On january 1956. the location is 63 wycliffe street in battersea london nothing stood out about this terraced house but behind the doors of number 63A.
Story still resonates long after it was torn down in the 1960s this particular story was national news it was talked about in parliament and it all began with a silver key found on the bed of 15 year old shirley hitchings.
She was the daughter of wally and kitty hitchings the former was a train driver the latter suffered from chronic arthritis and was wheelchair-bound john hitchings was shirley’s adopted brother.
He was in his 20s and worked as a surveyor for the local council the last of the occupants was ethel shirley’s grandmother. she was an imposing six foot four and weighed 250 pounds she was outspoken and quite the presence at the time of the events to be spoken of she had been slowed by a stroke as stated events began when shirley came across an old ornate silver key with intricate designs on her pillow.
She had never seen it before but was intrigued by its strange appearance naturally she wanted to know where it had come from so she asked her father if he knew anything about it.
At the time he was bathing shirley’s mother who because of her illness was unable to do so he told shirley to leave the key on the mantelpiece and he would have a look at it when he could. After tending to kitty he walked to the mantelpiece there was no key there and he asked shirley where it had gone.
She didn’t know it was soon found by shirley in the same place she had found it on her pillow while he asked if she had put it back.
She replied no though thinking it strange wally decided to find out where to come from.
So he went about the house trying the key on every lock including an old chest left by the previous occupant the key didn’t fit any the household put it down as an odd unexplained find and nothing more. But it was that night the events began the household was woken to banging coming from inside the walls john being familiar with buildings attempted to find a source none could be found.
The reverberations seem to emanate from in the words of shirley everywhere wally and john determined it wasn’t the pipes so they made the decision to enter the attic while up there the doorbell rang it was a number of neighbours asking to find out what was causing all the commotion they blamed it on wally but while remonstrating with him they heard the noises and quickly realized that none of the occupants of number 63 had anything to do with them.
Some thought it was a structural problem others thought it was possibly a less than careful home invader and some simply stood baffled.
When the police arrived they brushed it off as the doings of hoaxers yet the family were adamant they had nothing to do with the events and they had neighbors who could verify this dumbfounded the only link they could make was with the key that had been found.
A search began for the item but it was nowhere to be found and all the occupants denied having moved it.
What was more disconcerting is the fact that the noise continued every night for two weeks both upstairs and downstairs in the ceiling and walls soon after chairs began moving and whatever was said to be interfering with the objects in wycliffe street began focusing on one of the house’s members.
Shirley hitchings one character who must be looked at in more detail in order to get a better understanding of the case is a man called harold chibit.
He was in many ways eccentric and had an entrenched belief in an afterlife which seems to have been instigated during his period of service in the first world war throughout the day he was a tax collector at night he spent large amounts of time researching paranormal activity even going so far as to sleep in the living rooms and kitchens of people seeking answers to unexplainable phenomena because of his past unorthodox.
Investigations he was called in by the hitchings family to examine and detail the activities experienced he arrived six weeks after the key was found on shirley’s pillow.
He would take a position on the kitchen floor for a good many nights with nothing more than a sleeping bag a pen and some notebooks to document any happening experienced by himself and other family members especially shirley these notebooks exist to this day and we’re last in the possession of a bbc podcast team looking into the case.
Shirley who is now in her 80s continues to relay her story to documentary makers authors and most extensively to the bbc podcast team just mentioned.
She tells of ornaments pots and pans and a range of other household items floating slowly or quickly across rooms in the house.
Sometimes it would appear as though the entity was placing them down on the floor at other times it looked as if they were aimed at her and sometimes they were finally hurled against walls.
A disconcerting memory is seeing her father’s slippers always located beside the fireplace walk unembodied across the room john hitchings was the skeptic of the family when interviewed by harold chibit he stated that shirley was responsible for the strange phenomena from his position things went quiet when she wasn’t around there was no strange activity it was her that found the key and it was surely who witnessed most of the objects floating flying or being hurled against walls and it was shirley who named the entity donald chibit believed that john was right in part most if not all major events happened when shirley was present chibit was sure that shirley was the focus.
She was the person the entity was feeding off this seemed to be confirmed when john told him the following john said that there were things he saw that he couldn’t explain.
One night the family went to her room after they heard screaming coming from shirley john stated the following it was like our bed sheet was being pulled off her she was screaming for her dad’s help john asked shirley to show him her hands thinking this was a staged hoax.
She did raise her hands above the sheets only for the sheep beneath to wriggle free from its position too when it made it halfway down that’s when it happened her back was arched rigid it was like.
She was hovering floating maybe six inches over the bedaccounts of strange events soon got to the media.
Journalists photographers and radio men came to get first-hand accounts from the family on leaving her house shirley was inundated with questions and overwhelmed by the flashing of cameras for a while it led to her becoming a prisoner in her own home eventually the family decided that the only way to get rid of the press was to invite some reporters in while interviewing shirley and the family they were told of the moving objects and communication with donald they told reporters that a form of communication had been devised.
When questions were asked a reply would come in the form of taps on the wall one tap meant no and two meant yes the two reporters asked if they could communicate with the entity they were told they could a reporter from the south london advertiser asked simply are you there there was a two-tap reply in the presence of all.
The second question was are you evil there was a reply of one knock.
The third question was do you mean surely any harm once again the response was one knock.
The fourth question was posed by a reporter at the daily mail he said can we help you in any way two knocks were heard in response.
The questions continued in a similar vein but then they thought to ask the entity how old is shirley 15 knocks were heard.
The last question was will you go away the response was three interspersed knocks which were interpreted to be the. Reply no no no with the unwanted visitor seemingly set to stay wally shirley’s father grew more and more wary about the events he was told to take time off from his job as the strain began to show and it was this noticeable nervous tension that led one of his colleagues harry hanks.
A man with supposed psychic abilities to take an interest in the events on wycliffe road the idea he presented to the family was to exercise the spirit and they agreed.
When the day came the press were invited though this was done by harry hanks without the permission of the family shirley describes that night as traumatic she describes chance from wally contortions of the face and the light in the room was pulsing she says harry claimed to have channeled the entity who told him he wanted.
Shirley while the proceedings continued there was a knock at the front door mrs hanks harry’s wife went to answer it the remaining individuals in the sitting room heard a commotion when she returned.
She told them it was the police who came because they had a report of black magic and accused harry hanks of summoning the devil it turned out that a member of the press had tipped them off the story even went so far as to be mentioned in parliament where an mp made allegations regarding black magic some including a local mp accused the police of mishandling the case and asked for a public apology.
The home secretary gwillum lloyd george was also asked to condemn the actions of the police but he refused to do so on the grounds that black magic was a crime against common law.
Later in the year a newspaper would accuse shirley of being responsible for the noises being put on donald they said that shirley had a deformity in the toe which allowed her to make tapping noises unnoticed we will come back to this later rather than just tapping and banging the actions of donald began to increase when fire began taking hold spontaneously.
One thing we do know is that fires definitely took place the daily express reports that the fire brigade reported the happenings.
A daylight fire finally impacted one of the residency’s occupants shirley’s father wally it happened when his bed was set on fire and he received injuries.
The doctors noticed that the injuries were not just burns in the middle of the burn there was quite a deep gouge which the doctor said came from claws.
What we don’t know is if it was donald or other members of the house while surely going to extreme lengths to maintain her story that she was being harassed by an unwanted spirit.
The evidence to the contrary is to say that the firefighters could find no evidence that the fire was started by a person or persons.
We also have to account for the gouge marks noted by the doctor which were said to have been present within the burn as we’ve already said there were times.
When donald would use tapping noises in response to questions but later in this strange case he would communicate when harold chibit began pointing to letters and waiting for taps in response indicating the correct one after a period of time letters were found.
Which though childlike were legible some of the letters revolved around donald’s interest in shirley others requested items which he wished to have for the upcoming christmas and others gave details as to who he was.
Let’s talk about the supposed identity first he claimed to be and i quote the long dead son of louis xvi and marie antoinette this was apparently revealed while utilizing the letter pointing.
But soon letters began to appear around the house come the end of december nearly a year after the first strange events began the violent outburst said to have come from donald had subsided while the communications intensified.
The letters found were made up of curled capital letters the contents of which were strewn with spelling mistakes and the occasional french word rather than referring to shirley by her name he called her renee here’s a transcript of one of the letters said to have come from the 6th of december donald requested materials for christmas decorations the following monday there was also more information given through letters with regards to his supposed french and aristocratic background.
He also added the following essentially this unwanted visitor was claiming to be the dolphin son of the executed louis xvi apparently he escaped over the english channel by ship.
His ship apparently sank in 1795 and he would have been 10 at the time the front room by this time had become known as donald’s room and family members would claim he would tap along to tv theme tunes that he liked and letters began to appear addressed to some of the stars in these shows.
One of the stars was jeremy spencer and donald warned that his life might be in danger he again wrote a letter which he asked the family to mail to jeremy warning him of an impending accident as well as an apparent liking for certain tv shows he also developed an animosity to ethel the grandmother.
She continued to see him as a product of the devil some of the messages sent about her are vindictive but comical here is one sent to wally.
Wally for nana disobeyment tip her out of the bed silly out bugger she’s out balax with face like an overground beer the more vindictive side was always close by as donald’s animosity towards.
The elderly ethel became ever more hostile one night a message was tapped out on the wall surely interpreted as meaning get ethel.
When she came objects began to fly around and there was whispering heard eventually a disembodied voice was heard it was female in tone and distinctly irish and sound on asking whose voice it was the reply came back .
Sarah i need to speak to ethel.
Ethel replied how do i know it’s you the voice replied i have a message for you.
The family can remember ethel being deeply disturbed by the event.
Sarah was the name of ethel’s mother and the voice was said to have been that of her mother’s.
Shirley has said that her grandmother never recovered from that night she shut herself up in her room rarely came down to watch tv as she usually did and a few months later shirley would arrive home on a friday night to find an ambulance outside the now infamous house ethel had had another stroke.
Shirley followed her into the ambulance and says her grandmother told her she wouldn’t be coming home to them she was resigned to her death on the saturday morning police arrived to tell them her grandmother had died.
Harold chibit had become a part of the furniture in his attempt to find out what was causing all the activity at 63 wycliffe street his notes give off the impression that he is honest and truly believes he is communicating with non-material entities however for someone like me the previously mentioned information points towards an elaborate hoax we’ve all seen tv programs watch youtube clips and read some articles about haunting and poltergeist activity.
But the idea that a disembodied ghost has now reached the level of being able to communicate through letters in such a familiar way raises more than a few questions chibit appears to have believed this was credible but his faith was shaken when some names that donald had apparently linked to the london theater scene on drury lane were found by harold’s wife.
Lily in a radio times magazine dated to march 1956 he notes his possible foolishness in notebook entries and the bbc podcast team looked in more detail at the authenticity of shirley’s accounts.
The first thing they did was compare writing samples of shirleys against those meant to have been written by donald.
The first thing the handwriting expert said was that the handwriting was highly embellished there was a lot of curlicues and this often signifies an attempt to conceal.
The true writer’s identity through artifice when comparing shirley and the supposed letters of donald’s she says the following.
Surely like donald has a severe left slant and there are very white spaces between the words in fact there are quite white spaces between the letters this is somebody who doesn’t feel as though they are part of the group they will come across as being friendly and sociable but the reality is far from it and they feel themselves very isolated with regards to donald’s letter she says i think this letter is highly stylized but i think that again there’s artifice spelling mistakes there’s transposing of letters there’s fran glaze going between french and english it’s almost somebody showing off their bilingual abilities it’s a scream for attention i’m being asked if she believes the handwriting in both letters is from the same person she states i would say they almost certainly are the chances of both these letters being written by different people are remote enough for me to say that i’m certain they’ve been written by the same writer.
So we have an expert that is saying they are from the same person i personally find this convincing but i’m also aware that handwriting experts have come under some rough criticism in criminal cases over the past two decades.
And i have to say i’m a little skeptical about a handwriting expert who claims she can create a profile from the separation scene in the words and letters however on the whole i lean heavily towards her conclusion surely when confronted with this conclusion deny is being responsible while saying that she may have been taken over by the entity though she says she was never conscious of any takeover.
Though shirley says she may have been writing the letters unconsciously she also states that she can’t understand where she would have had the time to do so she says she was at work when a lot of the letters were found.
She also states that there was always family members around her especially her mother.
Shirley also states that at the height of the deluge when harold chibit was getting 60 letters a day she was also at work in all there were approximately four thousand letters being skeptical about hauntings in general i do lean towards the idea that this was all a teenage ploy for attention.
The letters point in this direction yet how do we explain the noises so loud.
Neighbors were woken up how do we explain the interactions reported by journalists and many others involved in the case.
Finally why were so many people taken along with the idea that all this was true this is a case that went on for 12 years yet so many people including family friends and investigators like harold chibit never really suspected shirley not to the degree that they gave up on the case and when they did come across information that may have led to suspicion it was always short-lived did these numerous people simply want to believe in the ghost should they have questioned shirley or other members of the family would it have caused an open wound they didn’t want to open.
We can’t say for certain that the rest of the family weren’t in on it but some of the members including john and ethel appear to either try and dispel the activity as hard to explain but explainable if not yet explained or like ethel they are clearly dead set against.
It i think the best way of getting to the core of things is by examining some of the things noted by chibit.
One thing that is quite clear from them is that he was not someone who blindly believed in shirley this is observed by the bbc podcast presenter in possession of the notebooks.
He kept one passage from the notebook states the following at first sight it looks as though fraud was operated here.
He was sure that there were some things that surely feigned.
However he also says this must be seen in relation to the whole case which is a strange mixture of the apparently genuine and false in the notebooks we see a sincere effort to catch shirley out for example he would take key home with him which was the only one available to enter a certain room.
When he returned the following day and unlocked the door the letters would be lying in ways there is no doubt in many ways shirley could have got around this though she could have picked locks though i don’t know how difficult it would be to lock it again once this has been achieved.
She may also have had a copy of the key that he wasn’t aware of once again we can’t be certain if it was a fraud it was a fraud on a huge level.
The activity would continue until 1968 it would become less frequent after they left the wycliffe address in 1964 but it would follow to their new address though it became much less frequent.
Shirley also continued to experience unnatural events so she says even after getting married in 1965.
One theory laid out by psychologist kieran o’keefe was that one background figure may have been responsible that person is john.
The reasons he gives are as follows he distrusts jon’s reaction if these things described were happening how could he remain so skeptical.
He also points out that it’s john deflecting the blame onto shirley when the activity begins.
He points out that we don’t know what the relationship between shirley and john was like.
John was probably the only person who had access to an ornate key after all he worked in the building trade lastly he may have developed an animosity towards the family for one reason in particular up until he was 18 he thought he was the son of ethel.
When he was called up for national service he discovered he wasn’t the son of ethel when the raf asked for birth certificates.
Shirley says he was distraught at the news evelyn hollow who also took part in the podcast series finds flaws in this argument.
She points out that it wouldn’t have been possible for john to have created the noises heard by neighbours.
He was also there when they were being interviewed by reporters these very reporters hear sounds which would at first sound as if they were coming from inside the table they would then move from wall to wardrop to ceiling all while john is sitting down.
She points out that it wouldn’t have been possible for john to have created the noises heard by neighbours.