OLD RECOVERED FILE
A weeping wife told a judge yesterday that she and her husband refused to pay money owing on their cottage after discovering it was haunted by evil spirits. Mother-of-three Josie Smith, 36, said she felt she had been raped and strangled by ghosts in the centuries-old house. She sobbed: "On one night I felt the quilt being lifted up and my nightdress moving up over my legs. It only stopped when I shouted: 'No!' Mrs Smith and husband Andrew, 35, are being sued for £3,500 owing on the £44,000 price of the stone-built house they bought in 1993.
The couple are counterclaiming against the previous owners, sisters Sandra Podmore and Susan Melbourne. The Smiths claim the sisters knew the house was haunted before selling it. Judge Peter Stretton must decide whether there really is such a thing as a ghost - and if he finds for the Smiths it will be the first official recognition of the paranormal since the Middle Ages.
Mrs Smith told Derby County Court that the terrifying events began six weeks after they bought Lowes Cottage in Hollow Lane at Upper Mayfield, Staffs. She had to give up her job as a theatre nurse because of stress. She spoke of
- FOUR ghostly assaults which left her in fear of her life;
- FOUL smells, weird noises and hurtling objects;
- FAILED attempts to exorcise the violent spirits.
Mrs Smith said that at one point they took the children - Lindsey, 12, Stephen, five, and 12-month-old Daniel - to stay with relatives to escape the nightmare.
She said of one chilling invasion: "I woke up in the middle of the night, and something was touching me beneath my nightdress. I felt very cold, very dirty, as if I had been raped. Twice I felt as if I was being strangled, and I woke up choking and shaking. Both times we had to leave the house. It was gripping me round the throat and throttling me. My whole body was shaking. I thought I was going to die.
"I went to my mother's, determined never to go back. But then I spoke to a medium on the phone. She said a girl had been murdered in the house and the ghost was just showing me how she had died. That gave us the strength to go back and that's when neighbours began telling us that the previous occupants had experienced the same thing."
The house is said to have a dark history, with local folklore of a dairymaid who died imprisoned in the cellar and a boy who hanged himself from the rafters. Mrs Smith claimed she saw visions of a woman naked, bound and gagged to a bed and of a 19th-century figure in flowing dress gliding across the room. She told of waking to the first night of terror.
"I felt a heavy weight pressing down on me and it took every ounce of strength in me just to lift my little finger," she said. "Then suddenly it just flew across my face. There was a strong, pungent smell around the house and we could find no explanation for it. We thought perhaps it was damp because the house hadn't been lived in for so long.
"A friend of mine who is a member of the Spiritualist Church advised us to place a wooden cross in a bowl of salted water in the bedroom and say a prayer to get rid of the ghost. But when we did this the atmosphere turned very thick and the smell was so vile that I wanted to vomit. I rang my friend and she said we had upset it."
Mrs Smith said the Reverend Peter Mockford, vicar of Blurton, Stoke-on-Trent, blessed the house four times in a bid to drive out the restless spirits. "The first time he blessed it it was quiet for a night but then the paranormal phenomena returned even stronger," she said. Electrical equipment failed, the immersion heater blew up and my daughter's tape player couldn't be turned off unless we unplugged it. On the third occasion the reverend tried to dispel the spirits we played tapes of religious music and prayers. As soon as we did, the floorboard upstairs started creaking. When we closed our eyes there was a rushing at the sides of our heads. It felt like smoke was spiralling up our noses and we had pins and needles until the next day."
The family went to a surveyor and were told the paranormal activity had knocked £20,000 off the value of the house. They withheld the last payment of their instalments from the vendors on the grounds of "misrepresentational fraud". The cottage was left to the two sisters by their father. They told the hearing they never saw a ghost in a total of more than 40 years of living there.
Mrs Melbourne, 40, who still lives in Upper Mayfield, said: "I have never experienced a ghost and never come across a haunted house - and definitely not in Mayfield. If I was told there was such a house in the village I wouldn't believe it, as I don't believe in ghosts."
Mrs Podmore, 38, from nearby Waterhouses, Staffs, said she was born in Lowes Cottage and lived there until the age of 25. She told the court: "I never had any strange experiences, and even after I moved out I would take my two children to visit their grandad."
Both women were questioned by joiner Mr Smith, who is representing himself and his wife at the hearing. Later the sisters' barrister, Thomas Dillon, suggested Mrs Smith's story had been made up out of "horror films and novels". Mr Dillon spoke of several similarities to sections of the book The Amityville Horror.
He said: "You refer to being able to look through floorboards from upstairs, seeing the face of a pig, a force so strong you could lean against it, and hearing upstairs beds moving back and forth. Isn't it amazing how all these things which you say happened to you can be found in just a few pages of this novel?" Mrs Smith said she had read the book, but insisted she was telling the truth.
She said: "Myself and my husband also watched the film The Haunting recently. Many things what happened there also happened to us. The Haunting was a true story and so is ours."
Mr Dillon said the couple had "made a habit" of running away from their financial problems and had five county court judgments against them. Mrs Smith said they had arisen from her husband being declared bankrupt after a failed business partnership.
The Rev Peter Mockford said he first visited the cottage in October 1995. He added: "I myself experienced the smell and the wet walls. In my view, in Lowes Cottage there is paranormal activity which cannot be explained."
Video Film Sheds Light
A pair of amateur ghostbusters revealed alleged video evidence of paranormal activity at the Smiths' cottage. Tony Dawson and Clive Topcliffe spent a night collating their own X-Files.
Tony, 30, of Ashbourne, Derbyshire, said at the time: "We set up the camera in a downstairs room and went to sleep. In the early hours, we heard banging coming from the room so we went to investigate. We had left a candle burning on the stairs in front of the camera and suddenly it flew into the air like a rocket."
They studied the recording with the Smiths and confirmed they had got the candle on film.
Josie Smith said: "On the video you can also hear a latch-door closing. We've got a modern door now, but when we moved in there was an original latch-door from years ago."
Glow in the Night Spooks Our Man
By Bill Daniels
A cold green light flickered over me as I lay stiff with fear in the gloom of the Smiths' dining room. In a foolhardy moment I'd agreed to spend the night in the house they say is haunted. I'd had no worries about the assignment. I didn't believe in ghosts. But now I wished I was asleep - anywhere else but there. All the chilling stories Andy had told me about things going bump in the night, walls running with water and doors mysteriously opening and closing came flooding back.
Cautiously I crept towards the mysterious glow. I peered nervously into the kitchen - and was confronted by my "ghost". A green light was flickering on and off, filling the room with its glow. But it was just a timer on the stove which hadn't been set properly. Despite the lurid tales I'd heard, that was the only terror I faced. Stairs creaked, windows rattled and radiators banged - but spooks stayed away.
