Mother leaves ‘haunted’ house after a month.
Family flees poltergeist.
By Emma Frampton.
A Shepton Mallet mother has been forced to leave the home where she lived for only a few weeks, because of suspected poltergeists. Mrs Lavinia Scurlock and her three young daughters moved into the council house at 19 Meadow Rise, on June 1. But four weeks later, in the middle of the night, she took the children and fled from the house. “I thought it was a lovely house and so did the girls,” she said. “I couldn’t understand why the neighbours were sort of sneering at us, when we moved in, and saying that they would give us nine months before we moved out. It all started after a week or so when I was in bed and a box flew out of the open wardrobe.”
The next day, the toaster kept falling off the worktop, even though it was pushed back against the wall, doors started swinging open and shut and dishes fleww out of the rack, one by one. Since then Lavinia has said that the experiences have become worse, including scissors being thrown at her and a china cup at one daughter, and another child being moved around in the bed. “When I went back to check her she was facing the other end of the bed, with the pillows and the covers beautifully tucked in around her. She didn’t have a clue how it happened,” she said.
Another evening Lavinia heard a loud thump from one of the bedrooms, and rushed upstairs to find one of the other daughters on the floor, crying and saying that her pillow had pushed her out of bed. The last straw for Lavinia came after she had been playing ball with the girls in the living room. “It was about midnight, and I could hear this thumping from downstairs,” she said. “It wsa just like the sound of the ball, thumping out a pattern. Door handles started rattling as well, and that was it, we left.”
No one at Mendip District council was available to comment.
Mrs Lavinia Scurlock, of Shepton Mallet, with her children Paige, aged one, Samantha, aged two, and Charmaine, aged five, outside their “haunted” house.
Wells Journal, 11th July 1996.