Driven from their home by “ghosts.”
From our own correspondent. Hebden Bridge, Thursday.
Councillors and officals at Sowerby Bridge are facing one of their strangest jobs – what to do about a haunted cottage that belongs to the Council. The tenants, Mr and Mrs Bodgan tarandziej, have been driven out of the house – the first real home of their own – by “terrible rushing noises; jangling pots in the kitchen early in the morning; bangs in the back bedroom and doors opening after they have been fastened.”
Afraid to sleep in the cottage – 59, Town Gate, Sowerby Town – they part each night and sleep in separate houses. Mr Tarandziej travels by bus five miles to lodgings in Halifax while his wife and their 18-month old baby sleep at her mother’s house nearby.
A Housing Department official told me: “The matter has actually been discussed in committee and is still under investigation.”
Bradford Observer, 18th February 1955.
Sowerby “ghost” is laid – at vigil in old cottage.
The Sowerby poltergeist does not exist, Dr J W Weston said yesterday after he had kept vigil from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. in the old cottage at No. 59, Towngate, the home of Mr and Mrs Bodga Tarandzief and their baby daughter. Dr Weston, a Halifax pathologist, explained away the sounds that forced the family to sleep elsewhere as being due to “warped and loose bedroom floorboards, a rattling window pane, draughts and winds.” Mr Jack Quain, the Sowerby Bridge water diviner, who shared the vigil on Wednesday night, claimed that the ghost was “snuffled” on Saturday, when his whalebone divining-rod shattered during an experiment.
Bradford Observer, 25th February 1955.