This Ghost is Knock-Knocking.
Villagers of Tharston, near Norwich, have a ghost in their midst. It taps eerily and has so upset the tranquility of the district that parties of “hunters” are lying in wait every night. Tharston’s ghost concentrates on the council house occupied by Mr C. Brown, his wife and his son Herbert.
“Between 10 and 11.30 every night except Thursdays,” Mrs Brown told the “Sunday Pictorial,” “we hear the knockings. They come from my son’s bedroom. Many times my husband has gone into the room, slipper in hand, hoping to see something he can hit. But the knockings go on, and there is nothing to be seen.”
“The knocking is definitely not human,” said Mr Brown. “It had a queer hollow sound. But we are determined to solve the mystery.”
Sunday Mirror, 24th January 1937.
They laughed off a “knock knock” house. By Howard French.
Ghostly rappings in a roadmender’s cottage at Tharston, 10 miles from Norwich, have set the villagers and the local council at loggerheads. The noises were first heard in an upstairs room and a fortnight later they stopped as mysteriously as they started.
The cottage belongs to Depwade Rural District Council, and now the clerk, Mr G.S. Scarlett, has announced that “The cause which has produced the knocking will not in future produce the knocking, and when you hear the explanation you will have a jolly good laugh.”
The explanation is being kept secret, so is the name of the councillor who caused Mr Scarlett to make the announcement. Villagers are surprised at this secrecy.
The noises, Mr Charles Brown told me, occurred most nights between 10 and 10.30. When he first heard them he got out of bed to see who was at the front door. There was no one there, but the knocks continued. They seemed to come from the bedroom of his 13-year-old son. He woke the boy, an dthey both declare they heard the knocks again.
I could find nothing in the cottage to account for the noise, nor could I see anything loose outside.
Next door I met Mrs Barnes, an invalid who uses a wheel-chair to move about the house. She called her husband who declared he had clearly heard the knocking.
Mrs Brown, pale and tired, explained that the rappings had upset her household. “We go to bed about 10 o’clock in these parts,” she said, “but lately we haven’t been able to sleep. People are laughing at us now. Some are even saying we made the noises ourselves. But why should we? The children are so scared they won’t go upstairs without me. I don’t know anything about Spiritualism. All we did was report the noise to the sanitary inspector.”
Both Mr and Mrs Brown denied that any of the councillors had been to listen for the noises, and Mr F.H. Bowden, the sanitary inspector said: “There were no noises on the night I went to the cottage. I examined all the doors and windows, but there were no unusual sounds. The walls are solid, so there could not have been anything in them.”
So to Mr Scarlett, the clerk, I went seeking the “laughable explanation” he had spoken about. No, he could not tell me the name of the councillor who knew the secret. No, he did not know the secret himself. Did any other councillor know it? No, he did not think so. “I am surprised they don’t know the solution at Tharston,” he added. “I should have thought they would have known.” He retired smiling broadly.
Weekly Dispatch (London), 31st January 1937.