LONDON (dpa) – A handsome farmhouse in the South Wales town of Barry is currently up for sale but would-be purchasers should check the small print of the sales contract carefully before committing themselves.
The document contains a clause which obliges the new owner to leave the resident ghost in peace. Exorcism of any kind is strictly forbidden since owners Ray and Maureen Bronson have become rather fond of their resident spirit.
“We want to move to a bigger house but we both feel that Tom should stay here where he belongs,” said Ray. The current owner admits though that there was a time when he was so frightened of Tom that he preferred sleeping in the car.
After a chat, strictly man to ghost with a vicar as an intermediary, both sides felt a lot better and began to get along fine.
Apparition or delusion? In Britain statistics show that more young people believe in the supernatural than they do in the Christian God. One survey revealed that nearly one in every two Britons believes that ghosts are genuine inhabitants of the British Isles.
A host of “ghostbusters” and other self-appointed experts in disposing of troublesome astral beings have sprung up to meet the demand and paranormal considerations play an increasingly important role in the buying and selling of property. Some people want a haunted house while others definitely do not.
Last year Andrew Smith and his wife Josephine took a firm of estate agents to court after a series of odd goings on at their new home. Mrs Smith even accused the ghosts of having raped her and demanded the couple be given back some of money it paid for the house. The court rejected the appeal.
Eye specialist, professor Trevor Kirkham, went to court after the farm he bought in the northern county of Lancashire failed to live up to its reputation of being haunted. Kirkham cited the distinct lack of a headless friar, whose apparition he had been promised, and won the case. The court awarded him around 80,000 pounds in damages.
The reputedly most haunted house in Britain as listed by the Guinness Book of Records was recently up for sale for 375,000 pounds. The paranormal inventory of Littledean Hall in the Forest of Dean includes, among others, a former servant from the Caribbean who slayed his master, sugar baron Charles Pyrke, along with a Victorian gentleman who suffered a stroke on the stairs.
In one bedroom the various nocturnal noises include heavy breathing, the slamming of doors and sabre rattling. On the dining room floor a bloodstain said to have been left there after a bloody English Civil War battle in 1644 refuses to go away. The property agents suggest covering it up with a large carpet.
Even the best-connected families have ghosts and Queen Elizabeth II is no exception. This year ghostbusters were called for the first time to Hampton Court near London, a mansion occasionally used by the monarch.
Using cameras, microphones and temperature sensors the experts stalked through the favourite palace of Henry VIII (1491-1547), the king who almost certainly boosted the supernatural pantheon with several of his executed wives.
The fifth of his six wives, Catherine Howard, has been blamed for causing sudden draughts, the sound of footsteps and whispering noises hundreds of years after her demise.
One consolation for the Royals is that the queen’s ghosts do adhere strictly to court etiquette.
It hardly bears thinking about what would happen if one of their residences was to be haunted by the second Duke of Buckingham, a notorious womanizer in his day.
Parapsychologists tracked down this restless spirit to the Cock and Bottle Inn in the northern city of York where he is said to haunt the ladies’ room and take delight in blowing up hot air through the toilet bowl.
