‘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.