A ghost in the house

Mansfield district council first heard of the haunted council house in March 2000. The housing department was approached by a tenant, who claimed that she and her eight-year-old daughter were plagued by supernatural phenomena.

“They said that things were falling off shelves, lights were turned off on their own, washing was thrown around the bathroom,” says general housing manager Kelly Scott.

The woman had moved into the three-bedroom semi in December 1999, but it was not until two months later that the trouble started.

“She said her daughter had been in the spare bedroom and let out a huge scream – when she asked what was wrong, she said she’d seen a man dressed in black.”

The tenant also claimed that on another occasion, she had been in the bathroom looking in the mirror when she saw a man standing behind her – but when she turned around, there was no one there. She told the council that her daughter was traumatised by terrible nightmares and requested a transfer to another property.

“It’s not the sort of complaint we get every day,” says Scott. “We checked our records to see if there had been any previous complaints, but there was nothing.”

With no precedent for dealing with such a case, Scott had to play it by ear.

He first looked for a more down-to-earth explanation. A meeting was arranged with the tenant at the council offices, and she was asked to obtain a doctor’s or psychologist’s report to back up the effects of the ghostly sightings.

“We were very concerned about possible traumatic effects on the child, but we needed to be satisfied there was evidence to back it up.”

“We were trying to establish their state of mind, and whether there was any kind of medication involved that might lead to delusions.”

Did he not contemplate a more spiritual solution? “She’d apparently already called in a clergyman to cleanse the house of evil spirits and sprinkle holy water around, so I don’t know what else we could do, short of asking a housing officer to keep a vigil on the house, and that was neither desirable or practical,” he says. “Or, I suppose, getting the local ghostbusters in!”

If the tenant had provided proof of the effects the “haunting” had on her child, Scott concedes the council would have had to consider more drastic action, but it was heard no more.

The ghost appeared to have vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and the council staff were left scratching their heads and wondering if there had perhaps been more to the case than there appeared.

“You do feel a bit suspicious about why she’d said it in the first place,” says Scott.

In fact, the tenant moved a few months later, to live above the local pub with her mother, and the house has apparently been peaceful ever since. “The tenant who subsequently moved in never made any similar complaints about ghostly goings on.”

For Mansfield council, then, the case remains a mystery, one of the more bizarre chapters in the annals of its housing history.

Scott is not a superstitious man and has never been party to visitations from the other side.

“I have heard peculiar noises now and again, but sometimes there are other explanations, like faulty plumbing or movements in lofts,” he says.

“I’m not aware that Mansfield has a greater degree of paranormal activity than any other area – this was the first case I’d heard of and I haven’t heard of anything like it since.”