She believes ghost has secret.
Strange sounds heard in a Warsash house.
Standing in the doorway of her 250-year-old oak-beamed cottage, a Warsash woman told a reporter that she thought ghosts were trying to lead her to a smugglers’ fortune – which might be buried in the grounds of her home.
Forty-six-year-old Mrs Rita Creighton, who has lived there for two years, with her aircraft inspector husband, described the eerie happenings at the cottage, which so frightened the previous owner – an elderly woman – that she had to leave. The cottage, in Newton Road, Warsash, is built where an inlet of the River Hamble once flowed – an ideal spot for the secret unloading of contraband. Lying in bed one night, Mrs Creighton heard footsteps in the attic above. Switching on the light, she and her husband raced upstairs to find… nothing.
Not long afterwards, Mrs Creighton placed her musical box on a chair, opened the lid, and the box began to play. She allowed it to run down and left it on the chair. Two hours later she heard the box playing again – mysteriously of its own accord. And that was not all. Two small mirrors which she had left inside the lid, were now lying neatly on either side of the box. No-one had entered the house in those two hours.
More inexplicable things have been happening. One night, Mr and Mrs Creighton were sitting by their fire, when they heard a tremendous crash from the kitchen. “The drawer of knives and forks has fallen out,” they thought. But when they rushed into the kitchen there was again… nothing. “There is no explanation to these incidents,” said Mrs Creighton, “I am certain the house is haunted, but this does not worry us. One thing that did give me a big fright, and that was when I was carrying a cup of tea across my darkened bedroom. Suddenly the cup seemed to jump from the saucer, and tea spilled over me. The cup was in pieces on the floor. The saucer was not broken, and on it was a fragment of glass. I do not know how it got there, but the whole affair left me very shaky. I am sure some influence is trying to tell me something.”
Although she has never seen a ghost – villagers say a smuggler’s apparition has been seen near the cottage – Mrs Creighton did “feel” something in her home one dark winter’s evening. Sitting alone, she heard a rustling. The sound moved across the room and faded away. “Fortunately I am not a nervous person,” smiled Mrs Creighton.
The Creighton’s cottage contains another strange feature – a curiously shaped wall. Puzzled, Mr and Mrs Creighton want to have it opened up. This, they hope, might reveal a long-forgotten tunnel, or secret cache, and put an end to the mystery of Smugglers’ Cottage.
Portsmouth Evening News, 21st May 1958.