Workmen fear haunted house.
Seven workmen converting four 17th century farm cottages at Fakenham Magna are refusing to work there alone – they say it is haunted. Since they started work on the property three weeks ago they have been scared by mysterious happenings. Every day they hear footsteps on floorboards which are no longer there. Twice they have been hit by flying plaster for no apparent reason. Regularly they hear creaking and banging around the house.
“It’s a ghostly atmosphere and we don’t like it,” said Mr. J.R. Lomax, the foreman. “The men won’t work here alone – and neither will I. We hear footsteps overhead when we are eating lunch and everything is quiet. But the floorboards have all been taken away,” he said. Mr Lomax said mysterious creaking and banging around the house had been heard by the men at all hours of the day. One of the men had his shoulder grazed by a piece of plaster when he was walking alone through the house early one morning this week.
“I was alone when a chunk of plaster hit me. There was no ceiling above me,” said Mr E.V. Goad. In fact all the ceilings and plaster walls have been ripped out in the course of modernisation. It was the second time that something like this had happened.
Older residents in the village say they have never heard of any haunting there before. The cottages are being converted into a week-end home for Mr Aubrey Nye, a London businessman, who has been told about the happenings. “He has not altered his plans to move in,” said Mr Lomax.
Bury Free Press, 28th July 1972.
‘Black magic’ cats scare workers.
Workmen restoring a 17th century house at Fakenham Magna have threatened to leave the job unless mummified remains of cats found in the building are put back again. The men believe that queer happenings at the house have followed the disturbance of the cats. Now, Hadleigh ghosthunter Mr Malcolm Ramplin has been called in to solve the mystery of what is frightening the builders.
While converting a group of cottages into a week-end retreat for a London businessman, they have heard ghostly footsteps and tapping after uncovering the mummified remains of three cats and two kittens. The first two mummified cats were found between the upper storey ceiling and the roof. Another was discovered inside a wall and the two kittens in another interwall space. Site manager Mr John Lomax, of Ingham, took them away to his home – and odd things began to happen.
The men eating their lunch in a downstairs room heard footsteps coming slowly up the pathway to the house but there was no-one there. Later they complained of a sinister and frightening atmosphere. One young workman carried a pick-axe for protection and shortly after quit his job. Another, a 35-year-old Scotsman, has told the psychic investigator that he really felt afraid.
Malcolm Ramplin is planning to spend several nights at the house with other members of the Psychic Phenomena Research Group, formed two years ago by students of Ipswich Civic College.
Mr Lomax removed the cats from his home after one night during which his wife complained of strange noises and a ghostly tapping on the kitchen door.
Experts are studying the remains this week. “It may be that they have not been there very long and the dry atmsophere of the place caused their mummification,” said Mr Ramplin. “I consider it unlikely that so many cats could have become accidentally bricked up. I suspect some kind of witchcraft and there may eventually have to be an exorcism.”
The team has until January to complete its investigation and the only clues are the cats and star shaped carvings cut at random into timbers which may have been made before the house was built.
Bury Free Press, 18th August 1972.