A haunted house at Steeton.
No little sensation has been caused in the village of Steeton, near Keighley, by a story that a cottage house at Lane Ends is haunted. The house is occupied by Mr Herbert Harrison, tailor, and his wife, a newly-married couple, who have lived in it about two months.
The operations of the “ghost” take the form of rattling and opening doors, and sometimes are accompanied by a small light. The occupants have at last become so frightened that on Monday night they dared not sleep in the house.
The house has been erected some years, but it was renovated recently.
It is stated that previous occupants have heard the noises. The “ghost” has not yet been laid, it prudently refraining from “operating” on one occasion when two men stayed up to watch.
Bradford Daily Telegraph, 2nd October 1895.’
Ghost walks at Keighley.
A Keighley correspondent writes: – A haunted house at Steeton, near Keighley, is just now creating much excitement in the village. The alleged ghost has taken up his residence at a cottage house at Lane Ends, occupied by a newly-married man and his wife. They allege that when in bed they have plainly heard footsteps on the stairs; then lights have been seen, and the bedroom door has been noiselessly swung open. The man has more than once got up to ascertain the cause, but not once has he been successful.
The nocturnal visitor has so alarmed the couple that they have not dared to sleep in the house, and on Tuesday they stayed with their parents. Another cottage adjoins, and the occupants of this state that they also have heard the peculiar noises.
Recently a couple of men took possession of the haunted house for the night, but the ghost failed to “operate.” The tenant of the house states that once he fastened one of the doors with bolts which, however, were removed during the night, and were found on the floor in the morning. At the commencement of the stir the villagers gave no credence to the occurrence, but those who intimately know the couple, and have investigated the circumstances, sincerely believe that the house is actually haunted. For some nights crowds have collected outside the house.
South Wales Daily News, 3rd October 1895.
A Steeton mystery.
Noises of the night.
Ghost or joker?
Considerable attention was attracted by statements published in the early part of the week that a house at Steeton was haunted, and that all kinds of sounds were heard at night. A Keighley journalist who went over to investigate the matter on Wednesday writes as follows: –
At the corner of Chapel Lane and Burrows Lane, Steeton, stands a block of two-storey cottages, whose solidly-built walls bespeak a respectable antiquity, though evidences of recent renovation are to be seen in the new window frames and doors. Report gives them a century or more, but anyway they belong to a pre-jerry builder era, and promise to outlast many of its productions. The corner house has two doors into the road, indicative of the time when it was two tenements, but they now form one occupancy, and on the door first seen by a visitor approaching from the Keighley and Skipton turnpike appears a large brass plate inscribed H.W. Harrison. The room into which it opens is a tailor’s workshop, and here, busy on his board, seated a la Turque, was a young man of about twenty-two, industriously plying his needle: a bright, intelligent young woman was standing near to “run the seams” on her sewing machine; and in the doorway was a neighbour, who discreetly left soon after I entered.
After a little preliminary diffidence on the score of objection to too much publicity, they readily told part at least of what had come under their own experience, though there seemed to have been manifestations beyond into which they preferred not to enter. Mrs Harrison – for such the young woman turned out to be – said that they had been married four months, the house in which they live having been renovated for their occupancy. Strange noises had been heard almost from the first, but they had made light of them. For her own part, she had never been the subject of such disturbances, and had been inclined to laugh at them. But with persistence they compelled attention, and, try as they would, they had not been able to account for what they had heard.
The door from Chapel Lane opens into the living room. In front of the doorway ascends the staircase, which midway branches off to a sitting-room on the right, and over the living room, and two small bedrooms on the left over the workshop. The first room appears to be the smaller, inasmuch as a passage is left for the approach to the second bedroom, which last runs in the same direction as Burrows Lane.
About three weeks ago, said Mrs Harrison, the noises began to be really troublesome. Sometimes they took the form of a queer crackling noise, dissimilar from anything they knew, and at other times as if someone was walking rather heavily on the boards in the little passage. She has often heard these things, and has had to waken her husband, who, on searching, has been unable to find any clue. They were so much disturbed in the back bedroom that they made a change to the front. Here on Sunday night, when they went to bed, the noises began. This was a little after ten o’clock, and it seemed as if there was a crackling noise along the top side of the bed nearest the partition. At the same time a flickering light shone on the partition wall and then disappeared. It returned. The gas was burning at full and the blind was drawn, so that there could be no question of someone larking in the street. They tried to fall asleep and pass it off, but presently came such a thumping that they were obliged to get up, but they were left just as puzzled as ever.
During the time they slept in the other bedroom they one night fastened the door-sneck down with a penknife, and afterwards heard a sharp snap as if somebody had tried to lift the sneck. The door, which sticks at the bottom, did not open, and the knife was still there. There is a little back window in the sitting-room, which opens upon a field, but this has no moveable sash, and the other sashes are securely fastened with long screws. No noises have been heard from the sitting-room.
Sometimes there had been an interval of a week without much annoyance, and recently for two nights in succession there had been nothing unusual. Watch had been kept by friends one night without result. Their next door neighbour in Burrows Lane, Mrs Brown, had also been troubled with noises.
Mr Harrison inclined strongly to the belief that there was practical joking somewhere, and was apprehensive as to consequences from a business point of view. What might be other people’s amusement could very easily be his loss.
Mrs Brown, a respectable-looking woman, added her story. She had only lived next door some three weeks, and had heard things for which she could not account. It seemed like a rustling in the kitchen after the family had gone to bed. At first they thought it was a cat, but could find nothing. The sounds were sometimes heard about nine o’clock, and they died away as if someone were trying to get away into the back kitchen, which faces the field, but which is under the same roof. They had heard sounds of roaming about and scuffling as if downstairs, and as if someone were turning things over in search of something displaced. Last Saturday night they went to bed about twelve, but she awoke half an hour later and did not sleep again till nearly two. A quarter of an hour’s doze was then disturbed by rustling. The noise moved about down stairs. The noises went on till about three, and then the oven door clashed two or three times. Following this was a curious sound of jingling, as if a person had poured out from a bottle on to the table a number of cooperative checks or coins, “and as if a lot more were siding them.”
Finally there was a withdrawal of sound into the coalplace, and it ceased. On the previous night no sounds whatever had been heard. Mr Harrison again interposed with the remark that he did not think the noises had any supernatural origin. Mrs Brown then continued, and said that about midnight not long since she called her husband’s attention to a noise as if someone was handling newspapers in the room. This lasted a minute or two. They had, however, seen nothing from first to last. Another incident was as if someone had thrown down a piece of iron with some force. Mrs Harrison said that for some time they had made light of the matter, thinking the noises came from next door. Her husband had jumped out of bed nearly every time, but had been baffled. During the last fortnight the sounds had been heard between a quarter-past two and three in the morning. They had only been out of the house one night, and had not told their experiences much. It was a mistake to say that there had been any crowds about, as very few knew.
The writer was directed to Queen Street, where in a row of new houses he found a Mrs Summerscales. The latter, a very respectable middle-aged body, said she and her family had lived for twenty-one years in the house now occupied by Mrs Brown, out of which they moved in January. It had been occupied since then by a family who had removed to Sutton. The rest of the story had best be told, as far as possible, in her own words: – “We had not lived there long,” said she, “before we noticed something. It has always been a ‘superstitious’ house, because other people went out of it, and my husband’s father lived in it when he was a boy, and he tells the same things. We never saw anything but lights, which have come into the staircase, and there has neither been a bit of fire nor anything to account for it. It has generally been about midnight or into the morning. We have heard noises, and traced them times out of number, and thought it might be children walking in their sleep. The sounds used to come out of the front bedroom, and into the back to our bed, but never seemed to go back again except once, and I said, ‘Oh, dear; here it is, and it’s going back again; ‘ and it turned away as distinct as could be, and went down stairs. We have had it at various times, but ten years since in particular. We then heard this walking about, and have heard an oven door banged to.
“I was sitting up one night in the bedroom reading when the oven door slammed to as fair as could be. I said to a neighbour, ‘We have had the boggard again.’ But we have never made much talk of it. The noises, though heard at different times, were mostly from the back-end to Christmas. One night, when waiting with a daughter of my husband, and just preparing for bed, there came ‘the awfullest noise in that little cellar,’ as if a lot of dogs or pigs were there; and then it died away. Sometimes it has been as if someone had shot with a gun two or three times.”
At the close of the interview Mrs Summerscales added:- “We have had a clairvoyant who sometimes visits us, and I have asked her what she thought it was, and the reply has been, ‘It is nothing that will do you any harm’.”
And there the matter stands. It is nearly seven centuries since Sir Robert de Styveton, the Knight Templar, was laid to rest in the “Lang Kirk of Craven” at Kildwick, and the place of his abode in Steeton is probably lost in uncertainty. The explanation will probably turn out that the “visitant” is no mailed knight; but whether a practical joker or one of the things that philosophy wots not of remains for investigatioin by some Steeton Sherlock Holmes.
Keighley News, 5th October 1895.