‘Hunt the spirit’ bid by group.
A group of Nottingham ghost hunters were ready and waiting today to move into the Clifton council house which a family deserted after claiming it had seen a “black ghost.” Armed with thermometers, oscilloscopes, sound equipment and infra-red film they hope to identify the spirit which frightened the Dennis family out of their Farnborough road home.
Leader of the Nottingham Psychic Research Group, Mr Patrick Burton, said about ten members wanted to take over the house during the weekend, if the City Council gives permission. “From the reports we have heard this sounds like a genuine case,” said Mr Burton, a trainee sales manager, who lives at Midland Road, Heanor. “There is an earlier report on the Clifton Estate of a spirit trying to smother a child and we are still trying to find out if this is correct.”
Mr Burton said the modern theory on ghosts was that they were “Mind prints” of electrical energy left in a room by a dead person. “I feel exorcism is a lot of mumbo-jumbo. If spirits are merely an electrical field they can be destroyed by releasing stronger electrical energy into the room.”
Nottingham Evening Post, 22nd August 1975.
Eerie tale of family who quit new home.Our night on the trail of a ghost.
By Chris Arnot.
The key wouldn’t turn in the lock. Immediately the imagination started working overtime… There was something trying to stop us getting in – the same spiritual force which drove a terrified family of six from this Clifton council house earlier in the week. But with so many expectant child faces staring at us over the hedge, there was no giving up. After much twisting and pushing the door finally swung open.
It was obvious the Dennis family had left in a hurry – dishes on the draining board, a two-thirds empty cup of cold coffee on the arm of a chair, a discarded newspaper on another chair, a toy dog in the dining room doorway. When you’re frightened enough to leave your new home for good only three days after moving in, you don’t hang around to clear up. And there’s no doubt that the Dennises were badly frightened by something. I spoke to them at the friend’s house where they’ve been staying while waiting to move into another house which Nottingham City Council has found for them.
Mr Keith Dennis, a 31-year-old car dismantler is a big, strong-looking man who doesn’t scare easily. “I’m not a nervous sort of bloke,” he said. “I’ve never been frightened of anything in my life, until now. I would laugh if anybody told me about a ghost.” But he’s not laughing now. Last Friday night something happened which will make him, in his own words, “never feel quite the same man again.”
The family had just moved into the house on Farnborough Road and he was laying some carpet in the front bedroom when, he claims, a black apparition appeared at his shoulder. He froze with fright. But the ghost disappeared within seconds and Mr Dennis left the room, badly shaken but determined not to frighten his family. He said nothing about the incident until Monday night when his nine-year-old daughter Mandy woke up screaming. Like most children, she always thought of a ghost as something floating draped in a white sheet. but on this occasion she said she had seen a grunting black shape at the foot of her bed. It was then that the family fled.
Mrs Kathleen Dennis had not seen the apparition but she says she felt unnerved by the house… as though there was something present that wanted them out. “I spent most of Monday sitting on the step because I didn’t want to be inside,” she told me.
With the permission of Nottingham Corporation and the Dennis family, I set out to spend an evening at the house together with Evening Post reporter Steve Clark and his fiancee Christine Gore. Mr Dennis was rather sceptical about our visit, mainly because he thought it unlikely that the ghost would appear to three people at once. There are three answers to that:
Firstly, we wanted witnesses so that any ghostly appearances could not be put down to one person’s imagination. Secondly, we wanted a woman to be present because they are supposed to be more sensitive to spiritual vibrations. Christine’s great grandmother was a medium and her mother goes to a spiritualist church. Thirdly, none of us is a hero with nerves of steel prepared to sit all night alone in a dark, strange house which is supposed to be haunted.
We went into it with open minds. None of us had seen a ghost before but we were prepared to believe that there could be something there. Before going to the house I had spoken to a Clifton vicar, the Rev. Frank Crowther, who has exorcised six council houses on the estate in recent months. He didn’t think that Clifton was any different from anywhere else in the country where ghostly appearances were becoming more frequent.
“There’s a general atmosphere created through more and more people dabbling in the occult. But that doesn’t mean that the people who have been dabbling themselves. As a nation we have fallen a long way from the Christian faith. Many people have no concept of eternity… and that includes people who are passing on. Sometimes they get lost on the way. They cling to the things of this world. This could be the case at Farnborough Road.”
The former occupant of the house, Mrs Doris Parker, died in hospital last month at the age of 57. her husband died in the house seven or eight years ago. Both were devoted to the house. Both had their ashes scattered on the roses in the garden. Mr Dennis is convinced that the apparition he saw was male. We waited for him to come. Quite a strange experience waiting for something you don’t really want to come. As Steve said at the time: “If nothing happens I won’t be surprised. But I keep expecting to be jolted.”
Christine said she felt like going out. She was nervous. We all were for the first hour or so. Then the conversation flowed as the tension lessened and we forgot about the ghost for long periods. Every now and then a sudden noise would jolt us back into a tense silence as the shadows lengthened – a banging outhouse door, a cat squawking in the road outside, a clicking latch next door. We all went upstairs individually at different times to use the toilet or take a quick look round the haunted bedroom. We didn’t stay there long. We switched all the lights off for half an hour and sat in the front room watching the lights from the traffic outside move across the wall. But nothing came. Until a quarter of an hour before midnight…
There was a sharp rap on the window which lifted all of us about two inches off our chairs. I tentatively opened the front door to see two dark shapes outside… They were policemen wanting to know what we were up to! We left just after the “witching hour” of midnight. It was one of those front doors which you have to lock from the outside. This time there was no obstruction – the key turned smoothly in the hole.
The waiting game… Chris Arnot, left, Steve and Christine.
Nottingham Evening Post, 22nd August 1975.
‘Black ghost’ terror.
A clergyman revealed today that he had held a service to bring peace to a council house at Clifton, Nottingham where a ‘black ghost’ was said to have forced its former occupants to flee in terror. The Rev. Frank Crowther, Vicar of St Francis Church, Clifton, said he was confident that when another family moved into the house in Farnborough Road they would write off the whole episode as a load of stupid nonsense.
Mr Keith Dennis, his wife Kathleen and their four children fled from the house two weeks ago after nine-year-old Mandy Dennis saw what she described as a grunting black shape at the foot of her bed. The family sought sanctuary with a Roman Catholic priest, the Rev. Gerrard Murphy before going to stay with relatives. They refused to go back and the house has stood empty since.
A spokesman for Nottingham Corporation Housing Department said that the Dennis fmaily had been rehoused at Pastures Avenue, Clifton and new tenants would be moving into Farnborough Road within ten days.
The clergyman said that the ceremony he performed at the Sunday morning service was not exorcism in the technical sense because he had not visited the house but the Eucharist had been offered at St Francis’s for the peace of the house. He said: “I wrote down on a piece of paper the situation as I saw it and placed it on the altar. I had explained this to the congregation and we then had a few moments prayer. Nobody knows at the moment what effect this had but I’m confident that new tenants will wonder what the fuss was all about.”
Derby Daily Telegraph, 4th September 1975.