All so mysterious for the Busbys.
Birmingham Post Chipping Norton Correspondent.
In the Cotswold village of Over Norton, Oxfordshire – population 450 – tongues have been wagging about the strange happenings in a council house occupied by Mr Reginald Busby, aged 28, a motor fitter, his wife, and their three children, aged seven, five and 11 months. Outside, the two-bedroom house on the end of a terrace built ten years ago could hardly look more unexciting, but inside, according to the Busbys, some extraordinary things have been happening in recent weeks. The focal point of the trouble seems to be the staircase, and the ceiling hatch above the landing that leads to the loft. The hatch has been sliding open several times a day. A bulb and shade from a hanging light near has been removed and left in the hall. The front door has been mysteriously locked and the key hidden.
Mr Busby said yesterday: “I’ve had about enough of it. The other day I found baby Tina looking up the stairs and laughing as if someone was there. These things have always happened in the daytime. At first we thought it was the boys, but when they went back to school the occurrences still continued.”
Mr Busby who has listed every incident in his pocket diary, said: “One evening my brother’s girl friend came in to ‘baby-sit’ for us while we went to the pictures. While she was in the sitting-room something locked the front door from the inside.”
Three days later, Mrs Busby said, she was in the house with the baby and heard a noise in the hall “light glass being knocked.” She found that the shade from the landing light had been put on the stairs and the bulb was on the telephone table beside the front door.
The same day, after going into the garden, she returned to find the front door locked. A neighbour helped her to get in through the kitchen window, but the key was missing from the lock. Her husband found it lying in the loft when he went up to close the hatch later in the day. The next day flowers were taken from a vase in the sitting-room and scattered up the stairs. Again Mrs Busby was alone in the house, she said, and the baby in her perambulator.
On several occasions the previous tenants, who lived there for seven years, reported odd experiences.
Birmingham Daily Post, 7th May 1965.
Reg – he does not believe in the supernatural – finds:
A Ghost In His Attic.
By Charles Bryce and Joe Roughton.
Mr and Mrs Reg Busby were delighted when they got a Council house. It was their first real home. It had lawns and a big tree at the front, and a stretch of garden at the back. They were at the end of the council terrace, No. 6 Penfield, Over Norton, a charming residential area looking over the Cotswold farm hills. It was idea. Then a ghost moved in.
Just after their baby Christina was born, strange things began to happen. At first they put it down to childish pranks by their sons Timothy (7) and Christopher (5). But not any more. Reg and Pat Busby are convinced there’s a supernatural influence at work. “Give me an explanation, and I’ll accept it gladly,” Mrs Busby told the Banbury Guardian. “We’ve never believed in ghosts.” She added, “We’ve exhausted all our own theories about it. There’s definitely something funny going on.”
For Mrs Busby, the most terrifying thing has been watching her baby stand at the foot of the stairs. Tina looks up, then laughs at something invisible. “It’s uncanny,” said Mrs Busby. “She appears to be laughing at someone halfway up the stairs which lead to the attic.”
The other day, Mrs Busby left her baby a moment to hang out her washing. She left the door ajar, with the key on the inside. When she tried to get in again, it was closed and locked. She’d been shut out of her own house. The key is big and chunky, not a yale lock, and needs a strong turn to work it. She fetched her next door neighbour, who said it must be the wind. “I thought she was having me on,” says the neighbour, “but when I gave her a lift up to the kitchen window, the key wasn’t even in the lock. It had vanished.” They searched the house, and found the attic trapdoor open. The key was on the attic floor. The boys couldn’t be blamed this time. They were at school. The only other door to the house was also locked from the inside and the only open window was the one Mrs Busby went in by. Whoever locked her out had disappeared into thin air.
Two days later Mrs Busby came out of the kitchen to find daffodils had been taken from a vase in the dining room and scattered up the hall stairs. Again, it couldn’t be her boys. She had been watching them from the window. They were climbing a tree on the other side of the road. Mrs Busby followed the trail of daffodils. They led to the attic trapdoor, and it was open.
Next night the Busbys went visiting. As they left the house, their baby-sitter went to lock the door, and found it already locked from the inside. The baby and she had been locked in with the ghost!
After this, Reg began to keep a diary. He records the comings and goings of the ghost and what it does. Here’s a sample from last week: –
Monday. Baby-sitter locked in. Attic trapdoor found open. Tuesday. Attic trapdoor found open. Wednesday. All clear. Thursday. Bulb unscrewed from landing light, found on telephone table. Shade from same light found halfway up stairs. Attic trapdoor open. Friday. Home at midday. Pat said “Nothing’s happened today.” Glanced up the stairs, and the attic trapdoor was open again.
Reg (28) works as a motor mechanic in Chipping Norton. He has made a complete search of the attic. Except for the trapdoor, there is no way in or out. A brick wall closes it off from the attic next door. The trap-door is ceiling height and cannot be reached without a chair or ladder. Yet every time something strange happens, it is found to have been opened. “It’s almost as if the ghost lives up there,” Reg said. “But I don’t know what to think. People scoff when we tell them. They say we have been imagining things. The funny part is that Pat and I don’t believe in ghosts. I’ve experimented with that front door, trying to get it to lock itself. I’ve jumped up and down and rattled the rafters, trying to get the attic trap-door to open by itself. Nothing happens. We thought it might be the wind, getting under the eaves, but the trapdoor opened twice on a day when there was no wind at all.”
Another man who once occupied the house, Mr Peter Harrison, said he was glad to get out of it. “There was something spooky about it. My dog would not go near the stairs without bristling.”
Over Norton villagers have their own ideas about the ghost and its apparent interest in Baby Tina. Two years ago a Mrs Kathie Clifton lived in the house with her baby. She was the daughter of a medium, the late Kathleen Oates. Both were psychic and interested in spiritualism. Mrs Clifton was parted from her baby when it was the same age as Tina. She had to leave it in a home. Shortly afterwards, Mrs Clifton was killed in a car crash. “We don’t know anything about that,” said Mrs Busby. “They’re saying all sorts of things. Even that we’re making it all up to get a new house. But we don’t want a new house. We like this one.” Reg says the same: “It’s a nice house and a nice neighbourhood. Suits us fine. I feel a bit silly because I’ve always scoffed at other people’s ghost stories. Now I just don’t know.” He is continuing his diary, adding to it every time something happens.
The Rev. R. Jeans, who went to the house on Friday evening, said: “I blessed the house and said a prayer.” The following day Mr Jeans and the Rev. C G Cheales, of Wyck Rissington, visited the house to allay the spirit. Mr Cheales some time ago visited the Langston Arms at Kingham to perform a ghost laying ceremony there. The Rev. Attwood-Evans, of Churchill, who attended the ceremony at the Langston Arms which is in his parish says: “More harm than good can be done if it’s a benign ghost.”
Banbury Guardian, 13th May 1965.
Haunted family will stay put.
Despite ghostly happenings in their “haunted” council house, an Over Norton family have no intention of moving from their home or, in fact, trying to get rid of their “ghost.” Mr and Mrs Reginald Busby and their three children, Christopher, Tim and Tina, who live at 6, Penfield, Over Norton, have been haunted now for almost a year. But they said this week that they had now got used to living in the midst of strange happenings and did not want to move into another house.
During the past few months the couple have seen an iron floating out of the living room into the attic, milk bottles “dancing” on a window sill, a dressing gown disappearing through a window, and have also found mysterious messages written on cigarette packets and scraps of paper.
Since the Banbury Guardian first reported the story of the poltergeist in May, Mr Busby has had pebbles thrown at him, his bed has been moved and a very heavy sewing machine has been carried from the living room into the kitchen. Mrs Busby said that the machine must have been carried as there were no marks to show that it has been dragged across the polished floor. She added that when her husband put it back in the living room he opened the top and found her purse, which had been missing for several days, and was not in the machine the previous night as she had been using it.
The latest incident happened about two weeks ago, and concerned their pet Mynah, Nicky. Mrs Busby said that she was hanging out her washing when Nicky flew out of the door and away. She added that she rushed back into the house and found the cage door open, and the screw that secured the door, on the floor.
“This need not have been the poltergeist, however,” added Mr Busby. “Mynah birds have been known to open cages themselves, but it seems hard to believe that it could have pushed its head through the bars and undone the screw from the outside by itself,” he said. Both were quite certain that the bird was not let out by the children however, who at one time used to be blamed for many of the strange happenings in the house.
Soon after the events started happening Mr and Mrs Busby made friends with a Mr and Mrs Pethrick from Stow-on-the-Wold, who also have a poltergeist. Mrs Busby said that when they went over to visit the Pethricks, their daughter Tina screamed every time she went into th ehouse. And when the Pethricks visited the Busby’s home Mr Busby found a note which read “I think she’s nice.” One suggestion is that the two poltergeists met in the Busby’s house and if one is male and the other is female… that’s one suggestion.
Perhaps one advantage of the Busby’s poltergeist is that it is not harmful, and it has only “performed” during the day.
Banbury Guardian, 19th August 1965.