A “Haunted” Lodging-house.
We quote the following from the Daily Mail, which may probably intend to father upon Tunbridge Wells the episode which it attributes to a “fashionable town on the borders of Kent and Sussex.”
The publication in the Daily Mail of the story of the spectral bird that haunts one of the legal inns in London has led to the communication of another real ghost story of great interest. It is told be a tradesman in a fashionable town on the borders of Kent and Sussex, who, for business reasons, requests that his name and address shall not be published. His wife keeps a lodging-house, and it is there that strange happenings have been witnessed and felt during the last three and a half years.
The house is an unpretentious brick and cement building in a long street, and its occupants are the tradesman, his wife, his sister, another relative, and a lodger. Before that time the house was unoccupied, but furnished, for seven years.
About a year after they entered the place they were startled by hearing loud rumblings in some of the rooms, especially in those upstairs. It seems as if heavy weights were being thrown about. Then the culinary vessels in the kitchen took to rattling on their own account, and a tea-tray, firmly fixed behind a bookcase in the dining-room, would suddenly be moved into another position by an unseen hand.
Next came a huge black cat, which would glide across the floor and then disappear. And often the inmates of the house would tread on what appeared to be a dog’s paw, but on looking down to the floor they would fail to discover anything.
There were many variations, such as noises on the stairs as if half-a-dozen drunken men were seeking their rooms; the wrenching off of window fasteners; the moving of curtains where there was no draught; and the creaking of a wardrobe in one of the bedrooms, as if a Red Indian were playfully knocking it about with a tomahawk.
But the strangest of all the occurrences was the appearance of an apparition of a woman, and most marvellous to relate, this self-same woman is still in the flesh, and is living in the same town. Her astral body has continually appeared in various parts of the house, and more than once she has actually touched the frightened occupiers. Once she became violent and pulled the tradesman’s sister out of her bed by the hair. For weeks afterwards the maltreated lady suffered from pains in her head. The features of the woman are always plainly discernible, but she changes her attire at each appearance. She never makes a long stay, ten seconds being the longest on record.
A Daily Mail representative who inquired into the strange affair on the spot was not fortunate enough to witness any of the visitations, but was impressed by the seriousness of the occupants of the house when they related their experiences. Moreover, he learnt from public men in the town that the tradesman and his family are people whose word can be relied upon.
Visitors to the house have been affected in a manner similar to the regular occupants, but the woman whose second self appears there has not witnessed any of the phenomena when she has paid her old friends a visit at first hand.
The tradesman wants to know what it all means, and he says he will willingly assist in any genuine attempt to sift the mystery.
Kent and Sussex Courier, 5th June 1901.