Hallowe’en ghost turns family out.
Finally the ghost of Cumberland Avenue has driven a family out of its home. For last night – Hallowe’en – was the worst in its three-week campaign of terror. And today the Barons – father, mother, and nine-year-old Janet – of Kirkholt, Rochdale, filled in forms for an exchange of council houses. Each night, noises begin at 8 p.m. – as if someone were hammering on metal. The ghost, the Barons call it a poltergeist, re-echoes every knock in the house… even one on the front door.
The vicar, the Rev. W.H. Vanstone, has investigated and so have engineers.
Manchester Evening News, 1st November 1958.
The Baron family of Kirkholt were disturbed night after night in 1958 for several weeks when loud crashes and banging noises echoed through their house. At first they looked at each other and blamed the neighbours; then they noticed that the noises only began after their nine-year-old daughter, Janet, had gone to bed – until one night the little girl went to bed an hour later than her usual time and the noises started while she was downstairs.
The Barons sent for the police; the police informed the Waterworks Department and their inspector, carrying out a routine check on the plumbing, heard the noises himself. He left the house in something of a hurry, saying as he went, ‘Your water system is all right.’
The next development took place when a caller at the house knocked on the front door and everyone heard a knock in reply from inside th ehouse. This was repeated a number of times; each time the unexplained knocks seemed to come from the floor in the vicinity of Janet’s bedroom door. They experimented time and time again and each time anyone tapped anywhere in the house, no matter how lightly, an answering knock came from the child’s bedroom door. It ‘performed’ for the reporter of a local newspaper, then for the family doctor, Dr Donald Glen; and for the local vicar, the Reverend W. H. Vanstone, who decided that the family had a poltergeist.
An electronics engineer was consulted and he thought the knocking might be either the result of some accidental arrangement of the electrical supply, a freak of resonance within the walls, or something to do with the water supply. A psychiatrist thought it might be something to do with the little girl – although he thought this unlikely due to her age – or perhaps the electricity, the walls or the gas supply. And still the knocks continued to sound, before they grew weaker and then ceased.
Ghosts of North-West England, by Peter Underwood (1978).