Girl says she saw ghost of woman in white in shop cellar.
Strange events during recent weeks have convinced Miss Berenice Seager, proprietor of a ladies’ hairdressing salon in London Road, Sittingbourne, that the premises are haunted. When she heard that two people who once lived above the shop had suffered serious mental breakdowns, Miss Seager decided that something would have to be done before she herself moved into the flat and she called in the assistance of the Rev. Wallace Edwards, Vicar of Stockbury. Mr Edwards visited the house and conducted the ceremony of exorcism. He said afterwards that the rooms had a “definite atmosphere” and he promised Miss Seager that if the strange things continued to happen he and a friend would spend a night in the house and attempt to “lay the ghost.”
Miss Seager’s two assistants, Maureen and Bridget, support her story that unaccountable things have occurred. Just before Christmas the staff returned from lunch to find that the ceiling had fallen on a chair which would normally have been occupied by Maureen. On another occasion, when the lights had fused, Maureen went to the cellar to fetch coal for the fire. At the bottom of the stairs she was confronted with the figure of a woman dressed in white. Panic-stricken she fled upstairs and told the others what she had seen. No one would go down to see if the apparition was still there and they all stayed away from the cellar until the fuses had been repaired.
Miss Seager recently bought a new hood-dryer from Germany and stood it near a new record player. Entering the flat one morning she found that the dryer had fallen on to the record player and both were badly damaged. The base of the dryer would have made it impossible for the apparatus to tip over accidentally.
Said the Rev. Wallace Edwards: “I know that a good many people are inclined to scorn this kind of thing, but I remember only too clearly something that happened when we first moved into the vicarage at Stocksbury 10 years ago. We had all gone to bed one night, when suddenly all the bells in what had been the servants’ quarters began to ring. I went downstairs and saw that all the doors were locked – the bells were no longer ringing, but as I entered the kitchen they were still swinging gently…”
Tonbridge Free Press, 30th January 1959.
Ghost Story.
Do you believe in ghosts? Miss Berenice Seager told me she did not, but Margaret and Bridget, the two assistants at her hairdressing salon in London Road, Sittingbourne, were not so sure. Some curious things had been happening there recently. They seemed to be dogged by bad luck. Miss Seager had been converting the attic room into a living room and the decorators had taken far longer than they expected; the plumbing kept going wrong; a window with apparently perfectly good sash cords fell and trapped someone’s fingers; strange knocks and thumps were heard; and then, when the lights had fused, Bridget, who had gone to fetch coal in the cellar, thought she saw a white-clad figure lurking behind her – so they did without coal until the fuses were mended!
Miss Seager decided to seek the advice of a vicar so she called on the Rev. W.E. Edwards (Vicar of Stockbury) who agreed to visit it. Mr Edwards felt there was a peculiar atmosphere in the room but saw nothing unusual himself; however, he exorcised the attic.
After that things continued more or less normally, so on Saturday Miss Seager decided to spend her first night alone in the house. She saw nothing and heard nothing, though perhaps any apparitions were scared away by the lights she kept burning all night – and the fact that she remained wide awake!
East Kent Gazette, 6th February 1959.
Nothing supernatural.
News of Miss Berenice Seager’s ghost, mentioned a few weeks ago in the Diary, came to the notice of the B.B.C., and last week a member of the B.B.C. staff, Mr Burford, interviewed Miss Seager adn the Rev. W.E. Edwards (Vicar of Stockbury), who had exorcised the “haunted” room. Recordings of the interviews were heard in the Town and Country programme on Thursday evening. Incidentally, no supernatural happenings have occurred since the exorcism, and life has returned to normal at Miss Seager’s hair-dressing salon in London Road, Sittingbourne.
East Kent Gazette, 20th February 1959.