leak in the roof when she woke me,” said Bob. There was no leak and apart from a relatively recent lean-to extension at the rear, the cottage does not appear to suffer from dampness at all. “After I turned the light on, I touched the damp patch but as I held the blanket it just dried out in seconds,” he said. Two days later it happened again. The bed was next to an old bricked-up doorway in the cottage, which the Le Tissiers think was once part of a large inn.
There have been other frightening experiences. On two occasions the vacuum cleaner catch has suddenly burst open on the steep, narrow staircase when Margaret was cleaning and her most frightening experience to date was the night she awoke to find two bright eyes staring at her from the landing outside the bedroom. “I have never seen anything so evil. I am convinced that whatever it is wants to harm or kill me,” she said.
At the end of November Margaret got out her ouija board to try to contact the spirit. Instead she got through, she said, to a girl spirit who warned her to leave the cottage as soon as possible. “The second time we tried there was the sound of two people running across the main bedroom. It was so loud it shook the house. I am sure there are two spirits in the house.”
Mr Le Tissier has made small wooden crosses which have been placed in all the rooms. At present Mrs Le Tissier says she feels safe in the sitting room, kitchen and bathroom downstairs, but the couple have been advertising in the accommodation wanted column of the Examiner for a number of weeks. “If we don’t find somewhere soon I will have to go back to my old home at Hastings,” said Margaret. Bob, whose hobby is nothing more spectral than railways, said he would rather go back to his mother at Chorleywood than stay alone at the cottage.
The Rev. Andrew Warburton, team vicar designate of Emmanuel Church, Chesham, has been to the house to pray with the couple. “I am going to take the matter to the diocese. Hopefully we will be able to do more for them later.”
Margaret and Bob Le Tissier on the bed they have made on the sitting room floor in the cottage they are convinced is, or has recently become, haunted. Previous tenants have not reported anything strange but Margaret said: “This is the only part of the house I feel safe in.”
The corner of the main bedroom where the couple says the ghostly presence seems strongest.
Buckinghamshire Examiner, 4th January 1980.
‘Jealous’ ghost haunts lovers.
By Wensley Clarkson.
A jealous ghost is trying to part a loving couple. For months he has been haunting Margaret and Bob Le Tissier. The reason, says newly-wed Margaret, is “so he can have me to himself.” The couple, who live in a 300-year-old cottage at Chesham, Buckinghamshire, believe that the ghost is of a Cromwellian soldier. The cottage is on the site of a Cromwellian ale house and the couple are so worried they have asked the local vicar to exorcise their home.
The first ghostly encounter came when Margaret, 32, and 40-year-old Bob were in bed. Margaret said: “I was cuddling my husband when I felt that part of the blanket was soaking wet, then seconds again it was dry again. I am sure that must have been when the soldier took off his wet cape.”
The couple claim that there have been other frightening incidents, which include: Eyes staring at them while they were in bed together; Sharp objects being pushed into their backs at night; A strange, sweet, sickly smell in the hall; Horses’ hooves sounding in the lane outside at midnight.
The ghost had a short-lived victory last week when Bob left Margaret for a couple of days because of the strain. Now, they are pinning their hopes on an exorcism. The vicar, the Rev. Andrew Warburton said: “They have been through a terrible ordeal. I have been in touch with my diocesan headquarters and hophefully they will be sending someone down who will look at the house and eventually something will be done to clear it. This whole thing has come between them. My main aim is to help them mend their marriage.”
Sunday Mirror, 17th February 1980.