To the best of my knowledge, the following is based on a true account of unexplained events at rectory in Staffordshire in the 1930s, as recorded by Harry Price in his book ‘Poltergeist over England’. I have chosen not to reveal the exact location of the rectory in my post, nor the full names of those involved, as the current inhabitants might not consider finding out their house might be haunted to be a Halloween treat.

The new vicar and his family arrived in the village in March 1934 and soon settled into the house. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred until September that year when a young nephew came to stay. One evening, the boy felt unwell and so bedroom doors were left open, in case he needed assistance during the night . At around 4am in the morning Mrs H, the vicar’s wife, heard the sound of someone in bedroom slippers walking along the landing. Naturally assuming it to be her nephew, she sat up in bed and waited for him to come into the room. Nobody appeared, yet the sound of the footsteps continued. As they approached the bed, the air in the room turned icily cold. Convinced she was ‘up against something she had never experienced before’, Mrs H closed her eyes and reached for a small crucifix she had nearby. As she lay clutching the cross, she sensed somebody or something lean over her and her husband and heard it sigh deeply, before she felt the presence fade away. Mrs H believed it to be a small man in trouble but that he had gone out happier than he had come in.

Nothing else of note happened until the following September, when Mrs H was awakened by three loud raps and the sound of approaching footsteps once more. The vicar recalled her trembling with fear as she woke him.

The following September the family were on holiday and so if any paranormal activity did take place, it went unwitnessed by anyone. The following year was 1937 and on 12^th September, the Rev H had his first first-hand experience, in the form of three loud thumps on the bedroom door at around 6.30am. A further strange occurrence took place around this time one evening when the couple were getting undressed for bed. The vicar had forgotten something and went to fetch it from another room, taking the candle with him. When he returned, he found his wife terrified, as the petticoat she was taking off had burst into flames as she pulled it over her head.  

On 17^th September 1938 the vicar’s wife woke and heard two loud raps, presumably having been woken by the first. She woke her husband and announced ‘It has come’. Perhaps understandably, in April 1939, the vicar and his family moved to a parish in Northamptonshire. Whether his successors experienced anything paranormal in any of the subsequent Septembers is unknown.

The story as it stands is strange enough but there is a twist in the tale to tell you. The vicar had appealed to Price for any suggestion as to what might be causing the seemingly supernatural phenomenon as he was unable to find , ‘any local event of the past which occurred in September, and which would be likely account for it’. He wondered if it was related to the removal of the base of an ancient cross from the Rectory garden back into the church yard or the loan of a chalice and patten, dug up in the parish in 1823, to the Victoria and Albert Museum. I however have found something. In 1847, a local newspaper reported that the two young sons of the village’s then vicar were travelling in a cart when the horse pulling it took fright and bolted. The wagon overturned and the wheels passed over the elder of the two boys, leaving him with such catastrophic internal injuries that he died in his bedroom at the Rectory a few days later. And the month these tragic events took place in?

September.

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