ghughesarch
Devoted Cultist
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2009
- Messages
- 165
This was posted recently by an acquaintance, to a Stockport history page on Facebook.
THE HAUNTING OF 1, EVA ROAD, 1941 – 1954.
1, Eva Road, Cheadle Heath, Stockport, Cheshire, was the address…a seemingly normal enough end terraced house in a small street of fourteen similar dwellings. In 1941, after being bombed out of their home in Elm Road during a German air raid on Cheadle Heath during the war, my family, such as it was then, consisting of my mother, and elder half-brother, Barrie who was then three years old, were offered this rented dwelling by the landlord, a Mr Ford of Bramhall, at a weekly rent of 10 shillings and sixpence per week (or 52 pence in today’s money), an average rent for those days. My father was at that time abroad in the army.
The house probably dated from around the middle of the 19th century. In 1941, unlike its done-up appearance today, it certainly looked sinister enough, with its age-blackened red brick walls and its outside toilet and coal house. From the moment they moved in, it seemed that something…or someone…in the house did not want them to be there. There were strange tappings and mysterious coloured lights across the living room ceiling, the sound of footsteps on the stairs in the middle of the night and a strange feeling that someone was standing behind them, watching them.
After I was born in the house in April, 1947, things got decidedly worse. Although I have no memory of it, it was not uncommon for me to wake up screaming in my cot a half hour or so after I had been put to bed and for my parents, on entering the room, to be confronted with a strange sight no baby could have been responsible for…the blankets from the cot, together with the side rail, strewn over the other side of the room. A similar thing would happen to my sister, after she was also born in the house in 1949. I grew up with this kind of thing from the cradle and, by the time I reached the age of three in 1950, I was certainly aware of the terror.
Although all parts of the house were affected by this phenomenon, the main focus for this paranormal activity seemed to be the upstairs back bedroom. My half-brother, by now a teenager, slept in there for a while, until he was awakened one night by a noise and scared witless by the sight of a man who appeared to be hanging by the neck from the light fitting. He ran screaming out of the room and refused to sleep in there any more, preferring to make his bed in the cupboard under the stairs. However, he wasn’t there for long, as he was driven out by the sounds of voices talking in a foreign language. He ended up sleeping at the house of one of his friends.
I was then given the back bedroom. I remember distinctly one particular night, when, as I was lying in bed in the darkness with my right foot protruding from the bottom of the blankets, I yelled out as I felt something bite it very hard.
My parents rushed in from the other room and, putting on the light, tried to calm me down as I cried out that my foot had been bitten. On examining my foot, they discovered teeth marks on it, but by the next morning, they had faded away.
Afraid by now to go to sleep in the room, I would bury my head under the blankets for protection and lye there with my fingers in my ears. But this didn’t protect me from whatever it was that was in the room. One night, when I was five years old, I was awakened from a troubled sleep by the bedclothes being dragged off me and then, as I tried to grope for them in the darkness, by someone grasping their hands around my throat, trying to strangle me. I managed to yell out and my parents rushed in, switching on the light, which ended the entity’s activity. “The ghost! The ghost!”, I cried out, “It tried to strangle me!” “Well where is it now?” asked my father. “It went in there!”, I told him, pointing to the cupboard in the wall. My father looked inside it, but could find nothing. “Well, there’s nothing here now”, he said. In a very distressed state, I was carried downstairs, pleading not to be put in the room again. From then on, I slept downstairs in the living room.
The police, in the form of the local beat bobby, were brought in to investigate the mysterious goings on. Maybe we thought that the sight of a big tall policeman in a big, tall helmet, walking up the stairs and walking around the back bedroom would scare away the ghost. But we were naïve. We asked the local minister in to say prayers in the house and put a blessing on it. But that didn’t work either. We asked the landlord if he knew of anything terrible that had happened in the house in the past, but he couldn’t help. However, he did venture that the house was already around a hundred years old by that time and anything could have happened in there…and probably had…although none of his previous tenants had reported anything untoward.
One night, my father was sitting in the living room reading the paper when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a woman walk past and into the scullery. Thinking that my auntie Nan had let herself in and gone into the scullery to make a drink of tea, he called out “Is that you, Nan?” Receiving no answer, he went into the scullery to investigate. But there was no sign of auntie Nan and both the back door and the window were bolted from the inside.
I remember one particular afternoon in 1953, when I was six years old, very vividly. I was alone in the living room, my mother having left me in the house while she and my auntie Nan went to attend to my bedridden grandmother, who lived in the next street. I was happily looking into a 3-D viewer at a photo of a gorilla standing in a field of long grass on a sunny day. Suddenly, I heard heavy footsteps walking slowly across the floor of the back bedroom above me. I listened, transfixed, as the footsteps made their way to the bedroom door and made their way slowly down the stairs. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, I stood staring at the door, expecting something, whatever it was, to open the door. But the door remained shut. After a few seconds, I slowly made my way across the room and opened the door…but there was no one there!
A feeling of absolute terror gripped me and I turned and fled from the house as fast as my legs would carry me, around to my grandmother’s at 21, Elm Road, where it took them a full five minutes to calm me down long enough for me to tell them what had just happened.
Things came to a head in 1954, when I was seven. One night, the whole family was in the living room when we heard a loud thud come from the back bedroom. My parents went upstairs and, opening the door, put the light on. The blankets from the bed had been thrown across the room, together with a stone hot water bottle that, although thrown across the room, had not been broken. I was behind them on the stairs. Suddenly, my parents let out a yell. Standing in the corner of the room, they had seen a man, who looked straight at them, pointed at them and suddenly disappeared. After that, the room was removed of all furniture and sealed up, remaining so until we moved from the house in September, 1954. None of us ever entered the room again.
In the many years since then, I have often wondered about the present position in that house. So, in January, 1999, I wrote to the present occupier, explaining the background to my enquiry and asking if things there were quiet now. Whether or not they received my letter, I don’t know. But, to date, I have heard nothing from them.
What was it that caused such terror in that house from 1941 to 1954? Perhaps an unhappy, earthbound spirit trying to draw attention to himself? An unfortunate suicide, perhaps? Who were the people who lived…and perhaps died…in that house from when it was built to when we took it over in 1945? Was the landlord being economical with the truth when he said that the previous tenants had reported nothing untoward? Did a previous occupant hang himself in the back bedroom? Is he still there in spirit…or has he finally been released from his earthbound torment and moved on to higher realms? There are more things in heaven and earth, my dear reader, than are dreamed of in our philosophy.
When I was a member of the Facebook ‘Stockport Memories’ page, I received a message from a member saying they knew someone who now lives at 1, Eva Road, and that they told her that the house is still haunted.
The photo accompanying this article shows myself, aged three in the back garden at 1, Eva Road, in April, 1950, nearly 73 years ago. Behind me above can be seen the haunted bedroom where I slept uneasily as a child.
When I used to attend St Mary's Church Heritage Centre in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a lady there who's name I don't recall, who was very into the supernatural and I told her all about the long ago happenings 1, Eva Road and she asked me what kind of a marriage did my parents have. I told her they had a very unhappy marriage and there was a lot of violence from my father directed at my mother. She told me that because of the unhappiness, there would have been a lot of negative energy in the house and that ghosts thrive on negative energy, enabling them to perform poltergeist activities and move objects by the power of thought alone.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbi...HOw5KAaYu38VEnizEx-m3XszBPVpNUfSs&__tn__=EH-R
https://www.facebook.com/groups/190...SdUgjiTnqPkFKP_58mrI_RuNNDuRBJv&__tn__=<<,P-R
THE HAUNTING OF 1, EVA ROAD, 1941 – 1954.
1, Eva Road, Cheadle Heath, Stockport, Cheshire, was the address…a seemingly normal enough end terraced house in a small street of fourteen similar dwellings. In 1941, after being bombed out of their home in Elm Road during a German air raid on Cheadle Heath during the war, my family, such as it was then, consisting of my mother, and elder half-brother, Barrie who was then three years old, were offered this rented dwelling by the landlord, a Mr Ford of Bramhall, at a weekly rent of 10 shillings and sixpence per week (or 52 pence in today’s money), an average rent for those days. My father was at that time abroad in the army.
The house probably dated from around the middle of the 19th century. In 1941, unlike its done-up appearance today, it certainly looked sinister enough, with its age-blackened red brick walls and its outside toilet and coal house. From the moment they moved in, it seemed that something…or someone…in the house did not want them to be there. There were strange tappings and mysterious coloured lights across the living room ceiling, the sound of footsteps on the stairs in the middle of the night and a strange feeling that someone was standing behind them, watching them.
After I was born in the house in April, 1947, things got decidedly worse. Although I have no memory of it, it was not uncommon for me to wake up screaming in my cot a half hour or so after I had been put to bed and for my parents, on entering the room, to be confronted with a strange sight no baby could have been responsible for…the blankets from the cot, together with the side rail, strewn over the other side of the room. A similar thing would happen to my sister, after she was also born in the house in 1949. I grew up with this kind of thing from the cradle and, by the time I reached the age of three in 1950, I was certainly aware of the terror.
Although all parts of the house were affected by this phenomenon, the main focus for this paranormal activity seemed to be the upstairs back bedroom. My half-brother, by now a teenager, slept in there for a while, until he was awakened one night by a noise and scared witless by the sight of a man who appeared to be hanging by the neck from the light fitting. He ran screaming out of the room and refused to sleep in there any more, preferring to make his bed in the cupboard under the stairs. However, he wasn’t there for long, as he was driven out by the sounds of voices talking in a foreign language. He ended up sleeping at the house of one of his friends.
I was then given the back bedroom. I remember distinctly one particular night, when, as I was lying in bed in the darkness with my right foot protruding from the bottom of the blankets, I yelled out as I felt something bite it very hard.
My parents rushed in from the other room and, putting on the light, tried to calm me down as I cried out that my foot had been bitten. On examining my foot, they discovered teeth marks on it, but by the next morning, they had faded away.
Afraid by now to go to sleep in the room, I would bury my head under the blankets for protection and lye there with my fingers in my ears. But this didn’t protect me from whatever it was that was in the room. One night, when I was five years old, I was awakened from a troubled sleep by the bedclothes being dragged off me and then, as I tried to grope for them in the darkness, by someone grasping their hands around my throat, trying to strangle me. I managed to yell out and my parents rushed in, switching on the light, which ended the entity’s activity. “The ghost! The ghost!”, I cried out, “It tried to strangle me!” “Well where is it now?” asked my father. “It went in there!”, I told him, pointing to the cupboard in the wall. My father looked inside it, but could find nothing. “Well, there’s nothing here now”, he said. In a very distressed state, I was carried downstairs, pleading not to be put in the room again. From then on, I slept downstairs in the living room.
The police, in the form of the local beat bobby, were brought in to investigate the mysterious goings on. Maybe we thought that the sight of a big tall policeman in a big, tall helmet, walking up the stairs and walking around the back bedroom would scare away the ghost. But we were naïve. We asked the local minister in to say prayers in the house and put a blessing on it. But that didn’t work either. We asked the landlord if he knew of anything terrible that had happened in the house in the past, but he couldn’t help. However, he did venture that the house was already around a hundred years old by that time and anything could have happened in there…and probably had…although none of his previous tenants had reported anything untoward.
One night, my father was sitting in the living room reading the paper when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a woman walk past and into the scullery. Thinking that my auntie Nan had let herself in and gone into the scullery to make a drink of tea, he called out “Is that you, Nan?” Receiving no answer, he went into the scullery to investigate. But there was no sign of auntie Nan and both the back door and the window were bolted from the inside.
I remember one particular afternoon in 1953, when I was six years old, very vividly. I was alone in the living room, my mother having left me in the house while she and my auntie Nan went to attend to my bedridden grandmother, who lived in the next street. I was happily looking into a 3-D viewer at a photo of a gorilla standing in a field of long grass on a sunny day. Suddenly, I heard heavy footsteps walking slowly across the floor of the back bedroom above me. I listened, transfixed, as the footsteps made their way to the bedroom door and made their way slowly down the stairs. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, I stood staring at the door, expecting something, whatever it was, to open the door. But the door remained shut. After a few seconds, I slowly made my way across the room and opened the door…but there was no one there!
A feeling of absolute terror gripped me and I turned and fled from the house as fast as my legs would carry me, around to my grandmother’s at 21, Elm Road, where it took them a full five minutes to calm me down long enough for me to tell them what had just happened.
Things came to a head in 1954, when I was seven. One night, the whole family was in the living room when we heard a loud thud come from the back bedroom. My parents went upstairs and, opening the door, put the light on. The blankets from the bed had been thrown across the room, together with a stone hot water bottle that, although thrown across the room, had not been broken. I was behind them on the stairs. Suddenly, my parents let out a yell. Standing in the corner of the room, they had seen a man, who looked straight at them, pointed at them and suddenly disappeared. After that, the room was removed of all furniture and sealed up, remaining so until we moved from the house in September, 1954. None of us ever entered the room again.
In the many years since then, I have often wondered about the present position in that house. So, in January, 1999, I wrote to the present occupier, explaining the background to my enquiry and asking if things there were quiet now. Whether or not they received my letter, I don’t know. But, to date, I have heard nothing from them.
What was it that caused such terror in that house from 1941 to 1954? Perhaps an unhappy, earthbound spirit trying to draw attention to himself? An unfortunate suicide, perhaps? Who were the people who lived…and perhaps died…in that house from when it was built to when we took it over in 1945? Was the landlord being economical with the truth when he said that the previous tenants had reported nothing untoward? Did a previous occupant hang himself in the back bedroom? Is he still there in spirit…or has he finally been released from his earthbound torment and moved on to higher realms? There are more things in heaven and earth, my dear reader, than are dreamed of in our philosophy.
When I was a member of the Facebook ‘Stockport Memories’ page, I received a message from a member saying they knew someone who now lives at 1, Eva Road, and that they told her that the house is still haunted.
The photo accompanying this article shows myself, aged three in the back garden at 1, Eva Road, in April, 1950, nearly 73 years ago. Behind me above can be seen the haunted bedroom where I slept uneasily as a child.
When I used to attend St Mary's Church Heritage Centre in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a lady there who's name I don't recall, who was very into the supernatural and I told her all about the long ago happenings 1, Eva Road and she asked me what kind of a marriage did my parents have. I told her they had a very unhappy marriage and there was a lot of violence from my father directed at my mother. She told me that because of the unhappiness, there would have been a lot of negative energy in the house and that ghosts thrive on negative energy, enabling them to perform poltergeist activities and move objects by the power of thought alone.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbi...HOw5KAaYu38VEnizEx-m3XszBPVpNUfSs&__tn__=EH-R
https://www.facebook.com/groups/190...SdUgjiTnqPkFKP_58mrI_RuNNDuRBJv&__tn__=<<,P-R