Now a snooker-playing spirit is getting tough.
‘Poltergeist’ pranks.
“George,” the snooker-playing Leamington poltergeist with a liking for club life, is reacting violently now that his favourite haunt is being knocked down. For 30 years his footsteps have been heard in the front hall of “Brookhurst,” the 23-roomed club house of Leamington Golf Club. Now the building is being demolished to make way for flats.
Yesterday bricks shattered three windows in the bar room, showering in the bar room, showering glass over demolition workers, who hurried outside – and found the grounds empty. On Friday, Mr Donald Wilkes, managing director of the demolition firm, had a large ball of paper thrown at him. “I searched everywhere and couldn’t find anyone,” he said yesterday. “At first we took it to be a joke, but now we are really wondering whether someone or something is trying to scare us away.”
Mrs Edna Cox, a former barmaid at the club, three times heard a game of snooker in progress in the room above her head. “When I went up there was never anyone there,” she said yesterday.
Because of “George’s” antics, the Rev. John Dening, curate at Leamington Parish Church, who is interested in psychic research, is to make on-the-spot investigation. He believes that the poltergeist may transfer to the new flats unless exorcised.
The former owner of the house, Mr Granville Guilliman, a local business man, said: “Several times I heard the club’s front door open and then there were footsteps,” he said. “We never found anyone. We got so used to it that we called it George. Several times the local police called me out in the middle of the night to lock the premises. Yet I was certain I had left them locked.”
Mr Donald Wilkes, managing director of the demolition firm, points out one of the smashed windows. With him is Mr Dennis Stokes, of Bordesley Green, Birmingham, another of the men who were showered in broken glass.
Birmingham Weekly Mercury, 16th October 1960.