House of Mystery.
Strange steps, whistling, knocks.
By a “Daily Post” reporter.
Yesterday morning thirty-four-year-old Mrs Helen Painter, of 3 Cybi Street, Holyhead, lost her ninth lodger since September. And Mrs Painter confirms what the disappearing lodgers – all men – complain of… there’s something mysterious going on at No. 3.
Doors slam in the night… strange footsteps are heard, door knobs turn… bed clothes are thrown on the floor and furniture in a room on the second floor is heard moving.
Palefaced and frightened, Mrs Painter said yesterday: “I have only been in the house six months and none of my lodgers stay very long. Late at night whistling can be heard in the house together with mysterious footsteps and knocking on the walls. But when I go to investigate there is never anyone there.”
Her sister, Miss Jean Wright, aged 22, who has been staying with her for the past fortnight, said, “One night I put the light out in the bedroom and it came on a few hours later. Another night I heard singing which sounded to me like a woman singing a hymn.”
Lodgers complained that a chair on which they sat on had risen several inches from the floor. Slippers had moved and one lodger said that before the footsteps were heard he invariably felt a cold draught around him. Six local spiritualists visited the house at Mrs Painter’s request and held a seance. Afterwards one of the spiritualists said: “Although I personally got nothing we definitely think that something is troubling the house and upsetting the home.”
Six-year-old Robert Painter was unperturbed by it all and he said: “I am not afraid although I hear footsteps but there was one night when my father came to see me. He did not say anything to me but left almost immediately.” His father, at the time, as he is now, was away at sea in a tanker.
Now, Mrs Painter, her two children, and her sister will not sleep upstairs but on the ground floor.
Liverpool Daily Post, 8th February 1957