Shuffling phantom haunts a shop.
Girl faints with fear.
It was all quiet in the village shop as 15-year-old Adrienne Bramley went about her work yesterday. Then she heard an eerie sound. Adrienne fainted with fear. The ghost with the soft shoe shuffle had struck again.
Last night, after the last customer had left the shop at Long Wittenham, Berkshire, the vicar, the Rev. HC Roberts conducted a service of exorcism. Adrienne, her mother and the shop manager, Mr Derek Bird, watched from behind a counter laden with Christmas fare. And Mr Bird said: “I feel our ghost has been laid to rest, and that this terrible strain for my staff and I has come to an end.”
The ghost made its presence known a week ago at the shop, a Co-operative Society branch. Mr Bird said: “The ghost shuffled about the shop like an old woman. It was driving me crazy. She smashed the clock, moved packets and tins on the shelves and hid customers’ order books. Twice she appeared in the evening. I saw a strange white shape with streaks of blue in it.”
Mr Bird and Adrienne’s mother, who also works at the shop, refused to go in alone. Mr Bird’s dog, Chips, would not go in without him. And after her scare yesterday, when she heard a shuffling noise in the shop, Adrienne went home and said: “I can’t stand it any longer. I’m not going back in the shop until the ghost is driven away.”
Daily Herald, 27th November 1962.
Ghost shuffles off.
The ghost with a soft-shoe shuffle which had been haunting a shop quit yesterday after the Rev. Hubert Roberts, vicar of Long Wittenham, Berks, conducted a service of exorcism at the village Co-op shop. Mr Derek Bird, shop manager, said: “Everything has been quite normal today. I believe our ghost has gone for good.”
Daily Herald, 28th November 1962.