A house in fear of the ‘Thing’.
By a Staff Reporter.
Housewife Mrs Dorothy Moulton ran out of her Middleton council house in fear today as “The Thing” struck again. “The Thing” has been haunting her home for months, and breaking point was almost reached today for frightened Mrs Moulton, of Lorton Close, Langley, Middleton, as it ransacked the back bedroom.
Mrs Moulton, aged 45, is now hoping desperately that two Manchester mediums will be able to drive the puzzle poltergeist out when they visit the house on Sunday. A priest has already been to the house. So have the police. And next-door neighbour Mrs Mavis Boyle has given Mrs Moulton a crucifix to hang up in the house. But the ghost has not yet been laid, and the mystery manifestations go on.
Footsteps have been heard on the landing and cushions have been discovered flung about the rooms downstairs. Then today Mrs Moulton heard a thud upstairs. Furniture was found disarranged, dressing table drawers and their contents were on the bed and clothing from an airing cupboard was scattered all over the floor. Still shaken from the experience Mrs Moulton said later: “We treated it as a joke at first but now it has got beyond a joke and my nerves are continually on edge and we are getting very little sleep.”
Manchester Evening News, 21st November 1968.
Peace at last in haunted home.
By our correspondent.
Housewife Dorothy Moulton, who claims her council house home is haunted by a ghost, got her first full night’s sleep for nearly a week last night. She said today that for once the bed clothes were not pulled off in the middle of the night, furniture was not overturned and clothes were not mysteriously scattered at her home in Lorton Close, Langley, Middleton.
“The only sign of the ghost was a slight dig in the back which it gave my husband during the night,” said Mrs Moulton, aged 45. She added: “I hope now it has decided to leave us alone. It has certainly caused enough trouble while it has been here.”
Yesterday Mrs Moulton called in Mrs Lily Sherrington, aged 37, a minister of the National Union of Spiritualists. She said she felt the presence of a woman, aged 30 to 35, with a high forehead and high cheekbones and wavy hair dyed ginger. But she told Mrs Moulton, her husband Eric, and three of their children not to be afraid. “It is just a troubled spirit trying to draw attention to itself,” she said.
Manchester Evening News, 25th November 1968.
Ghost appears to victims.
By a staff reporter.
Red-eyed from lack of sleep, housewife Dorothy Moulton claimed today that the poltergeist which has terrorised her for the past month has now begun to SHOW himself. “He has appeared both as a black shadow and as a white patch of mist,” she claimed. “He is driving me out of my mind…”
The haunting, she claimed, was even worse since a priest called in to bless her council house home in Lorton Close, Langley, Middleton. “My husband and I took turns going to sleep last night because we were so terrified. At one stage my husband saw a black shadow flit across my face. It upset him so much that he got up and walked up and down the room smoking.”
The apparition has been seen by the couple’s lodger, 20-year-old shorthand typist Miss Carolyn Fleetham. Said she: “When I was coming out of the bathroom last night I saw a white misty shape outside Mr and Mrs Moulton’s bedroom. It looked like a disconnected head. I never believed in ghosts before but now I’m not so sure.”
Later today Mrs Moulton said she had seen the ghost again – flitting about at the top of the stairs. “I will have to ask the council for a new house,” she said. “This is more than I can stand.”
Manchester Evening News, 2nd December 1968.