In the autumn of 1933, ghost hunter Elliott O’Donnell wrote to the Rector of Stafford asking if he could be connected to any houses in or near the county town where paranormal activity had been reported in the hope he could spend Halloween night at one of them. After discounting Weston Hall, a decision which would literally come back to haunt him, and an unnamed place near Penkridge, he was put in touch with the residents of property at Rickerscote on the outskirts of Stafford.

Accompanying him was author and army officer, Wilfred Byford-Jones who recorded the adventure in his book ‘Midland Leaves’. He describes the house as, ‘a pleasing old structure with nothing eerie about it’. However, the mistress of the hall revealed that she, along with her husband and several friends, had seen the spirit of an old woman dressed in black in the sitting room and out on the lawns on several occasions. As luck would have it, they were holding a seance that very evening to try and connect with this shady lady.

After dinner, the two men returned to Rickerscote to find four people sat around a large log fire in the sitting room. O’Donnell joined the circle but the Quaestor preferred to observe only and settled himself in a dark corner. To begin, the participants placed their fingers on the table and chanted the words to hymns. In the hour that followed, the group sat in silence as the wind howled in the chimney and the rain lashed against the windows, the tension punctuated by the ticking of an old grandfather clock.

Quaestor began to feel sleepy until an ear-piercing scream came from one of the male guests. He began to gibber and sway with the mistress of the house joining in moments later. Neither said anything that made any sense. The woman then began to whimper for several minutes. As she fell back into her chair a hiss came from her husband.

‘There she is’. He seemed to stare at something before continuing. ‘It is the old lady I have seen before in this room and on the lawn’.

Two other guests also claimed they could see her. Quaestor followed their gaze but could see nothing, ghost or otherwise. Even when someone suggested that the spirit was stood near to him, tending to a bird in a cage, he could see nothing. Nor could he feel the pocket of cold air the others claimed to.

The seance continued until midnight struck on the old grandfather clock. Those gathered revealed the uninvited guest had a name. Miss L____ E_____ J______, a former resident who had loved the house and hoped the person she passed it onto in her will would live there. This wish was not fulfilled and presumably was the reason her presence remained. The two visitors left around 12.30am and the following morning, O’Donnell recorded his own version of events.

“A sudden feeling came over me that there was a presence of some kind just behind a lady on my right. I asked her if she was concious of it. She said, ‘Yes I know it is there. It is a lady in black. She came in through the closed window, crossed the floor to the door, then came to me’.

Quaestor’s own account differs somewhat. “I can only say that I am baffled, having seen nothing and heard nothing that could not be explained by natural phenomena.”

I suspect the events at the house on that Halloween night were down to mass hysteria rather than a haunting. However, after much reflection, I’ve decided not to share the precise location of the house just in case its former resident really did return to her Rickerscote home and the current residents would rather not know about it.

I myself shall be returning to the subplot involving Weston Hall another day. It’s one of my favourite haunted houses in all of Staffordshire but I’m much more likely to indulge in scones instead of a seance when sat around the fireplace here.

Sources:

Midland Leaves, Quaestor aka Wilfred

Staffordshire Advertiser, Saturday, 9 June 1917