Mysterious knocking sounds keep family awake.
Vicar prays in house of strange noises.
A vicar has said prayers in the house of a Scotswood family of five who are being troubled by mysterious knockings in the night. Housewife Mrs Agnes Boyle said today that strange noises in her home in Delaval Gardens have been giving her and her family sleepless nights for a week.
The Rev. J. S. Monks, vicar of St. Margaret’s, Scotswood, who visited the house and tried to find a rational explanation said “I am unable to say that there is not something there.” Mr Monks added, “One can become frightened and imagine there is more to it than there really is. These people certainly have my sympathy.” The vicar said he had said prayers in the house and would be calling again in a few days.
Mrs Boyle said that if her husband Mr Joseph Boyle spoke to the “spirit” or knocked back, there would be a corresponding answer in knocks. The mysterious noises were heard again last night, she said.
The Boyle family is considering calling in a spiritualist to find out what the noises mean. Next door neighbour Mrs Lottie McGarry has heard the knocking noises, too. “It’s like a hammering,” she said. “Sometimes there is a sound like running water up or down the drain pipe.” Mrs McGarry believes that something is trying to make contact with the Boyles’s 15-year-old daughter Joan. “One night she stayed in my house and we had the knocking in here,” said Mrs McGarry.
Mrs Ivy Harrison, who lives opposite said that when Joan stayed the night at her house they heard the mysterious noises there as well. “It is as if someone was trying to get a message through,” she said. Mrs Harrison said that an unexplained bright light also appears on the wall of the Boyles home. “When you approach it, it moves away.”
Joan Boyle, 15, with her mother, Mrs Agnes Boyle (centre) and their neighbour, Mrs Lottie McGarry.
Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 16th July 1964.