Battersea Poltergeist: What did cause the strange goings on?
What was causing the strange goings-on in a London family home…?
ixty-three Wycliffe Road, Battersea. It was an address that became synonymous with fear, terror and sleepless nights in the Fifties and Sixties, not least for the traumatised family who’d lived there.
Train driver Wally Hitchings and his wife, Kitty, along with their children, Shirley and John, were the inhabitants and strange things began happening in 1956. Shirley was just a teenager then, and one day she’d returned to her bedroom and found an ornate silver key resting on her pillow. She’d never seen it before and none of her family recognised it. From then on, inexplicable, spooky things started to happen…
Objects mysteriously moving, chairs flying through the air, deafeningly loud banging coming from ceilings and walls, which woke the Hitchings family – and their irate neighbours. ‘I lived through the Blitz and I remember the bombs dropping, it was the same level of noise,’ Shirley later said. ‘The sound was coming from the roots of the house.’
A pile of tea towels was set alight, and Shirley had her covers ripped off and was thrown from her bed. Writings allegedly appeared on walls and she heard scratching coming from her headboard too.
‘Everybody was pointing the finger at me,’ she told The
Sun. ‘I knew I was not doing this. I’d been brought up to be honest and never lie.’
They nicknamed what they thought of as a terrifying poltergeist, Donald, and the family were questioned by police after they received reports that the
‘devil’ was being summoned.
Shirley’s grandmother, Ethel, who lived with them, was convinced Donald was an evil spirit – even throwing holy water over her granddaughter. ‘Donald went berserk,’ Shirley recalled. ‘The crucifix went flying across the room and the curtains were left in shreds, as if someone had taken a knife to them.’ The then 15-year-old worked part-time as a seamstress at Selfridges department store, but she was later sacked after admitting she was the ‘poltergeist girl’. Noises seemed to follow her to work and objects disappeared from the clothing store. In time, the family got used to the haunting and Donald, despite various investigations – including by paranormal researcher Harold Chibbett – and bids to remove the ghostly presence from their home. In 1965, Shirley and her husband, Derek, moved to Bognor Regis and went on to have two children, but the poltergeist supposedly followed them. ‘He’d leave messages telling me what my parents were doing and tell them what Derek and
I were doing in great detail. He would snitch on us,’ Shirley, now 80, told the paper.
In 1968, Donald fell silent, leaving a final message with Kitty and Wally, saying goodbye and that he’d leave the family in peace.
Danny Robins, the presenter of Radio 4’s documentary drama, The Battersea Poltergeist, has been investigating the haunting for a podcast, which is available from the BBC now. Psychology professor Ciaran O’Keeffe and parapsychologist Evelyn Hollow are also part of the series, as well as the voices of Toby Jones as Harold Chibbett and Dafne Keen as a young Shirley.
When Danny traipsed up and down Wycliffe Road, looking for number 63, he discovered it had been torn down in the late Sixties. He’d expected to find a modernday successor in its place, but instead, that number simply no longer exists. It’s as if the address has been erased from history. Maybe it’s for the best…
My mum, 72, remarried 10 years ago – and though she’s still as loving as ever, she has dramatically changed her politics to be more like her partner. We’re now arguing over the Covid vaccine – she wants to visit once lockdown is ‘over’ this Summer, but she and her husband won’t take the vaccine and I said I don’t really want her visiting till she does (one of my children has severe asthma and was shielding until recently). She says I can’t stop her from seeing the grandkids like this. Where do I go from here?!
Lucy, Doncaster
What does being vaccinated have to do with politics? Your mother is at severe risk of extreme illness and even death if she contracts Covid. The only protection against both those risks is having both jabs. If she doesn’t take up the vaccine, visiting your children is still possible, but she will have to keep her face covered, maintain at least a two-metre distance and ideally stay outside the house – even when the regulations have been relaxed. Tell her that’s the best you’ll be able to do – no kisses or cuddles, and certainly no snuggling on the sofa. Explain that you’ll have to maintain these rules indefinitely, until she is vaccinated.