TheVillage History

Firstly, we have Part One of a tale about the cottage next to the fish and chip shop at the bottom of Bear Hill, related by a local lady whose family lived there for many years. Part Two follows next month.

“I moved into the cottage in 1954, when I was four years old. My father had died when I was two, and my mother, sister and I had moved in to live with my grandparents.

Originally the cottage had just two bedrooms, one at the back and one at the front. Granny and Grandad slept in the back bedroom, and my mother, sister and I slept in the front one.

When I was about seven years old I began sleepwalking. I would get out of bed, walk over to the window and rattle the catch, trying to open it. Luckily this window did not open, and my mother would lead me gently back to my bed. This would happen at least once every two weeks.

As time went by, my mother decided that my older sister should have her own room, and partitioned the back bedroom into two. When my sister moved into this new room, my grandparents moved into the front bedroom, and my mother and I to the rear one. From the day I moved out of the front, I never sleepwalked again.

When all the family were downstairs in the front room at night time, we would become aware of footsteps above us. My Grandad would look up and say, “She’s walking again.”

Looking back now, I think it just became normal to hear the steps so often. They would start by the wall adjoining the chip shop next door, cross the middle of the room towards the side entry, and then back again. The amazing thing was that my grandparents’ bed was in the middle of the room upstairs.

As I grew older, I would sometimes arrive home from a night out and open the door at the foot of the stairway and hear the footsteps. I would quickly close the door and wait until they had gone. It wasn’t that I was really scared of the footsteps, but I did not feel too confident, especially as there was no light on the stairs until you got to the very top. I sometimes wonder how I ever slept a wink at night.

When I was 19 and my sister was 25, we were both working full time. One day Granny was in bed with a bad leg ulcer. When my sister came home from work and went to check on her, Granny said, “I’ve had a few visitors today.”

My sister asked who had been there, and she replied, “There’s been a lady sat in that chair over there with a baby on her lap; she didn’t say anything to me, but she had a nice smile. I didn’t know her, but I thought it would be rude to ask her who she was.”

When my sister asked my mother who this visitor was, she said that no one had been to see Granny that day.

Several years later when I was living in Evesham, I received a phone call from my sister saying that Grandad had died in the night. It was two days after his 90th birthday, but he was a very strong and fit man for his age. He had simply got out of bed and keeled over with a heart attack.

A year later I returned to Alvechurch with my two sons, aged five and three. We all moved into the cottage while we waited for a house to become available. As the cottage was now cramped, the only place for us to sleep was in the front bedroom. That first night I propped the door open, but didn’t sleep a wink.

The second night I slept in the back bedroom with my mother, leaving the boys in the front. Almost every night for some time they would wake up screaming – something which had never happened before. My youngest son still remembers that he would become trapped beneath his bedclothes as if someone were holding them over him.

As this happened regularly, he says he learned to stay calm and find an opening in the sheets, but then the air would become thin and he would have to scream. I moved them both into the back bedrooms and they slept peacefully every night.

A few months later Granny broke her hip and was taken to Birmingham Accident Hospital, where we visited her every night. She was in for three weeks, and it wasn’t healing. At 10 o’clock one morning I had an overwhelming need to get to the hospital. When we arrived, Granny was sleeping peacefully so we gave her a kiss and came home. We had been home for about an hour when we had a call to say that she had died.

The following year I moved into a house just up the road from the cottage, and used to call in every day to visit my mother, who was now on her own after my sister moved out. Sometimes I would hear the footsteps coming down the stairs, and the door at the bottom would open.

My mother would say it was just the wind blowing it open, even though no windows were open upstairs. I still hated that front bedroom, which was now used as a storeroom, and even my mother would hardly ever go in there.

Soon, several structural faults in the building became apparent, and my mother decided to sell and move out. I was there every day helping to sort and pack things away. One day I went upstairs for something, and as I was starting back down I felt a very strong hand in the middle of my back and someone pushed me hard.

I just managed to grab hold of the handrail and stopped myself falling from top to bottom. Although I was shaking all over I did not say anything to my mother, so as not to worry her.

Following this, I started to mention to people in the village that I thought there was something peculiar in the cottage, and one day I talked to an old lady who had lived in Alvechurch all her life. She told me that when she was a little girl, her friend lived in the cottage.

The old lady said that she never liked going in there because it had a funny atmosphere, and that people used to call it the Haunted Cottage. This was because a Miss Morris had once lived there with a baby, which was considered a sin as she was unmarried. Apparently she went mad in the front bedroom and killed the baby, probably due to then-unrecognised post-natal depression.

The old lady went on to say that several occupants since had been pushed down the stairs – I had not yet told her about my own experience.

Some months later, my mother sold the cottage to the new chip shop owner next door, and moved to a flat in Tanyard Lane. The day after she moved, my eldest son and I went back to the cottage to clear some remaining things away.

My mother had said that there was a fire guard that she didn’t want, so we put it in the back yard on a pile of rubbish. We then went back in through the back door and locked and bolted it, before leaving through the front door to go home.

The following day we went back to the cottage, entering through the front door, and were both gobsmacked to find the fire guard in the middle of the kitchen. The back door was still locked and bolted.

We went out to check that the fire guard definitely was the one from the rubbish pile, to make sure we weren’t seeing things, but it was the very one. I later checked with the estate agent to see if the keys had been given out, and they assured me they had not.

A day later I was in the chemist’s talking to Mrs Houghton, the assistant, and she asked me when my mother was moving. When I told her that she had moved out three days ago, Mrs Houghton told me that the previous night, she had walked past the cottage and noticed an old lady in the entry next to it.

She thought it a strange hour for an old lady to be out, and also thought the lady seemed troubled, as though she didn’t know where she was. As Mrs Houghton reached the chip shop she turned back, but there was no trace of the lady anywhere. She knew that there hadn’t been any old ladies living in that area for some time.

When the builders began work on the cottage they had to strip it out completely, including opening the walls to combat the damp. I asked if I could take some photographs of the inside for my mother, as they had uncovered all the old beams and several areas of wattle and daub in the walls. It was so interesting that I took a whole roll of film, which was then developed and came out perfectly.

A friend of mine saw the pictures and asked if she could take some for the Historical Society. She went with a very expensive professional camera and again used a whole film. When I next saw her, she said she couldn’t understand why not one of her photos had come out.

When all the work in the cottage was finished I asked the chip shop owner, Alan, if I could take another look.I was amazed to find that all the walls were smooth plaster, the staircase had been moved to come down into the kitchen, and it had been fitted with central heating.

It looked so different that I began to think “Miss Morris” had moved out, but the following weeks revealed something different…

PART TWO FOLLOWS NEXT MONTH!

Three more stories of ghostly activity in the village…

The grey people

A resident of Old Rectory Lane in Alvechurch tells us that his home is inhabited by a number of ghosts, whom he and his wife refer to as “the grey people”. These include a lady in a grey flowing robe, and a small boy in a grey shirt and short trousers.

“They often walk past us, either in the cottage or outside. At first my wife and I didn’t mention the sightings to each other, in case we weren’t believed, but when we finally did, we discovered that our experiences were exactly the same.

“We’re not scared of them – we’ve been living with them for about 40 years, and we have always just accepted their presence. Mind you, there have been a couple of unpleasant incidents, when a pair of scissors and a knife went flying across the room and embedded themselves in the carpet.

“We often hear strange noises, which I suppose could be mice or the old house moving, but usually it’s the grey people wandering about. Doors open by themselves and there is a strong smell of tobacco.

“The children next door have also seen the young boy, and even played with him in the garden.”

The tidy ghost

A former resident of Snake Lane, Alvechurch, told us about the odd occurrences that happened when she lived there.

“Things would go missing for days and then turn up exactly where we’d been searching, and sometimes you doubt yourself and put it down to absent-mindedness – but there are some things that can’t be explained rationally.

“For example, once I was frantically searching through my makeup for a certain item, and I left everything strewn across the bed while I ran downstairs to search elsewhere. When I came back, all my makeup had been lined up in neat rows on the bed!

“Another time, my daughter returned home one night and as she approached the house, she saw a girl in her bedroom window. She came in and started shouting at her sister, accusing her of going into her bedroom, but her sister had been sitting downstairs with me the whole time…”

A spooky shot of the bakery

The storeroom ghost

The Village Bakery on Bear Hill has also been the scene of some paranormal activity.

One former employee reported that he was in the upstairs toilet when he sensed a presence near him – he turned and saw an “old-fashioned-looking” man behind him.

The man then disappeared, but the worker heard “banging and walloping” coming from the nearby store room. He tried the door, but it was locked.

Thinking that perhaps someone was locked in by mistake, he ran to fetch the key, returned and opened the door – only to find there was nobody in the room. However, all the bags of flour, which had been neatly stacked, had now been flung all around the room…

Another employee had a similar encounter: hearing a lot of noise from the store room, he also discovered the door was locked and went to find a key.

On this occasion the room was not empty – when he opened the door, he saw the figure of a young boy, who appeared to be praying.

If you have any spooky stories to share, please get in touch!

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