The Battersea Poltergeist | Ep. 124

One of the UK’s scariest Poltergeist experiences involves a young girl, Shirley, that was tormented for 12 years.

Beyond experiencing terrifying notes and levitating from her bed, her family’s house consistently rattled, objects flew across rooms, and fires randomly started throughout the home.

But is it believable? Listen now.

The Battersea Poltergeist – The Hitchings Haunting

What would you do if your house suddenly became alive?

What would you do if you had to live with a poltergeist haunting your home?

Would you be willing to communicate with the spirit that was terrorizing your family?

Have you ever experienced a true haunting?

What’s up, Bizarros?!  This week we dive into the Battersea Poltergeist in London. We’ll take a look at the amazing journey of the Hitchings family.

What Happened At The Home On 63 Wycliffe Road?

From history hit: the Hitchings family was a seemingly ordinary working-class group: there was father Wally, a tall and gaunt London Underground driver; his wife Kitty, a former office clerk who was a wheelchair user due to chronic arthritis; grandmother Ethel, a fiery character known locally as ‘Old Mother Hitchings’; her adopted son John, a surveyor in his twenties; and finally Shirley Hitchings, Wally and Kitty’s 15-year-old daughter who was about to start art school and worked as a seamstress in Selfridges.

The first unusual occurrence and essentially the beginning of it all started on a January morning.

15-year-old Shirley Hitchings, the daughter, walked into her bedroom and immediately noticed something peculiar.

There was an ornate silver key sitting very blatantly on her pillow. It seemed as if it wasn’t just thrown or dropped there – but set down with a purpose.

Almost like it was presented to her for her to find.

Naturally, Shirley was intrigued and started asking everyone in her family why the key was put on her pillow and what door or item it was for.

However, no one in her family knew the origins of the key or how it ended up in Shirley’s room.

Her father, Wally, took the key and decided that, even though he may not know where it came from, he would find out what it is used for.

So, he started going from door to door and lock to lock in the house to see what purpose this silver key served.

But he ran out of luck. It didn’t fit anything. Honestly, to the family, it wasn’t even clear what kind of lock this key was intended to open.

Despite all the hoopla the key caused with the family, within a few days, the key vanished into thin air. As strangely as it appeared, it seemed to disappear.

As strange as the key was, without serving an exact purpose or anyone coming forward and claiming where it came from, it was lost in the shuffle of life, and the family decided to move on.

The Awful Night That Changed Their Lives 

The evening the family made this decision is when the strange activity began in the house.

When everyone had gone to sleep that night, a strange sound started coming from within the walls.

Kind of like…Roland Doe, I believe. But that was a scratching sound.

It started as a faint scratching sound, but it steadily grew louder and more demanding.

Similar to most people, I assume, Wally figured it was just rodents and mice that had gotten into the walls. (or, like a typical horror movie dad, there are just birds in the walls.)

He got out of bed to look around and see if he could identify the rodent or maybe the hole that they came in.

As he got up and started inspecting, the scratching sound quickly pivoted to a loud thumping.

Wally described it as if someone were taking their fists and pounding on the walls with all of their strength.

Suddenly, the pounding seemed to spread around the entire house like wildfire. The home erupted with loud thuds and bangs. Furniture began shaking, and picture frames rattled against the walls.

The house had seemingly become violent.

Lights were flickering on and off on their own, and by this point, the entire family was awake.

They all stood in silence and terror as their home was overtaken by loud noises, scratching noises, and shaking furniture.

Here is a quote by Shirley:

I lived through the Blitz, and I remember the bombs dropping; it was the same level of noise. The sound was coming from the roots of the house. The whole house shook like it was an air raid. It went on night after night for three weeks. We were shattered. It was as if the noises came from the bowels of the earth. It went on until daylight. We were traumatized. I remember clinging to my dad, saying, ‘Please make it stop.’

Unlike how some ghost stories typically operate, where isolation is emphasized, this loud cacophony of noises wasn’t somehow contained to the Hitchings family.

Neighbors up and down Wycliffe Road exited their homes and stood in their front yard, just gawking at the Hitchings’s house and wondering what the hell was happening.

Then, almost as quickly as the noise and banging had started, it completely stopped at the drop of a dime.

The silence that followed carried its own weight. It was eerie, almost in a way of second-guessing did we really just hear all of that?

But, looking around at each other and the furniture and pictures and frames that had moved, it was very real.

They were baffled.

Wally tried to inspect the house, unsure of what to determine or what he was expecting to find.

He wouldn’t have believed it about 2 minutes prior during the chaos, but the house appeared to be in normal shape. Nothing was damaged; there was no sign of anything and no rodents he could see.

What started off as scratching had turned into, essentially, nothing. Just a short time period of unusual activity.

As difficult as it was, the family decided the only thing to do was to accept the situation for what it was and just go back to sleep.

The next morning, the police were notified about the previous night’s disturbance, and a surveyor was brought in.

Like Wally, he was unable to find any cause for the incident. Everyone was stumped, and essentially they had no choice but to continue on with life as usual.

That evening the noises returned, in particular the banging and the scratching sounds, which seemed to come from the walls, floor, ceiling, and even from within furniture.

At this point, these alarming sounds became a regular occurrence which would spring up out of nowhere and without warning at all hours of the day.

For about 3 weeks, the noises continued. But then, the banging sounds and loud noises were accompanied by moving objects.

Not just the rattling of picture frames like before, but furniture, chairs, and couches full-on being moved and slid across the floor.

Lamps and end tables were flung around and flipped over by unseen hands.

At times objects would even levitate through the air or be thrown across the room, often directly at members of the family.

The objects would hover slowly for a few moments but then dart toward the family members, so they’d have to duck quickly.

Both the intensity and the strangeness factor seemed to escalate with time.

Slippers were seen to walk about on their own as if someone was wearing them, the piano would play music on its own, and pens would fly about and scrawl pictures onto the walls.

The family even started to hear deep, animalistic growls coming from the shadows.

The grandmother, Ethel, was also almost pushed down the stairs by unseen hands.

The most violent act came on a night when Shirley was attacked by an unseen force and literally dragged out of her bed.

She started screaming, and her family rushed in to see the terrifying sight of her wrestling and pulling at her sheets with an unseen entity.

Shirley went stiff, her back arched, as she rose several inches from the bed.

She had begun levitating.

Shirley said:

“The bedsheets came off, and I was floating; I thought I was going mad. I remember the sheets coming off and being tossed about in the bed. I was floating above the bed. When John pulled me down, I was rigid. My nan, who was Catholic, thought I might be possessed by the devil. I thought I was going mad. I was crying all the time, very traumatized.”

This last violent and horrifying fact sparked a change in the activity.

It was as if, at this moment, the poltergeist picked Shirley Hitchings as its target.

The strange banging and noises would follow her around town, even when she was out shopping or at her job as a seamstress.

In fact, the noises got so disruptive that her boss thought she was pulling a prank, and when scissors and other items began to go missing, they accused her of stealing and ended up firing her.

In February, the story reached the national press due to all of the photographers that lingered outside the house and journalists that fought to get a word or two out of the family.

Daily Mail even got in touch and invited her to visit the head office. She was searched intricately to make sure there were no tricks or charades going on.

Nothing ended up happening.

All of the press ended up reaching a Paranormal investigator named Harold Chibbet

Harold Chibbett, known as Chib, was a ghost hunter who ended up devoting the rest of his life to the Battersea case.

Chib listened to their stories and spent many nights surveying the home and trying to collect as much evidence as possible.

Due to his consistent exposure to the family, he was able to experience some of the phenomena himself. Then, he let the family know what they were up against.

A poltergeist.

Although rare, this type of spirit is said to be responsible for physical disturbances, such as throwing objects and making loud noises.

Chib explained that there was usually a teenage girl at the center of poltergeist activity.

Shirley and her family were horrified. They had never heard of a poltergeist nor had any idea what to do about it.

It felt hopeless. Basically, like a life sentence to misery.

They did the only thing they could think to do and arranged for Shirley to have an exorcism.

This would be taken place at the home of Harry Hanks, a part-time medium who worked with Wally.

But before the exorcism could begin, the police arrived, having been tipped off about alleged ‘black magic and witchcraft’ and put a halt to the event.

Next, Chib suggested that the family try to make contact with the poltergeist, who they started calling Donald after Donald Duck and his temper.

The poltergeist was already writing symbols and crosses on the walls, so he figured they didn’t really have anything to lose.

He brought letter cards to the house and laid them on the table.

The idea was that Chib would point to the letters, and the spirit would tap when the right letters were reached to spell out words.

Believe it or not, it actually worked. Slowly the spirit began to tap out messages.

He claimed to be French. In fact, he detailed an extensive identity.

Donald said that he was Louis-Charles, the very short-lived Louis 17th, who was rumored to have escaped captivity during the French Revolution.

He told the family that he drowned in a river during his exile and that he was very scared.

But the family had dealt with too much. They didn’t have empathy. They didn’t feel sorry for the poltergeist. They told it to go.

Chib would leave the paper and a pen in the family’s front room – the only one with a lock – and take the key home with him.

The room came to be known as ‘Donald’s room’ because he would tap along to music on the television and arrange dolls in a circle.

In the morning, there could be 60 or 70 notes.

The first note they found chillingly said, ‘Shirley, I come.’

Many more are illegible or a strange mixture of French and English, sometimes addressed to ‘mon cherie Chibbett.’

As time went on, Donald started making demands and threatening to burn the house down, something which it made good on when fires started to erupt around the house.

Another quote from Shirley:

Donald started making demands – wanting me to wear my hair a certain way ‒ then threaten us, saying he’d set fires in the house,’ she says. ‘Dad locked all the matches and knives in our air raid shelter. But it did no good because fires would start all over the house. One night Dad got burned putting out a fire. Underneath the burn were gouge marks like he’d been clawed.

This led to Wally actually having to go to the hospital and be treated for wounds.

One night in October 1956, in addition to objects being flung around the room, they started hearing whispering.

It was hard to tell at first, but it sounded like a woman with an Irish accent.

This absolutely terrified Shirley’s grandmother because she said it sounded just like her mother’s voice.

She had a breakdown and ran to her room. Just a few days later, Shirley’s grandmother suffered a stroke and died shortly after.

This poltergeist activity and hauntings for Shirley and her family went on for 12 years.

Quote:

‘It ruined my life,’ Shirley says. ‘It took my teenage years. I was 21 before I could get anything near normality. And even then, he interfered in my life.

One boyfriend came to the house and was trying to goad Donald by saying things like, “Come on, Donald, do your worst!”

But apparently, he ran away after a bowl was tipped onto his head.”

It is estimated that over the 12 years, between 3,000 and 4,000 messages were written by Donald.

The last message came in 1968.

Shirley was living in West Sussex with her husband and their baby son.

Donald would leave messages on the notepad she kept by the telephone, telling her what her parents were doing back in London.

It had been going on for so long that it was normal to Shirley at this point. Not even out of the ordinary, which is crazy, of course.

The note said he was leaving – and they never heard from him again. ‘My mum went into mourning,’ Shirley says. ‘She’d got to think of Donald like a son. But Dad and I were delighted.’

In the late 1960s, the house would be demolished, and Shirley would move off to the South of England to start a new life and put it all behind her.

In the 1980s, a psychic medium approached Shirley to tell her something important.

The medium told Shirley that she was being followed by a little boy. What stood out as strange, though, was what the little boy was wearing.

She said he was in a fancy dress – blue satin, and he had red hair.

This struck Shirley immediately because she remembered back when Chib had once given her a postcard that supposedly depicted Louis Charles.

On the postcard, he was wearing a blue satin suit with red hair. The medium also relayed a message that the little boy was sorry for what he had done.

Could The Battersea Poltergeist Be A Fake?

History hit – Some point to the noises coming from the house being located on uneasy marshland, while others have suggested that acid in the soil could have led to madness.

Also, Handwriting experts have analyzed the letters that were supposedly written by Donald and concluded that they were almost certainly written by Shirley.

Was The Battersea Poltergeist Real?

What do you think, Bizarros?

Was the Battersea Poltergeist an elaborate hoax portrayed by a 15-year-old Shirley?

Could it be a true story that one bereaved family had to deal with an ongoing series of events that ruined their everyday lives?

Let us know in the comments!

P.S. It looks like Blumhouse TV will be bringing the Battersea Poltergeist series to life on Peacock. It’s based on BBC Radio 4’s drama podcast.