Horsforth ‘poltergeist’ busy.
Police puzzled but medium stops raps.
In the old-world, rosebush flanked district of Woodside, Horsforth, 75-year-old Mrs. Annie Eanor lives in fear with her daughter, Mrs. Lily Wrighton, and her granddaughter, Gladys, aged 8. The little cottage in which she has lived for 15 years is “haunted by a ghost” which has impressed Leeds policemen, a Spiritualist, and independent observers by its knockings. Three weeks ago when Mrs. Eanor heard noises in the night, she thought her next-door neighbour was ill and knocking on the wall for help. The noise became insistent and unbearable, and the rappings so frequent that she felt she had to report the matter to the police.
According to this lady and her daughter, three Leeds City policemen spent an evening there and checked up on Mrs. Eanor’s house, the outer walls of both cottages, and Mrs Higgin’s house, which is next door. The police, according to Mrs. Eanor, heard the noises but could give no explanation.
Mrs. Lamb, of Wyther Park, Leeds, a Spiritualist medium, spent two evenings there, and according to her the manifestations were spirit rappings warning the granddaughter of illness. Mrs. Lamb learned last night that she had “exorcised the spirits” on her last visit. Certainly there have been no knockings for the past three nights.
After three weeks, during which Mrs. Eanor calculates she recorded hundreds of violent raps, this silence is troubling the whole village. A linen box, made by a local undertaker from coffin wood, seems to have been a centre of the disturbance.
Bradford Observer, 6th November 1945.
Police view of mystery knocking at Horsforth cottage.
“Evening Post” Reporter
Mysterious nightly knockings at a Horsforth cottage have been the subject of investigations by the Leeds police; and the Chief Constable, Mr F. Swaby, said to-day that, on the authority of the Chapeltown police, who have had the matter in hand, he is satisfied that the “mystery” is capable of a simple explanation – the knockings are the work of some mischievous person, or persons, wishing to frighten or annoy the tenant.
She is Mrs A Eanor (75), and she lives with a woman lodger and the latter’s eight-year-old daughter at Clayton Cottages, Woodside. Mrs Eanor told me to-day, “We first heard the knocking three weeks ago yesterday. The three of us had gone to bed. We thought at first it might be Mrs Higgins, next door, knocking. We used to knock to each other when the sirens went. From then on, nightly, the knockings continued, and always after we had gone to bed. They used to be faint at first, and then increase to a regular hammering. It began to worry us, and eventually we got in touch with the police. Last night a medium, who has been here before, told us that it was someone trying to get ‘through with a message’ for the little girl, Gladys. She said the knocking would now cease.”
There has been no knocking for the past three or four nights. Mrs Higgins, who lives alone, has also heard the knockings, but is at a loss to account for them. Clayton Cottages stand alone on a slope down from the main Woodside road.
Mrs Eanor’s Cottage is on the left.
Yorkshire Evening Post, 6th November 1945.