Family quits ‘haunted’ house.
Shirley and Stephen Du-Val with baby Kevin in their bedroom at the flat they claim is haunted.
A frightened young mother has quit her council flat, driven out, she claims, by the return of a ghost. Now 19-year-old Shirley Du-Val has pleaded with Reading Borough Council to rehouse her. And she has vowed never to return to the upstairs flat at 11 Zinzan Street, Reading, for fear the spirit might possess her 12-week-old baby, Kevin.
The house last hit the headlines in 1979 when a couple in the basement flat were re-housed after complaining it was haunted by the ghost of a drowned acquaintance. Now Mrs Du-Val is claiming the spirit has returned to terrify her. She claims a ghostly voice keeps whispering her name close in her ear when she is alone in th ehouse.
She and her husband, Stephen, have left the flat and are staying with Shirley’s mother. Stephen, who is working as a warehouseman, has not heard the voice, but says doors in the flat open and close of their own accord, and one picture has fallen off the wall so many times he has given up putting it back.
An ornament of a swinging man fell down wherever it was put until the couple gave it away. It now stands firm in a friend’s house, says Stephen.
Yesterday Mrs DuVal went with her mother to ask the borough council to rehouse her. A council spokesman said this was the first time the council had heard of any problem, and an urgent meeting was arranged to look at the premises. The spokesman pointed out the flat was not the one that was supposedly haunted before, and said it was possible that the Du-Vals had not been told of it. The previous tenants of the basement, Mrs Christine Kelliher and her husband Noel were so troubled by odd happenings in their flat they called in five witnesses, who all told of scrapings and bumpings in the night, a chill wind and smell of bad eggs. They said trouble began after the night Mr Kelliher went to identify the corpse of Joseph Nee, who was found in the river Kennet.
Present tenant of the flat, Carol Featherstone, 20, said she had lived there over a year and nothing frightening or odd had happened. “The council told me about why the other couple had moved out before I moved in, but I didn’t take any notice. I don’t believe much in that sort of thing,” she said.
But Mr and Mrs Du-Val say they had never heard about the haunting fears. “The council must have known about this but they never said anything to us. I’d not have taken it if I’d known,” said Stephen. The couple say they had been very pleased with the two-bedroomed flat until Shirley started getting frightened. “We thought it was nice and big. It was very dirty and needed doing up when we first came, but we liked it,” said Stephen. Now he is upset because if he has to move, he reckons £200 he has spent on decorating, plus his work, will be wasted.
But Shirley is determined she and baby Kevin can’t live there any longer. “I wouldn’t stay here even if they exorcised it,” she said. A priest blessed the house and hung a crucifix and rosary in the basement flat in 1979. Shirley’s mother, Mrs Brenda Barnes, of Callington Road, Reading said: “I’m very worried about her. Shirley’s not at all a nervous sort of girl usually. But this is really terrifying her. She looks pale and ill. Now she’s got a baby, she’s taken it into her head this thing might get into him and take him over.”
Reading Evening Post, 9th September 1980.