The Horrible Haunting of 63 Wycliffe Road Battersea
TRIGGER WARNING: Some speculation around child abuse
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A Family Rudely Awoken in the Dead of Night
It’s not often that stories of hauntings make the headlines. Let alone end up being discussed in Parliament. But the haunting at 63 Wycliffe Road Battersea seemed to stand out. When 15 year old Shirley Hitchings found an ornate, silver key on her pillow, the only thing it seemed to unlock was a level of violence that swiftly garnered a lot of attention.
Another Council Estate, Another Teenage Girl
The year was 1956 and Shirley lived with her parents, Kitty and Wally, her grandmother, Ethel, and her adopted brother John. They lived in a council estate, in a similar vein to The Enfield Haunting, and the poltergeist at 30 East Drive.
On its discovery, Shirley presented the key to the family, but nobody had seen it before. What’s more, they had no idea what it might unlock. They tried all the doors at 63 Wycliffe Road Battersea, but it didn’t fit into any of them. Perplexed, Wally put the key on the mantelpiece for safekeeping, and the family went on with their day
It was in the deep dark of night that the problems started. Banging noises suddenly erupted while the family slept. Loud pounding that seemed to come from the “bowels of the earth” rang through the building. Scratching noises clawed their way out from inside the furniture. The lights flashed on and off. It was so loud that the next door neighbours came round to complain.
Shirley Hitchings
"It went on until daylight. We were traumatised. I remember clinging to my dad, saying, “Please make it stop.”
These were people who were used to frighteningly loud noises – it hadn’t been long since the blitz. But they were utterly spooked by this disembodied attack.
The Key that Unlocked this Mess Disappears
When Wally checked the mantelpiece the next day, the key that had been found on Shirley’s pillow was nowhere to be seen. Whatever it was, that key seemed to have been the catalyst for a malevolent spirit to start terrorising the Hitchings.
The midnight cacophony was not a one off. Over the following two weeks, the nightly noises intensified. Desperate, the family called the police, who didn’t arrive until the following day. The police wrote the incident off as “too much cocoa” and left the terrified family with no answers. They also rang the fire brigade, who were perplexed, but couldn’t offer them any help or advice.
Donald as in Duck
The family were subjected to noises every single night. Eventually, seemingly emboldened, Donald began to torment the Hitchins during the day too. Pots and pans started to fly off the stove. Family members had to duck these heavy projectiles.
At one point, Kitty’s clock, a prized possession, flew off the mantelpiece… but then glided gently down and onto the dining table in front of her.
Shirley was dragged from her bed, bed sheets were ripped off and thrown. In one instance, Shirley woke the whole household up screaming. When they rushed to see what the problem was, she was having a tug of war with an invisible force that was yanking at her bed sheets. Finally, the family managed to wrestle the sheets out of the unseen hands. But then Shirley went stiff on the bed – her back began to arch and she floated upwards and hung in the air before them. John eventually pulled her back down.
Strange writing began to appear on the walls at 63 Wycliffe Road Battersea.
The activity was not restricted to the family home, either. From time to time, the poltergeist would follow Shirley on the bus to work at Selfridges. Scissors and stock were going missing, so Selfridges saw fit to have Shirley strip searched. Despite not finding the missing items on her person, Shirley lost her job.
63 Wycliffe Road Battersea Gets a Visit from a Ghost Hunter
As with the other cases of poltergeist activity that we’ve touched upon, the press got involved. The Daily Mirror set up camp outside 63 Wycliffe Road Battersea to see if they could catch a glimpse of what was going on inside.
At this point, ghost hunter, Harold Chibbett, heard about the case and paid the family a visit. He immediately made contact with the spirit. On being asked if he minded being referred to as Donald, the poltergeist began rapping enthusiastically on the table.
Donald also seemed to be thrilled with the idea of communicating in writing. Harold left a ballpoint pen and a piece of paper on the kitchen table and went to fetch the family. When they gathered around, Donald had written a shaky message on the paper, which said: “I come.”
After several more wobbly attempts, Donald managed to communicate that he needed a quill – the ballpoint just wouldn’t do.
Viva France in English Battersea
Once he had the right equipment, Donald began to tell the family that he was French and that he was scared. The family were sympathetic, but told him he needed to go. Undeterred, the spirit started to write on the walls of the home with messages like: “Viva France.”
The front room at 63 Wycliffe Road Battersea became known to the family as “Donald’s Room”. Harold would often leave pens and paper locked in that room. He would always take the key with him, but when they reopened the room, there could be anywhere from 60 to 80 notes left by Donald. These notes had various messages, starting with the first that said: “Shirley, I come” echoing his original written communication. The notes would be in a strange mixture of French and English.
Donald’s strangest claim was that he was the lost dauphin, Louis Charles. Heir to the French throne. There has been much speculation over the years as to what happened to the son of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. He would write about several things nobody in the house could have known, such as the names of the dauphin’s bodyguards. These were later corroborated by Harold.
The entity seemed to have some level of intelligence of its own. And a sense of humour! One note read: “Mon cherie Chibbett.”
At one point, a pair of slippers walked around the room with no wearer. Shirley said it was like a game and Donald would make her chase the slippers up the stairs.
Twisted Firestarter at Wycliffe Road Battersea
But it wasn’t all fun and games. Donald was easily upset and the Hitchins had to watch what they were saying for fear of upsetting him. If they said something that Donald didn’t like, he would start fires.
In one particularly frightening occurrence, the fire started in Kitty’s bed. Wally, attempting to smother the flames, said that he was dragged right into the centre of the fire by an unseen force. Later on, in the hospital, the consultant who cleaned Wally’s wounds said that it looked like he had been clawed by a wild animal. The wounds took three months to heal and there were clearly three, deep claw marks gouged into his arm.
Donald also began to become controlling of Shirley. The worst period, she claims, was a couple of months into the haunting, when Donald would demand that she wear her hair a certain way and wear specific things that he had picked out. If she didn’t comply, more fires were started. Wally locked all the matches in the air raid shelter, but it didn’t seem to stop the problem and small fires continued to break out.
Poor Grandma Ethel Bears the Brunt of this Horrible Haunting
Grandma Ethel was convinced that Donald was the Devil. She was very outspoken about how evil she felt he was.
Ethel was shoved forcefully downstairs on numerous occasions. She was terrified by voices that whispered in her bedroom. Objects would float around her while she tried to sleep. The final straw was when she heard an Irish voice that was undeniably that of her mother’s. She had a stroke shortly after and died.
Hopefully, she isn’t suffering the same fate as Donald.
An Exorcism Seemed to be the Best option
Wally Hitchings was a tube driver. His co-driver, Mr Hanks, was married to a medium. Mr Hanks said that his wife could help the Hitchings to get rid of this pesky spirit that had been tormenting them for years.
The Hitchens paid the Hanks a visit. Around the table were Mr and Mrs Hanks, two other mediums, and a priest. It sounds like the start of a very unfunny joke. The group all joined hands in a circle and the priest got his holy water out.
But the séance was interrupted by the appearance of some police officers who arrested them on the grounds of performing black magic. The case was discussed by the Home Secretary in the House of Commons and Wally and Mr Hanks had to give a statement. One MP called for an apology from the police over the intrusion in the house of commons.
Twelve Years of Terror at 63 Wycliffe Road Battersea
Donald plagued the Hitchens, and particularly Shirley, for 12 years. Even when the family moved to a house around the corner on Latchmere Road, they weren’t allowed a moment’s peace. Donald simply went with them.
Shirley has said that the experience stole her teenage years, and had a very detrimental effect on her early 20s. Donald would write notes to Kitty, telling her what Shirley was up to. That included an instance where Kitty had been out messing around with the man she finally married. She came home to find her mother holding detailed notes of what she’d been up to.
Shirley claimed that, even after she married and moved, Donald would leave notes. He would tell her what her parents were up to in Battersea. Her parents would also receive notes from Donald, telling them what Shirley was doing.
One day, Shirley received a phone call from her dad to say that it was all over. Donald had left them a note that said: “My work is done. Goodbye.”
While Wally and Shirley were over the moon, Kitty went into a sort of mourning. As if she had lost her own son.
Poor Grandma Ethel Bears the Brunt of this Horrible Haunting
But that wasn’t quite the end of Donald. One day in the 80s, Shirley was approached by a woman claiming to be a medium. The medium said that she could see a little boy following Shirley around. The medium said that the little boy was wearing a blue satin outfit and that he had red hair. Shirley knew all too well who that was, having seen a painting of Dauphin Louis Charles.
More recently, Shirley attended a psychic session with her daughter and was told that a little boy had a message for her. He was sorry, apparently, for everything he had done.
Scaredy Cat Skeptic Take
What Evidence for a Haunting Do We Have?
The haunting of 63 Wycliffe Road Battersea nearly had me, I’ll be honest. I was tired – I’ve not been sleeping again and I’ve been thinking about all things spooky for four months. It does something to the way you think. I even slept with the lights on the other night… although, I had just finished editing the first episode, which includes me talking about what happened in the house I grew up in.
So as I was reading Shirley’s story, I began to get creeped out. The incidents were corroborated several times over by credible witnesses and there were even police photos taken. There was physical evidence in the form of notes and the testimony of a rather sweet old lady…
However, none of this evidence is available now, so everything is based purely on Shirley’s word. And what she’s saying now doesn’t even line up with what was said at the time. It’s that cumulative effect of telling a story over and over and it snowballing into something slightly different.
There’s Nothing Left for Us to Check
Apparently, the police took photographs of the sounds sustained by Wally during the bedroom fire. Shirley’s story is now that there were three clear claw marks on his arm. I did some digging into what was said at the time and it had been one gash in Wally’s arm that could have been caused by stumbling in the smoky room. The photographs are unavailable so we can’t do anything other than discount those.
The banging I can explain! When I lived alone the second time, in the flat with the strange streak in the photo, I had a stalker. The neighbour below me was absolutely obsessed with scaring me. He vandalised my car several times, including writing “Gona get u. [flat no.]” I was terrified. I’m strong, but I think that kind of thing would freak anyone out. One of the things this guy would do was to bang something against the walls. I have no idea what, but it sounded like this thumping was coming from the bowels of hell. I was absolutely scared to death by it. So I know first hand that it is absolutely possible to bang that loudly in a home, without doing a lot of damage. And in the middle of the night… yeah, fucking frightening, mate.
The Notes are the Biggest Indicator of Fraud
Shirley’s handwriting has also been analysed and has been matched with a 98% accuracy to the notes that Donald was leaving. Donald could, of course, have been leaving these notes via Shirley by taking over her body, but we can’t just assume that in the absence of any data. We have to collate what we do know as absolute, which when you pick it apart, is next to nothing, and come to a conclusion based on what we know.
The notes that were left around the house and on the walls were in a naïve Franglais. The French wasn’t accurate enough to be fluent and the English used colloquialisms that a French person wouldn’t know. The words “Viva France” were scrawled on the walls in crayon, but that’s not French – a French person would know that. It would have been “Vive La France”. Viva is Spanish.
Here’s what I do find particularly strange about the notes. They were supposedly written by Donald in the front room, which had been locked by the paranormal investigator, Harold Chibbett. Nobody had access to that room… except that if you cast your mind back to the beginning of this tale, Shirley was left with an ornate key that nobody could match to a door. Who couldn’t match it? What if that key was a second key for the front room door and Shirley just said it didn’t match anything? That key went missing never to be seen again, but Shirley could have easily hidden such a small item about her person.
Shirley Hitchings' Hammer Toe
It would be remiss of me to not mention the suspicion that Shirley was able to create a rapping noise in response to questions asked by Chib with her big toe.
I can actually relate to this. If I rest my foot against the floor, I can crunch my big toe and create a really sharp rapping noise. I mean, I couldn’t do it for prolonged periods of time, but then I’m not a fifteen year old girl. It’s not so much the noise that the bone makes, but the noise the toe makes as it snaps into place. An almost imperceptible movement to an onlooker.
It was noted that before Donald rapped his responses, Shirley would squeeze her eyes shut as if concentrating on forcing out a click with her toe.
Emma Bache, Handwriting Expert
“All of the letters have enormous curlicue and a lot of artifice... it’s nearly always a facade, a cover-up to hide the real personality.”
Not only was the existence of the notes questionable, the object of their focus seemed odd. At one point, the notes mention a famous actor. On further investigation, it turned out that the actor in question had been on the television a couple of nights beforehand and Shirley had taken quite an interest in him. On another occasion, the notes talked about periods.
And What of the Poor Adopted Boy, John?
There’s hardly any mention of John throughout this debacle. He keeps to himself throughout and, I believe, is now deceased. So we can’t grill him and there’s no first hand testimonial from him.
But what if John was in on it? In fact, it struck me that Shirley was (and still is) under the influence of a narcissist. Maybe even a clinical psychopath. That is how her relationship with Donald feels to me. Fearful and trapped, even after she escaped into marriage, she is unable to speak up because she was groomed from a young age. I can… feel it in her tone. You could say that being in a relationship with a poltergeist would feel like being with an abuser. But we have to consider that John might have been a bit of a wrong un.
Donald Sounds Like a Very Jealous Lover
The note that grassed Shirley up when she had been canoodling with her boyfriend was designed to humiliate her. It has the overtones of a jealous lover. At one point, Donald banged twice to say that, yes he did love Shirley.
Shirley lost friends, boyfriends and jobs because of this supposed haunting. She was isolated and trapped because of it. Much like the survivor of a narcissistic partnership. Imagine that you’re a child living in fear that the house would be set on fire with your family in it if you breathed a word about what was really happening.
If you haven’t been in a dangerous relationship, this might be harder to process, but if Shirley was groomed from a young age to fear John and was shown what he was capable of, she would never be able to come clean. The fear you have turns to PTSD. Trauma can have a profound effect on your amygdala and that can cause dips in memory and false memories to be created. In fact, Shirley may have begun to live in a fantasy world, as children who are abused often do, so she may not even know what happened herself.
In Conclusion
It’s all disappointingly inconclusive. Every piece of evidence is from the mouth of Shirley. Whether she believes what she is saying or remembers full well what really happened, I don’t think we’ll ever know.
But here’s the thing – just because there’s no evidence pointing to a hoax, it doesn’t mean that the default is ghosts! At this point, it’s Schrödinger’s poltergeist. There is as little evidence pointing to the supernatural as there is to a living, breathing perpetrator.
So I guess, as with all of these haunting cases, we’ll just have to leave it as unsolved. But as far as I’m concerned, I think John is the cause of all of this. I’ve seen first hand the damage a narcissistic psychopath can do. Physically and to your mental health. And this all feels like a terrifying erotic fixation on a young girl. The abused are prime candidates for hauntings and possession.
In conclusion, I reckon the culprit was a combination of factors, including narcissistic obsession and, our fave, mental illness.
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