• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

The Black Monk Of Pontefract

sherbetbizarre

sherbetbizarre

Special Branch
Joined
Sep 4, 2004
Messages
5,341
Here's an old poltergeist story some of you may remember, now turned into a low-budget movie...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_ ... Pontefract

The Black Monk of Pontefract (also referred to as The Pontefract Poltergeist) is a poltergeist haunting that occurred in the late 1960's in the home of Joe and Jean Pritchard on 30 East Drive Chequerfield Estate in Pontefract.[1] This particular activity is often noted by ghost researchers as unusual because of the physical apparition of a hooded figure that accompanied the otherwise typical disruptive behaviors of the supernatural entity. It is regarded as the most violent poltergeist haunting in Europe.
Click to expand...

The 2012 film When the Lights Went Out follows the story of the Black Monk of Pontefract. The film is directed by Pat Holden (Awaydays) and produced by Bill Bungay (Moon) and Deepak Nayar (Tucker And Dale Vs Evil). Director Pat Holden has a unique connection with the story – it was his aunt’s home that was the target of the haunting
Click to expand...

Here's an interview with the director...

UK filmmaker Pat Holden (Long Weekend, Awaydays) had a personal reason to tell the story of his Rotterdam world premiere When The Lights Went Out – it was his aunt’s home that was the target of the haunting. “I was about 8 or 9 when it happened,” Holden remembers. “My mum was always around there with the family.”

The film is loosely based on the story of the Black Monk of Pontefract, the true story of a haunting of a working class family in 1970s Yorkshire. Holden says: “It is recognised as the worst case of poltergeist haunting in European history; many people experienced it at first hand; the police, neighbours, relatives, priests — even the local mayor.”

“I grew up with the story, it was a famous thing in the town. I was getting asked about it at school,” he says. “This has been a part of my life for so many years, I’ve been desperate to make a film about it for so long.”
Click to expand...
http://www.screendaily.com/home/blogs/h ... 59.article

I'm not sure about his line... "It is recognised as the worst case of poltergeist haunting in European history..." :?

Review of the film -
http://www.viewsedge.com/2012/08/when-l ... l?spref=tw

More on the how the real story began -
http://www.worldofghosts.co.uk/about3790.html

And the trailer -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubHxqTcqGfA

In Yorkshire Cinemas September 12
In Cinemas Nationwide September 14

WITNESS THE TRUE STORY OF THE MOST TERRIFYING POLTERGEIST HAUNTING IN BRITISH HISTORY

Prepare yourself for the ultimate horror experience. As you watch this film there is one inescapable fact that cannot be denied, one fact that will make your blood run cold, one fact that will leave you gasping for breath and unable to turn out the lights... everything you are about to see... really happened.
Click to expand...
 
Another interview with the director:
In the end I did my own interviews with the family. Extensive interviews. I went up there a couple of times and spent hours, and it was on top of the anecdotal stuff I have from my mum. What I tried to do is internalise it all and basically, when I started writing it, not throw it away but not try and use the facts as a straitjacket.
Click to expand...
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/stephen ... 52202.html
 
sherbetbizarre said:
Cheers, and I hear it features in the new issue of FT too...
Click to expand...

There's an interview with the filmmakers. It sounds more interesting than a lot of the "based on a true story" horrors around recently.
 
All this movie exposure has set off the Poltergeist again, says the Daily Star!

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/view/27 ... -Went-Out/

Next-door neighbour Carol Fieldhouse, 54, said things started to take a sinister turn three months ago.

She didn’t know the former owner Philip Pritchard had just sold the long-empty property to film producer Bil Bungay.

“I saw Philip in the front, tidying up the ­garden,” she said.

“I went out and asked him if he’d sold it to one of his nephews. I thought it must have been one of them because I knew they were deaf and I’d heard the telly blasting out all night.

“He said ‘There’s no TV in there. It’s ­empty’. Then he turned pale and went ‘God, it’s started again’. I haven’t seen him since.”
Click to expand...
:lol:
 
Rented this from Lovefilm last week. It's not bad, they nail the Britain in the 70s atmosphere well (it's very brown and everyone smokes, all the time). A good cast and good performances, good effects, yet it falls just short of being a classic.

I think the main problem was it just wasn't very scary. Even a coward like me didn't find it that shocking. To be fair, the producers don't really go in for the cheesy sudden action or loud noise bits that pass for a lot of modern horror.

Worth a watch if you like British ghost things, one of the better polt movies I've seen. Just don't expect to have to hide behind the sofa much.
 
i enjoyed it, the fashion on display may have been the scariest thing about the movie but it had some nice "JUMP" moments and at my age i am glad of anything that will give me a jump.
I liked the way it was played low key until the final confrontation, where it got a bit "hollywood" and i liked the humour. A nicely made movie all round really.
 
I can't find a thread about the actual case so will put this here. I was talking to a psychic medium earlier this week who was asked to help with research, not sure if it was for this film or later ghost hunting type stuff, and he talked to a neighbour of the family at the time who said the house on East Drive wasn't the house that was haunted, the council house was just where they moved to to escape from the ghost. The actual house where the haunting occurred was an older property nearby and was apparently very spooky and empty and boarded up for years.
 
marion said:
I can't find a thread about the actual case so will put this here. I was talking to a psychic medium earlier this week who was asked to help with research, not sure if it was for this film or later ghost hunting type stuff, and he talked to a neighbour of the family at the time who said the house on East Drive wasn't the house that was haunted, the council house was just where they moved to to escape from the ghost. The actual house where the haunting occurred was an older property nearby and was apparently very spooky and empty and boarded up for years.
Click to expand...

That's quite interesting as I've not heard that before, (or I've forgotten it), time to dig out Colin Wilson's Poltergeist. Just a quick look around the net, particularly the owner Bill Bungay's site there is no mention of this and I've not heard the legendary fierce psychic neighbor Carol mention it.

Of course there is a financial motive for not saying it was the original house. As Bungay does tours and Carol is often interviewed.

If you want a lol - crying with laughter take on the BMofP check out the Parapod. episode one and then a later episode when the presenters actually go and visit. Hilarious if you never heard it before. It's on Itunes, Soundcloud, etc.

http://www.theparapod.com/episode-1-launches/ .


Just realized I don't have the Wilson book anymore. Can someone who has it see what Wilson said about the subject?
 
marion said:
I've not read round the case, there were local people at the meeting who commented on the boarded up house as being spooky and no children dared to go there, they all seemed to accept the story. Maybe it is a case of two different stories from the past merging.
Click to expand...

I think you've nailed it.

It's an interesting case in the fact that it had so little press coverage compared to Enfield and yet the activity was much stranger.

I reckon even locals wouldn't have known all the details.
 
The Knock Once For Yes Podcast did an interview with the Paranormal Photographer group. I think Fitz the co-host pops in here now and again so probably won't mind me posting.

So essentially this group had done a 5-day investigation at 30 East Drive. They didn't spot the anomaly in this footage but viewers did and so this clip has been made to highlight it. Something moves behind the door and there was nobody else in the house apart from the two in front of the camera and the cameraman.


The female part of the PP group also has a brief account of high strangeness which I don't recall hearing anything similar before.

The episode can be found on most pod-capture places. It's also here. https://knockonceforyes.com/ Always worth a listen. I'll be glad when they get out and about again as I enjoy their visits to historical places.
 
Last edited:
I have a Kindle book, published in 2015: Don't Look Back in Anger: The Black Monk of Pontefract by Andy Evans. He's a local author who grew up with the story and was allowed to investigate the house after the film had been made. I thought it was an interesting read.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
The Knock Once For Yes Podcast did an interview with the Paranormal Photographer group. I think Fitz the co-host pops in here now and again so probably won't mind me posting.

So essentially this group had done a 5-day investigation at 30 East Drive. They didn't spot the anomaly in this footage but viewers did and so this clip has been made to highlight it. Something moves behind the door and there was nobody else in the house apart from the two in front of the camera and the cameraman.


The female part of the PP group also has a brief account of high strangeness which I don't recall hearing anything similar before.

The episode can be found on most pod-capture places. It's also here. https://knockonceforyes.com/ Always worth a listen. I'll be glad when they get out and about again as I enjoy their visits to historical places.
Click to expand...
KOFY is about the best paranormal podcast about at the moment.
 
. . . KOFY is also a TV station in the San Francisco Bay Area. They used to broadcast reruns of Perry Mason and Dragnet on weekday mornings, and all Christmas day they broadcast a burning yule log so you could put your TV in your fire place and feel cozy and warm. They also ran great, swarmy local ads. Ah, the good old days :smghost: ! . . . and now, back to the actual thread topic.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
The Knock Once For Yes Podcast did an interview with the Paranormal Photographer group. I think Fitz the co-host pops in here now and again so probably won't mind me posting.

So essentially this group had done a 5-day investigation at 30 East Drive. They didn't spot the anomaly in this footage but viewers did and so this clip has been made to highlight it. Something moves behind the door and there was nobody else in the house apart from the two in front of the camera and the cameraman.


The female part of the PP group also has a brief account of high strangeness which I don't recall hearing anything similar before.

The episode can be found on most pod-capture places. It's also here. https://knockonceforyes.com/ Always worth a listen. I'll be glad when they get out and about again as I enjoy their visits to historical places.
Click to expand...

I don't mind at all :)

It is a bit of a strange one isn't it? Something clearly moves behind the door, it's just frustrating that they weren't aware of it at the time so they could find out what it was.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
I found the women interviewee's account of the rolling mist very strange I've never heard of that before.
Click to expand...
Yes, it wasn't something I'd heard of before, or at least, not to that extent. You do sometimes hear of a mist forming into a figure or a figure dissapating into mist but that seemed to be on another scale entirely.
 
I watched 'When the lights went out' today - I thought it was great. It doesn't get very good reviews on 'rotten tomatoes' for example. But that's probably because it's so quintessentially British. It rolls along at a rather sedate pace and there's not much in the way of ghastly special effects and screaming. But the attention to 1970s detail is amazing. The decor, the crockery, but down to the door handles and the hair bobbles, for god's sake, and many other subtle things. It's proper time travel and whoever did the props did an amazing job. I found the exorcism scene with people exclaiming 'flippin heck' and the general term of abuse being 'bugger off' to be marvellously British. I liked the way it was sort of ambiguous to start with, with the mention that the girl had played tricks before (what with poltergeists generally getting blamed on girls pulling tricks). And that after the exorcism they signified she had grown up, by giving her a grown up hair-do in the salon.

I don't know how closely it matches the real events if at all. But I enjoyed the film. If you're not hoping for some US style paranormal extravaganza you might like it too.
 
plastic wiganer said:
me and the wife are booked on an all night investigation in 30 East Drive in January 2021 - cant wait, IF anything happens i will obv's be posting on here about it
Click to expand...
Our team spent the night there with Eddie Mallet and Luke Tabram (Luke runs the youtube channel Shadow Paranormal) although it was a pretty uneventful night for us to be honest .. good luck!:

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top