Birmingham Poltergeist Cases
Poltergeists are a particularly troublesome type of alleged haunting. Rather than being content to appear on a staircase or glide through a wall, they are usually associated with physical disturbances such as loud banging, objects moving and things being thrown around. The word itself comes from the German poltern, meaning to make a noise or disturbance, and Geist, meaning ghost.
Birmingham has one particularly interesting case involving a poltergeist, although whether a ghost was actually responsible is another matter. I first wrote about the strange goings-on at Thornton Road many years ago, and the story still leaves plenty of unanswered questions.
Thornton Road, Ward End
In 1981 residents of a small group of houses in Thornton Road, Ward End, found themselves under repeated attack from stones. Windows were smashed and roof tiles damaged, but despite the obvious suspicion that local vandals were responsible, nobody could catch whoever was doing it.
The police took the matter seriously and spent a considerable amount of time trying to discover where the stones were coming from. Officers kept watch at night and surveillance equipment was brought in, including cameras and nighttime imaging equipment . Chief Inspector Len Turley was involved in the investigation, but even with all this attention the culprit remained remarkably elusive.
Police eventually considered the possibility that somebody was using a powerful homemade catapult and launching the stones from around 200 yards away. It is a perfectly reasonable explanation and would certainly account for somebody being able to remain at a distance, although nobody was ever caught. Somewhere along the way the incidents acquired the rather more interesting name of the Thornton Road Poltergeist.
Whatever was responsible, it must have been a nightmare for the people living there. In my original article I wrote about officers camping out in the gardens whilst waiting to catch the culprits, only for the stones to continue without anybody being seen. More than forty years later we are still left with the same basic question. Who, or what, was throwing them?
A House in Kingstanding
I don't have to rely entirely on newspaper reports when it comes to strange disturbances in Birmingham homes. I briefly stayed in a house in Kingstanding where several incidents took place that I still cannot properly explain.
One of the strangest happened while I was sitting on the sofa in the living room. My sister was sitting nearby when, without warning, the sofa moved by around a foot with me still sitting on it. My sister saw it happen as well.
There were other odd noises in the house. On several occasions we were upstairs when we heard what sounded like glass smashing downstairs, but when we went to investigate nothing appeared to have been broken. We also heard loud banging coming from the kitchen which sounded almost as though somebody was hitting the cooker with a spatula.
Another regular occurrence involved the door at the bottom of the stairs. We would hear the handle being pushed down and the latch moving as though somebody was about to come through the door. We would wait for someone to appear, but nobody did.
Perhaps the incident I remember most clearly happened one evening when I was sitting in the living room facing towards the kitchen. It was dark outside and the kitchen light was on, allowing me to see the reflection in the window. I saw a small older woman standing near the cooker who appeared to be wearing a pink cardigan. I watched as she walked away from the cooker and out of view. I never saw that particular woman again.
Was the activity in the Kingstanding house caused by a poltergeist? I really don't know. The movement of the sofa and some of the unexplained noises certainly resemble the type of activity commonly associated with poltergeist cases, whilst seeing the woman was something rather different. I cannot say whether any of it was connected.
Thornton Road and Kingstanding are very different cases. One resulted in a lengthy police investigation while the other consists of things that I personally experienced in an ordinary Birmingham house. Neither gives us a convenient answer, which is probably why they still interest me.
If anyone remembers the strange events at Thornton Road, or has experienced similar activity in a Birmingham home, I would be very interested to hear about it.
