Police watch on mystery house.
Noises, telephone calls – now a fire.
A 35-year old Birmingham woman, the mother of four-year-old twins, yesterday asked for police protection for herself and her family, because of mysterious happenings at her home, 65, Chantry Road, Moseley. Last night police officers promised to “keep a watch on the house” after they had investigated a fire which broke out and damaged furniture and bedclothes in her bedroom. The fire was the climax of a series of nerve-racking incidents that have occurred through the month.
Police investigating the fire found a burnt match stick in the charred remains of the mattress. But the other, Mrs Mark Owen, told the Birmingham Gazette: “Nobody in the house smokes – and it wasn’t the children, because we have bolts on all the doors, and they are well out of the reach of the twins.”
Mr Owen, a 35-year-old furniture salesman, said: “We moved into the house two and a half years ago, but we have only been troubled by these incidents in the past month. The side door of the house has been found unbolted several times. Odd telephone calls have been made to us by strangers. When we have answered there has either been no reply or a man has asked ‘Is anyone there?’ We have even heard noises coming from empty rooms in the house, but when we have searched them there has been nothing there.”
Mrs Owen, who is frightened of the effect the incidents will have on her twins Robert and Gillian, said: “They have been frightened out of their lives by a loud bang on the kitchen window. Yet when we have hurried outside there has been nobody within sight. It is all very odd and wearing on the nerves.”
Both Mr and Mrs Owen scoff at the idea of ghosts, or the house being haunted. “I was born here” she said. “This house belonged to my parents before we moved in, and everything was fine until about a month ago.”
Birmingham Daily Gazette, 11th June 1952.