Solstice Moon
Joined: 31 Aug 2008
Posts: 272
Location: Horsham, W Sussex
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 Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 11:15 am Post subject: The Mount Pleasant Poltergeist |
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Being lazy, I'll copy the article from the following site...
http://www.welcometogower.co.uk/2007/08/mount-pleasant-poltergeist.html
| Quote: | The Mount Pleasant Poltergeist
In December 1965, David and Marcia Howells and their family vacated 88 Rhondda Street , Mount Pleasant , Swansea – vowing never to return to the property. Their mortgage on the house had run for just 11 months. With that in mind and the difficultly of finding temporary accommodation for both themselves and their two young children until the house was resold, what had made them so adamant never to spend another night in the home?
Just three days after moving into the house, Marcia Howells, aged 20, had awoken in the early hours of the morning with the feeling that she was being choked. Even opening the bedroom window and gulping down the crisp winter morning's air could not rid her of the feeling that she was being strangled!
Things quietened for a while after that initial disturbing event and it was not until late November/ early December that further strange episodes began to occur.
Entering the living room one day she was taken aback to see a child's medicine bottle rise unaided from the mantelpiece and fly straight towards her! Slamming the door shut behind her, she heard the bottle smash as it hit the door. Marcia did not re-enter the room until her husband, David, a 24 year old decorator, returned home from work that evening. When they eventually did so, they found the entire room in turmoil. Clothes lay scattered all around the floor and upon the furniture, which themselves had been upturned!
There was not to be a further long gap before the next bizarre event was to take place at 88 Rhondda Street , however. Living with David and Marcia Howells and their two small children – Gareth, who was not yet two, and Beverly who was nearly four – were Grandparents Glendora and Jack Howells. Babysitting young Gareth one afternoon, Glendora was startled by the sound of something crashing to the ground in the living room. Running to see what had happened, she found the door to the room shut fast, as though it had been locked! When Marcia returned home with her daughter Beverly, having just collected her from school, the family tried the door again. This time it opened easily and inside they found the room had been turned upside down again. The settee had been completely upended and the television set thrown onto the floor with the living room chairs stacked on top of it. In a state of shock and turmoil, they then set upon investigating the other rooms in the house. Nothing unusual had seemed to have taken place in any of the other rooms except the master bedroom. The door to this particular room could only be pushed open a couple of inches given the state of the room behind it, but through this gap the two woman could see the double bed had been turned upside down and pushed on top of Gareth's cot.
Swansea police. investigating the reports, found Marcia in tears as she recalled what had happened to her family and she told them that she believed there to be a poltergeist at work in the house. The furniture in the house was still upturned when they visited the property and they had to force their way into the bedroom such was the complete disarray in the room. They left the property puzzled by the incidences.
With police unable to help the family, a local Roman Catholic priest visited the house. The Howells family did not accompany the priest on his visit and, gaining a key to the home from a neighbour, he performed a private cleansing ceremony upon the “Ghost House.” Father Martin Griffin, curate of St. David's R.C. Church , Swansea , was unable to exorcise the property as that would have necessitated the Archbishop himself getting involved in the case. He did, however, bless the home – his prayers calling for peace and rest and good health for all who occupied the house, as he wandered the now quiet rooms and sprinkled holy water around the property.
Such was the interest in the happenings at 88 Rhondda Street at the time that the residents of the street petitioned for the public to leave them in peace. Via an article in the South Wales Evening Post, dated December 7, 1965, it was reported that people were calling at properties neighbouring the “Ghost House”, enquiring about the happenings at all times of the day and night. Mrs. A.J. McGuick, who lived next door to the supposedly haunted home, even found that “some hooligans” had tried to climb the drainpipe of her property to gain access to number 88. She stated that a man, belonging to a psychic research group somewhere in Staffordshire, had even knocked her door after midnight asking if she let him inside the “house of terror.”
Another neighbour, Mrs. Vera Newland, told the newspaper that the whole street were “fed up” with all the enquiries concerning 88 Rhondda Street . “There has been very little privacy for us for about a week.” She told them. “I have thought of covering myself in a white sheet to frighten any would-be callers.” She added.
Intrigued by the story, which by this time had made headlines in the local daily newspaper – the South Wales Evening Post – as well as on the local television news - part-time security officer Harry Holmes undertook a 24 hour vigil in the house. 74 year old Harry Holmes, of Oxford Street , had been investigating haunted houses for 35 years and was convinced that he could solve the mystery of the house once and for all. An unbeliever in the supernatural, Harry took only a black box, which he called “Harry's Box”, containing bells which he tied around the home to warn him if there was anything else in the house, and a packet of cigarettes for company. During his night there, he reported beforehand to the local paper, “There will be no sleeping for me and no lights will be switched on during the night.”
During his investigations, he found no evidence of the house being haunted and, in a letter addressed to the South Wales Evening Post, reported that all incidences supposedly of a paranormal origin could, in fact, have been fabricated by human hands, adding: “Honestly, I would not mind buying that house. I think it's a nice little home for any family.”
The Howells family rejected his conclusions. “I'm still mystified by the happenings and my family and I are afraid to go back. I'll never live there again”
Although David and Marcia Howells and their two children, did not move back into the house, their grandparents, Glendora and Jack Howells did return. They continued to live in the house, without further incident until the property was, at last, sold.
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