Leamington family flee from ‘presence’.
A mother and daughter fled terrified from their Leamington terraced home at midnight after strange footsteps, bangs and crashes echoed round the house. The woman believes there is an “evil presence” there. This was the culmination of three years of steadily mounting fear which has led the woman’s 16-year-old son to leave the house and refuse to come back.
Today a Roman Catholic priest has sprinkled holy water in every room. The priest went through the same ritual three years ago when the woman claimed the trouble first started, and after that everything went quiet. Then three weeks ago the woman got the uneasy feeling that all was not well and shortly afterwards she felt the presence had returned, she said. She said she could feel it moving around the house and early one morning her 19-year-old daughter screamed as she saw a misty figure suddenly appear in a corner of the sitting room.
The woman, who is in her 50s, said she did not want to be named as she did not want her neighbours in the quiet back street to think she was a crank. “I know that is exactly what my own reaction would have been if I had heard the story three years ago, but you cannot go through something like this and not think there is something in this house.”
The family moved into th ehouse, which is more than a century old, six years ago and for three years life was normal. Then late one evening the woman and her daughter were saying their prayers beside the bed they share when they heard a click as if the bathroom window had opened. “Then suddenly it was as if something terrifying had gripped us. The sensation came in waves and it brought with it a smell of burning ashes like a crematoorium. In the days that followed there were knocks and bangs on the furniture and one evening there was a loud scratching sound as if someone was running their finger nails along the top of the dressing table.”
She asked Father Samuel Penney for help and he went through the house sprinkling holy water and saying a blessing. “That seemed to be the end of it. Then three weeks ago I felt as if something had gone wrong,” said the woman, “and the sensations started again. We found doors which had been locked were open. We heard footsteps and the knockings started again.”
That was enough for her son who left to stay with relatives and said he would not go back. Then one night as the mother and daughter were preparing to go to bed, the pet dog began growling and barking at what appeared to be a blank wall. “We could not stand it any longer and grabbed a few things and go out. We walked to my brother’s house and arrived still shaking, at about one in the morning.”
The woman in the front room which she now refuses to enter alone.
Coventry Evening Telegraph, 20th September 1972.