Is this the most haunted house in Britain?
Young mother ‘kicked’ by ghost.
Strange chill in council house.
White dress ‘floated’ down stairs.
Mystery bruises appear on girls.
Two young mothers claim they are being terrorised int their own home by a violent ghost – and they are desperate to be rehoused. Throughout a nightmarish three weeks at their Dover council house, sisters Tracey and Linda Uren say they have: Moved their beds into the dining room because the upstairs is haunted; Called in members of a local Baptist church and a minister to pray in the house; Heard banging and crashing in the haunted bedroom, as if objects were being thrown around; Seen a ghostly white dress float down the stairs.
Tracey, 18, and Linda, 19, both unemployed and each with a young baby, contacted the Dover Express in desperation this week. And the terrified teenagers reported that the spiteful spook had flown into a rage and started slamming doors just one hour after an Express news team visited the modest terraced house at number 11, Edgar Road.
So far, the only person who has seen the ghost’s face is their younger sister Heidi, although Linda has seen its white dress and Tracey says she has felt it kick her. Now Heidi, 16, who lives in Queen’s Avenue, Dover, refuses to visit the house in Edgar Road. Tracey, whose bedroom Heidi shared when she stayed overnight, said she and Heidi started waking up to find their bodies covered with mysterious bruises. They also noticed a strange chill in the bedroom. They were so alarmed by these supernatural happenings that the sisters decided they couldn’t sleep upstairs again and moved a bed to the dining room. It was there that Heidi saw the ghost for the first time.
Tracey said: “Heidi was woken by the cupboard door banging. She saw a woman standing in front of her. She said the woman had long black straggly hair and was wearing a white dress with a billowing skirt. She was very old and her face was very wrinkled.” A few days after that Linda and Tracey heard banging and crashing noises coming from the upstairs bedroom while they were sitting in the living room. Then Linda saw a white dress floating down the stairs towards the basement kitchen and bathroom.
One of the babies has suffered unusually violent crying fits and one of their pet dogs turned on Heidi the night the ghost appeared. By then the sisters had had enough and turned to the Church for help. David Cook, secretary of Salem Baptist Church in Maison Dieu Road, Dover, said: “They contacted us. They were in some distress.” Mr Cook visited the house with another member of his church, a guest minister and his wife. Mr Cook said: “We prayed in the house with them. I would not call it an exorcism but it certainly seemed to give them some comfort.” Mr Cook said he did not feel any presence while he was there.
But the sisters say the prayers were to no avail. Now they are still too frightened to go upstairs because they believe the bedroom is “her room” and the whole family, including the babies, sleep in the dining room. Tracey and Linda, who have lived in the house since March, say they were quite happy there until the ghost appeared. Now they want out and have told council workers about the sinister spook. The sisters are even prepared to call in a ghost expert to back up their claims.
A council spokesman said: “We have very little experience with ghosts but we will send someone to Edgar Road to discuss the problem. We will have to verify there is a ghost there before we can decide what action to take. The council has been running this house for at least 25 years and there have never been any previous complaints of this kind.”
The people living at number 9 Edgar Road said they also had a ghost but it was “friendly” and didn’t bother them.
Archives contained little about the history of Edgar Road. But it is widely known that the first shell to land on Dover during World War Two landed nearby on Edgar Crescent. The four houses there were wrecked and two people were killed. They were Helen Barker, a nurse who was on her way to a first aid post, and Alfred Reid, who was believed [illegible]. Both of them lived in Oswald Road. Edgar Crescent no longer exists.
Dover Express, 24th July 1992.
Girls flee the haunted house.
There was a new twist this week to the story of Dover’s most haunted house – exclusively revealed in last week’s Dover Express. A vicar was called in to get rid of the ghost, said to be haunting the home of Linda and Tracey Uren, and a clairvoyant went along to find out why it was there.
The council house, in Edgar Road, is now set to be given to another family because the girls have refused to go back there. The ‘ghost’, which the girls say is an old woman, mysteriously disappeared at the weekend after Canon Leonard Tyzack had been round.
But three days later the teenage sisters fled with their babies after Linda claims it came back.
A spokesman for Dover District Council said: “We are discussing alternative accommodation with the girls. It is likely to be a flat because there are no houses available. They don’t want to go back to their house and have said they will wait. The house in Edgar Road will be re-let and we will tell any incoming tenants that the previous family believed it was haunted.”
Dover Express, 31st July 1992.
Things that go bump in the night
Last week, we reported that two teenage mothers sharing a house in Edgar Road, Dover, had appealed to the Express to help them get rehoused after the ghost of an old woman had appeared in their council-owned home. Worse, the ghost had kicked them and caused strange bruises to appear on their bodies overnight. On Saturday night, Express reporter Charlotte Morrissey and photographer Jane Potter joined clairvoyant Sally Taylor and the girls themselves to look over the house in the hope of learning something of the strange apparitions. Nothing happened. But on Monday the ghost was back…
Despite visits from a clergyman and a psychic, the ghost of an old woman is still terrorising two Dover teenagers. That’s the belief of Linda and Tracey Uren who say they will definitely move out of their Edgar Road home because they are too scared to stay. Last week, the Express reported how the sisters had claimed that their modest terraced home was haunted by the ghost of an old woman with black, ‘straggly’ hair. The apparition was, they said, responsible for strange noises – as if things were being thrown about in an upstairs bedroom – and, alarmingly, it had kicked one of them.
The girls had invited representatives of the Salem Baptist Church to visit the house and prayers were said but to no avail as the spook remained.
On Saturday Dover’s Canon Leonard Tyzack visited the house where he ‘celebrated the Eucharist’ in the hope that the ghost would leave the girls alone. Linda, 19, and Tracey, 18, both said they were happy to go back to the house after the churchman had visited – but three days later the girls told us the ghost was back.
Linda told the Express that as she sat alone in her living room on Monday evening her feet suddenly went cold and she felt someone playing her toes. When she looked down no-one was there and her feet went back to normal. The mysterious apparition was still in residence.
On the Saturday night, after Canon Tyzack’s visit but before the ghost made its presence felt again, I joined the girls at the house and took clairvoyant Sally Taylor with me to get her thoughts on what had happened there. Sally, who lives in Folkestone, accompanied me in a purely observational role in teh hope that her knowledge and sensitivity could help throw some light on the strange occurrences. After examining the house Sally was left with more of a feeling about the railway main line which passes close to the houses in Edgar Road. She said: “I think there was something here in the house but I can’t feel it here now. But I’ve got a very strong feeling about the railway line, though. I think it’s got something to do with that.
When we first got to the house, Sally and I chatted to the girls in their living room. They told us that ‘her’ room was the front bedroom of the house. As they watched television one night Linda and Tracey say they heard noises coming from the room above which sounded like objects being thrown around the room.
On another occasion Tracey says she was kicked by the ghost.
So Sally and I went upstairs to have a look at the former bedroom which is now used for storage. Sally said: “I don’t feel anything in that room.” We sat in the room for a few minutes with just the street lights shining in through the window as the light bulb had been taken out. The clairvoyant then walked into the other bedroom and called to us to follow her. As I walked into the room I noticed a very sudden chill in the air. The second bedroom was dramatically cooler than the first although the windows in both rooms were open and the cooler room was south facing.”It could be that the spirit left the house through this room. But then it may be just the way the draught is going through this room and out of the window in the first bedroom,” Sally commented.
Then her colleague David Mapley went upstairs alone to check the rooms for anything unusual. First he used dowsing rods which he held in each hand. The idea is that they move when there is a presence. Crystals were also used – they are held up on a cord and if they move it indicates there could be a spirit in the house. He said his tests showed there was something unusual about the window in the warm bedroom which overlooked a railway.
The most alarming part of the evening came next as we all sat together in the living room. Sally suddenly felt strangely hot and asked David to check her blood pressure with an electronic gauge. The reading showed that it had shot up and was dangerously high. Then a train thundered past on the railway just yards from the house. After the train had gone Sally felt slightly better and said “I definitely feel strongly about the railway. Perhaps someone committed suicide on the railway years ago, but it’s impossible to say really. People only usually become ghosts when they have died before their time, when they weren’t ready to die.” Sally left soon afterwards but I stayed a while longer just in case the mysterious old woman decided to appear. But come 12.30 p.m. we had still not seen her and left Linda and Tracey alone in th ehouse. The girls felt more confident but two days later the mysterious old woman made her presence felt again.
Pensioner Jean Anderson, who lived at 11 Edgar road for about 20 years, said she and her family also had some spooky experiences there. Mrs Anderson, who lived in the house from 1962 to 1980, said her son Harry felt something jump on his bed shortly after they had moved in. She said: “Harry said it was if a cat had jumped on the bed but when he switched on the light there was nothing there.” Harry, who was 14 at the time, was sleeping in the back bedroom.
A few years after that Mrs Anderson was sleeping in the living room when she felt her bed covering lift up as if someone was trying to get in beside her. Her brother, who moved into the house with his wife in the 1930s, had died in the living room a few months earlier. Mrs Anderson, who is 69, said: “I thought my brother’s ghost was getting into bed beside me but I wasn’t really frightened.”
Mrs Anderson said she never saw any ghosts while she lived in the house and she did not know who the mysterious woman in white could be. Her brother’s wife Muriel Ackhurst died in hospital at the age of 45 after suffering a brain haemorrhage. But Mrs Anderson said the ghost the Uren sisters described was an old woman and had long black straggly hair. This did not sound like her sister-in-law.
Mrs Anderson’s daughter Elizabeth slept in the “haunted bedroom” for many years but she never mentioned seeing any ghosts or feeling anything strange. Neither did Elizabeth’s sister Doreen or Mrs Anderson’s husband, who also lived in the house. Other members of the family who spent time in the haunted room had nothing unusual to report.
Number 11 is where the ghost has been seen and felt… but do other houses in the road have a connection?
The family were quite happy with the house although facilities were primitive. They put in for a transfer to a place with a bathroom when the council took over and moved to Weavers Way, Dover. Mrs Anderston, who used to work in Avo’s electronics factory in Wycliffe, now lives in a council flat in George Street.
Another former resident of Edgar Road claims the ghost which used to haunt her home could be the one the Uren sisters have seen. Beatrice Gillespie, who lived at Number 8 until May this year, says the ghost of her next-door-neighbour visited her home for two years until she moved out. She says her son Cyril, 36, used to see a woman matching the Uren sisters’ ghost appearance in his bedroom. Mrs Gillespie, who now lives in Friar’s Way, Dover, said: “I used to be good friends with the woman who lived at number nine. She was called Isabelle Matters. She died about two years ago and about a month after her death Cyril told me we had a ‘friend’ in the house. I thought he meant my husband, because I’ve seen his ghost several times, but he told me it was Isabelle.” Mrs Gillespie, 69, lived in the house from 1983 until this year. She said: “My son said he was in his bedroom one night when Isabelle’s ghost came through the wall adjoining her house and floated round the room. She was in her sixties, had dark, shoulder length hair and was wearing a white flowing nightie. I know the girls said that their ghost kicked them but that couldn’t be Isabelle. She wasn’t violent at all. She wouldn’t do that. Before she died Isabelle told me she would never leave Edgar Road. But if it is her I don’t know what she would be doing at Number 11. She didn’t know the people who lived there.”
Clairvoyant Sally Taylor using crystals in the rear bedroom . The room seemed strangely cooler than the others i nthe house despite the fact that the weather that day had been hot and sunny and the room had a southerly aspect.
Dover Express, 31st July 1992.
As someone who is extremely superstitious – you should see me dodge ladders or throw spilled salt over my shoulder – and believes in every type of spook, I am full of sympathy for Tracey and Linda Uren. These two young mothers want to get out of their council house which sounds as if it could well be the most haunted home in the country – and I don’t blame them. Life is hard enough for single parents without the added problems of being bruised by a ghost and things being thrown around in an empty bedroom.
I have no doubt some cynical souls will say the sisters just fancy living somewhere else and have found the perfect excuse for a move. That being so, how come a woman who lived at number 11 Edgar Road some years back always felt there was something odd about the place? She may not have actually seen or heard anything, but she was probably less psychic than Tracey and Linda.
I’ve never actually seen a ghost, but I’ve heard one. He used to pace the top floor of a house I lived in at Deal, but he didn’t do us any harm although before we moved in the painters doing the redecoration would never work there after dark. If any readers also have had ghosts – benign or otherwise – in their houses, I’d love to hear about them. Meanwhile, I suggest the council finds somewhere else for the Uren sisters to live.
Dover Express, 31st July 1992.
‘Boffin’ investigates girls’ haunted home.
Frightened sisters say cot bedding was thrown about in a bedroom as ‘ghost’ strikes again.
Scientist Bill Love has been called in to help the teenage mothers who claim their council house is haunted. Frightened sisters Linda and Tracey Uren, of Edgar Road, have moved back to the house because there wasn’t enough room for them at their parents’ two bedroomed bungalow. But on their return the girls were met with another manifestation. This time Linda discovered sheets and blankets left neatly tucked in on a cot upstairs had been mysteriously pulled off and thrown about .So Mr Love, experienced in investigating the paranormal, took his scientific apparatus to the house to see whether or not any unusual readings could be picked up. Mr Love , who lives in Folkestone, said: “I firmly believe there are things which creep through from other dimensions. And I think it has something to do with electricity.”
Linda and Tracey’s ghostly experiences were exclusively revealed in the Dover Express two weeks ago. The girls – each has a young baby – moved into the two bedroomed terraced home in March after sharing a single bedsit. But five weeks ago their 16-year-old sister Heidi says she was woken in the night by a banging sound and looked up to find the figure of an old woman standing near her bed. Since then Linda, 19, has seen the same figure float down the staircase and felt someone fondling her toes as she sat watching TV alone. Tracey, 18, claims she was kicked by the spook, and she and Heidi woke one morning to find bruises on their legs.
Mr Love said: “I certainly believe what the girls have told me. I think they are genuinely scared of somethin gin that house and I don’t believe they’ve got any reason for making it up.” The girls fled to their parents’ tiny two bedroomed bungalow after the earlier manifestations. Mr Love brought an oscilloscope, a field detector and a surge clock to the house with him to see whether anything strange would show up. He said: “Everyone has electricity in their bodies but the current is slightly different in some people .I have been working on a case in Somerset where a lot of strange things have been going on and the two men who live in the house give very strange readings on the oscilloscope.”
Mr Love, who is a physicist, has worked at many other houses where bizarre things have happened. He said: “I want to check what sort of current the girls have in them to see whether I get a similar reading to those in Somerset.” All three girls were tested, using one of Mr Love’s instruments but each had a normal reading of 50 hertz on the oscilloscope. Mr Love said: “Just because the oscilloscope didn’t show anything unusual, it doesn’t mean there is nothing strange in the house. Sometimes you can take normal readings on a house for months then all of a sudden you get bizarre readings.” Mr Love also checked the upstairs of the house with a field detector which shows up electromagnetic fields. But that was all as it should be.
A surge clock was also plugged into the mains to check for any unusual ‘surges’ of power through the house. But all evening a little green light on the clock told us it was normal. Then, just as Mr Love was getting ready to leave a red light flashed on the clock. He said “It could be that there is a factory or something nearby where the mains had just been switched off. But from what happened at the house tonight we still can’t prove or disprove there is a ghost. What we need is an independent witness to see something, so it can be proven.”
Mr Love plans to call in a colleague to stay with Linda and Tracey a few days in case something happens.
Scientist Bill Love investigator of the paranormal ‘happenings’ takes a critical look at one of the bedrooms at the frightened Uren sisters’ ‘haunted house’ in Edgar Road in the hope of discovering something which might help to explain what it is the two women probably witnessed.
Dover Express, 7th August 1992.
Medium banishes Edgar Road ghosts.
Spirits now at peace, anxious sisters are told.
Report by Charlotte Morrissey.
The ghosts at Dover’s most haunted house have left and are now at peace. That’s the claim of medium Daphne Posse who visited Linda and Tracey Uren’s council home in Edgar Road last week. She says she managed to make two ghosts leave the house. Daphne, who has made predictions all over the world, said: “There is definitely nothing in that house now. There was something there but it has gone.”
When Daphne arrived at the two-bedroomed terraced home she asked sisters Linda and Tracey what had happened there. Linda, 19, said she had seen the figure of an old woman on the stairs and Tracey, 18, said she had had a vision of a child in one of the bedrooms upstairs. Daphne, who correctly predicted the length of time the Gulf War would last, said: “I feel that what we’ve got here is two spirits. A grandmother and a granddaughter. There was opposition over a baby that was born that somebody wanted aborted. I think it was a very long time ago. I think the mother wanted an abortion but the grandmother wouldn’t let her so she had the baby. But I see the mother as a suicide case. I think she killed herself so the grandmother was left to look after the little girl.” She said she thought the little girl died from pneumonia and that the grandmother died with a ‘choking feeling’. She siad: “The grandmother is here because she feels protective of the little girl, but she is very strict with her.”
Next Daphne told Linda, Tracey and their sister Heidi she could see a picture of a horse and was being drawn to it so she asked them if they had any pictures like that in the house. They said they had several pictures of horses in the kitchen downstairs. In the kitchen, Daphne said she felt a strong presence in the room. Then she said: “I can see the little girl behind the fridge playing with a red ball. I can hear her saying she feels sick.”
So Daphne set about removing the ghost by saying the Lord’s Prayer and reading the 23rd Psalm out loud and telling them to leave. As she ‘cleared’ each room Daphne said she could see the grandmother and child and said they were reluctant to leave. As she read from the Bible in the kitchen she said the spirits were trying to stop her speaking and that the little girl was hiding under the table because she didn’t want to leave. Daphne said: “Open the back door now because I’m sending them up to the Buckland Hospital where they will be at rest.”
The door was opened and a gust of wind and rain came in but when closed again the room seemed strangely warmer than it had before. Daphne told the girls that the ghosts had left the house and that they should try to forget about what had happened. Then as we sat in the living room Daphne placed her hands on each of the girls heads to ‘heal’ and relax them. Tracey said: “I feel a lot better now.”
Medium Daphne Posse reads from the Bible and holds her rosary in one of the ‘haunted house’s’ bedrooms to get rid of the ghosts.
Dover Express, 21st August 1992.
‘Ghosts’ turn up again at sisters’ ‘haunted’ home.
Ghosts at Dover’s most haunted house are still causing havoc despite numerous attempts to make them leave. Last week, the Express reported how medium Daphne Posse claimed Linda and Tracey Uren’s council house in Edgar Road was now clear of spirits. During her visit, Daphne felt the presence of a grandmother and grand-daughter and she said she had sent them up to the Buckland Hospital where they would be at rest. But after a few days’ peace, the sisters say the ghosts are back and up to their old tricks again.
Tracey, 18, said: “When I turned the stairway light on the light in the living room went on instead. Then all the downstairs lights blew. She’s turned the cooker on and keeps playing with the light switches. We haven’t seen either of them again and when we’re sitting in the living room we can hear someone banging a baking tray in the kitchen.”
On top of this, Tracey woke the other morning to find mysterious bruises had appeared on her left leg in the shape of a face. After several attempts to get rid of the ghosts, the girls are beginning to admit defeat and thinking of letting their unwelcome house guests stay on. Tracey said: “I think I’ll just live here for now and see what happens over the next few days. I’m getting used to it and we might as well let them stay. It still scares me at night but I can go upstairs by myself sometimes without getting too worried now.”
Dover Express, 28th August 1992.
Ghostbust-up! Experts in dispute over town’s most haunted house…
An extraordinary row between two groups of ‘ghostbusters’ has broken out at Dover’s notorious haunted house. The spooky squabble is between scientist Bill Love and psychic Susan Lambert. The house, in Edgar Road, is occupied by sisters Linda and Tracey Uren. Both had claimed the house was haunted by a ghost that, among other manifestations, had kicked them and caused mysterious bruises to appear on their bodies.
Mrs Lambert claimed she had been possessed by one of the spirits and gripped by a “terrible fear” when visiting the house. But Mr Love and his associates, who favour a more scientific approach to the paranormal, were sceptical. Mr Love, an experienced investigator of alleged hauntings, told Mrs Lambert: “I have very grave doubts about the fact that any spirit could have got into you here. And assuming something could enter you I thinkn it would be a grave mistake to allow it to do so.” But Mrs Lambert, who lives in Chatham, insisted she had been “taken over” in some way. Her 17-year-old son Andrew said his mother suffered a mysterious collapse on entering the haunted upstairs bedroom a few weeks ago.
Mrs Lambert herself said the incident itself was a blank but she had suffered from the effects ever since. “I have felt fear, absolute fear, and I’m still living with it,” she said. “It took over my whole body, soul and mind. I haven’t been able to sleep at nights.” She believed the younger of the two spirits had taken her over. Another investigator, medium Daphne Posse, decided there were two spirits in the house – a grandmother and granddaughter.
Mrs Lambert said: “I think I have got a younger one inside me but I can’t be more specific than that.” In a bid to confront the fear and find out what the spirit wanted Mrs Lambert went back to the haunted room. Before climbing the stairs Mrs Lambert, her son, daughter and friend all dabbed holy water on their foreheads. The Express reporter decided to put his trust in a plain old notebook and pen as he followed them up.
Mrs Lambert entered the room and said she couldn’t feel anything. Meanwhile, the Uren sisters’ dog walked around happily sniffing the bare floorboards and wagging its tail. It was all a bit of a let down but Mrs Lambert explained the heated discussion with Bill Love and his friends earlier on had not made the atmosphere very conducive to spook hunting.
Mr Love believes most of the problems in the house have now gone after he and his friends made some “small technical adjustments.” He wouldn’t elaborate but believes electricity has a part to play in paranormal experiences. “I have not felt anything oppressive in this place at all although I know there are forces here,” said Mr love, who lives in Folkestone.
Tracey Uren says she will stay in the house now but Linda still wants to move out.
A few days later Mrs Lambert said things had “quietened down” in the house and she said she was no longer possessed. “I gave back what I took,” she said.
Dover Express, 11th September 1992.