Chapter 4
The Ghost Club
1961
38
YEARS
BILBOROUGH ESTATE
“An interesting and in many ways a satisfying investigation was carried out by the Ghost Club at a haunted council house in the Bilborough Estate at Nottingham.”
Aerial photograph of Bilborough estate.
“On a preliminary visit I talked with Charles Hill,
his 17-year-old daughter Sandra and his two younger children
at the home of friends…”
“…where they were staying
after being frightened out of their home by a ghost…”
Charles and Sandra Hill
“Charles Hill told us he had found himself awake in the middle of the night,
and he had seen the figure of a young man in white cricket trousers and a white shirt…”
“…with a handkerchief over the back of his neck,
standing beside his bed. The form disappeared after a few seconds. He said nothing about this sighting.”
“He decided that he must have dreamed the whole thing.”
“A few nights later… he was having a cigarette in bed when something caught his eye…”
“…turning, he saw the same figure and again it hovered for a few seconds, before disappearing…”
“…this time he was frightened for there could be no question of a dream on this occasion: he was still smoking his cigarette…”
“But again he said nothing to his family.”
“A few days later Sandra saw the same figure and when she told her father, they fled the house…”
“I made immediate plans to spend a night there…”
Underwood (top left) at the seance conducted at the house.
“During the night measured footfalls, a dragging sound and knocks were heard, apparently emanating from empty rooms…”
Underwood tests for traces during the investigation
“During a period that I spent alone in the haunted room I distinctly heard a sharp crack…”
“…almost like a pistol shot which seemed to come from a distance and yet be in the room, a sound that was not heard by anyone else in the house.”
“Months later we discovered an elderly widow who had once lived in the house whose surname was the same as that given at a seance
as the name of the ghost…”
“It transpired that she had had a son who had started a window-cleaning business with a friend…”
“…there had been an accident and the friend had been killed and her son had been paralysed from the waist down;
the rest of his life had been spent in the ‘haunted’ room…”
“He had always been fond of sport, cricket in particular, and during the summer months he had been dressed in white cricket trousers and a white shirt...”
“…and because he could not move out of the sun,
a handkerchief had been arranged over the back of his neck...”
“After about eighteen months
he had got hold of a revolver
and shot himself…”
