Newly-Built Haunted Houses?

[Ghost In The Machine]

A

Any objection to giving us the exact location of these properties? There may be other reports from the wider area as well.

No, I can't ID it publicly, unfortunately. Nothing I'm aware of in the immediate area but think I also posted about a long closed village school nearby and husband and a few of his colleagues over the years, heard kids playing at playtime - an entire playground full of kids, that is - when it's now just someone's back garden. (He's also heard it during half term). No other schools are anywhere near and sounds always came from that direction. I've been researching hauntings in this area and not come across any accounts, historical or recent, relevant to the location as it is in a village and was once just a field.

 

[Lord Lucan]

I've only just recently seen this thread and have something to add.

In 2004 my wife and I bought a brand new house, never lived in, in a town called Bowral in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. A fairly standard 4 bedroom home on a 1000 sq meter block. It was on a new street, with other new houses in an area that has only been developed for less than 10 years.
The house was built on land that had previously been a large horse stud/training arena.
Not long after moving in, we (my wife and out two sons) all started to notice the occasional shadow moving through the hallways. We had a home office setup and I was working from home at the time, being the only one there through the day. There was often the feeling that someone was watching you and now and again, you'd catch a glimpse of what appeared to be a child in the reflection of the computer monitor as you were working. My wife also had the same experience.
The most unusual thing that would happen, was that our laundry basket would often be upended. We'd walk into the laundry only to find it upside down, clothes all over the floor. This sometimes would happen multiple times a day.
There was never a sinister feeling, but it was somewhat disturbing at the same time being it was a brand new home.
Once when working alone, I also did distinctly hear a voice say ''Hello'' so clearly that I got up from my chair and walked to the front door to see who was there, finding no one.
Our explanation was that somehow whatever energy it was was either attached to the land the house was built on, or to us.

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

There's been a lot of posting here about the importance of the site of a haunted house. Essentially, the assumption is that a house becomes haunted because of the history of the land it's built on.

I do wonder if there are other factors involved. Forgive me if I get a bit vague and rambly, but here's an idea of mine:

- what if design and layout are important? Perhaps there are factors in the geometry of a building that allow things to happen, or at least facilitate things happening. I'm thinking about factors like the dimensions of rooms, the relationships of corridors to living spaces, the placement of windows and doorways, etc.

I can't be very specific on all of this because it's not something that's been looked into a lot. But perhaps it should be.

One thing that makes me speculate on ideas like that is that many years ago I tried to learn to play the pipe organ. This got me interested in the design of organs and organ pipes. And when it comes to organ pipes, there's one critical factor that determines whether a pipe will voice at all, and what note it will generate if it does voice, and that is the geometry of the space inside the pipe. Okay, that's a rather stretched analogy, but all the same, maybe there's something in it.

Another factor could be the materials a house is built from. One extreme example: I remember reading Harry Price's book on Borley Rectory, specifically one anecdote. After the fire and the demolition, a local bought some bricks from the Rectory and built a garage. Despite being well designed and soundly constructed, apparently the garage spontaneously collapsed immediately after being build. That's one extreme, but perhaps materials can also contribute to the 'psychic resonance' of a building.

In terms of those 2 buildings I described, the one with the awful vibe, I've always felt it is something actually tangible/physical about the building. Something that the other building right next to it, doesn't share. Something to do with electro-magnetic fields causing a neurological response? Something like that. Sorry I can't be more cogent. But it's so tangible and became a massive joke amongst all of us - it was like everyone acknowledged it and I really don't think it is truly paranormal.

I think whatever that is, is localised to that one building, though. The other seems to be genuinely haunted and yet has quite a cheerful atmosphere, if anything!

 

[Tempest63]

depending on the date of the church... in church burials?

Unlikely, it was built in 1843, damaged during WWII and demolished in 1956. Probably not old enough for in church burials.

WALWORTH, ST MARY MAGDALENE
also known as SOUTHWARK, ST MARY MAGDALENE
No description has been found of this church, which was damaged in World War 2, demolished in 1956 and the site sold. The parish was merged with Walworth, Lady Margaret (WAL05). Housing (Barker House) is now on the site.
Congreve Street SE17 1TD
TQ 331 787

https://southwark.anglican.org/wp-c...rship-in-the-Diocese-of-Southwark-low-res.pdf

 

[Carl Grove]

No, I can't ID it publicly, unfortunately. Nothing I'm aware of in the immediate area but think I also posted about a long closed village school nearby and husband and a few of his colleagues over the years, heard kids playing at playtime - an entire playground full of kids, that is - when it's now just someone's back garden. (He's also heard it during half term). No other schools are anywhere near and sounds always came from that direction. I've been researching hauntings in this area and not come across any accounts, historical or recent, relevant to the location as it is in a village and was once just a field.

It's strange how the sounds from school playgrounds seem to travel much farther than other noises. It reminds me that a school where I worked for 5 years was said to have a haunted girls' toilet: the doors were heard banging when nobody was in there. The janitor (sorry, Site Supervisor) told me that when he took his holiday, his replacement heard children around the school when it was supposed to be empty, and actually wasted a lot of time searching the empty corridors.. He also said that one classroom was especially affected. Was it such-and-such a classroom, I asked, and of course it was! It definitely had an atmosphere. The rumour (they always seems to be spread when hauntings occur) was that a boy had drowned in the drains there at some time while it was being built, but I never heard any evidence of that.

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

Unlikely, it was built in 1843, damaged during WWII and demolished in 1956. Probably not old enough for in church burials.

WALWORTH, ST MARY MAGDALENE
also known as SOUTHWARK, ST MARY MAGDALENE
No description has been found of this church, which was damaged in World War 2, demolished in 1956 and the site sold. The parish was merged with Walworth, Lady Margaret (WAL05). Housing (Barker House) is now on the site.
Congreve Street SE17 1TD
TQ 331 787

https://southwark.anglican.org/wp-c...rship-in-the-Diocese-of-Southwark-low-res.pdf

The real decider would be if the local archive, where surrounding churches' records are stored, has any burial records for it..? If someone can locate where the parish records are, that would be easy enough to find. Even if it had no burials, it would inevitably have had marriages and christenings and usually there are churchwardens' accounts, parish chest contents etc. If it's known where those are deposited, then if there were burials, those records should be together. (Usually, all recorded in the same book).

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

It's strange how the sounds from school playgrounds seem to travel much farther than other noises. It reminds me that a school where I worked for 5 years was said to have a haunted girls' toilet: the doors were heard banging when nobody was in there. The janitor (sorry, Site Supervisor) told me that when he took his holiday, his replacement heard children around the school when it was supposed to be empty, and actually wasted a lot of time searching the empty corridors.. He also said that one classroom was especially affected. Was it such-and-such a classroom, I asked, and of course it was! It definitely had an atmosphere. The rumour (they always seems to be spread when hauntings occur) was that a boy had drowned in the drains there at some time while it was being built, but I never heard any evidence of that.

I once worked in a large inner city primary school that had been built as, or changed into, a small secondary school - so it was way bigger than needed, and even had an upstairs, and whole bits we barely used or went in. And some of those bits - not so much my classroom which was 1890s or so by the look of it, but some of the later "secondary modern" 1950s' bits - were very atmospheric indeed...

 

[Salmonellus]

The question of house design is very interesting. I believe feng shui experts make a fuss about having doors and windows etc. in certain locations to facilitate the energy passing through smoothly. German dowsers of the 30s (and still today, I think), and the Russian experts, also have a concept of dangerous energies building up in a house if it is wrongly situated with regard to the earth currents. There are a couple of contemporary articles here that suggest the concept is also recognised by at least some official agencies:

Wow. Thanks for that. I see I have some reading to do !

 

[Tempest63]

Don’t know if this counts but the block of maisonettes I grew up in was built between the 50’s and 60’s on the site of a former church.
We moved in, in 68 when I was 6 year’s old.
We experienced stuff every day and whilst I am now a big sceptic there are numerous times I think back and wonder WTF caused that.

Listening to the latest episode of Danny Robbins Uncanny (S3 E2) brought back to mind memories of the place mentioned in my earlier post (above)
One of the common phenomena we encountered was the sound of someone walking down the stairs.
My elder brother told one of his friends of the “haunting” and after an evening in the pub, amongst much scoffing, dared him to come back and experience it for himself.
After everyone had gone to bed the two of them sat in the lounge (or the living room as it was back then) when, after a short while, the footsteps descending the stairs started.
Big bruv pointed it out but his buddy was having none of it, he opened the lounge door and was looking straight up the stair, listening to someone coming down but there was no one there.
These guys were hardened 1970‘s football hooligans and there wasn’t much that could intimidate them, but years later my brothers friend confided to me, again over a pint, that the episode frightened the living bejesus out of him.

 

[catseye]

A thought that did strike me - some houses that are newly built on sites that have not previously been built on might be prey to earth movement or underground water sources that went undetected simply because there were no houses on the site before.

I know of one place in Somerset where an estate of very posh houses were built on the (rumoured to be inadequately) buried remains of an old scrap yard. I can imagine that there is a good degree of movement under those houses which might give rise to all manner of strange happenings indoors - but as the scrap yard was there more than forty years ago and people move about so much, the memory of what the estate was built on may well have gone.

 

[Fanari_Lloyd]

As I posted in the Road Ghosts thread, the hairdresser was telling me that she’s seen and heard things since she was a child and just accepts it, doesn’t look into it particularly and won’t go on ghost hunts although a friend of hers is part of a team who organises them. She explained this reluctance as not wanting anything that might be malicious to latch onto her as she’s never come across anything like that and doesn’t want to.

She lives in a new build and she and her family are the first residents but she sees things there, mostly in her peripheral vision, moving dark shadows shaped like people. Sometimes she can see that they’re male or female; there are noises she cannot explain etc.

And a couple of weeks ago she almost tripped badly over one of her cats. She has two, I think. She said he was suddenly right there under her feet and she had to do one of those jumps that you do to avoid a fall and gasp out a swear word or two.
Except the cat wasn’t there. One second it was, she says, very clearly this one cat, the next there was nothing there at all. He’d not bolted away, he’d just vanished from almost under her feet. Both cats were out in the garden as she immediately looked out and there wasn’t time for either of them to have gone out. She said she could understand seeing ghost animals, but not when one of them was alive.
was adamant it was this one cat, with his markings that ‘appeared’ right in her path and then was just gone.

 

[Carl Grove]

As I posted in the Road Ghosts thread, the hairdresser was telling me that she’s seen and heard things since she was a child and just accepts it, doesn’t look into it particularly and won’t go on ghost hunts although a friend of hers is part of a team who organises them. She explained this reluctance as not wanting anything that might be malicious to latch onto her as she’s never come across anything like that and doesn’t want to.

She lives in a new build and she and her family are the first residents but she sees things there, mostly in her peripheral vision, moving dark shadows shaped like people. Sometimes she can see that they’re male or female; there are noises she cannot explain etc.

And a couple of weeks ago she almost tripped badly over one of her cats. She has two, I think. She said he was suddenly right there under her feet and she had to do one of those jumps that you do to avoid a fall and gasp out a swear word or two.
Except the cat wasn’t there. One second it was, she says, very clearly this one cat, the next there was nothing there at all. He’d not bolted away, he’d just vanished from almost under her feet. Both cats were out in the garden as she immediately looked out and there wasn’t time for either of them to have gone out. She said she could understand seeing ghost animals, but not when one of them was alive.
was adamant it was this one cat, with his markings that ‘appeared’ right in her path and then was just gone.

As we know, cats can just do things like that -- cases like that crop up in Reddit's Glitch in the Matrix forum almost every day.

 

[SimonBurchell]

As we know, cats can just do things like that -- cases like that crop up in Reddit's Glitch in the Matrix forum almost every day.

Yes - I just dredged up one of my posts from 2006(!) regarding an odd occurrence with my parents' cat:

A few years ago I was temporarily living with my parents after returning from overseas. I went up to the tiny cell that was laughingly called my bedroom, opened the door and a cat-shaped blur ran out of the bedroom, past me and down the stairs. I turned to look at it and there was nothing there. The cat-shaped blur wasn't exactly visible, more the impression of a cat running past me, it's very hard to explain. It acted exactly as the house-cat acted when leaving my bedroom.

I went into the bedroom and there was the house-cat, sleeping peacefully on the bed. I would like to think that it was its dream-self that ran past me, maybe having an OBE or something...

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/contacts-from-departed-deceased-pets.25507/post-656070

 

[Fanari_Lloyd]

@Carl Grove and @SimonBurchell .

I said, ‘Well cats are very strange’

I knew I’d read something like that about cats a few years ago.

I’ll ask her more about her house at my next appt.

 

[escargot]

Listening to the latest episode of Danny Robbins Uncanny (S3 E2) brought back to mind memories of the place mentioned in my earlier post (above)
One of the common phenomena we encountered was the sound of someone walking down the stairs.
My elder brother told one of his friends of the “haunting” and after an evening in the pub, amongst much scoffing, dared him to come back and experience it for himself.
After everyone had gone to bed the two of them sat in the lounge (or the living room as it was back then) when, after a short while, the footsteps descending the stairs started.
Big bruv pointed it out but his buddy was having none of it, he opened the lounge door and was looking straight up the stair, listening to someone coming down but there was no one there.
These guys were hardened 1970‘s football hooligans and there wasn’t much that could intimidate them, but years later my brothers friend confided to me, again over a pint, that the episode frightened the living bejesus out of him.

Techy and I would absolutely ADORE that experience.
We love ghosts.

 

[Cochise]

I presume a new built house can inherit a ghost? I think of the marching Romans in York, for example.

 

[escargot]

I presume a new built house can inherit a ghost? I think of the marching Romans in York, for example.

With that one, the building seems to have been constructed on top of the Legionnaires' route.

 

[Cochise]

With that one, the building seems to have been constructed on top of the Legionnaires' route.

Understood. But if you live on a modern estate built on the site of a haunted mansion, would not the 'white lady' (or whoever) still walk? Or would the haunting be so attached to the building (unlike the Legionnaires) that she/he/it would disappear with the fabric.

I don't know, obviously. I don't even believe in ghosts, as such, but the phenomenon interests me. There are enough reports of ghosts to suggest something is going on, even if the supernatural explanation is not the correct one.

 

[AnonyJ]

There's one aspect that I don't think has been discussed yet that has just popped into my noggin - what about the builders of houses and buildings?

Even if the constructions are standard, photocopy houses, surely the people designing the houses/flats, moving the earth, building foundations, walls, roofs, tradesmen, electricians, decorators etc., all these are feeling, emotional humans as we all are to a lesser or greater extent?

What if the people creating these homes are somehow influencing atmosphere, phenomena and associated happenings? The artisan always influences the article, even if we can't 'see' it as such.

Buildings aren't created by machines/robots unlike plastic bottles (for example) and even pre-fab buildings are erected by real people. A lot of energy, time, and I daresay emotion is expended by the guys and girls labouring away on buildings. Something to consider!

 

[Carl Grove]

There's one aspect that I don't think has been discussed yet that has just popped into my noggin - what about the builders of houses and buildings?

Even if the constructions are standard, photocopy houses, surely the people designing the houses/flats, moving the earth, building foundations, walls, roofs, tradesmen, electricians, decorators etc., all these are feeling, emotional humans as we all are to a lesser or greater extent?

What if the people creating these homes are somehow influencing atmosphere, phenomena and associated happenings? The artisan always influences the article, even if we can't 'see' it as such.

Buildings aren't created by machines/robots unlike plastic bottles (for example) and even pre-fab buildings are erected by real people. A lot of energy, time, and I daresay emotion is expended by the guys and girls labouring away on buildings. Something to consider!

Yes, that's a good point. Sensitive people can detect all kinds of emotions, and there was some Russian research explaining how human emotion can affect water molecules in the air and get transferred to different surfaces.

 

[catseye]

There's one aspect that I don't think has been discussed yet that has just popped into my noggin - what about the builders of houses and buildings?

Even if the constructions are standard, photocopy houses, surely the people designing the houses/flats, moving the earth, building foundations, walls, roofs, tradesmen, electricians, decorators etc., all these are feeling, emotional humans as we all are to a lesser or greater extent?

What if the people creating these homes are somehow influencing atmosphere, phenomena and associated happenings? The artisan always influences the article, even if we can't 'see' it as such.

Buildings aren't created by machines/robots unlike plastic bottles (for example) and even pre-fab buildings are erected by real people. A lot of energy, time, and I daresay emotion is expended by the guys and girls labouring away on buildings. Something to consider!

From all the builders I know, the primary emotion seems to be 'how soon can I get away for a fag break.' Maybe in some of the more 'handcrafted' houses, carefully built by masters of the craft there might be a lot of emotion on site, but on commercial sites I'd argue that these are just guys (and women) doing their job as quickly and efficiently as possible. Because, after all, if those working on a house build are going to imbue the site with their emotional leavings, then what is to stop retail workers filling their shops with their emotions (they are often there for far longer than builders are onsite), or office workers doing the same?

 

[AnonyJ]

From all the builders I know, the primary emotion seems to be 'how soon can I get away for a fag break.' Maybe in some of the more 'handcrafted' houses, carefully built by masters of the craft there might be a lot of emotion on site, but on commercial sites I'd argue that these are just guys (and women) doing their job as quickly and efficiently as possible. Because, after all, if those working on a house build are going to imbue the site with their emotional leavings, then what is to stop retail workers filling their shops with their emotions (they are often there for far longer than builders are onsite), or office workers doing the same?

Interesting! I am now thinking of the 'haunted' or paranormally-noisy office buildings and shops etc., or those that just feel 'off'.

What if the human factor could be facet of various phenomena?

I am not stating any of this as a hypothesis, but it could be an interesting tangent.

edited to add:
Apropos of the thread theme, I knew a young lady, FOAF, in the early 1990s who fled from a newly-rented flat above a showroom type of shop, her building was not very old, 20thC but built in a small SW English market town that has at least two millennia-worth of successive buildings under the current iteration. She was hearing menacing, deep voices and sounds and she was very, very frightened. AFAIK she wasn't prone to such auditory hallucinations and held a responsible FT job in healthcare.

 

[Frideswide]

what about the builders of houses and buildings?

Interesting!

I'm going to add... what about living (but not for long) foundation sacrifices?

 

[SimonBurchell]

...held a responsible FT job in healthcare.

FT job means something different from normal on this forum...