Mystery of haunted council house.
Mr and Mrs Jimmy Dyson lived at 21 Solent Way, Milford, with their two children, their Siamese cat and their puppy, until last week. It was the eerie seventh resident of the thirty year old Council house that made them move.
This extraordinary story of a haunted house began almost thirty years ago when Mrs Dyson’s mother, Mrs Mary Troulli, and her husband Chris lived in the house. “It was new when we moved in. It’s a semi-detached house and the couple next door and we were very friendly. She used to read the cards, and my children were very friendly with her husband. They used to go and sit and talk to him for hours,” Mrs Troulli told the “A and T.”
“During the time we were there he died, but I don’t think that has any connection with the problems. When he died his wife gave me his wardrobe. Sometimes I would go to it and it would be perfectly all right. But then the next day there would be a terrible smell coming from it. Not like any smell I’ve ever known before. It would make my eyes water and make me sick. I just couldn’t go near it. Then the next day it would be all right again. It got to a point when I couldn’t stand it any longer, so eventually I burned it. It was around this time that my oldest son said he could see a tall man in the bedroom. We thought he was disturbed and took him to the doctor.”
All that was many years ago, and soon after these incidents the family moved into Chris’s, the shop and barbers they now run in Keyhaven Road. Mrs Troulli was glad enough to get away from the house, and the subject wasn’t mentioned again. Mrs Dyson – Janice – was a tiny baby when the family moved and no-one (as far as Mrs Troulli knows) mentioned the incidents to her. She grew up and married Jimmy Dyson and they lived in a flat in Pennington. When they had two children they wanted somewhere bigger, with a garden. So they put themselves on the transfer list, and settled on a transfer with the people who had gone to live at 21, Solent Way – the house where her family had lived when it was first built.
Two years ago they moved, and the first inkling of anything untoward came when the children – then 2 and 4 – started talking about a “humf” in their room. As they grew older and could express themselves more clearly they described an old man. They didn’t seem at all frightened by this. But Mrs Dyson grew more and more uneasy. She was aware of something upstairs in the house, especially on the landing. She felt threatened. When she was in bed she felt a malevolent presence in the room, and although she never saw anything she became more frightened to be alone in the house.
Once, just before they moved last week, she was on a ladder and she felt something trying to harm her. She heard her husband calling to her when he was not in the house, and she heard a dog crying and barking when there was none. By the end of her time at 21, Solent Way, Janice Dyson just would not stay in the house. She spent all day at her mother’s and only went home when the children were there.
Jimmy Dyson told the “A and T”, “I never saw anything, and nor did Janice,” but according to Mrs Troulli even Mr Dyson was getting uneasy in the house.
Now they have moved to a new house in Andrew Lane, Ashley, in a transfer with Mr and Mrs Ralph Hunt. A week after moving in Mr Hunt told the “A and T”, “It doesn’t bother me at all.” But already his son has been aware of something. “I heard a dog barking and growling when there wasn’t one here, and another time I heard a dog crying to get out. When I was up the ladder the other day I felt a sort of nipping at my ankles. But I’m not bothered by it. If the place is haunted I should think it’s by a dog.” And Mr Hunt joked, “Any ghost that wakes me up in the middle of the night, I’ll go right back and haunt the bugger.”
New Milton Advertiser, 17th March 1979.