Minister in a hunt for ghost.
One of the Black Country’s leading ghost hunters, Eric Hatton, has been asked to carry out an investigation at a haunted house at Quarry Bank. Spiritualist Church Minister Mr Hatton of Broughton Road, Stourbridge is national president of the Spiritualist National Union. He said: “I have received a request from the woman to visit her home because of unusual activities. She has complained of pictures being removed from walls and items moving around rooms.”
Sandwell Evening Mail, 1st January 1994.
‘Ghost house’ dad pleads to move out.
Priests have failed to rid a council house of a ghost said to be terrifying a Quarry Bank family. The eerie events are continuing, the family claims. Mr Clive Raybould and his wife Rita are pleading to be moved to a new home. They are accusing housing chiefs of treating their request as a “joke.”
Mr Raybould, aged 41, of Wavell Road, says drawers and doors mysteriously open, belongings disappear and heavy items – including a television – have moved while rooms were unoccupied. He had also heard a man’s voice telling him to get out of the house and other muffled sounds which could not be explained.
Quarry Bank vicar, the Rev Tom Chapman and the Rev Francesca Dixon – a Lichfield diocese expert in the supernatural – were called in to say prayers at the house during the summer, it emerged today. But the visit failed to halt the ghostly goings-on, Mr Raybould claims. His nine-year-old son William and 16-year-old partially-blind daughter Lisa have both been disturbed by the hauntings.
“My wife and myself aren’t the sort of people to get upset about ghosts but we are worried about the effect on the children. We’ve had to suffer this for three years,” he said. Brierley Hill district housing manager John Hopkins stressed that the complaint is being taken seriously. But a move is unlikely to solve the problem because the family claimed their previous home was haunted – an allegation denied by Mr Raybould.
Mr Chapman confirmed that he had been called to the Rayboulds’ home in Wavell Road and a previous address of the family at Farm Road. An expert had been unable to find any evidence of supernatural happenings.
Wolverhampton Express and Star, 14th April 1994.
Woman in offer to settle family ghost.
A former daughter-in-law today offered to end a Dudley family’s torment by moving into their “haunted” house – because she believes she knows the ghost. Mrs Barbara Hughes is convinced the spirit of her late father-in-law Reuben Charles is responsible for eerie events at Wavell Road, Quarry Bank. She has volunteered to move back to the council house, where she nursed him for six years, to put his soul at rest. Her offer came after priests failed to rid the house of a ghost said to be tormenting the new occupiers Clive and Rita Raybould and their children.
News of the haunting solved an unexplained urge she had felt to move back to Wavell Road over the last 12 months, said Mrs Hughes, who now lives at Wells Road, Brierley Hill. “I keep dreaming about dad as if he is trying to find me. He won’t rest until I am back there. There is no way dad would hurt me because he adored me. I promised my mother-in-law I would look after him when she died. I loved that old man. If dad is playing up and moving furniture he must be distressed and I would move back there tomorrow to put him at rest.”
Mrs Hughes, who claims that she is slightly psychic, stayed at Wavell Road to look after Mr Charles for six years after she divorced his son. Mr Charles died aged 79 at a a nursing home where he was staying for a week while Mrs Hughes was on honeymoon with her new husband John three years ago.
Mrs Raybould said today: “What Mrs Hughes says makes sense because this house had always been in the same family.”
Wolverhampton Express and Star, 15th April 1994.