The Poltergeist Prince of London E-Book

James Clark

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

It began with a key. One afternoon in 1956, in the home of the Hitchings family in Battersea, south London, a small silver key appeared on Shirley Hitchings' bed. This seemingly insignificant event heralded the beginning of one of the most terrifying, incredible and mysterious hauntings in British history. The spirit, who quickly became known as 'Donald', began to communicate, initially via tapping sounds, but over time - and with the encouragement of psychical researcher Harold Chibbett, whose case-files appear here – by learning to write. Soon, the spirit had begun to make simply incredible claims about his identity, insisting that he was one of the most famous figures in world history – but what was the truth? Here, for the first time, is the full story, told by the woman right at the heart of it all – Shirley herself.

Leseprobe

Dedicated to the memory of Harold Chibbett, a real gentleman who became a dear friend. Thank you for everything you did for us.

Shirley Hitchings

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Foreword by Shirley Hitchings

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I: It Started with a Key

Part II: The King of Shades

Discussion

Epilogue

Appendix

Bibliography

Plate Section

Copyright

FOREWORD

I am very grateful to Harold Chibbett for keeping such good records of Donald’s haunting. Without his hard work this book could not have been written.

I was only a child when all this happened and I did not really know what was going on. At the time a lot was kept from me by Mr Chibbett and my parents, to protect me from harm or worry. However, I can honestly say that what is in the book is true and did happen.

I am now in my seventies and, looking back, my one regret is that Donald took my teenage years away from me.

I think Donald wanted his story told and I am glad at last of the opportunity to carry out his wish. Whoever or whatever he was, I would like to think that he was the French Dauphin, but you must decide this for yourself.

James Clark has been extremely patient and I thank him for his time in writing this book with me.

Shirley Hitchings, 2013

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are grateful to the following people who helped us during our research for this book: Peter Edwards, Helen Farnsworth, the late Andrew Green, the late Norah Green, Janice Holton, Kate Jarvis, Steve Jebson, John Kahila, Roberto Labanti, Joe McNally, Kieron McNulty and Robert Schneck, as well as all those others who asked that their names be withheld.

Special thanks also go to Jayne Ayris, for casting her expert eyes over more than one draft of this material and offering invaluable feedback, and to Alan Murdie for much help and encouragement and for enabling the reproduction of images owned by the estate of the late Andrew Green.

In addition, we owe a deep debt of gratitude to Harold Chibbett for documenting these events and to Shirley’s father Walter (Wally) Hitchings for so conscientiously maintaining a journal recording what took place.

To anyone we have overlooked, we sincerely apologise.

INTRODUCTION

This story was very nearly lost.

Numerous newspaper articles appeared during the early weeks of these events and a few brief summaries of what took place later appeared in books about the paranormal. However, by far the most detailed reports were those made by the psychical researcher Harold Chibbett and his records were almost thrown away.

Chibbett died in 1978 and after his wife Lily followed him some sixteen years later their surviving relatives had no desire to hold onto his vast collection of investigation reports. Chibbett had always promised Shirley that the records relating to her story would one day be hers, so his relatives told her she could collect whatever she wanted before everything went to the rubbish tip.

Shirley and her husband Derek raced from the south coast of England to Chibbett’s house in north London. There they discovered an Aladdin’s Cave of paranormal papers, the repository of Chibbett’s decades of investigation into esoteric subjects. It was clear, though, that the process of discarding material had already begun and that there would be no time for a return trip. As tempting as it was simply to grab the entire collection there was far too much to take with them, so with Derek’s help Shirley set about looking for material relating specifically to her and rescuing as much as she could.

The papers she saved hold tantalising hints of Chibbett’s other investigations (such as that into ‘Charlie’ the Basingstoke Poltergeist), the full details of which are gone now. But Shirley did find a vast amount – probably the majority – of the documents dealing with her story.

For more than a decade afterwards those papers gathered dust in her attic, incomplete, dog-eared and in no real order. By the mid-2000s, however, Shirley was contemplating using them to put her full story on record, largely to redress the way she felt some authors had, over the years, misrepresented what had happened. Working with James Clark, a writer who had recently looked into her story for a book titled Haunted Wandsworth, Shirley was able to reconstruct large parts of Chibbett’s account from the scattered pages she had saved. These were then combined with other source materials such as contemporary news reports and the three surviving volumes of her father’s diaries.

Another potential source of information was Shirley’s own memories of the events which took place more than half a century earlier. However, memories fade and become distorted with time. Moreover, while these events were taking place Shirley was kept mostly unaware of what Chibbett and her parents discussed regarding her and ‘her’ poltergeist. In fact Chibbett was always wary that he might be dealing with the product of Shirley’s subconscious mind and so he tried to avoid influencing her with his own speculations. Thus, much of the material that appears in this book was forgotten by, or new to, Shirley when we began to collate the records. As a result, presenting this story as a first-person account would have given a highly misleading impression. We have therefore deliberately written this book using the more detached third-person perspective, placing our emphasis on what was recorded at the time, rather than on what Shirley recalls now.

These records tell the tale of ‘Donald’, who has always been described as a poltergeist although this hardly seems an adequate label for the bizarre story which began to unfold in early 1956. It might also be an inaccurate description, given that we lack a universally accepted interpretation of what a poltergeist actually is. For simplicity’s sake, we refer to Donald as a poltergeist; readers should make up their own minds as to who – or what – ‘he’ really was.

Readers should also bear in mind that much of the material Chibbett documented recorded events from the Hitchings family’s point of view. That is to be expected because they were the people ‘on the spot’ at the time. But, because the family came to believe that Donald was a supernatural entity, they simply reported incidents by recording that Donald had, for example, banged on the wall at a particular time, without properly exploring any other explanation. Therefore, when we make a statement in this book along the lines of ‘Donald banged on the wall’ this should be taken as referring to a reported incident that was blamed on Donald, rather than necessarily indicating our acceptance of the original implication.

As will become clear, there has always been considerable debate as to what exactly was happening in Shirley’s home and the story told here can be read in different ways. Readers of a psychological disposition will doubtless interpret what they read from a very different perspective to those who believe that poltergeist phenomena are evidence of currently unexplained powers of the human mind, while those who believe that poltergeists are discarnate spirit beings will have very different opinions again. Although our Discussion chapter towards the end of this book briefly considers various interpretations of this story, it is not our intention to persuade readers to interpret what happened in any particular way. As Harold Chibbett would have wanted, the purpose of this book is simply to describe what took place.

It is thanks mainly to Chibbett’s hard work that the full story of Donald – the Poltergeist Prince of Battersea – can finally be told.

Donald’s Spelling

Whatever else he may have been, Donald was a notoriously unreliable speller and his communications are littered with errors. In many cases, the original version of his message no longer exists and the transcript given in this book comes from a record made by (usually) Harold Chibbett or Walter Hitchings. They (Chibbett especially) often improved what Donald had written by correcting spelling and grammatical mistakes, changing the occasional French word to English, and so on, in order to make the messages easier to read. Where possible, however, we give Donald’s original spelling so as to offer a more accurate representation of what was actually received: please assume that spelling errors in these messages are sic throughout.

Note also that Donald rarely used punctuation. In fact, his early tapped communications were delivered as continuous strings of letters without even any breaks between words. The dashes that appear in transcripts are used for the sake of clarity.

CHAPTER 1

It started with a key. Approximately 2 inches long and silver in colour, it was of the barrel type and probably designed for the sort of small lock that might be found on a desk or cupboard. The teenage Shirley Hitchings discovered it on top of her bed in No. 63 Wycliffe Road in late January 1956, but when she took it into the kitchen to ask whose it was nobody could identify it.

Her father walked through the house, testing the key in every door, desk and cupboard lock there was, but he was unable to find a match. Eventually he reasoned that, if it did not belong to anyone in the family it could not be important, so he left it overnight on a table in the kitchen. The next day the key was again found on top of Shirley’s bed.

It was an odd but minor episode that would have been swiftly forgotten had it not been for later events. With the benefit of hindsight, the key’s arrival signalled the start of something that would throw the family’s life into turmoil for years to come.

Wycliffe Road lies in Battersea, south London, approximately 1 mile north-east of the busy Clapham Junction railway station. Until the nineteenth century this was a rural area on the outskirts of the city but the opening of the station in March 1863 brought with it rapid commercial and residential development. Wycliffe Grove, as it was originally known, was built in 1866 at the junction with the main road (Lavender Hill). It was later extended northward and in 1895 was renamed Wycliffe Road. By this time the area had well and truly become a suburb of the expanding metropolis.

At the beginning of 1956 Wycliffe Road was an unremarkable street of terraced houses in an ordinary working-class district of London. The city itself was a largely drab and grey place, scarred by German bombs and still occasionally choked by dirty ‘pea-souper’ smogs; just four years earlier, the ‘Great Smog’ had caused thousands of deaths. But London was recovering: steps were being taken to improve air quality, the food and clothes rationing that had persisted from the Second World War was finally over, optimism was growing and Londoners were at long last leaving behind the grim years of post-war privation and starting to look to the future.

Standing about a third of the way along Wycliffe Road – as measured from Lavender Hill – was No. 63. It had for many years been home to the Hitchings family and, behind its neat little red curtains, the two-storey house was effectively divided into two separate properties. Walking through the front door took you into the passageway, where a staircase ahead led up the left-hand wall onto the upper floor. The ground-floor rooms were home to Walter (Wally) Hitchings, aged 47, his 51-year-old wife, Catherine (Kitty), and their 15-year-old daughter, Shirley. Occupying the upstairs rooms were Wally’s 73-year-old mother, Ethel, and ‘Mark’ (pseudonym), a male relative in his twenties (little information will be given about Mark because he later sought to put behind him the events detailed in this book).

Along the right-hand wall of the ground-floor passageway, the first door led into Wally and Kitty’s bedroom, the bay window of which looked out into the front garden. Next to their double bed was a small bed used by Shirley. It was a family secret that Shirley still slept in the same room as her parents since, from a very young age, she had been prone to sleepwalking and Kitty was so worried that Shirley might accidentally hurt herself while asleep that the bedroom door was kept locked at night. It was not a large room and the two beds together almost completely filled the floor space.

The next room was one the family sometimes called the ‘back room’ but, confusingly, also referred to as their ‘front room’ because it was the best room in the house. Either way, it was the room behind the downstairs front bedroom and it will be referred to here as the ‘front room’. It was kept comfortably furnished with a three-piece suite, a coffee table and a piano, but was generally off-limits, kept in pristine condition for use only on special occasions such as a visit from the vicar.

At the end of the passageway two steps led down to a turning where a door to the right opened into the back yard, while another door ahead led into the kitchen. The kitchen was the main room in the house, used by the family as a joint living/dining room. As well as four wooden, leather-seated chairs and three armchairs, the crowded room contained a dining table, another table against one wall and a glass-fronted cabinet holding ornaments and a few of Shirley’s childhood storybooks. Dominating one corner was a large television set. This was a real luxury item for Battersea in 1956 and it was a focal point for much of the family’s day-to-day life.

Behind the kitchen, at the rear of the house, was the scullery. From here a window looked out into the back yard, where the family had converted an old air-raid shelter to keep chickens.

It was by no means a prosperous household but it was clean and tidy, comfortably furnished and, in Shirley’s words, ‘quite a nice home’.

Soon after the mysterious key’s arrival, the noises began. They started in the downstairs bedroom at about 10.30 p.m. on Friday 27 January, shortly after the family had retired for the night. Wally described the sounds as ‘tapping as though water pipes bubbling’. They grew so loud that Shirley went upstairs to Ethel’s room to try to sleep, but there she found that something seemed to keep pulling at her bedclothes. Nobody slept that night.

The tapping recurred the following night, and the night after, and so on. Soon, there was tapping during the day too. ‘It would have a metallic sound,’ Shirley recalls. ‘An odd sound, a hollow sound.’ Sometimes it would come from the head of Shirley’s bed and at other times from her parents’ bed. It also started coming from the floors, ceilings and walls. The furniture too became a source of the tapping, which was sometimes accompanied by a scratching like the sound of claws. Now and then the tapping was heard while Shirley was in a different room, but on the vast majority of occasions she was present. It quickly became apparent that whatever was causing the sounds was somehow connected with the teenager.

Born on 18 December 1940, Shirley had turned 15 only six weeks before. Slim and dark-haired, she was an only child, imaginative, and frequently described as ‘highly strung’. Her school report cards depict a quiet, shy pupil who, although not especially gifted academically, was intelligent and always tried hard. Part of her difficulty with schoolwork stemmed from her problems with spelling and in fact when Shirley was in her thirties she would be diagnosed as slightly dyslexic. As a young girl, she would often sit with Ethel, watching her make lace, but despite her granddaughter’s pleas Ethel refused to teach this skill to Shirley, saying that Shirley was ‘too impatient’. Embroidery, on the other hand, was something that Shirley could and did enjoy. Her artistic nature also found outlets in dance (she took both ballet and tap-dancing classes), drawing and painting. Shirley believes she inherited her love of drawing from her father, who himself had a talent for sketching.

In all other respects, however, Walter Hitchings (born 27 October 1908) was a down-to-earth, practical sort who impressed all who met him with his obvious honesty. Over 6 feet tall and thin to the point of gauntness, Wally cut a striking figure. He had previously worked as a steam engine driver and he was now employed by London Transport to drive underground trains on the Northern Line.

His wife Kitty (born 31 August 1904) was ‘a small, elderly, and somewhat faded lady’ (Chibbett’s description) whose chronic arthritis forced her to spend much of the time in a wheelchair or else rely on walking sticks to get about. Despite this, Kitty was fiercely house-proud, determined to ensure the family’s home was always presentable. Her own parents had been reasonably well-off at one time, however her family experienced money troubles after her father was killed during the First World War and they had been evicted from their home. When Kitty was around 14 years old her mother had died and Kitty, along with her sister, had been sent to live with relatives. There, the girls slept on the bare floor with only a thin blanket for warmth. Kitty blamed this for her arthritis.

Both Wally and Kitty were staunchly religious, belonging to the Church of England and having little knowledge of – or time for – such subjects as spiritualism and ghosts. They felt sure that the strange noises would quickly turn out to have a natural explanation. They thought such sounds might be a by-product of the electricity mains supply but this possibility evaporated as it became clear the noises were connected with Shirley. They next wondered if Shirley was producing the sounds herself, so whenever either the tapping or scratching started while Shirley was in bed they asked their daughter to hold her hands above the sheets where they could be seen. Shirley would do so – and the sounds would continue without interruption.

Despite getting next to no sleep that first weekend, Wally went to work as usual on Monday 30 January. Word of the strange noises quickly got round and at Morden station Wally found that someone had left a note for him. It proved to be from a fellow underground train driver by the name of Henry (Harry) Hanks, offering his assistance. Hanks was a spiritualist who practised as a medium in his free time and he believed he might be able to drive away whatever was responsible for the disturbances. Being a good Church of England man, Wally was far from keen to become embroiled in the world of spiritualism, mediums and contact with the dead, but on the other hand he had a duty to protect his family. If Hanks could indeed help it would be foolish to ignore him. Cautiously, Wally invited Hanks to visit No. 63 on Sunday 5 February.

On that date the part-time medium arrived with his wife and his daughter and the three of them, accompanied by Shirley, held a séance in the downstairs bedroom. Soon after Hanks left, the tapping returned.

Ten days later, Hanks visited again. As the Hitchings family waited, uncomfortable with what was happening and unsure what to expect, Hanks put himself into a trance. An hour passed before he opened his eyes. Sadly, he admitted he had failed to make contact with whatever was there. He told Wally he might get better results if Shirley were to accompany him to his own house in a few days’ time to take part in a proper sitting. Reluctantly, Wally agreed.

Tensions within the sleep-deprived household were increasing and tempers were becoming frayed. Attempting to lighten the situation, the family gave humorous nicknames to the strange force that had seemingly invaded their home, referring to ‘him’ as Charlie Boy and Spooky Willie. Meanwhile, the tapping was growing louder. One day, neighbours who had been disturbed by the noises late at night pointedly asked Wally if he had been taking up the floorboards. Another time, Wally and Kitty were visiting the Muslim family who lived next door at No. 65 when everyone present clearly heard a loud knocking coming from inside No. 63, where Shirley was alone with her grandmother. According to a report made by an investigator a few weeks later, such noises were sometimes so loud they could be heard outside in the street, several houses’ distance away.

Fortunately for the neighbours at No. 65, the stretch of yard running between part of their house and No. 63 protected them from some of the tapping that continued to break out both night and day. There was no such escape for those living at No. 61, whose terraced house shared an entire wall with No. 63. Those neighbours received their first proper introduction to the unfolding story roughly three weeks after the tapping first began when, according to Wally, ‘we could not stand it no longer & had to bring the man from next door in to see & hear for himself’.

One of the occupants of No. 61 was Shirley’s ‘Auntie Lil’. Lily Love had always been Shirley’s ‘Auntie’, despite not actually being related to the Hitchings family. Lily and Kitty had known each other since schooldays and, with Kitty now largely wheelchair-bound, Lily often helped out with the washing and ironing, fetched bits of shopping, and so on. In mid-February, knowing how much of a disturbance the noises were causing, ‘Auntie Lil’ invited Shirley to spend a night in No. 61 so that the rest of the Hitchings family could get a good night’s sleep. Unfortunately for Lily, the tapping followed Shirley. Afterwards, Lily told a reporter (Daily Herald, 20 February 1956), ‘[Shirley] spent a night with us but none of us got any sleep because of the noise. We were all scared.’

By now, news was beginning to spread.

CHAPTER 2

In 1956 Wycliffe Road was a little community of its own. Everybody knew everybody else’s business and, as word got round of the peculiar goings-on at No. 63, more and more neighbours dropped by. Ostensibly it was for a cup of tea and a chat with Kitty, but really they wanted the latest gossip. Strangers, too, began to arrive, many drawn by nothing more than curiosity, others by the desire to help. The Revd W.E. Douthwaite, vicar of the nearby St Bartholomew’s church, was one of those who called at No. 63 hoping to solve the mystery. Despite his best efforts he left as baffled as everyone else.

News, however, was not the only thing that was spreading. So was Spooky Willie’s ability to cause mischief. The tapping noises now seemed to follow Shirley and sometimes when she travelled on a bus her fellow passengers heard the noises and cast odd glances in her direction. The problem even followed her to work.

Shirley was employed as a dress cutter in the Alterations Department of a large department store in London’s West End. It was her first job since leaving school and she had only been there for around ten weeks. The mysterious tapping upset and even frightened some of her colleagues and, when the occasional pair of scissors started to go missing, blame inevitably fell on Shirley and her invisible companion. Everyone could see that Shirley was exhausted and distressed from severe lack of sleep, so she was sent to see the firm’s doctor. He did not believe a word of her story, until he too heard the tapping. For the sake of her health – and no doubt to prevent further disruption at work – he ordered Shirley to take a fortnight’s leave.

At home on Saturday 18 February, Shirley accidentally dropped a glove onto the floor. When she bent down to retrieve it, it flew up and hit Wally in the face. Sometime later, loud knocking interrupted the family’s plans to watch television. The most dramatic incident (sensationalised by newspapers as a ‘levitation’) came after Shirley went to bed that night. Wally and Mark had stayed up to keep watch and they soon heard tapping from Shirley’s bed. It went on for ‘a long time’. Wally’s account of what happened next was reported in Psychic News (25 February 1956): ‘Shirley said the bedclothes were being pulled under her so we got hold of them and felt that they were being tugged by force. While this was going on we saw that Shirley was being lifted out of her bed. She was rigid and about six inches above the bed when we lifted her out and stood her on the floor.’

Wally later gave a more detailed account to author and journalist John Langdon-Davies, as follows. Hearing Shirley cry out that the sheet was being pulled from under her, Wally and Mark rushed into the bedroom. As they entered they saw the sheet at one corner of the bed slowly move away from Shirley as if it were being pulled by an invisible hand. To make sure Shirley was not somehow moving the sheet herself they made her place her hands on top of the bedclothes, then the two men pulled the corner of the sheet back. The moment they let go, it was pulled away again. ‘It was just like a tug-of-war,’ explained Wally, ‘and in the end I said, “Oh, let it be”.’ He and Mark stood and watched the sheet slowly pull away from beneath Shirley. According to Langdon-Davies’ summary of what Wally told him, when the moving sheet reached her back Shirley ‘involuntarily arched herself into a bow’ and then, in Wally’s words, ‘it was just as if her head was raised’. The rumpled sheet shot from Shirley’s bed onto her parents’ double bed. ‘I’m all stiff,’ complained Shirley. ‘I can’t sit up.’ Wally and Mark, going to help her, found that her body was rigid and ‘when they pulled her up by the arms she remained upright until vertical and then collapsed.’ Afterwards, Shirley told reporters, ‘I could feel a force pushing into the centre of my back and lifting me up.’

By now, the mainstream media had caught on to the story and the stream of visitors was swelled by reporters. Harry Hanks’s mediumistic efforts had had little or no effect in dampening the situation and the reporters that visited over the following days were told of objects that had moved by themselves. A china ornament and an alarm clock, both of which had stood on the mantelpiece, and a table lamp, had fallen to the ground. Something had also thrown a chair. According to the Daily Express (21 February 1956), all five members of the Hitchings family, some of their next-door neighbours and even the family’s landlord, had by now seen objects move. The visiting reporters did not witness any movements themselves but, while Shirley was telling James O’Driscoll from the News Chronicle about her recent ‘levitation’, her wristwatch slipped quietly from her arm and fell to the floor. ‘There he is again!’ she cried.

The South Western Star newspaper sent their reporter Ross Werge. When Werge arrived at No. 63 on Monday 20 February, he interviewed Shirley and her parents, then went upstairs to talk to Shirley’s grandmother. Ethel Hitchings was Wally’s mother. She had lived in the neighbourhood for many years and was widely known throughout the local community, who respectfully referred to her as ‘Old Mother Hitchings’. She had been a district nurse and midwife for her entire working life and even in retirement she remained the first port of call for many locals seeking medical advice. Ethel was as religious as Wally and Kitty, although unlike them she was a devout Roman Catholic. Too ill now to visit church, she was visited once a week by her priest, who would administer the rite of Holy Communion to her in her room. In a very real way, Ethel had been and remained the head of the Hitchings family, both of the immediate family within No. 63 and of the families of Wally’s sisters – Shirley’s Aunt Nell and Aunt Gert – who also lived in Wycliffe Road. In the event of any family crisis, Ethel would summon everyone to her, and the adults would have no choice but to answer her call and abide by her decisions. Although she was now almost completely crippled by arthritis and able to move only slowly and with pain, Ethel remained a formidable presence. Of Irish ancestry, given to smoking a pipe, and inherently bossy, she was a tall and rather hefty woman. The extra weight she had put on as a result of her illness made her, if anything, even more physically imposing.

Werge found the redoubtable old woman sitting in a comfortable armchair before a fire. She quickly made her feelings clear to the reporter, declaring, ‘It’s a lot of rot.’ It was a typical announcement from a woman who would never stand for anything she saw as nonsense – even if that meant ignoring the evidence of her own eyes. Ironically, Ethel was the only family member to claim any prior experience of the paranormal. Years before, when working in a hospital, she had been present when patients had died and Shirley remembers that Ethel claimed to have once seen a misty essence leave a patient’s body at the point of death. According to one newspaper account (Weekend Mail, 1-5 March 1956), Ethel also claimed she had once ‘seen the ghost of her dead husband at the bottom of her bed’. Despite her stubbornness, Werge persuaded Ethel to admit that ‘slippers had flown over her head and clothes pegs she had secured seconds before had mysteriously detached themselves.’ She also told Werge that, on another occasion, she had been mixing a pudding when a spoon suddenly jumped into the bowl.

Werge’s most remarkable interview, though, came later that day and was not with Ethel but with Spooky Willie himself. At around 2.30 p.m. Shirley offered to demonstrate to the reporter the tapping sounds she said were generated by the poltergeist. She placed her foot on the seat of a hard wooden chair, Werge placed his hand next to her foot, and before long Werge felt and heard faint tapping for himself, apparently coming from the wood. Although he watched Shirley’s foot intently he was sure she was not creating the sounds herself. He asked Shirley to move her foot to the edge of the seat but the tapping continued. Shirley walked across to a wall and leaned against it, and the tapping not only followed her but also became louder. She moved to the opposite side of the room and leaned against a cupboard, and the tapping sounded from there instead.

At some point, one of them had the idea to use the sounds to try communicating with Spooky Willie. Between them, Werge and Shirley agreed a simple code – one tap for ‘No’, two for ‘Yes’ and three for ‘Don’t know’. For the next three hours the reporter questioned the poltergeist.

‘Are you evil?’

‘NO.’

‘Can we help you in any way?’

‘YES.’

‘Have you a message for Shirley?’

‘YES.’

‘Will you deliver it today?’

‘NO.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘NO.’

‘On Sunday?’

‘YES.’

Werge asked the poltergeist to tap out Shirley’s age. Spooky Willie answered correctly with fifteen ‘distinct thumps’. When asked about his own identity, however, he seemed less certain. Somebody – probably Hanks – had previously suggested that the poltergeist was the spirit of an old man tapping with a stick, but Spooky Willie told Werge he was the spirit of Shirley’s great-grandmother (Ethel’s mother), who had died forty years previously. A little later, however, the poltergeist claimed to be a boy named Donald, who had played with Shirley when they were children.

In his subsequent article, Werge claimed he had been ‘extremely sceptical’ before his visit, but less so when he left. His report concluded, ‘Perhaps there is a natural explanation, but it has me beat. And I take a lot of convincing.’

Another reporter who visited that Monday was Elizabeth Few from the Daily Express. Upstairs in Ethel’s parlour, Few and Shirley sat at a table with Shirley resting her slipper-clad feet on an old wooden chair. Like Werge, Few interviewed the poltergeist by asking questions and receiving simple responses, although in Few’s case a reply of two taps was interpreted as meaning ‘No’ rather than ‘Yes’.

Few rested her hands on the chair and asked Spooky Willie if he was evil. He replied that he was not and Few ‘heard the knocks distinctly’ and with her hand ‘felt them throb’. The atmosphere was light-hearted and the reporter and the teenage girl giggled as they questioned the empty chair. Shirley asked if the poltergeist meant her harm and was told, ‘NO’. Few asked if he had been responsible for the key found on Shirley’s bed: ‘YES’. They learned that, ‘YES’, the poltergeist was guilty of throwing ‘all those things’ and, ‘YES’, he would do it again. Would he be a nuisance that night? ‘YES.’

‘Oh dear,’ cried Shirley in alarm. ‘No sleep again and more clothes pulled off the beds. Please go away.’

Three double taps followed: ‘NO. NO. NO.’ The poltergeist sounded another triple ‘NO’ later when Few announced it was time for her to go. The reporter made her excuses and left – ‘thankfully’, she later wrote.

During her visit, Few built up a similar picture to the one Werge had: that the poltergeist was claiming to be a boy named Donald (or possibly Ronald). The reporters understood this to be a particular boy who had regularly stayed at his nan’s house in Wycliffe Road during the school holidays. His family and Shirley’s had known each other well and, because Donald/Ronald and Shirley had been the same age, they had often played together as children. Two or three years before, Donald/Ronald’s father had taken a job overseas and the family had moved abroad. Shirley had been most upset to see her friend go. He had promised to write to her, but never had.

It is no longer clear exactly why the poltergeist became identified with this boy and the issue is rather confused. Possibly, the idea was rooted in an incident involving a gold bangle belonging to Shirley. Donald/Ronald had often teased Shirley by stealing a particular bangle of hers and, some time prior to the reporters’ visits, Shirley had discovered that this same bangle was missing. Few’s article mentions that while she was interviewing Spooky Willie, Shirley asked the poltergeist, ‘My gold bangle has disappeared. Have you got it, Donald?’ The poltergeist confirmed that he had taken it and refused to give it back.

This seems to be the first recorded instance of anyone referring to the poltergeist as ‘Donald’, and the context does suggest that Shirley thought the poltergeist was connected with her childhood playmate. Shirley’s own present-day recollection, however, is that the identification of Donald the poltergeist with her friend Donald/Ronald resulted from a misunderstanding made by the reporters. She believes that the first use of ‘Donald’ as the poltergeist’s name took place before this, with her mother jokingly using the name in allusion to Donald Duck, and that the choice of name had no more relevance than did Spooky Willie or Charlie Boy. Yet despite Shirley’s present-day conviction, some of the messages that would be communicated by the poltergeist over the early weeks and months of these events do clearly refer to the poltergeist wanting to renew the friendship between Shirley and her old playmate. (Fortunately, any initial worries the family had that Shirley’s old friend had died and come back to haunt her were quickly dispelled: by the end of 21 February Ethel had contacted the boy’s family and confirmed that he remained alive and well.) Regardless of how the early (mis)identification with Shirley’s old friend came about, after 20 February 1956 the names Spooky Willie and Charlie Boy fell into disuse. Everybody began to refer to the poltergeist as Donald.

On Tuesday 21 February the family began to keep a journal of these strange events. It was a big day for Shirley because she was due to appear on national television that evening, to be interviewed on the BBC. Shirley wrote the first journal entries herself (although thereafter it was usually Wally who recorded brief notes) and her entry for that Tuesday was as follows:

2.00 a.m. Went to bed leaving mystery key on sideboard.

2.05 a.m. Father noticed key back on my bed. Tapping continues.

2.08 a.m. Gloves dropped. Inside one of them was my face cream.

2.20 a.m. We felt something lying across our feet. Tapping continued but fell asleep keeping light on.

8.30 a.m. No tapping but both sheets on bed begin to pull up. Dad and Aunt Gert come to watch as witnesses.

11.00 a.m. Newly made bed rumpled behind Dad’s back while I was in kitchen.

1.00 p.m. Tapping gives me message from Donald. Didn’t make sense.

1.30 p.m. Chair overturned upstairs in Grandma’s room.

2.45 p.m. Tapping follows me into bedroom. Key still on bed.

4.45 p.m. Tapping follows me into Fleet-street shop.

The reporter Elizabeth Few was with Shirley in this shop. In a subsequent article Few confirmed that she had heard the taps referred to, noting that they apparently emanated from somewhere near Shirley’s feet. Because the girl was wearing thick, crepe-soled snow boots Few was ‘baffled’ as to how Shirley could have been making the sounds herself.

Shortly before the family left for BBC Television Centre that evening, Shirley and Donald were interviewed by a reporter from the Daily Sketch. The crude and limited method of communicating with Donald via tapped responses of ‘Yes’, ‘No’ and ‘Maybe’ had already started to evolve. Hanks had suggested an idea inspired by that notorious tool of mediums, the Ouija board; if the poltergeist could tap in reply to a question, it should be able to tap to select individual letters of the alphabet. Wally would never allow an actual Ouija board into the house, so the next-best method was to write out the alphabet on a sheet of paper or card and invite Donald to respond to spoken questions as someone pointed to each letter in turn. Every time Donald tapped, the selected letter was noted down and in this way messages could be laboriously spelled out.

An even more elaborate method of communication would evolve over the following weeks. Drawing still further on the image of the Ouija board, this involved arranging separate cards for each letter of the alphabet in a large ring on a tabletop. To speed matters up, additional cards would be placed in the centre of the ring for common answers such as ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. Somebody – often Mark – would point to the cards, moving around the ring as the poltergeist tapped to select letters. Sometimes a wine glass was moved around the ring instead, with the poltergeist tapping to indicate when the glass was in the correct place.

Wally and Kitty disapproved of such ‘spirit games’ as they called them, but reluctantly allowed these sessions to take place and sometimes even participated themselves. One detail that very quickly emerged from these sessions was that the poltergeist had difficulty spelling. This would be a consistent feature of Donald’s communications over the years to come and it suggested a close connection between the poltergeist and the mildly dyslexic teenager.

With this evolution of communication methods, the newspaper stories began to change from the ‘classic’ poltergeist narrative of childish thumping and flying objects into something approaching a love story between a young woman and a disembodied spirit. Shirley insists that this romantic angle was nothing more than a fictional creation, or at least blown out of all proportion, by the media.

The Daily Sketch reporter present on 21 February was one of those keen on the concept of Donald as a ghostly suitor. Shirley had no boyfriend at that time and the reporter asked the poltergeist outright, ‘Do you love Shirley?’ A single tap sounded in response:

‘YES.’

‘Will you ever leave her?’

‘NO.’

The reporter and Shirley then listened as the tapping slowly picked out letters, spelling, ‘BE LOVING SHIRLEY – COME SOON.’ Further tapping stated that Donald was 15 years old and had been born in Kent. Shirley’s similarly named childhood playmate would also have been 15, and his family likewise came from Kent, although in a sinister addition Donald stated that he had not been born of flesh-and-blood parents.

Also describing Donald as Shirley’s ‘ghost admirer’ was an amusing article by the South London Advertiser’s Joyce Lewis (23 February 1956). Lewis did not use the alphabet method of communication but the more basic ‘Yes’/‘No’ system and she marvelled at how much expression could be conveyed through simple tapping. After cheekily proposing marriage to Donald (and being turned down) Lewis asked, ‘Don’t you usually like girls?’ whereupon a single solid tap announced a definite ‘YES’. Was Donald turning her down because she was too old (at 24)? ‘YES’.

Shirley’s television appearance that evening was on the BBC’s topical magazine programme Highlight. The teenager described to the programme’s viewers what had been happening at her home and maintained that before it had started she had never heard of poltergeists, let alone known what they ‘normally’ do. Unfortunately, Donald himself failed to put on a show for the cameras.

After Shirley returned home another journalist turned up at No. 63. According to Shirley’s brief diary entry, he asked Donald to throw something for him. The journalist stayed for around two hours and saw nothing but as he was leaving shortly after midnight Donald threw a bottle top at (presumably) his back. Shirley did not record what his reaction to this was.

The situation in Wycliffe Road was becoming unmanageable. Shirley’s television appearance and the many newspaper reports were drawing in the curious and the ghoulish, and the numbers of people passing by the ‘haunted’ house in the hope of seeing something were growing day by day. ‘Judging by the uproar which has blown up over the poltergeist … one might think it was the first phenomenon of its kind,’ sniffed Psychic News (3 March 1956).

Neighbours found ever more inventive excuses to pop round and gossips merrily disseminated their findings. Neighbourhood children would sneak into the garden to peer through the window or listen at the front door and one newspaper reported that local children were scrawling the word ‘Donald’ on parked cars.

Increasingly, answering a knock at the front door would reveal a complete stranger, often somebody claiming to have psychic gifts and offering help. The more obvious ‘nutters’ were politely but firmly turned away, but many self-proclaimed mediums were allowed inside to give their opinions. Unfortunately, it was rare for any two psychics to reveal the same ‘truth’. One would announce that the house was haunted by a little old lady angry at passing over before she was ready, while another would identify the spirit as that of a murderer denied entry to heaven. It all added to the general air of chaos and confusion.

Even the postal delivery became something to dread when begging letters started to arrive. Evidently, because the story was in the newspapers, the writers assumed the family was being paid vast sums for their interviews. This was far from the case. Although Shirley did earn three guineas for her appearance on the BBC, neither she nor the rest of her family had earned a penny from the newspaper stories. Over the coming months Wally learned to deal with the begging letters the best way he could – by throwing them onto the fire.

The greatest irritation was the growing army of reporters camped outside the house. Wycliffe Road was not especially wide and it was impossible to avoid the pack of journalists that descended upon anyone who called at No. 63, yelling out their questions and demanding to know what was happening. Under siege in their small home, life was becoming unbearable for the family. The stress affected everyone, but especially Wally. Soon the train driver started worrying that lack of sleep and the constant strain on his nerves was putting his passengers’ safety at risk. The frustrations bubbling inside him occasionally escaped in flashes of temper and he would scream at the reporters to ‘Go on! Piss off! Leave us alone!’ Ethel, too – annoyed but also frightened in her upstairs rooms – desperately wanted the poltergeist to leave and for calm to return. ‘I tried to get rid of him by putting a crucifix on the floor of my bedroom,’ she told one reporter (Daily Sketch, 22 February 1956). ‘Donald went mad. He nearly threw me out of bed and rapped so loudly that the neighbours complained.’

Family, media and public alike eagerly awaited the next big event, scheduled for the evening of Wednesday 22 February. Donald was going to be exorcised.

CHAPTER 3

The exorcism would be attempted by Wally’s fellow underground train driver, the medium Harry Hanks. Hanks had convinced Wally and Kitty – who still distrusted spiritualism – that this could help Shirley. Some of the reporters also helped persuade Shirley’s parents to allow the exorcism, although this was possibly less to do with helping Shirley than because they sensed an entertaining news story. As for Shirley herself, she was not sure she actually wanted to lose her ghostly companion but Wally put his foot down, stating, ‘This nonsense has to stop.’

Hanks was to perform the exorcism at his home in Groveway, Stockwell, approximately 1½ miles (2.5 km) west of Wycliffe Road. Harry Hanks was in his early fifties and had worked for London Transport for just over thirty years. He claimed that he sometimes received messages from spirits while he was driving trains, although he stressed that these communiqués from the beyond did not affect his concentration and so did not interfere with his job. Outside work, he operated as a medium.

He had been born with his gift, he asserted, although he had been unaware of it until, aged 10, he saw the figure of a man emerge from his bedroom wall and walk across the room. In his early teens, shortly after the end of the First World War, Hanks gravely informed his mother that another great conflict was coming and he claimed to have correctly predicted to within a year when this would break out. Hanks had become seriously involved with spiritualism at the age of 28, since when he had conducted numerous séances.

The setting for the exorcism was Hanks’s first-floor sitting room, with its television set, knick-knacks and dartboard. A dog lazed in front of the fireplace, budgerigars and canaries watched from a birdcage, and a pair of unimpressed goldfish swam around inside their fish tank. The lighting was dim and dull pink, merging with the dying coals in the grate to cast a warm glow across the brown and orange wallpaper. Those gathered to try to drive Donald away from Shirley were Hanks himself; his 51-year-old wife Georgina; their daughter Dorothy who was in her early twenties; a clairvoyant named Mrs Daisy Bennett; and Mrs Ada Roden, a spiritualist. Shirley was accompanied by her father, who had not had time to change out of his work clothes. There were also many onlookers. Hanks had seen an opportunity to publicise the spiritualist movement and had invited numerous reporters, photographers and TV cameramen to cram themselves into the room.

Despite the cameras, Hanks refused to allow any photography or filming during the procedure itself because he felt it would interfere with the conditions needed. Although footage apparently showing the exorcism was later aired on ITV, the images shown were actually staged for the cameras after the real exorcism finished.

With everything set, the sitters joined hands. They sang ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’, the reporters joining in as Mrs Ada Roden accompanied them on an upright piano. Mrs Roden then joined the circle as the company sang ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’, after which a period of contemplative silence was followed by a prayer.

Dorothy Hanks was learning the skills needed to practise as a medium and she now attempted to slip into a trance. She ‘shook convulsively’ (Daily Sketch, 23 February 1956) but failed to achieve the correct state of consciousness. Her father was sympathetic and told not her not to worry, before closing his own eyes and successfully putting himself into a trance. As he sank under, wrote the same reporter, his ‘face contorted and his hands waved.’

A hush enveloped the room as Hanks’s breathing deepened. The next moment there was a hammering at the front door. As the dog barked excitedly and the startled birds squawked and flapped, Mrs Hanks hurried downstairs. From upstairs in the sitting room, she could be heard remonstrating with someone on the doorstep, refusing them entry. A few seconds later, Mrs Hanks came back into the room looking worried. She tried her best to inform her husband that the police were at the door – but there was no reply from the deeply entranced Hanks.

The police had been patrolling Brixton Road in their car when they received an order to go to Groveway. An anonymous informant had notified Scotland Yard that a ‘black magic’ ceremony was taking place there. Now two uniformed policemen came thumping up the staircase to investigate. Mrs Hanks did her best to explain that the event was a spiritualist meeting and perfectly legal. For a quarter of an hour, the police watched and listened to the proceedings before they finally left, satisfied that – whatever was going on – it was breaking no laws.

The sitters did their best to continue. ‘We mustn’t lose the power,’ encouraged Mrs Roden, attempting to restore a suitably sombre atmosphere as Shirley did her best not to giggle at the turn of affairs. Eventually the exorcism was underway again and Hanks stretched out his hands to Shirley. He shook violently as his spirit guide – an African spirit named (with an utter lack of modern political correctness) ‘Sambo’ – spoke through him. In a deep voice, ‘Sambo’ declared that the exorcism had worked. ‘It is free, my friend,’ he boomed. ‘The interference is from you. God bless you all.’

Hanks awoke from his trance, Mrs Bennett delivered a short prayer and the exorcism was over. Over cups of tea, Hanks explained that he and his guide had driven away the spirit that had taken possession of Shirley. He had then sealed her damaged aura and created a psychic barrier that should protect her from other spirits.

‘I feel much happier,’ Shirley said. ‘I think the poltergeist has gone for good.’

The following morning, Hanks drove the short distance to No. 63 to check on Shirley. Before the exorcism he had been worried that the poltergeist, strengthened by all the recent publicity, might have been too powerful for him. ‘Poltergeists like to be the centre of attention,’ he had warned. ‘The more fuss they get the stronger they become.’ He was therefore delighted to learn there had been no trouble from Donald overnight. Unfortunately, a short while later the actions of two reporters from the Weekend Mail, keen to find their own solution to the story, seemed to upset whatever delicate balance had resulted from the exorcism.