Spooked family bid to give up the ghost.
By Pete Leydon.
Spooked couple Donna and Barrie Appleby have called in a team of ghostbusters after a series of bizarre events forced them out of their new home. They believe a supernatural presence has taken over their council house in Cowgate, Newcastle. The couple, and baby Danielle, two, had to move in with Donna’s parents days after being given their new home.
Ghostbuster Matthew Hutton and medium Julie Ness, both from Gateshead, have now teamed up to investigate the ghostly goings-on in the haunted house in Hillsleigh Road. The family has also called in a priest to exorcise the house so that they can move back in before Donna has her second child, due in July. Denise said: “It moves things around and flicks objects through the air.”
Strange things began to happen when Donna and Barry moved in last November and spent the first few days decorating the house. One night, Danielle’s doll was moved from its pram to a chair, and the next morning it was found hanging by its neck between two chairs. Denise said: “We found out that the person who used to live there hanged himself and his sister was admitted to a mental institute.”
Other unexplained events include toilets flushing during the night, objects flying through the air, apparitions of a young man and family members receiving electric shocks.
Ghostbuster Matthew Hutton said: “There is usually a focus for this sort of activity, and it could be Mrs Appleby’s pregnancy. The electro-magnetic field around a pregnant woman could trigger it off.”
A council spokesman said: “We would be happy to help investigate the problem.”
Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 3rd April 1995.
Roger and out, ghost.
Family plans to banish spectre of boy.
By Anne Barrowclough.
Donna and Barry Appleby had owned their new house only a week when the hauntings started. Photographs and receipts disappeared from a teapot in the living room and turned up in the back of a clock next door, where Barry’s mother lives. A bike was thrown across the living room. A few days later the pump disappeared. It reappeared in a couple of hours, partly smashed, on top of a milk crate.
One day, as Barry’s mother, Denise, was visiting the house she felt something pull at the gold crucifix around her neck. The chain snapped and the crucifix fell to the floor.
The Applebys bought their house in Cowgate, Newcastle, last November. They have been living elsewhere while they decorate it. But the gas fire is constantly being turned off and on – and they recently received an electricity bill for £100. Worst of all, a child’s doll belonging to their two-year-old daughter, Danielle, was found hanging by its neck between two chairs that had been pushed together.
A ghost, or just someone playing a sick practical joke?
Last week we revealed how psychic cop Keith Charles believes he knows where Lord Lucan is buried.
And now the Applebys have told how they are convinced their house is haunted – by the ghost of a small boy called Roger. “The day the bike was thrown across the room, we took Danielle into the house and she said, ‘Roger’s hiding under the bench,’ says Donna, 24. We asked her why and she said, ‘Because he’s been naughty.’
“Another time she was playing with a toy and kept saying ‘Roger, stop being naughty.’ She’s not frightened of him and she always tells us that he’s in the living room or the kitchen, or he’s gone upstairs to bed.”
A girl of 15 who knew nothing of the hauntings came to visit last week and suddenly said: “Who’s that lad stood over there?” She could see a young boy, about 5ft 3in, with brown hair and a very white face staring at her. When told the adults couldn’t see him, she ran out of the house and won’t return.
Donna and Barry, also 24, are now so sick of Roger’s mischief they have called in a priest – and a psychic investigator – to exorcise the place.
Yet they are quite used to ghosts. For the past few years, Barry’s late grandmother has been visiting his mother Denise – and has even shown herself to Donna. She says: “Two years ago when we were staying with my mother-in-law I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night and saw her mother, who had died in 1988, glide down the hall and into Denise’s bedroom. She smiled at me and I smiled at her, and it wasn’t until I was in the bathroom I realised what I had seen. “The next day Denise said her mother had come into her room and sat on her bed. I was pregnant and she told Denise the baby would be a girl and she would be in a purple dress. The baby was a girl – and the first dress I ever bought her was purple, although by then I’d forgotten what the spirit had said.”
Denise, 44, frequently sees her mother. She has come to depend on her for advice and help almost as much as she did when she was alive, and says: “If I’m sitting in the living room, she will sit and talk to me. She was wearing a white satin nightdress when she died and she’s always in that. Sometimes she comes and sits on my bed. She was always a good one for giving advice and she still is. Since she died, she has often warned me against people and she’s turned out to be right about them. The first time she made herself known was just a few days after she passed away. I think she was angry at herself for passing away.
“She started smashing things around the house. Part of the glass in a picture suddenly flew out of the frame and smashed. As soon as I’d cleaned it up, a plate flew off the table and smashed. The first time she actually showed herself to me was before Barry and Donna got married. I was in hospital. She appeared by the bed and said, ‘Donna’s going to have a baby, but I don’t want them to rush into anything.’ At the time, Donna didn’t even know she was pregnant.
“When I told her she was going to have a baby and should take the idea of marriage seriously she looked at me as if I was stupid. A couple of months later she called me and said, ‘You’re right, I am pregnant’.” Denise adds: “I’m never frightened when I see my mother. “I couldn’t be scared of her. She gives you such a warm, comforting feeling. I’ve always believed in life after death, and this is the proof.”
Sunday Mirror, 9th April 1995.