It's haunted, please get us out of here!

- 24 August 2006

A YOUNG mother has pleaded with Redbridge Council to be re-house her and her daughter because their home is haunted.

They believe they are being spooked by the same ghost which terrorised a three-year-old girl nearly 10 years ago.

The family from Hainault, who do not want to be named, have reported eerily similar unexplained phenomena to that experienced by the girl, which the Recorder reported in January 1997.

Then the girl's family were told by a neighbour that a man had been killed in the house years earlier.

The dead man, thought to have been a wife-beater, was stabbed to death by his twin sons during a bout of violence more than 50 years ago.

The petrified single mother and her daughter have now moved out and say they have pleaded with Redbridge Council to re-house them.

The sound of fighting, shouting and breaking glass, which may have blighted the home half a century ago, can still be heard claim the family.

In 1997 the young girl was so frightened at hearing screaming and shouting in her bedroom she refused to sleep there.

A family member told the Recorder this week: "Every single thing is the same as what was reported nearly a decade ago.

"I'm a spiritual person myself, a healer, and I sense their presence."

The Recorder reported how the family, who had moved in the previous September 1996, discovered the loft was fully carpeted and contained hidden compartments in the walls and drawers.

Every door in the house was fitted with three inside locks, and a bag found hidden behind a bathroom shelf hid diaries from the last 15 years, crammed with strange entries, newspaper cuttings and photographs.

A Redbridge Council spokesman said: "We do not have a policy for moving people who allege that a property is haunted.

"But we do take account of all the circumstances when a person requests a move from one property to another."

DO YOU HAVE A GHOST STORY TO TELL? Email newsdesk@ilfordrecorder.co.uk