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.
Whatever became of George…?
They were saying a lot of things about George about three years ago. George was one of the town’s most celebrated ghosts, who was in the limelight on and off for about 27 years as the cause of the strange happenings at Brookhurst, the social headquarters of the old Leamington Golf Club, near Guy’s Cliffe Avenue.
In October 1960 workmen who were demolishing the 100-year-old house to make way for modern luxury flats were disturbed by a “poltergeist” who threw bricks through windows.
Then curate at the Parish Church, the Rev. John Dening announced that unless George was exorcised he would probably trouble the residents of the flats. Although he started plans to lay George Mr Dening moved from Leamington before he was able to carry out the experiment. So as far as anyone knows George is still there…
“Ghosts!” said Mrs Mabel England of 1 Brookhurst Court, when I told her the story. “I’ve never had any experience with them here.” Her upstairs neighbour, Mr E. Latham smiled: “I don’t think it will keep me awake tonight – I have lived here for some time and I’ve never seen a ghost yet.”
But the ex-owner of the haunted house, Leamington businessman Mr Granville Gulliman told me this week: “We used to lock up all the rooms and switch all the lights out and when you had a final look around there would be the lights switched back on or the doors had been unlocked. It was most annoying at times,” said Mr Gulliman. “There was only one time that I was scared. I had just switched off all the lights and I heard a sound like a rustling mackintosh coming towards me.”
Mr Gulliman’s relations who lived at Brookhurst for several years christened George, and treated him almost as one of the family when he left doors open and played with the snooker table. Mr Gulliman was convinced that demolition work would reveal a body – the cause of the hauntings – but the foundations were concreted in.
What has happened to George? – Peter Fairley.
Leamington Spa Courier, 29th November 1963.