Mystery knocks baffle police and neighbours.
A two hour investigation by four police and several neighbours failed to explain mysterious knockings which terrified two women and three children in a Mortdale cottage last night. In the home of Norman Green, Rockdale fireman, in Villiers Street Mortdale, between 8.30 and 11pm:- Windows rattled; Glass panels were dislodged in an elaborate lampshade in the children’s bedroom; Strange rappings, at times developing hammer force, occurred under the floor in various parts of the house.
Initial action of what a neighbour suggested was a poltergeist – mischievous ghost – occurred at 8.30 pm. Mrs Olga Green and a visitor, Miss Dulcie Wright, were seated before a gas fire in the lounge room of the trim brick cottage. Mrs Green’s three children, Elaine 9, John 4 1/2, and Kenneth 3, were asleep in their bedroom, adjoining the lounge room. “Suddenly I heard a faint tapping on the wall newar the fire place,” said Mrs Green. “It became stronger and seemed to go under the floor. At first I thought it might be a rat, but when it developed to hammer-like blows Dulcie and I began to get a bit scared.”
After Mrs Green and Miss Wright had endured the mysterious noises for about an hour, Mr Bob Smith, who lives next door, came in. Mr Smith said today: – “I could hear the knocking from my place.” Smith telephoned Hurstville police. Consts. Townsend and Gibb went to the Green home and were joined later by Det.-Sgt. Wedlock and Det. Robertson. By this time the knockings had increased. Armed with one of the policeman’s batons, Smith squeezed down through a manhole in the kitchen floor and with a torch searched under the house. Meanwhile, the police climbed to the roof othe house. Neither they nor Mr Smith found anything that might explain the rappings.
Constable Gibb said today that although it sounded silly, he could offer no explanation other than that a ghost was at work. “We’d rush into the room from which the noise came, and then there’d be a crash in the room we had just left,” he said. “A dozen people heard the noises, and surely we all can’t be crazy. It was the eeriest experience I’ve ever had.”
Checking on the children, police watched them through their bedroom window when hammerings started in the room.
The Green home in Villers Street Mortdale, scene of last night’s mysterious rappings which terrified a family for three hours.
Bob Smith… searched for ghost under the house.
Sleepless night. Mrs Olg Green comforts her children after a sleepless night at their home in Mortdale, where ghostly knockings terrified the family.
The Sun (Sydney) 11th June 1949.
Mysterious rapping baffles police.
[…] “Suddenly I heard a faint tapping on the wall near the fireplace. It became stronger and seemed down under the floor,” said Mrs Green. “At first I thought it might have been a rat, but when it developed to hammer-like blows, Dulcie and I began to get a bit scared. The noise woke Elaine, who called out that somebody was knocking on the front door, but I knew no one was there.” Mrs Green said she and Miss Wright endured the mysterious noises for about an hour and she was about to call a neighbour when Mr Bob Smith, who lives next door, came in.
“I could hear the knocking from my place and I thought I would investigate because it seemed funny that Mrs Green was not answering the door,” said Mr Smith today. After a short pause, the knockings resumed and Smith telephoned Hurstville police. By this time the knockings had increased in intensity and the police began a thorough search of the premises. Armed with one of the policemen’s batons, Smith squeezed down through a manhole in the kitchen floor – all four police were too large for the aperture – and with a torch searched under the house.
“I don’t mind admitting I had the breeze up when I first went down,” said Smith, “but after a few minutes of chasing the knockings, which occurred in several parts of the house, I saw the funny side of it and got the giggles.”
In the meantime, the police climbed on to the roof of the house, seeking a possum or anything else that might provide a solution to the mystery, but without success. Neither they nor Mr Smith found anything that might explain explain the rappings. […]
The Newcastle Sun (NSW), 11th June 1949.
Knock, knock, but no one was there.
A detective, two constables and a big crowd last night listened to mysterious knockings in a Mortdale house without discovering the cause. The house is in Villiers Avenue, Mortdale. The tenant, Norman Green, was on duty at the time at Rockdale fire station. The knockings, which sounded like hammer blows underneath the floor, frightened Mrs Green and her three young children from the house. A neighbour, Mr Robert Smith, telephoned Hurstville police and told them about the mysterious noises. Detective-Sergeant Wedlock and Constables Gibb and Townsend, of Hurstville, went to the house and found a big crowd outside.
Constable Gibb said the noises sounded like somebody hammering beneath the floor. Gibb said that at times the electric lights in the house flickered on and off. A neighbour crawled under the house, but could not find any cause for the noises. After about two hours the hammering stopped. Police said they were unable to trace the cause of the strange noises.
The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 11th June 1949.
Experts dodge the rap.
Four members of the Psychic Research Society, who went to investigate a ghost mystery at Mortdale last night, were disappointed. They visited the house in Villers Avenue of Fireman Norman Green, whose wife and three young children had been frightened by loud hammering noises. They were the president, Mr L L Hall, and his wife; the secretary, Mrs E.S. Adams, and Mr Adams. The noise did not occur while they were there. Mr Hall said: “Without hearing the sound we can make no statement about its cause. It may be merely physical.”
Mr Hall said it was comparatively easy to rid a place of a poltergeist (mischievous ghost). There were too many people in the house for a psychic test, he said. Miss Zelie Algaro, who is keenly interested in all psychic studies, also visited the house. She said it was puzzling that the noise persistently came from the floor. Poltergeists usually moved things, and were mischievous, she said.
Mrs Green said: “The noises came on Friday night from different parts of different rooms. Police saw the light in the children’s bedroom swinging. Police say it’s either a rat in a trap or an air-lock in a water-pipe. But it is much louder than those noises, like heavy hammering on wood.”
Mrs Green’s sister, Mrs Alf Berryman, said: “Wehn I heard the bang at 6.30 this evening my teeth chattered. Neighbour Mrs M Garner said “I think it’s all eye-wash. I would be prepared to stay here alone all night, any time.”
The Sun (Sydney), 12th June 1949.
“Ghost” rapping heard again: Woman flees.
A woman whose home was upset by mysterious rappings on Friday night rushed from the house when the rappings began again last night and refused to return alone. She is Mrs Norman Green, of Villiers Avenue, Mortdale. Mr Green, who is a fireman, was away at work. Neighbours rushed to Mrs Green as she stood alarmed by the front gate, and entered the house with her. The rappings, which were similar to those which frightened Mrs Green and her three small children the night before, went on for 20 minutes. The noises came from under the floor in several rooms. They had stopped for some minutes when police arrived.
Neighbours and police searched the house, but could find nothing which might have caused the noises. Mrs Green was certain last night that the rappings under the floor were not caused by rats or opossums. She said: “They sounded exactly the same tonight as last night – hard, sharp knocks like hammer blows. When one of the Hurstville police heard them last night, he gave such a start that he nearly dropped his cigarette.”
When the rappings began last night Mrs Green’s 9-year-old daughter Elaine was terrified. She and her 4 1/2 year old brother John moved to Mr C Sullivan’s home next door. Three year old Kenneth Green did not waken. Mrs Green was nursing him, still asleep, at the front gate when police arrived.
Mrs Green said that a man called yesterday and offered to buy the house. “I told him that we were not moving,” she said.
Mr Bob Smith, one of the Green’s neighbours, who had crawled under the house the night before while the mystery knockings were being heard, yesterday ridiculed the idea that they could have been caused by noises in water or gas pipes. He said: “I was right up against some of the knocks. There were no pipes anywhere near.”
Mr Smith said he had looked up “poltergeists” in an encyclopaedia. Poltergeists (‘racketing spirits’) have been reported for many centuries from most countries of the world. They are supposed to be responsible for strange noises, movements of furniture, and breakages of crockery and glass, which seem inexplicable to people living in houses where they occur. “If poltergeists exist they apparently carry on just as something has been carrying on here,” Mr Smith said.
Mrs Green: scared.
The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 12th June 1949.
Crowd waits to hear ‘ghost’ knock.
One hundred people and six motor cars last night were outside a house in which ‘ghostly’ rappings terrified Mrs Olga Green on Friday and Saturday nights. Late last night, no more rappings had occurred.
Suggestion by plumber.
The house is in Villiers Street, Mortdale. The occupants are Mr Norman Green, Rockdale fireman, his wife and their three children, Elaine, 9, John, 4 1/2, and Kenneth, 3. Last night a Daily Telegraph reporter took a local plumber, Mr C. J. Burns, of Anderson Street, Mortdale, to the house to test a theory that hammering of water in water pipes had caused the rappings. Other theories which people advanced yesterday were: A poltergeist (Oxford Dictionary describes a poltergeist as: ‘A spirit which makes its presence known by noises.’); An opossum or rat; Faulty gas meter; Badly-fitting floor boards; A Death Watch beetle.
Mr Burns, who has been a plumber for 32 years, said he felt sure that sudden changes in water pressure caused the rappings. He gave Mr Green a plumber’s turnkey and left it with Mr Green. He told Mr Green to store enough water for overnight use then turn the water off at the main. Mr Green said he would try this and see if the noise occurred during the night. Mr Burns said that if one of Mr Green’s water-pipes rested on a piece of wood which also carried part of the floor, noise of water hammering in a pipe would be carried into the floor. If someone nearby turned a tap off quickly, the water might cause noises under the house.
A Daily Telegraph reporter tested this theory by asking Mr C.J. Sullivan, railway worker, who occupies the cottage adjoining Mr Green’s, to turn a tap on and off quickly. Mr Sullivan did. No noises occurred in the Green house.
Mr Green said last night: “I don’t know what’s causing this rapping noise but I’m sure of this – it’s not ghosts, spirits or poltergeists. I won’t have any of that nonsense. I’ve been pestered all day by people who want to come inside and test theories about spirits and things. On Saturday night a party of people called and took charge of the house. They wanted to move my gas fire out and burn candles in the fireplace to bring a spirit down the chimney. They wanted to turn the lights out and goodness knows what else. Fortunately for them, I was at work.
“I got a mate to call out: ‘Relatives to the left, others to the right – and out the front gate.’ My wife was nearly worried crazy by them. So I got special leave and came home today. I had a long talk to her this afternoon and have convinced her that there is nothing to worry about. I’m more worried about the people who come through the front gate than the noises under the floor.
“I’m pretty sure that the noises are more than just water hammering in the pipes. I’m a fireman, and dealing all day with water systems and that sort of thing. This noise sounds like wood hammering on wood. Sometimes it is as though there is someone under the house with a piece of four-by-two, belting on the floorboards.
“I’ve spent hours up under the roof with a torch. The only entrance to the space under the house is through a small trapdoor. I put that there and it was never moved until a man crawled under the other day to search. No water pipes run under the house. The water pipes come down the side of the house under a concrete path. They emerge from the concrete to run up the wall to the bathroom and the kitchen. I have tried tapping water pipes everywhere they are exposed, but I haven’t been able to duplicate the noise. I have tapped them with metal and with wood. Detectives have told me that if they don’t get to the bottom of it soon, they may call in someone from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.”
Mr W. F. Forsyth, of Maroubra, who telephoned the Daily Telegraph yesterday said that a Death Watch beetle probably had caused the knocking. He said: “This beetle usually gets into oak furniture. In the mating season the male beetle bangs its head in the tunnel it has bored in the oak and the resultant knock is quite audible.”
The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 13th June 1949.
[…] More than 50 boys and girls tonight kept vigil outside the “haunted” house. Despite thorough investigations, police have been unable to offer a conclusive explanation for the noise. While waiting for the rappings tonight, the “ghost breakers” jitterbugged on Mr Green’s front lawn to the accompaniment of a car radio. However, whether the noise was supernatural or mechanical, it was not heard tonight. Mr Green, a Rockdale fireman, said that spiritualists who had interviewed him today had caused more disturbance than the ‘spirit’.
Daily Mercury (Qld), 13th June 1949.
Whenever anything cannot be immediately explained such as the noises in a house at Mortdale, Sydney, it is immediately ascribed to “Ghosts.” But the police didn’t take long to discover that there was no supernatural cause – merely water “hammering” in a service pipe, which makes an intermittent knocking sound. It is caused by an air lock.
The Newcastle Sun (NSW), 13th June 1949.
Ghost takes the knock.
“Ghostly” rappings that frightened Mrs Olga Green at her house on Friday and Saturday nights have stopped. The home is in Villiers Avenue, Mortdale. The occupants are Mr Norman Green, fireman, his wife and their three children. Mr Green said last night that no rappings had occurred since Saturday night. “I haven’t the slightest idea what caused the rappings,” he said. “We decided to ignore them and have carried on in a normal way. I haven’t done anything to stop the noises. They just stopped.”
The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 14th June 1949.
Mysterious Noises in house.
Police and neighbours could not offer a logical explanation of mysterious rappings in a Mortdale cottage recently. The noises, which occurred between 8.30 and 11pm terrified the family of Rockdale fireman Norman Green, who was at work. Neighbours blamed a poltergeist – mischievous ghost – for these happenings in the cottage in Villiers Street, Mortdale.
Windows rattled. Glass panels were dislodged in an elaborate lampshade in a bedroom. Strange rappings, at times developing hammer force, occurred under the floor.
Mrs Olga Green and a visitor, Miss Dulcie Wright, were seated before a gas fire in the lounge room of the brick cottage. “Suddenly I heard a faint tapping on the wall near the fireplace,” Mrs Green said. “It became stronger and seemed to go under the floor.”
After Mrs Green and Miss Wright had endured the mysterious noises for about an hour, Mr Bob Smith, who lives next door, came in. Mr Smith, who said he could hear the knocking from his own house, telephoned Hurstville police. The noises were even louder when the police arrived.
Consts. Townsend and Gibb, who were joined later by Det-Sgt. Wedlock and Det. Robertson, searched the house and even climbed to the roof. Constable Gibb said that, although it sounded silly, he could offer no explanation other than that a ghost was at work. “We’d rush into the room from which the noises came, and then there’d be a crash in the room we had just left,” he said.
Coolgardie Miner (WA), 7th July 1949.
Ghost or Goat.
Sydney.
The police and local residents are puzzled by mysterious noises which terrified a Mortdale family for five hours last night and early today. The noises began about 8 p.m and continued with varying intensity, until 1 a.m., sometimes reaching deafening proportions. They came at different stages from the floor, roof and walls. Mrs Norman Green and her three young children became so frightened that they sought the protection of neighbours, who examined the roof, walls, and underneath the house, but could find nothing. The police, who then summoned Mrs Green’s husband from Rockdale Fire Station, where he was on duty, also examined the house but could find nothing.
The police said that the noises centred mainly in a room where the three children slept, but it was a physical impossibility for the children to have created the din.
Mrs Green said today: “I did not believe in ghosts until now. I am scared stiff the noises might be repeated tonight. You would swear that someone with a hammer was trying to beat his way up through the floorboards. Mrs Green said that the noises awakened her children, and when she went to their room the chandelier was swinging alarmingly, and she thought it would crash.
One policeman said: “Although it sounds silly, I can offer no explanation other than that a ghost was at work. We would rush into the room from which the noise came, and then there would be a crash in the room we had just left.”
Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, NSW), 11th June 1949.
Family again hear ‘ghost’ under house.
Mysterious noises were again heard in the brick cottage occupied by Mrs Norman Green and her three young children in Villiers St., Mortdale, last night.
Constable Judd, of Hurstville, rushed to the rear of the house and with drawn revolver pointed under the foundations shouted “Come out with your hands up”. No one appeared.
Mrs Green’s children, Elaine (9), John (4 1/2) and Kenneth (3) were terrified when a Truth representative called at the house last night. Referring to the mysterious noises and knockings in the house which have been going on since Friday Mrs Green said, “I’m scared stiff. Although I never believed in ghosts, I do now.”
Hurstville police have made a thorough examination of the house but have not been able to advance any reason for the mysterious noises. Most residents of Villiers St. also have heard the eerie noises and everyon in the district is talking of the “ghost.” Some residents claim that a poltergeist, a noisy ghost which makes mysterious rappings and eerie disturbances, is “haunting the house.”
Mr Bob Smith, who lives next door, had an amazing experience. He took a police baton with him to search under the house. He looked everywhere but could not find anything amiss, although the noise continued. “I signalled those in the house with the baton, but the noises then shifted to the next room. It was unnerving,” said Mr Smith.
Mrs Green’s brother-in-law, Mr Alf Berriman, has moved in to help “lay” the ghost. Armed with half a paling, he moved around the outside of the house last night enjoining the “ghost” to “come out and have a go.” His challenge was not accepted.
Mrs Green said she was thinking of seeking the aid of a spiritualist in an attempt to clear up the mystery. The “ghost” was first heard by Elaine about 8.30 on Friday night. The child thought someone was knocking on the back door but when she opened the door no one was there. Later in the night when the children were asleep Mrs Green heard the knocking again. “It became violent and you would swear someone with a hammer was trying to beat his way up through the floorboards,” she said. “The children awoke with fright and I went into their room.”
The police were called and the knocking noise was so loud that they could hear the knocking as they entered the front gate. Mrs Green’s husband, who is a fireman at Rockdale fire station, returned home from duty and with police made a thorough search under the house. Nothing was seen which would indicate what was causing the noise.
Unpopular poltergeist. A Mortdale poltergeist has terrified Mr Norman Green, of Villiers St, Mortdale, and the rest of his family, by its rappings and knockings all over the premises since Friday night. Investigations have failed to show the cause of the noises, which have been heard by neighbours living some distance away. The Green house is the only one in the street affected. Here, Mr Green’s brother-in-law, Mr Alf Berriman, of Homer St., Earlwood, was snapped by Truth last night as he peered under the Mortdale house. Armed with a paling, Mr Berriman promises the “ghost” a warm reception.
Truth (Sydney), Sunday 12th June 1949.
Mysterious noises. Sydney, June 13.
Police now think that high water pressure in loose pipes is responsible for a mysterious knocking under the floor of a house in Villiers Avenue, Mortdale. Occupants of the house are Norman Green, fireman, his wife and three young children. The noise disturbed Mrs Green and the children for two nights last week. On the Sunday, four members of the Psychic Research Society visited the house, but the noises did not occur while they were there.
Barrier Daily Truth (Broken Hill, NSW), 14th June 1949.