"Please Give Me A New House" Pleads A Mother Who Believes Her Home Is Haunted By A Ghost Of A Man Called Nigel!

• Stacey McGill claims ghost flicks lights and microwave on and off 
•  Paranormal investigator identified 'male energy' at Loughborough house 
• Ms McGill felt 'cobwebs' on her skin when she moved in last December 
• Lives with partner Carl, 25, and their 18-month-old daughter Chelsey 
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A frightened mother is demanding a new home for her and her young family - because she is convinced their terraced house is haunted by the ghost of a man called Nigel. Housing association tenant Stacey McGill claims a spiritual presence flicks lights on and off, tampers with electrical appliances, moves posters around the walls and causes the floorboards to creak at the property in Loughborough. The 29-year-old, who moved into the house last December with her partner Carl, 25, and their 18-month-old daughter Chelsey, said a medium she hired to investigate the property confirmed a 'male energy' at their home.

Paranormal: 
The mother-of-one claims a 'presence' in the house has flicked lights on and off, moved posters around the walls, and caused the floorboards to creak Paranormal investigator Dave Vickers said he felt a ghost run through his body at Ms McGill's home, and told how he allowed the spirit to communicate with the mother-of-one via a scrawled message on a piece of paper. He described sensing the presence of a man aged in his late 30s whose name was Nigel. 

Ms McGill said: 
'We came back from the shops yesterday and as I went to get some cereal the light went on without anyone touching the switch. It's so unnerving. 'I noticed that something was there when I moved in straight away. I just felt cobwebs all over my skin. I knew it wasn't right. Then Carl said that he had felt the same. 'Next the microwave started going on and off by itself and posters have moved around the walls. 'One morning we were woken at 3am by the sound of maintenance works. It was so loud. But there were no work men, it was the ghost.' 

Ms McGill eventually contacted Mr Vickers, who has since made two visits to her home with infra-red night vision camcorders, EMF metres to measure electrical magnetic frequency, and digital cameras.' 'He confirmed that there is a presence here,' Ms McGill said. 'We were in a flat around the corner before. We didn't have any problems there. I just want the housing association to find me somewhere to live that isn't haunted. 

'The last tenant did not experience anything. But some people are more susceptible to ghosts than others. I have felt paranormal presences before.' Mr Vickers, from TSL Holistic Centre, twice visited Ms McGill's home with Carly Adams from the Female Paranormal Investigation team to examine her claims. 'On entering the house I was immediately aware of energy at the end of the hall way, the energy presented itself as a male, and kept saying "I am at the back",' said Mr Vickers. 'A lot of the activity occurred to the back of the property, mainly the rear bedroom. Going up the stairs the male energy made his presence more known, cold spots were experienced. 'I picked up on a man in his late thirties, however his mental age was a lot lower, he was a recluse and was kept hidden away during his younger days by his parents. 'They were embarrassed due to his mental disability. 'I picked up on the name "Nigel". He eventually turned to drink to forget his own fears of life. 'This spirit energy means no harm to anyone and will not harm anyone. Further investigations into the haunting may be needed,' Mr Vickers concluded. It was during the medium's second visit that he sensed that the spirit wanted to communicate, he said. 'I allowed the spirit to use me as a medium and give any messages through writing. This was carried out in the dark. I sat with paper on my lap and pen in hand in the dark while turning into spirit. 

Medium: 
Dave Vickers sensed the presence of a man in his late 30s named Nigel at Ms McGill's Loughborough home 'I pictured Nigel in my mind and my hand started moving the pen. 'Although when we examined the writings things are hard to make out, both Carly and I felt he meant no harm. 'I conveyed love and light to him and told him that he had nothing to fear and that he was free of those hurtful feelings.' Mr Vickers found that the posters and creaking floor boards could be explained by natural occurrences. 

Graeme Stewardson, head of housing at East Midlands Housing Association, said: 
'We are aware of the unusual activities reported by Ms McGill and have listened to her concerns in a sensitive manner. 'We understand that she has previously sought advice from specialists in this field. We will continue to offer Ms McGill our support and advice as a landlord. 'There have been only three tenants, including Ms McGill, in the property in the last 13 years, and we have not had any reports of this nature before. 'As far as we know, the house does not have an unusual history'.

Ely Family Ask To Move Out Of Their ‘Haunted House'!

PARANORMAL investigators have been called to investigate poltergeist activity that a resident says has been tormenting her for weeks.

 Lisa Way Believes Her Council House In Ely, Cardiff Is Haunted! 

Lisa Way, who lives in Ely, said she was taking action to exorcise the demon spirits that plague the home she shares with her two teenage daughters – after a recent visit from a pastor failed to do the trick.

The ghostly goings-on began three weeks ago, on her daughter’s 14th birthday.

She said: “We had been seeing things out of the corner of our eye for a while.

“But on that day things started getting weirder. I started feeling cold air on my face. I saw white light flash by the door. We started taking pictures with our camera phones – and the strangest things started showing up. Arms coming round doors, legs coming down the stairs.”

“I said ‘we need to get out of here right now’. We haven’t slept here since.”

She said that the most frightening incident was a few nights after the birthday, when Lisa approached her front door – and saw a man staring at her from the front window.

Since then there have been lights that turn on and off by themselves, kettles that turn on in the middle of the night and the sound of children running around upstairs.

Lisa said she was desperate for the council to move her out of the house, in Marcross Road, Ely, where she has lived happily for more than 10 years until she realized it was haunted. “I spoke to the council and said we can’t stay here – but they don’t have a policy for dealing with haunted houses. They gave me a business card for a pastor. He blessed the house but it only made things worse.”

The family has turned to mediums Richard Oliver and Christopher Rees, better known as Paranormal Wales.

A spokeswoman for Cardiff council confirmed it did not have a policy for dealing with paranormal activity and they had not received notice from the tenant she wished to move houses.

“Should the tenant wish to apply they should contact C2C on 029 2087 2027,” the spokeswoman said.

The Ghosts In The Living Room!

In 1992 the BBC transmitted a drama that was based on a number of the factual reports I am going to show. The underlying aim of the makers of the drama was not just to frighten, but to demonstrate in a vivid way what had happened to the very idea of reality in television.

It was called Ghostwatch, and it caused a national sensation because thousands of viewers believed it was real. And, at the time, the BBC promised never to show it again.

I want to tell the story of the rise of the suburban poltergeist in factual TV from the 1970s onwards, how those reports inspired Ghostwatch, and how the extraordinary reaction on the night Ghostwatch was transmitted in 1992 showed clearly where the real ghosts of our society had now gone to live. They are inside television itself - a strange nether world of PR-driven half truths, synthetic personalities, and waves of apocalyptic fear.

In the 1950s and early 1960s the reporting of ghosts on television followed the classical rules. The hauntings were in old houses, stately homes, or ancient ruins. Here is a perfect example. It is from the Tonight programme in 1963. The reporter also follows an accepted format - he is indulgently sceptical, but brings with him a religious "expert" who is going to exorcise the presence.

But then, in the early 1970s, there was a peculiar change. The ghosts moved. They gave up haunting old castles and ruins and moved into the most ordinary suburban houses.

The battle between good and evil was now relocated into the suburban kitchens, bedrooms and even the stairs of modern Britain. Throughout, the ghosts also showed perfect taste in wallpaper.

Here is an extract from one of the earliest. It is the haunting of a council house in Swindon in 1973.

At this stage the film-makers are still following the classical editorial model. The local vicar brings in a religious "expert" to expel the poltergeist. The vicar smokes a fantastic pipe - and there is a wonderful shot of the Mr and Mrs Pellymounter watching the exorcism.

As the suburban hauntings multiplied in the mid 1970s, the approach of the programme-makers changed. The idea of exorcism disappeared and the TV reporters decided to turn to science. They would use special recording equipment to discover whether the hauntings were real, and the stories were turned into a battle between superstition and reason.

Here is part of a film made by the BBC Northeast regional magazine programme in 1975. It's about a 1960s block of maisonettes that have been built over an old disused coal mine just outside Newcastle.

The reporter and the crew decide to stay all night in an empty flat - and set up their special cameras and audio recording equipment.

There also a wonderful long-held shot in which one of the haunted occupants shows the reporter what the spirit did with his golf clubs.

The poltergeists kept spreading.

In January 1977 one turned up at 16 Ruskin Road, Dartford in Kent. Ann and Barry Robertson who lived there were terrified and are fleeing the house as the film starts.

There is a change in this film. The suburban couple at the heart of the story are no longer secondary figures in the story. They turn it into an emotional melodrama where they become the focus - Ann especially who has an epic turn of phrase:

"I can't even face taking the furniture with me because this thing - whatever it is - has interfered with my home. It's touched my things. And I'm so frightened that I won't even take the things with me now. So we're back to square one where we started. With nothing"

Suddenly suburbia becomes not boring - but sinister, mysterious and epic.

The film also interviews the man from Dartford Council who Ann and Barry are demanding rehouse them. He is sympathetic but then comes out with a great quote - "I'm afraid the Dartford Council Transfer Points Scheme doesn't recognise ghosts - and therefore they can't be pointed".

And then - ten months later in November 1977 - the Nationwide programme made a film which brought all the elements of the modern haunted house together into a perfect form. And it also introduced a powerful new character into the melodrama - the psychic investigator who was determined to prove that the haunting was real.

A poltergeist had apparently turned up in a house in the north London suburb of Ponders End in the borough of Enfield. The Nationwide film was going to make this house famous.

And along with the house, the film would also make a star out of this man - he was Maurice Grosse who was an investigator for the Society for Psychical Research. Maurice Grosse would come to dominate the TV-ghostworld interface.

The film is beautifully made. It is possibly the best evocation of the mood that is at the heart of all these film reports - a transformation of the dull interior of an ordinary suburban house into an intense psycho-drama where even the most mundane of objects, in this case a Lego-block, becomes possessed by an inner destructive force.

And the poltergeist has by now gone beyond wallpaper. It has chosen the most wonderful bedroom to live in. The walls are covered with Bay City Rollers and David Soul posters. And the shot of an elderly psychic investigator sitting among the images of late 70s teen dreams while listening to the recordings of himself communicating with the poltergeist is just brilliant.

The fascination with the Enfield haunting didn't stop there. Two years later BBC Scotland made another film inside the house.

This time they concentrated on the two daughters - Margaret and Janet Hodgson. The crew filmed the two girls as the poltergeist seems to speak through Janet, the strange voice coming and going in front of the camera.

It is weird and a bit frightening - but you also think that she may be faking it. And it is fascinating to watch the long held shots of the two daughters, studying their faces to try and work out what they are up to. And it introduces a new element into these haunting stories - that children are not innocent, but potentially malicious and a bit dangerous (like in The Innocents). A modern fear that was going to grow much bigger in the 1990s - especially again on TV.

The girls have since said that they faked some of the incidents in the house. But they insist that they were only doing this to test and tease Mr Grosse - and that much of it was real.

The Scottish crew had also got their own mini-scoop. They persuaded the police who had seen the chair levitate inside the house in 1977 to describe it. It is a fantastic two-shot.

The Enfield haunting became famous, and so did the psychic investigator, Maurice Grosse. He was completely convinced by the two Hodgson girls from Ponders End and it launched him on a thirty-year odyssey to try and fight against the rise of what he saw as a narrow-minded sceptical rationalism in Britain.

Grosse was a wonderful person. He died in 2006 aged 87. He had been trained as an engineer - and back in the 1940s he had become an inventor. His most famous invention was called "The Cost-Effective Poster Machine". It is better known as the rotating poster display which you can still see today at thousands of bus stops.

In 1976 Maurice Grosse's 22 year old daughter died in a traffic accident. It devastated both him and his wife. But then Maurice came to believe that his daughter was trying to make contact with him from beyond the grave. This led him to join the Society for Psychical Research - and that took him into the Enfield house just a year later.

Maurice Grosse was well aware that his quest to contact the supernatural was driven by the intense feelings of loss he had experienced through his daughter's death. This made him intensely sympathetic to the people he encountered in his investigations.

In 1996 Grosse made a Video Diary with the BBC. He went around with a Hi-8 camera, operating it himself. He then had full editorial control - and used it to put together a beautiful and moving film.

It is structured around various of his visits to hauntings - both past and present - but he uses that structure to also tell the story of his life - both factual and emotional. He describes his daughter's death and the feelings that raised in him, and the odyssey it led him into, in a very moving way.

One of the most touching moments is when he sits in an ordinary living room and talks to a couple who believe their dead son appears to them on their television. Grosse himself then becomes overtaken by emotion and has to leave the room

As you watch the film it becomes clear that Grosse believes that it is these intense feelings that give people, and the places they live in, the power to summon up poltergeists. The feelings give people something special - the power to pierce through the disappointing reality of their suburban lives and enter into something new and special. Another, and possibly better, world of high drama and raised emotion.

In 1988 a TV dramatist called Stephen Volk had an idea for a six-part drama based on all these suburban hauntings - the story would focus on how television had reported them. Volk's original idea was to have a TV reporter team up with a psychical researcher to investigate the haunting of a contemporary London council house. It was going to culminate in the final episode with a live broadcast from the house - and all hell was going to break loose.

Then Volk's producer, Ruth Baumgarten, suggested that instead they make a one-off play based on the sixth episode. Volk agreed. And he immediately realised that he could use the structure of a live outside broadcast to make a powerful drama that demonstrated dramatically what was happening to television as a medium - how the line between reality and fiction was getting blurred.

Out of that came Ghostwatch.

A few years ago Stephen Volk wrote a fantastic essay about the making of Ghostwatch. It was published by the Fortean Times. And you can find the whole thing here.

In it Volk describes his underlying aim - to make people look at what was happening to reality on television:

Ghostwatch was, of course, also about television.

It's quite difficult now to think back to the televisual landscape of 1992. Formats that dissolve the boundaries between factual and fictional TV have since become the staple diet of the schedules, and it's difficult to imagine a world where they were new or unusual. But this was the time of the first successful hybrids: docu-dramas and drama-docs. Drama series like NYPD Blue increasingly employed a hand-held camera style derived from documentary realism, and documentaries like Crimewatch and 999 were full of reconstructions using actors mix-and-matched to real footage of real people.

Ruth, the producer, and I discussed how we both felt we could no longer trust what we were seeing, what we were being shown or told by TV. The lines between the once distinct languages of factual and fictional TV were becoming dangerously blurred. Even the CNN Gulf War reports on Newsnight (with the infrared camerawork we duplicated in Ghostwatch) felt suspect, somehow unreliable. What was drama and what was not?

But then Volk added a line that I think goes to the heart of what has happened to TV ever since. The strange paradox that, at the very time that the audience is becoming more and more aware that not everything on TV is real, that same audience feel that if an event appears on TV - that is a guide to whether it is real or not.

Yet, paradoxically, television had also become the arbiter of reality, as John Waite exemplified on hearing of the release of his hostage cousin Terry in November 1991: "I won't believe it until I see it on TV."

Ghostwatch was transmitted on Halloween 1992. It was quite obvious from both the introduction and the titles that it was a work of fiction. But the reaction was astonishing - thousands of people rang in - either terrified or angry or to report that they were experiencing paranormal activity in their house at that very moment.

The next day there was a media storm - and the BBC reacted in its normal courageous way by burying the programme and disowning it. The Radio Times was apparently told never to mention it ever again. And Volk has described how it was like being airbrushed out of a photograph in Stalinist Russia.

But the extraordinary reaction rather proved the central aim of the drama.

It demonstrated the truth about modern television - that we all know that increasingly the line between fiction and non-fiction is blurred on TV. But far from making us distrust television this actually makes it more powerful. It possesses our imagination more powerfully precisely because we don't know what is real and what is not.

I think the reason is that, from the early 1990s onward, the big confident stories of our time started to collapse, and people were faced instead with an everyday reality composed only of small and mostly mundane fragments. In the face of that, factual television has increasingly become a two-dimensional version of our world where everything is amplified and distorted.

News reporting and factual television are populated today by a strange nether world of PR-driven half truths, synthetic personalities and waves of apocalyptic fear. It is a world that is like ours but is exaggerated - weird, wonderful and frightening.

It is just like living in a haunted suburban house on the fringes of North London - except that it is now the whole world. All the mundane and banal aspects of reality are taken and infused with an hysterical intensity - that we are both fascinated by and terrified of - whether it be food or Al Qaida. Yet we know in our hearts that much of this is either distorted or just untrue.

It is the true spirit world of our time.

It is made even weirder because, at the same time, audiences are shown harsh and terrifying moments of reality, but they are also insubstantial 2D images flickering on a box in the living room. They don't feel real, they look like a ghost world. Here is an example.

The tiny white figures you see that look like ghosts are actually still alive. But probably not for very long.

And here are some extracts from Ghostwatch - which show how much it was rooted in the suburban poltergeist reports of the 1970s. But also how it used them to brilliantly evoke the mood at the heart of today's television - where so much is half-fiction and half-real.

It is also very frightening - and a brilliant piece of TV drama. Just remember it's not real.

Newcastle Family Beg To Leave 'Haunted House'!

 A SPOOKED family have pleaded to be moved from their house . . . because they believe it’s haunted!

Kim Dunster and her partner Mathew White

Kim Dunster and her partner Mathew White believe their baby son’s bedroom has been taken over by ghouls.

And they have the videos they claim prove it.

The family are so convinced they have filled the ‘reason for move’ section on their official house change form with one word - ghosts.

Doubters too have waded into the debate with a psychic expert saying the eerie “orbs” caught on camera are simply dust particles.

However, the explanation has been scant consolation for the frightened family, who have all taken to sleeping in the same room.

The chilling goings-on first came to light when mum-of-two Kim found 18-month-old Thomas lying in his cot crying and staring into space.

The 26-year-old put it down to teething until she spotted him playing “boo”.

The youngster was even pointing round the room and at one point held his hands round his neck and screamed.

Kim and Mathew, 27, of Newbiggin Hall, Newcastle, began to wonder if their bungalow, built in 1964, was haunted after speaking to a former next door neighbor.

Kim, who is also mum to five-year-old Chloe, said: “Everybody laughs when we tell them but when we show them the videos they can’t believe it.

“We've filmed in other rooms of the house but the orbs only show up in Thomas’s room.

“A lady at the bus stop said she lived in the house next door and her daughter’s toys under the bed used to move at night.

“We can’t sleep at night. We just don’t want to be in this house any more.”

Matthew added: “I've never believed in ghosts but I just can’t explain this. There’s a chill in Thomas’s room and we get goosebumps when we’re in there.”

Psychic expert Paul Green, who also goes by the name of the Psychic Biker and runs Extreme Ghost Hunting, believes the so-called “orbs” are in fact dust particles.

Paul, who lives near Rothbury, Northumberland, said: “I didn't sense anything unusual in the room. The orbs are transparent, you can see the room through them. Most orbs that are spirits are more solid as they are energy.”

Allison Hodgson, head of housing management at Your Homes Newcastle, confirmed the couple had applied for alternative accommodation.

“None of the previous tenants have reported any similar events at the property, and we are not aware of anything similar taking place in the surrounding area either,” she said.

“Video footage captured at the house is inconclusive. We have offered advice and support to Miss Dunster on the options available to her family and are happy to continue to do this.”

Council To Relocate Newbiggin Hall ‘Haunted House' Family!

A FAMILY who fear their house is haunted can move to a new home, council bosses have agreed.

Kim Dunster and her partner Matthew White pleaded with housing officials to allow them to move, convinced their baby son’s bedroom had been taken over by spooks.

After setting up a camera in the tot’s room they claim eerie “orbs” appeared on film and were so spooked they all began sleeping in the same room. An official house change form was filled in by Your Homes Newcastle with a one-word reason – ghosts.

Now, after meeting with the council property managers, Kim spoke of her relief after being told that she, Matthew, 18-month-old Thomas, and five-year-old Chloe can move out and into another home nearby in Newbiggin Hall, Newcastle.

“I am relieved, but I feel quite sad at the same time – this is our home,” said Kim.

“It’s been our first proper home together but now we've got to pack up and move on . . . and hope that whatever it is that’s been haunting us doesn't follow.”

A spokesman for Your Homes Newcastle, confirmed the couple can have alternative accommodation.

He added: “However, they are not on a priority list. That’s not necessary for this part of Newcastle as homes comes free fairly frequently.

“The house they are moving out of will be allocated to someone else.”

The family first got the jitters several months ago when 26-year-old Kim found Thomas lying in his cot, crying and staring into space.

Later, she spotted him playing “boo” with “someone”, pointing around the room and in one spooky incident he even held his hands round his little neck before screaming.

Psychic expert Paul Green, who also goes by the name of the Psychic Biker and runs Extreme Ghost Hunting, believed the so-called “orbs” were in fact dust particles.

But after visiting the home he told Kim the ghost is of her grandma, who passed away in 1998.

Paul, of Rothbury, Northumberland, said: “To be honest my opinions of the orb in the video has not changed but in the bedroom there was the presence of a woman.

“This woman is her grandmother, who is there because the family have had a hard time of late. I did “speak” to the grandmother and ask her to cool her interaction with the family and she reluctantly agreed.”

Haunted Houses: Who ya gonna call? Try Suzanne…

Unwanted guests of the ghostly kind are alive and well, discovers Christopher Hall!

We all love a home with a family spirit. Balavil House, on the other hand, has two spirits - according to legend, they are of young housemaids who died there. The property in the Scottish Highlands featured as the home of Lord Kilwillie, the character played by Julian Fellowes in the BBC's Monarch of the Glen. But the spirits are not a fictional creation, according to the family who have lived in Balavil since 1993.

The maids are called Agnes and Sarah, and turn on lights and heaters, tinker with cars, fold clothes and rearrange kitchen utensils as well as fulfil more traditional ghostly functions such as knocking on doors and sending shivers through the place.

"I have five grown-up children and nine grandchildren who visit, plus my wife, Marjorie, and myself living here. We never, ever feel threatened. There are tinkling noises and pictures fall to the ground all the time. But we're used to it," says the owner, Allan Macpherson Fletcher, a consultant at estate agent Strutt & Parker.

Part of the house is used as a bed and breakfast, for shooting parties and as a corporate conference venue. "I was showing one group around the haunted areas. A door opened entirely by itself and one person who was already spooked by the prospect of seeing a ghost, legged it down the stairs at great speed. They hadn't had a drink first," says Macpherson Fletcher.

"The Scottish Paranormal Association says the place is full of friendly spirits. I'm a sceptic but these events cannot be explained," he says.

This kind of experience is not unique. Psychic groups claim tens of thousands of UK properties are haunted - and ghosts, it seems, do not recognise social divisions.

The local authority at Easington, in County Durham, earlier this year paid for the exorcism of a modest three-bedroom council house whose tenant, Sabrina Fallon, reported groans, doors slamming and clothes moving around, apparently unaided.

Meanwhile, Nottinghamshire businessman Anwar Rashid has just abandoned Clifton Hall, the 52-room country pile he bought last year for £3.6million. He says his wife and four children have been terrorised by mysterious noises and visions. The final straw, he says, has been the appearance of blood spots on a quilt in his baby's bed.

So, as Ray Parker Jr famously sang, if there's something strange in your neighbourhood, who ya gonna call? Well, you could try Suzanne Hadwin. She is a ghostbuster - although she prefers the term "spiritualist medium'' - and visits up to 40 homes a year to remove unwanted spirits.

"It's not just noises or incidents that suggest a haunting. It can be that family members are depressed or arguing a lot. They take in the atmosphere created by spirits who are reliving experiences about the time of their deaths," says Hadwin, who runs a "spirit-removing'' business called Gabriel from her home in Sunderland.

"It can take two to three days to remove spirits. I visit the house, walk through every room and find where the spirits are concentrated. I lay salt at the front and back doors and pass through the house with incense and sometimes sage. In nine out of 10 cases the spirits are murderers or have themselves been murdered," she says.

Many of her clients over the past 14 years have been people who recently moved in to a property and noticed ghostly activity. "The owners don't need to move out. I get rid of the spirits and the people can stay," says Hadwin, who has visited homes throughout Britain.

A few sharp estate agents have been known to play up a property's ghostly image when trying to attract gullible American buyers, but even the scrupulously professional admit to coming across miasmic ladies, rattling keys and freezing-cold rooms.

James Greenwood runs Stacks Property Search & Acquisition, a buying agency run by the same family for 30 years. "My father went to see a house where someone pointed out a strange marking on a wall," he says. "The outline of a person was visible. History had it that a man had been shot there. The pellets surrounded the man and had gone into the wall, forming the outline of the body's shape. Whatever the owners had done to obscure the pattern - paint, wallpaper, plaster - had failed. It just kept reappearing."

Philip Selway, of another search agency, The Buying Solution, says his eeriest experience was at Frome, in Somerset, in 2006. "I found a lovely property, Rode House. The client liked it but we later found out it was one of the most haunted homes in the country. In Victorian times it was the scene of a gruesome child murder," he says. The deal fell through.

Estate agents selling a home must formally disclose to would-be buyers any issue that may materially affect the transaction. "We can't rely on the vendor's word. We have to see documentation about ownership, planning issues, and so on. Quite how one does that about a ghost, I'm not so sure," says Macpherson Fletcher.

There are no recorded disputes in the UK of new owners taking legal action against their sellers for failing to disclose details of a ghost. But it is happening in Italy.

Gaetano and Stefania Bastianelli bought a house in the Umbrian town of Spoleto, without being told it was built on the site of a cemetery, near a previous property that had required an exorcism. The Bastianellis spent three years hearing things go bump in the night before resorting to the law. The row is now being settled out of court.

We British seem to do things differently. Estate agency Clee, Tompkinson & Francis (01558 823601), at Llandeilo in south Wales, is selling a haunted former pub, the King's Head, for £635,000. It is ripe for conversion into a family home. Far from being shy about the ghost, the agency is inviting potential buyers to spend the night and get to know their ''lodger''.

It might just be the market slowdown, but so far there have been no takers. Business for this haunted house, it seems, is dead quiet.

Mum, There's A Poltergeist In My Bedroom!

The VERY strange case of Britain's most unlikely haunted house...  

Ellie Manning’s bedroom looks like it belongs to a stroppy teenager. The wardrobe doors are off their hinges and propped against the pink wall. 

The pictures hang at drunken angles. A bright pink chair sits in the middle of the room, as if abandoned in a hurry, and tangled piles of clothes and toys litter the floor.

So far, so messily normal. But on closer inspection, things don’t feel quite right.

Three pink plastic crucifixes hang in a cluster above the unmade bed. A group of crystals line the windowsill like sentries. And the floor around the bedroom door is gritty with a thick layer of salt. 

Spooked: Eleven-year-old Ellie Manning has been too scared to go upstairs in the family home in Holbrooks, Coventry, for fear of what the poltergeist might do next

Oh yes, and Ellie isn't a teenager. She’s just 11 years old and for the past month she’s been too scared to go upstairs — far less go into her room — in the three-bedroom house she shares with brother Jaydon, six, mother Lisa, and Lisa’s partner Anthony Powell, 25, in Holbrooks, Coventry.

‘We've had priests sprinkling everything with holy water, waving crucifixes and saying prayers, spiritualists with protective crystals and mediums laying salt down at the doorways to keep the evil spirits out,’ says Lisa, 34. 

‘We've tried it all after everything that’s happened here in the past six months.’

Lisa’s ‘everything’ includes, she says, doors opening and slamming shut, pounding footsteps, chairs that move on their own, cutlery drawers that hurtle to the floor, kettles that fly, tea cups that float and shatter in mid-air and bleach bottles that double as ghostly missiles. 

All of which she claims is part of a ‘sinister force’ that has been terrorising her family — pushing and shoving them, hurling things at them, knocking pictures off the walls, destroying their belongings, speaking in strange voices and maiming their pet dogs — since last September.

‘People say it’s all too far fetched — like something from a horror film — and that we’re making it up,’ she says as she takes me on a tour round her end-of-terrace council house. 

‘But this is our life and our home and it’s really happening to us and we can’t take it any longer.’

The devil within: Footage captured by Ellie's mother, Lisa, shows a cupboard flying open and a chair moving across the room

And so, earlier this week and after months of pleading with the local council to rehouse them, Lisa claims she snapped and made public a home video recording of the pink chair in Ellie’s bedroom, seemingly moving by itself.

‘It took us weeks to capture the poltergeist. First it was just shadows, which we knew wouldn’t be enough to convince anyone, then the video melted in the recorder, but finally we caught it.’

The video does indeed show the chair moving. Although, unfortunately for Lisa, it’s not quite possible to see the chair’s base and ascertain if anything — like a thread, or a stick, or a magnet — could, just possibly, be propelling it.

Ever since, the family have found themselves in a maelstrom of publicity — on television, in the papers — and not all of it good.

‘People are calling us liars. They say it’s a hoax. But all I can say is — we’ve been through six kettles, all my casserole dishes have been smashed, the children’s television and Nintendo have been destroyed and I’ve only two cups left that aren’t chipped from being hurled around.’

Goodness.

According to Lisa and Anthony, it all started back in September, when they and Lisa’s two children moved in. ‘From day one, I felt like somebody was watching me — particularly in the kitchen,’ says Lisa. 

‘But I wasn’t that bothered. It never occurred to me it was anything sinister — just a silly shadowy feeling.’

Phenomenon: Things had been thrown around the Mannings' house and lights turned on and off - striking fear into the family

Within a couple of weeks, though, lights started flicking on and off, footsteps pounded on the upstairs landing when all the family were downstairs and doors slammed shut at odd times. 

Again, Lisa — who insists she’d had no previous experience of ghosts or spirits and has never even had her fortune read — wasn’t fazed.

‘I thought it must be a wiring fault, but the electrician couldn’t find anything wrong,’ she says. ‘So we just tried to forget about it.’

But things soon escalated. 

One night last October Lisa and Anthony were woken by a freezing draft. The front door, which Lisa insists she’d locked with a key earlier, was wide open and the sound of heavy running footsteps rang out from Ellie’s room. But when they checked on her, she was fast asleep. 

Then things started going wild in the kitchen. 

‘First of all, the kettle kept smashing on to the floor. And the cutlery drawers started shooting out. Then, one by one, my casserole dishes smashed onto the floor. For weeks we kept making excuses for the children’s sake — it must have been the wind, it must have been one of the dogs. 

‘Ellie started hearing voices in her room and we told her she must have been imagining it.

‘And then one day I said, ‘I think we should get a crucifix’, and suddenly a heavy glass ashtray came flying from the kitchen into the sitting room, followed by the kettle. 

‘As we fled to the door, a dirty mug floated off the dining room table and shattered in mid-air and Ellie and I felt a force hit us in the shoulder like a great shove, before footsteps pounded up the stairs.’

Terrified, the family fled to stay with Lisa’s mum. According to Lisa, that was the end of any pretending. And the beginning of a new and alarmingly busy phase of ‘spiritual activity’. 

Because, while most modern ghostly sightings seem to be limited to a few floating light orbs, a sudden temperature drop, or a sinister feeling, here in Coventry, extraordinary story after extraordinary story tumbles out.

In at the deep end: Daily Mail reporter Jane Fryer (left) meets up with Lisa Manning to get a true taste of just what has been going on in the haunted house

So there’s the time Ellie was hit by a flying bleach bottle, the framed picture of the lead singer of UB40 that bashed Anthony in the side of the head, the mysterious injuries suffered by their pet dogs — one was ‘pushed’ down the stairs, breaking two of its legs — the time they were all locked in, hysterically tugging at a living room door held shut by an unseen force, forcing them to  flee out of the window. 

And not forgetting the time Lisa stood on the front lawn, looked up at Ellie’s bedroom window to see the lights flashing on and off and the blinds shooting up and down until suddenly they parted and she saw ‘something huge and dark — about seven feet tall and like an animal.’

Sadly the children aren’t here today to share their experiences, but Anthony more than makes up for it with his claims that: ‘I’d wake up with scratches all over my chest and big red hand prints on my arms as if someone had been grabbing me in the night.’

‘Even Jaydon and Ellie had scratches on their bodies,’ adds Lisa. ‘But we hadn’t put two and two together then.’

Or, sadly, taken any photographs.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the family have brought in a steady stream of spiritualists, priests, mediums, you name it — who have arrived clutching white candles, holy water, crystal pendants, large containers of table salt (to lay at the doorways to discourage the spirits) and a host of fantastic theories about spiritual doorways.

‘One medium said that this place was a like a portal hole for spirits,’ says Lisa, pointing to a spot on the sitting room floor. 

‘So it’s a bit like a bus stop. They all queue here, travel up through the portal hole, look round and if there’s been a spirit here and there’s negative energy, they’ll come and join.’

New start? The family are hoping that following a visit by TV 'ghostbuster' Derek Acorah, their torment is over

It wasn’t all quacks. The local council sent a Church of England priest (‘they only started taking it seriously once they saw the video’) who sprayed holy water, said lots of prayers and, according to Lisa, recommended they were not the right family to stay in the house.

This week they even had celebrity TV ‘ghostbuster’ Derek Acorah round — armed with more crystals, salt, cleansing prayers and a film crew — who claimed it was all down to a very angry man called Jim, who once lived in this spot, died of a heart attack aged 58 and had attached himself to Ellie. 

According to Lisa, the general pattern has been that, after every ‘cleansing’ (and a night of offended banging and crashing), things have quietened down, only to veer back to abnormal in a matter of weeks.

‘It starts building again with slamming doors and flying cutlery. Then the whole house starts to feel tense — I’ll start getting headaches, Ellie (who is staying with her grandma until things calm down) gets a pain in her stomach, Anthony just feels weird and the air feels cloudy and muggy — almost pressurised — until things explode with another bang.’

Derek Acorah insists that, after his ministering this week, the poltergeist will not return. Lisa, who is crossing her fingers, claims the house already feels different — ‘more like my house, for once’ — and, amazingly, claims she’s very happy to stay if ‘Jim’ really has gone and she can persuade her daughter to return home. 

Problem solved: Psychic Derek Acorah insists the poltergeist will not return to haunt the Coventry home

Which is all splendid news of course, but doesn’t deal with the doubters and cynics who claim Lisa and Anthony have made it all up.

Lisa, however, is standing firm.

‘I don’t care who knows now or what they say. All I want is that no one else has to go through what we’ve been through. Come and live here yourself for a bit if you want and see if it’s a hoax. Just take a look around you — does this look like a normal house?’

I take one last long look before I leave and she’s absolutely right — there aren’t many unchipped mugs in the kitchen cupboard, Ellie’s room is a right mess and the house is littered with crystals, crucifixes, candles and salt. 

But that’s about it. 

The pink chair is still and quiet, none of the doors is slamming, the bleach is safely tucked away in the bathroom cupboard and there are no scratches or fingerprints on show.

Maybe this poor family really has been terrorised for the past six months and Derek Acorah really has done the job, or maybe it’s all an elaborate hoax. Who knows? 

But I should perhaps mention that, as I later discovered, the previous family to live at the Coventry house apparently left in the middle of the night, leaving brand new carpets and all their possessions, in their hurry to get away.

Help! My Council House Is Haunted!

A single mum says she is too scared to remain in her Lincoln council house after a series of ghostly goings-on.

Jade Callaby, 26, moved into the Prial Avenue property more than six years ago and says strange things began to happen almost immediately.

She has told the council about appliances switching themselves on, objects moving of their own accord, unusual banging noises and shadows seemingly without source.

And she says that this paranormal activity has now escalated.

Despite priests being called in to perform a third "blessing", the full time mother has fled in fear with her nine-year-old daughter Courtney.

"It's been absolutely terrifying," said Ms Callaby. "Kettles and vacuum cleaners have turned on and off by themselves, cups have moved, dark shadows have appeared and darkened rooms and my daughter has been woken up by the sound of heavy breathing in front of her face – but nobody was there.

"I used to try and explain things away, but now I believe – and I'm not staying there another night."

And City of Lincoln Council housing officials say it's not just Prial Avenue where they've had ghost problems reported.

Tenancy management team leader John Morris, said: "There have been reported cases of haunted council houses in the past, but there has never been any tangible evidence of haunting".

"We will do everything we can to support Ms Callaby.

"However if she feels she can no longer live at the property, she may, of course, apply to move to alternative accommodation."

Council Gives Away £375,000 Manor 'Because It Is Haunted'!

A council has given away a £375,000 manor house after potential buyers were put off by rumours of hauntings, ghosts and ghouls.

Wymering Manor: Portsmouth City Council have now donated the Grade II listed building to the Wymering Manor Trust along with a £30,000 grant for repair work.  

Wymering Manor in Portsmouth, Hants, is said to be haunted by a choir of nuns who scuttle across hallways as well as a host of unseen hands which reach out and touch passers by.

The property, thought to be the oldest house in Portsmouth having been mentioned in the 1086 Doomsday book, was placed on sale at an auction with a reserve price of £375,000 last year but failed to sell.

Portsmouth City Council have now donated the Grade II listed building to the Wymering Manor Trust along with a £30,000 grant for repair work.

The group will attempt to restore the house to its former glory, estimated at a total cost of more than £500,000, before opening it as a tourist attraction.

The spirits of whispering children and Sir Roderick of Porchester, who was murdered outside the manor in the middle ages, are said to be among the ghosts haunting the property.

Ghost-hunters have reported the sudden drops in temperature and other strange apparitions that go on inside the building.

David Scanla, who used to live in the house, said he hadn't had any problems with ghosts but calimed he had seen them.

Portsmouth City Council bought the property in the 1960's and leased it to the Youth Hostel Association until 2006.

Jeremy Lamb, a chartered surveyor who tried to sell the property in 2010, said: "It's certainly a unique house.

"Although they patrol it on a 24-hour basis because it attracts lots of people who are intrigued by its levels of paranormal activity, they refuse to work alone there at night."

8 FEB 2013