House became haunted after woman’s suicide.
With reference to The Haunting (Lynn News front page, last Friday), I experienced a haunting 50 years ago when I lived in London. At the time I and my family lived in a flat and we had heard of a house to rent nearby. My mother and I arranged to meet at the house after work to have a look at it with a view to taking it.
The arrangement was that whoever arrived first would await the other. We each had a key. I duly arrived on my bicycle and opened the front door. Looking down the hall I could see a clear glass panelled door into the room beyond. There was a woman standing with her back to me looking through the window into the garden. The lady was fair haired and wearing a flower pattern frock. It wasn’t my mother, who was dark haired, taller and, I knew, would be wearing a two-piece suit.
I turned to wheel my bike into the hall just as my mother arrived, and I remarked that someone was already there, adding that they had probably come to view the house, as we had. My mother couldn’t understand how entry had been gained as she and I had the only keys. We decided we would announce our presence to the lady I’d seen, but when we entered the room (the kitchen ) there was nobody there and the door to the garden was locked and bolted. I subsequently had to replace this lock, the old one having no key. We took the house and on moving in was told by a neighbour that the previous tenant (a woman) had committed suicide by drinking Lysol (a caustic disinfectant).
We hadn’t been in residence long when the noises began. In the kitchen there was a cupboard under the stairs and there would be a noise in there reminiscent of somebody violently shovelling coal. Then would come the heavy footsteps along the hall, followed by a terrible crash against the front door.
We had a dog and nothing could persuade her to come into a room at the top of the stairs. If you took her in she would scratch frantically at the door to be let out. This was reportedly the room where the suicide had taken place.
Over the years the noises gradually got less until they faded away.
V.G. Neville-Statham, Granville Terrace, Sutton Bridge.
Lynn Advertiser, 3rd November 1995.