Two Poltergeists

Busy, bustling Swansea has been the scene of several ghostly disturbances, including violent disturbances at a terraced house in Rhondda Street in 1965. The Howells family, David and Marcia and their two little children, moved into the house, and three days later Mrs Howells said, "We woke up in the early hours of the morning…. We could hardly breathe and felt as if something was choking us… we opened the windows but it made no difference.." Nothing further happened for ten months and then Marcia Howells entered the living room one afternoon was amazed to see a child's medicine bottle rise off the mantelpiece and fly through the air towards her! She quickly left the room and slammed the door shut behind her. As she did so she heard the sound of the bottle smashing against the door of the now empty room. Son David returned home from work, and when they looked into the room together some of the furniture was upside down, and clothes were scattered all over the place. A couple of days later Mrs Howells's grandmother was in the front room with Gareth who was not yet 2 years old, when she heard a crashing sound from the direction of the living room. She immediately went to that room but was unable to open the door. When Marcia returned home with Beverley, nearly four years old, they found the living room had once again been wrecked: a settee had been upended, a television set thrown to the floor, and chairs were tumbled on top of everything. Upstairs they found the double bed had been turned upside down on top of the baby's cot, this much they could see through the gap in the bedroom door, which they could only open a few inches. Marcia now leaving the back door locked, as it had been when she went out, now waited at the front door for her husband. As he arrived there was another crashing sound that seemed to come from inside the house, somewhere near the back. On investigation they found an unconnected gas cooker on its side in the little kitchen, and a smashed bottle of coffee nearby. The family, including the two grandparents left the house to spend the night with relatives. David and Marcia had had enough. David said that although he had a mortgage on the property he would never take the children back there, and Marcia said she could never again sleep in that house. She was convinced that no human being could have been responsible for happenings. Police, a reporter and a Roman catholic priest later visited the house but encountered no further damage or phenomena of any kind and it was assumed that by then the disturbances had ceased of their own accord. Mrs Glendora Howells, the grandmother who moved out of the haunted house with her granddaughter's family, said later that none of her property was damaged. She and her husband Jack had occupied a front room, and she was very puzzled why none of her things were among the ones "thrown about by the unknown force". She said she was badly shaken up by the experience and would not return to Rhondda Street if offered £500 to do so. A few days later Harry Homes, a local psychic investigator, spent twenty-four hours in the house and came to the conclusion that the damage was done by a human being and not a poltergeist. He gave reasons for suspecting that someone had manufactured the disturbances, and made them look like happenings of a paranormal nature. He described how the jammed bedroom door, could have been rigged, and pointed out that a loose window in the lean to kitchen could have allowed somebody entry and exit. Less than a month later Mr and Mrs Jack Howells (the grandparents) returned to the house and lived in it without experiencing any unusual happenings- until it was sold. Andrew Mackenzie, in is book The Unexplained (1966) suggests that "unusually heavy rainfall and other climatic conditions could have resulted in conditions which caused the disturbances of objects in a house situated on a steep hillside", although he freely admits that he is unable to suggest a force "which could overturn a bed, a gas stove a television set and a settee!" Furthermore he is unable to explain how such an upheaval would only affect one house and not affect in the least any adjoining properties. The Swansea case like so many instances of so-called Poltergeist activity probably commenced with a few genuine inexplicable happenings, but later occurrences almost certainly had a human element. But without on the spot investigation and personal interviewing of the all the people concerned, it is misleading and wrong to attempt any sort of explanation.

back to Dragonslore main page
back to Ghosts Index