Chapter 4
The Ghost Club
1969
46
YEARS
STOKE NEWINGTON
In 1969, Underwood investigates a mixed case of haunting and poltergeist manifestations in the bedroom of a 150 year old house in Stoke Newington, in the London borough of Hackney.
“There were stories of a ‘white lady’, of loud and frequent footsteps, a groaning noise...
knocks, fires and unexplained smoke-like apparitions.”
“A ‘woman in white’ was seen - usually emerging from a wardrobe in the corner of the bedroom…”
“The face of the figure was frightening in the extreme with enormous black eyes that seemed to fill the eye sockets.”
On one occasion “what looked like smoke began to issue from one of the wardrobes standing in the room…”
On another occasion “the same wardrobe caught fire and was reduced to ashes…”
“During the course of my visits, accompanied by my wife, and W. G. T. Perrott, the chairman of The Ghost Club, we heard the stories of the happenings first-hand…”
“…and during a tour of the house
I was shown a fixed cupboard where
raps had apparently emanated on several occasions…”
“As we left the room I suggested that we might try to tempt the entity, and I tapped twice on the cupboard shelf and we all left...”
“As we did so two clear and distinct knocks sounded from the direction of the room we had just left
raps that were heard by all…”
“The whole affair came before Lord Parker,
the Lord Chief Justice,
during the course of a High Court action over the rent of the alleged haunted house.”
Although a rent assessment committee felt that “ghosts had nothing to do with the fires”,
Lord Parker observed that there had indeed been
“‘manifestations which took the the form of what was thought to be poltergeists causing havoc with the furniture and noises in the night.’”
“The mystery of who or what caused the movement of furniture, the noises and the fires
was never solved…”
“…but the sober statement in my records that two clear taps were heard in the quiet house, from a room devoid of human beings,
reminds me that personal experience always outweighs other people’s testimony...”
Underwood’s account of the Stoke Newington case is in Haunted London (1973).
