(Perhaps this is Uxbridge, where there was a large RAF recruit training depot, and where there would have been historic inns used as accommodation in the town).
Sportive “Ghosts.”
Beds dragged and the clothes scattered.
Queer happenings at a W.R.A.F. hostel.
An extraordinary story of strange happenings in a W.R.A.F. hostel, has been recounted to an “Evening Standard” representative by a W.R.A.F. administrator at an R.A.F. depot near London.
It appears that some considerable time ago a large, rambling old detached house was taken by the R.A.F. as a hostel for a number of W.R.A.F.’s employed at a stores depot. The girls had been installed about a fortnight when one evening the sergeant, who slept below, was startled by cries coming from one of the bedrooms. Hastening upstairs with a candle she was astonished to find the occupants of the room almost hysterical. It appeared that one of the girls had been awakened by her bed, a single one with a heavy iron frame, being dragged from its position close to the wall two or three feet towards the middle of the room.
Jumping out of bed she turned on the light, but there was no one in the room. The matter was dismissed either as a practical joke played by some of the girls or as a trick of the imagination. The beds were examined. No cords were found tied to the legs, and an R.A.F. man found the beds so heavy that no one but a very strong person could have moved them. No supernatural demonstration took place until a month later, when a precisely similar incident occurred.
It was directed to keep a watch. The light was left burning, and the W.R.A.F. sergeant slept in the room on a mattress. About midnight screams were heard, and the administrator, dashing upstairs was just in time to see the foot of one bed, which had moved from the wall and risen from the ground, move of its own volition, and come down heavily within an inch of the face of the sleeping sergeant.
The following night the same thing occurred again, this time to both beds in the room, and, moreover, one of the girls was wide awake. There was no noise of footsteps, and the occupants of the room were absolutely certain that no other person had entered.
The following night was a repetition of the first, and the administrator, who herself slept in the room, felt her bed rise from the ground, move out from the wall, and sink slowly to the floor.
Again a month elapsed, and the hostel was visited by the playful ghosts. Then the sergeant was instructed to place the beds in position in both rooms and lock the doors. This was done, and the following morning they were opened in the presence of the administrator. The beds were discovered in the middle of the room, and the pillows and bedclothes scattered about in wild confusion.
The hostel has now been abandoned by the W.R.A.F. It is understood that the house stands on the site of an old posting inn.
Lancashire Evening Post, 6th November 1919.