Charlie the ghost takes a fancy to fish.
It isn’t safe to leave things lying around in a basement flat in Adamson-road, Hampstead, London. Residents say it is haunted – by a hunchback ghost they call “Little Charlie.” And Little Charlie – he’s supposed to b a dwarf over 100 years old – is light-fingered. Forks, pokers, curling irons, scissors and knives – and a plate of fried fish – are among the objects that have mysteriously vanished. Mrs Gerda Ely, a tenant in the house, said: “Strange things do go on.”
Said another: “I never believed in ghosts though strange marks appeared on the door, books flew through the air, and non of mmy pets would live in the basement. Then one night I returned late to find my little boy hysterical with terror. He had opened a cupboard door and seen the figure of a crippled man standing before him. Once I saw Little Charlie myself. He was so small and ugly I thought he was a monkey. In fact, I was about to ring the Zoo to say an animal had escaped when the apparition vanished.”
The house was requisitioned during the war by the Hempstead Borough Council. Now the basement tenant has been given other accommodation.
“It’s hard to make any comment,” a council officer told the Daily Mirror. “It’s an awkward matter when it’s a question of a ghost. The basement is now being ‘renovated’ and a new council tenant will move in.”
Renovated, yes. But the council just won’t guarantee that Little Charlie has been well and truly laid.
Daily Mirror, 15th July 1948.