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Willington Quay, Tyne and Wear (1972)

The Haunted Housewife. By Bill Owen.

Housewife Janet Yates has a haunting fear of things that go bump in the night. A ghost which she says has been following her for the past eight years has now turned to violence – and she has a bump on her head to prove it. Mrs Yates, aged 32, of Bewicke Street, Willington Quay, has called in a medium to try to find out why the ghost pursues her wherever she goes. She said yesterday “In the past the main evidence I have had of the ghost is banging and crashing around the house and objects being moved. But the other night I felt a severe bump on the head which felt as if it came from a human fist. I turned round and of course there was no one there.”

Mrs Yates first saw the ghost eight years ago when she was living in Hertfordshire. “My husband and I saw the figure of a young girl, kneeling on the floor, crying. We later discovered that a century earlier, on the same site, a girl in her teens had an illegitimate child which died.” Seven years ago, Mrs Yates moved to Manchester and the ghost followed. “It used to travel round the house, switching lights on and off and it would terrify me and the children. Everywhere I have been, neighbours and visitors to the house have witnessed the ghost and some of them are surprised that I can stand it. I have lived in Willington Quay for 18 months now and I can always hear footsteps in the house.”

Mrs Yates’s next-door neighbour, Mrs Mary Moyle, aged 32, said yesterday: “One night I heard Mrs Yates’s children screaming and sobbing. I went to their bedroom. They were fast asleep. Many times I have heard peculiar noises coming from next door when there has been no one in and I firmly believe that Mrs Yates is sharing the house with a ghost.

Mrs Yates said: “The medium who visited me said the ghost has some message for me and I want to find out what it is before I get it exorcised.”

Newcastle Journal, 6th November 1972.