Ghost Story.
During the past week, the inmates of a double-tenanted house in Ingham Street, South Shields, have been thrown into a state of alarm by the supposed nocturnal visitation of some perturbed spirit, that about the midnight hour made the house resound with ominous knockings.
In the lower flat of the house reside an old lady and her maid of all work, a young girl, and upstiars live a family who also have a maid servant. Night after night, for more than a week past, no sooner did the old lady downstairs retire to rest than she was alarmed and kept wide awake by knockings and other mysterious sounds in various parts of the house.
After endeavouring in vain to find more definite trace of the restless spirits, or any mundane cause of the horrible noises, the old lady communicated with Mr Superintendent Richardson, who sent an officer on Saturday night to examine the house. The officer however, seems to have been overawed by the thought that the house was haunted, and after a brief stay returned to his superintendent and declared that ‘there was something very queer in that house, for when he left the house shook again.’
Mr Richardson himself visited this strange region of the spirits, and his researches fastened the ghostship on the two servant girls, who in a foolish freak raised the ghostly rumour and alarm by knocking at the dead hours of the night on the room door, and raised the other noises that terrified the old woman, who thanked Mr Richardson for having charmed the unruly spirits away, and retired reassured to her couch. – Newcastle Chronicle.
Renfrewshire Independent, 5th March 1870.