The haunting of Shirley Hitchings
Frowning, teenager Shirley Hitchings stared at her bed. She’d come up to her room and instantly spotted something strange – a silver key resting on her pillow.
Shirley, 15, had never seen the ornate, old-fashioned key before.
Confused, she handed it to her dad Wally, a Tubetrain driver. He didn’t recognise it, either.
They tried every cupboard and door in the family home in Battersea, south London.
But it didn’t fit anywhere in the property at
63 Wycliffe Road.
The mysterious key was put to one side.
Later that day in January 1956, Shirley realised the key had vanished.
So strange.
That moment signalled the beginning of one of Britain’s most infamous ghost stories.
And the start of a 12-year ordeal for Shirley and her family.
It was 2am, hours after the discovery of the key, when it all kicked off.
Shirley and the rest of her family – her dad, mum Kitty, brother John and gran Ethel – were woken by horrendous banging noises.
They seemed to be coming from within the walls, ceilings and floors.
It was so loud, it even disturbed neighbours on either side of their rented terraced house.
‘Keep it down!’ they called out, annoyed by the disruption. Terrified, the family called the police and, later that morning, an officer came to interview them.
He took notes and looked in disbelief at the sleepdeprived family. The story seemed unbelievable.
‘I think the whole house has had a bit too much cocoa,’ he smirked.
But, as the weeks passed, there were even more unexplained noises.
Banging from under the floorboards and behind walls, like someone stamping around.
Then other strange things happened. A clock fell from a shelf, furniture flew through the air, a pile of tea towels burst into flames.
And the weirdness always seemed centred on Shirley.
Tapping noises followed her around the house.
One night, she was woken by scratching sounds coming from her headboard.
The bedcovers were ripped away, she was thrown from her bed.
‘Daddy, make it stop!’ she sobbed when Wally raced in.
Shirley was accused of playing tricks.
‘Is it you?’ Wally asked. ‘No,’ she insisted. ‘That’s good enough for me,’ he nodded, believing his terrified daughter.
Besides, how could she make noises from behind walls, doors and ceilings?
Instead, the family became convinced they were being terrorised by a dark spirit, even named it: Donald.
Shirley’s gran Ethel, who was deeply religious, believed that ‘Donald’ was the devil. She threw holy
Noises seemed to be coming from within the walls...
water over Shirley and held up a crucifix.
What happened next was terrifying, as if Donald had gone berserk.
The crucifix flew across the room and the curtains were left in tatters.
Feeling desperate, Wally confided in a colleague, whose wife was a medium.
Shirley went to stay with the couple in the hope the evil spirit could be drawn from her.
But when they put their hands on her head and started chanting,
Shirley was scared. She begged her mum and dad to return to the family home.
And when the police heard about the attempted exorcism, Shirley and her father were taken in for questioning.
The case was then debated in the House of Commons after the family’s MP demanded a police apology.
Suddenly, Shirley was front-page news. The Press dubbed Donald ‘The Battersea Poltergeist’ and described ‘him’ as Shirley’s ‘ghostly lover’.
‘I’ve never even had a boyfriend,’ poor Shirley gasped, mortified.
Then ghosthunter Harold Chibbett turned up on the doorstep at Wycliffe Road.
A World War One veteran, he was a tax inspector by day and a paranormal investigator by night.
Harold been intrigued by the newspaper reports.
‘It starts with young girls like you, Shirley,’ he said.
Harold explained how poltergeists like Donald were thought to feed from pure life energy given off by youngsters.
After that, Mr Chibb – as the family called him – stayed in their kitchen at night.
He tried to contact Donald using cards with letters on them. ‘I’m not giving up until we get through to him,’ he vowed, asking the spook to write a message with a pen.
Sure enough, soon there was a note…..
Chills ran down Shirley’s spine as she read the ghostly scrawl: Shirley, I come.
Donald wrote again, demanding a quill rather than a ‘writing stick’, suggesting he was a spirit from centuries past.
But Mr Chibb couldn’t persuade it to leave the family, and the entity became more menacing.
Shirley found her dolls with their heads cut off and chilling one-word notes. Punish.
Donald was planning more torment.
The haunting profoundly affected Shirley.
Having been a carefree, confident girl planning to go to Art college, she became a shell of her former self.
She lost her friends and couldn’t get a boyfriend.
Described herself as existing, not living.
Eventually, she did find love. She married Derrick in 1965, and the couple moved to Bognor Regis, West Sussex, where they had a son David, now 54, and daughter Karen, 52.
But to Shirley’s horror, Donald followed them to her new home.
There was more mischief – strange sounds late at night, furniture moving by itself.
Finally, in 1968– after 12 years of torment, there was one last note.
Donald said goodbye, and promised to leave them in peace. Shirley was free.
But, in the years that followed, she never forgot.
Now she tells her amazing story in a new BBC Sounds podcast series.
Shirley, now aged 80 and living in Portsmouth, says, ‘We’ve found out so much more about Donald...and he is giving up his secrets.’