A Durham Scare.
Mysterious rappings in colliery house
Trying to catch the ghost.
The residents of Old Moore’s Terrace in the colliery district of Stanley (near Crook) are agog with excitement and alarm over mysterious manifestations which are said to have taken place in one of the houses, the occupiers of which are so alarmed that they have left the district until the mystery has been solved. They are Mr and Mrs Hutchinson, and another married couple. [Mr and Mrs H Wilkinson].
They had gone to bed, and were awakened by a curious rapping. The noise grew louder and louder, and was not always in one place, but travelling semi-circularly. The rapping, it is stated, developed to almost sledgehammer blows, and the two men proceeded to investigate. They visited every portion of the house, but could discover no clue to the noises.
Miners from the village were called in, but still the knocking went on. Policemen and civilians have formed a cordon round the houses before, during, and after the noises and no one was seen to approach or depart from the houses during the knocking.
Last week two stalwart men climbed into the garret whilst the knocking was in progress and searched the interior from end to end by the light of candles. All the time the knocking went on down below. The men, puzzled, sounded “the jowl of the pitman,” and received responsive signals. They shouted, but there was no reply but the knock, knock, knock.
Spiritualists have been engaged upon the mystery and have held seances within the various rooms. The leader of the group in an interview said that directly they entered the dwelling there was a feeling of utter depression which they had difficulty in fighting. Her daughter went under “control” after they had sung and prayed, and she was soon in touch with what were described as “bad spirits,” from whom she said an abundance of information of the past was received. They were directed to several places and told many names. The young woman told of her experiences when she went under “control.” She saw “a big man,” who beckoned her to proceed to a place some distance away, where she would find a box. Almost instantly, by a remarkable supernatural movement, she felt herself swept upstairs, and on recovering her normal state of mind she found herself standing at the foot of a bed, at the spot where the knocking was heard loudest.
There was a knocking of a similar mysterious character in or near the same dwelling a good many years ago, which many of the older residents will remember.
Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette
Saturday 23rd September 1922
Strange House of Knocks.
Mystery in a Durham Village.
People in the village of Stanley, near Crook, are more distressed by a strange knocking than ever was the porter of Macbeth’s Castle. The mysterious knocking began in a cottage inhabited by two young married couples, Mr and Mrs H Hutchinson, and Mr and Mrs H Wilkinson. The cottage stands in a row of similar dwellings named Old Moore’s cottages. The story of the knocking began some weeks ago.
Mr and Mrs Hutchinson, and Mr and Mrs Wilkinson soon after going to bed were awakened by the sound of knocking. This was no ordinary knocking. It was not always in one place, but travelled over the house, as it were in an arc. It grew louder and louder, and finally seemed to beat the house with sledge-hammer blows.
The husbands left their beds to investigate. They visited every quarter of the house, but could find no clue to the knocking. They told the story in the village, and when their vehemence had subdued all derision, some of their acquaintances agreed to assist them in seeking the author of the noise. Night after night a watch was kept in the cottage. Night after night the knocking went on. Policemen and neighbours formed a cordon round the cottages all night, but nobody approached, and nobody left the house.
William Norton and George Morrison climbed in to the garret and searched it from end to end while the knocking was in progress one night. They found no clues.
Spiritualists held seances in the house. The leader of the seances, an earnest woman, declares that immediately her daughter, the medium was “under control” they came in touch with “bad spirits.” The medium tells a vivid story of “a big man” beckoning to her, of being suddenly swept off her feet and carried upstairs into a bedroom, and then finding herself standing at the foot of the bed where the knocking was most persistent.
What is the secret of the knocking?
Shields Daily News, 23rd September 1922.
Families Flee From Haunted House.
“Ghosts'” High Jinks and Rapping Create Terror in Mining Village.
From our own reporter. Newcastle, Saturday.
Great excitement has been created among the inhabitants of the mining village of Stanley, near Newcastle, County Durham, by a series of ghostly manifestations in one of a group of five houses. The houses concerned in this remarkable affair are known as “Old Moore’s” Cottages, which face what is known as the Deerness Valley. It is about two months ago that an unaccountable rapping and knocking first alarmed and mystified the inhabitants, and since then the weird, ghostly-like noises have continued more or less incessantly until several families, unable to stand the nerve-wracking ordeal, have been obliged to flee to quieter quarters. [the Deerness Valley is to the north of Stanley]
Mr and Mrs Henry Hutchinson and Mr and Mrs H. Wilkinson, who were living under the same roof, have quitted the village as a result of the manifestations, and refuse to return until the mystery has been fathomed. At first rumblings would be heard, and these rapidly developed into loud knockings in the house.
Numerous people have attempted a solution, but without success. One evening lately just before midnight a local police officer took up his position in an adjacent field and arranged for civilians to form a cordon round the terrace. They were there when the knocking commenced and when it finished, but not a living soul was seen to approach the house or leave it.
On another occasion two miners, Messrs William Morton and George Morrison, kept watch, and when the rapping began they climbed into the bedrooms and then into the garret, but they came no nearer to an explanation of what is an extraordinary occurence.
All other means having failed, a band of Spiritualists have begun investigations, and they have had remarkable results, according to their version. On the first occasion they went to the house the leader said there was a most depressing sensation and they felt there were bad spirits about. They at once entered into their service, singing such hymns as “Abide with me” and “I need thee every hour,” and praying. They were soon in touch with the spirits, and so they learned much about the past which it would be unwise to disclose just yet. During the seance the medium went under control. She is a young lady of very prepossessing appearance, and told me some of her experiences, though she made it clear it was not wise to give too much information at present.
Immediately she went under control, the medium explained, she saw a big man beckoning to her to find a box buried some distance away. “I tried to restrain myself,” she continued, “but next moment I was swept off my feet and removed into the bedroom by supernatural force. When I came to myself I was standing at the foot of the bed.”
The leader, who is the mother of the medium, said that when they followed her upstaires they saw her standing like a woman possessed. She was on the very spot where the knocking was loudest and most distinct.
The investigations are still being carried on by Spiritualists, and more seances are to be held. Meanwhile, however, the district is greatly alarmed by the curious happenings. One old residenter declared – “The devil has got the people on the run.” Every inhabitant in the street has heard the strange rappings, and all are equally mystified. Mr Alby Moor says the noises are like sledgehammer blows, and his little girl was so afraid that she went to live with relatives.
Standing solitary and unsheltered on an eminence hundreds of yards away from other habitations, “Old Moore’s” houses possess a bleak, depressing appearance. Stained to a dirty grey by nearly a century of all sorts of weather, they immediately give one the idea of horrible things, and stories which I heard concerning the dwellings can well be believed after seeing them.
Mrs Jackson, Stanley, recalled to me startling incidents in the history of the five dwellings when I visited her. “Yes,” she said, “it is forty years since I first knew of the rapping. I was living in the village at the time, and young as I then was, I can remember that for months the houses stood empty. No one would live in them because of the terrible noises that were heard. At that time it caused a great sensation, and well do I remember my grandfather telling how the place came to have its name. It was because of two fatalities there. The first one was when the houses were a wayside inn, at which the huntsmen used to call for refreshment. That was before my father’s time, but then the inn was occupied by a terrible old miser. He was called a hard landlord, and was feared far and wide.
“One morning the village was startled tremendously by the news that he had hanged himself in a cellar. Later two brothers lived there, and one day Johnny Moore – that was the name of one – shot his brother with a rifle. It was said at the time it was accidental, and, of course, I never heard otherwise. Ever after that, however, the houses came to be known as ‘Moore’s’ houses.”
A startling feature of the phenomenon is the fact that on two occasions someone with a crippled foot has been seen by different persons dodging round the outside of the houses when the rappings were at their loudest.
Thousands of people have flocked in from the surrounding districts to hear the rappings, but for some days the noises have mysteriously ceased.
Sunday Post, 24th September 1922.
“Bad spirits” in Durham.
Mysterious rappings.
A ghost story is on the lips of the miners and their wives and families in the populous district of Stanley, near Crook, Co. Durham, writes a “People” correspondent. Two months ago, and at interevals since, there have been weird manifestations in one of a small group of miners’ dwellings known as “Old Moore’s Cottages,” and as a result the two families who occupied the rooms have cleared out, leaving their furniture and other belongings behind. Many investigations have been made, but all to no purpose.
Some few weeks ago rapping commenced in the house at the dead of night. The noise was at first a faint rumbling which later developed into persistent raps which proceeded in different directions about the house. The rapping soon becomes deafening banging which can be heard in all the house. Last week two men, while the noise was going on, proceeded into the bedrooms above, and then entered the attic. Nowhere was there the slightest trace of the origin of the curious happening. A policeman and civilians have kept watch before, during, and after the rapping, and have not seen a single person arrive or depart from the house. The district is alarmed, and one man told a “People” representative that “the devil had the people on the run.”
Spiritualists are now concerning themselves with the mystery, and have had remarkable results so far as they have gone, but their investigations are not complete. On the occasion of their first visit to the house most involved they were impressed by what seemed to be the heaviness of the atmosphere within, and, so they claimed, they afterwards found it was the influence of the bad spirits with whom they later communicated. On subsequent visits, it is claimed, they have seen things more clearly.
The medium told “The People” representative that she went under control, and in a moment saw “a big man,” who beckoned to her to go upstairs. She restrained herself, and in the next moment, by an extraordinary impulse of a supernatural character she was swept upstairs, and afterwards found herself standing at the foot of the bed on the spot where the noises are loudest.
The People, 24th September 1922.
Stanley “Ghost House.”
No more rappings, but a strange apparition.
“Woman in White.”
Unheard of tragedy to be revealed?
From our own correspondent. Crook, Sunday.
Three spiritualists swear to me that a white woman with blazing eyes, unbound hair and the left sleeve of her blouse torn to shreds, has twice beckoned to them at midnight in the ghost house at Stanley. Tales more gruesome and considerably bloodthirsty are current here about the lonely cottage in this mining village from which mysterious rappings have driven the two families.
Both the Hutchinsons and the Wilkinsons state that before they fled this knocking kept them awake all night. It shook pictures, and once the notes of the piano were touched by an invisible hand. Worse than the knocking was the terrible feeling of indescribable evil.
During the holding of the seance, not one of the 12,000 hefty miners in the neighbouring town of Crook would spend the night there. Shifts going to work in the small hours hurry past in terror.
I went up to have a look at the ghost house today. It stands deserted in a row of four cottages on the crest of a hill commanding two valleys, one a green agricultural district, and the other a smoky region scarred by pitheads, factories and slate-roofed houses. The key of the ghost house was next door with a miner named Campbell, whose family, terrified, refused to enter. After much hesitation, Campbell agreed to show me over the haunted house, a large four-roomed building, bearing every evidence of panic flight.
Furniture is left in all the rooms, except the badly-haunted back bedroom, which contains only pictures of Princess Mary and Lord Lascelles. In the sitting room the chairs of a horse hair suite are left in a circle from the last seance. Campbell described in an awed whisper how a ghostly knocking started softly in a certain corner, rose to hammerlike blows, and passed to every part of the house. A large retriever dog heard and trembled in every limb, howled and followed the direction of the sounds with bared teeth.
I must confess that the much-talked-of psychic atmosphere failed to impress me. If the wall paper were less truculent it might have been a cheerful cottage. I certainly noticed a ghostly smell, like mice.
Among spiritualists who have sworn to exorcise the ghost are a mother and daughter who live at Crook. The daughter is famous locally as a medium. “We have found,” she told me, “that fifty years ago the cottages were built on the site of a public house and cow sheds, and strange deaths occurred there. Whether it was a murder or a gun accident we cannot say at present, but twice a terrible woman with a white face, flowing hair, and torn clothes has come downstairs and stood beckoning. There were other ghosts about which I would rather say nothing, except that we have seen re-enacted parts of a tragedy which we think was one that took place years ago.”
“What is the spiritualists’ theory of this haunting?” I asked. “A ghost with a something to confess,” she replied. “I will not have peace till the secret is revealed. Our seance was a great success; I never felt such a black atmosphere in my life. Already as we learn things the atmosphere is less evil, and I have no doubt in two weeks time we shall have learned all, and that bad influences will depart for ever, making the house fit for human habitation.”
Other spiritualists confirm this opinion. I understand that the exiled families are greatly cheered by such hopes, and talk about re-occupying the ghost house in a fortnight. Every night people listen for the knocking, but for the last week or so nothing has been heard. What has been seen, however, is the talk of the district, and grows more ghastly every day.
Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 25th September 1922.
Stanley Spooks Exorcised.
Police take hand in “haunted” house affair.
The ghosts of the haunted house of Stanley have been exorcised by an unexpected person. Police-Sergeant Carr, the leader of the common sense movement, has been very strong and silent throughout the whole business. He has now disclosed his secret. It appears that he made certain inquiries at the height of the ghost scare, and with a tact that is characteristic of him hinted that unless the mysterious knocking stopped somebody’s neck might be broken. Since that day, he says, the ghosts have behaved themselves. He scornfully refuses, however, to apply for a diploma from the Psychical Society.
Within the next day or two the colliery company who lease Moore’s cottages, one of which is the haunted house of Stanley, intend to prohibit all further seances. It is felt that if the local spiritualists will leave the place alone the Hutchinsons and the Wilkinsons will probably reoccupy their homes at an early date, and if the ghosts come back Sergeant Carr threatens to grasp his truncheon firmly and go off in a trance, in which he thinks the powers of darkness might grant him astonishing visions.
Credit where credit is due, however. The ghosts have made a brighter Crook. They have in fact been the most thrilling thing that has ever happened there.
The psychic investigators are very annoyed by the swift turn events have taken just as they were getting on so well. They feel that there are heaps more ghosts to see, and a few more seances would have shown them the whole bunch. Still they have not done so badly. One white woman, an old man, a lance-corporal, a tall Scotsman, to say nothing of a stray cohort of angels, is a pretty good bag.
Dundee Evening Telegraph, 27th September 1922.
Stanley “Ghost” Laid.
Neighbours threat stops “manifestations.”
Spiritualists are continuing their seances in the “haunted house” at Stanley, near Crook, and they profess to have made extraordinary discoveries. Curious to relate, however, the knocking which was so persistent over a period of six or eight weeks has now absolutely ceased but for the table-rapping of the little band of psychic devotees.
A “Newcastle Daily Journal” representative learned that since the publicity given to the remarkable story the discovery has been made that an individual vastly different from the ghost of the villagers’ imaginations, was responsible for the manifestations, which created such a stir in the neighbourhood. A timely threat by neighbours was sufficient to lay the “ghost”, and it is understood that Mr and Mrs Henry Hutchinson are returning to their house tomorrow evening.
Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 28th September 1922.