The House in Abbeydale - Redditch, Worcestershire
About a mile South of the ruins of Bordesley Abbey in Redditch in Worcestershire is a housing estate called Abbeydale. In 1996 a young family moved into a house on the estate who experienced paranormal activity from the day they moved in.
The Abbeydale estate grew up from the prefabs that were built in the 1950s to house the population boom after World War Two. It was part of the government’s ‘Homes For Heroes’ pledge to house soldiers and their families. Over time, most of the prefabs were demolished and replaced with houses and flats with a community club at the centre. Before the 1950s it was farm land belonging to two farms Easemore Farm and Old Farm. |
Early in 1996, Roy a builders labourer was working on a house in Abbeydale with his colleague Tom. While they were working in the kitchen Roy noticed a man standing in the back garden. He told Tom who looked out of the window and he saw him too. They both exited the house into the garden to find out what he wanted and by the time they got there the man had gone. They both described him as middle aged, scruffy dark curly hair and unshaven, he was wearing black trousers and a dirty white shirt that was slightly open exposing his chest. They contacted their manager as they thought he might have been a gardener but the manager said It was only those two working on the property.
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In September of the same year, Roy and his wife Christine were looking for a new house with their children and bought this house in Abbeydale. On the day of moving in, Christine was in the kitchen and noticed a man in the back garden, staring through the window. She screamed and Roy came rushing in. She told Roy about the man and described him exactly the same as the man that Roy and Tom had seen in the garden a few months before. Roy wondered if it may have been a local drunk who walked home that way and just happened to walk into the garden but then he realised that the gate was locked. Roy asked the neighbours if they’d seen the man around before but none of them had. Seeing the man in the garden became a regular occurrence and they just accepted it as a ghost as it didn’t really cause any problems and was a talking point with friends and family.
One night about a year after moving in, everyone was asleep and Roy and Christine were woken up by the sound of one of the children talking. Roy got out of bed to see which child was awake and found their 3 year old, Brandon sitting on the stairs talking to someone. When Roy asked Brandon who he was talking he said “Albert”. Roy couldn't see anyone there but Brandon. When he told the 3 year old to go back to bed, he looked down the stairs and said “goodnight Albert”. A few weeks later the same thing happened again. As Roy approached the stairs he saw Brandon talking to someone again. As he watched and listened he noticed movement in the hallway, it was the same man who they had seen in the garden. He watched him walk diagonally across the hallway, through the stairs and disappeared into the wall to the neighbours house. Brandon sat on the stairs waving, saying goodbye to Albert. The next day, Roy asked the neighbours if they had ever seen or heard of anything strange going on in the house and they just looked at him strange as if he was delusional. The apparition started making this journey through the house at least twice a week at very times throughout the night and day, whilst still also appearing in the garden.
A year or so went by and they were still experiencing the same things but with an extra two children since they moved in to the house in 1996, Elizabeth and George. At this point George was only about 2 months old and Elizabeth was 18 months and she could talk really well for her age. Christine was at work and Roy had to pick Brandon up from school, he'd got George ready and in the pram while Elizabeth was sitting in the living room. He told her it was time to pick her brother up from school and she said “not yet”. When Roy asked why she said “I can’t go yet, I’m talking to Mary and David". Roy was shocked as Mary was the name of the elderly neighbour who had died only a few days before and David was her son who had died 10 years ago, she even told Roy their surname.
Over the next few years Elizabeth would tell her parents and siblings about her friend that she called Ballot. They just thought it was the usual imaginary friend which is a common thing with young children. She would speak about Ballot all of the time and would play with her in her bedroom, she even spoke about her in school and would draw pictures of herself and Ballot together.
Roy and Christine were relaxing In the living room one evening after putting the children to bed when they heard a crash coming from the kitchen. They went to investigate and found that a basket of wet washing that had been placed on the work surface was upside down over the other side of the room., as if it had been thrown. They were both shocked as nothing like this had happened before. After picking it up they both went back into the living room only to see a little girl Who looked about 8 years old, walk across the hallway and up the stairs. She was wearing a long white dress and had long blonde hair but she had bald patches and something covering half of her face which Roy described as looking like the mask worn by the Phantom of the Opera in the classic horror films. Only seconds later, George started crying frantically. Roy ran up the stairs to find George crying holding his hand up saying that someone had bit him. He shared a room with Brandon, who had just been woken up by the crying and Elizabeth was still asleep. The next morning while eating breakfast, Elizabeth told them that “Ballot doesn’t like George, she said he’s naughty”.
The little girl would appear often as well as the man. Other strange things started to happen too. Roy and Christine were sat at the kitchen table one evening when an old 50 pence piece manifested from nowhere, it just dropped onto the kitchen table and rolled off onto the floor. In the corner of the living room, two items of jewellery appeared that neither of them had ever seen before, a man’s bracelet from the 1970s and a ladies Victorian gold necklace. Other things would go missing for days and found where they were originally left or turn up in strange places like in food cupboards or even the shed.
One morning after the children had been taken to school, Christine went upstairs to have a bath, in the meantime Roy went into the kitchen to prepare that evenings meal ready for when the children return home from school. As he was chopping vegetables, standing at the breakfast bar, he was facing the doorway that leads to the hallway when he saw a naked woman walk past towards the back door. He presumed that it was Christine and asked her if she would like a drink. When she didn’t respond he went into the hallway to find no one there. He shouted upstairs and asked Christine if she was out of the bath yet, she replied with not yet. He witnessed this ghost on numerous occasions, always when alone and she was sometimes outside by the back door.
They were all asleep one night when Roy and Christine were woken up when someone pulled the bed covers off them. They heard the door slam and a little giggle followed by light footsteps running down the stairs. They thought it just the children up to mischief until Christine went into the children’s bedroom's to find them all asleep. Roy went downstairs to make a warm drink as they were now unsettled and Christine joined him at the kitchen table. As they were quietly chatting, they saw the little girl walk past the kitchen door towards the back door.
They decided to contact a paranormal research team who came the next week. One of the team claimed to be a psychic medium but both Roy and Christine were both very skeptical about mediums but were willing to try anything for a peaceful nights sleep. The team were not told anything about the what had gone on in the house, only that paranormal activity was taking place on a regular basis. As soon as the medium walked into the house she told them that she could feel the presence of a little girl called Charlotte who had died in a house fire nearby in the 1800s. She described her as wearing a long white dress with long blond hair, just as Roy and Christine had seen her, she explained that she had bald patches in her hair from her burns and that she was wearing a mask to cover her burns. The medium then went on to say that she didn’t die in the fire, she died of her wounds weeks later. She said that Charlotte was attached to their daughter Elizabeth, I suppose to a child, the name Charlotte could easily come out wrong as Ballot as Elizabeth called her. She explained that Charlotte was mischievous but not malevolent, she was just lost on this plain of existence and that’s why she attached herself to this family. She then went on to help Charlotte to move on and performed some type of ritual.
She then moved on towards the back door and to the garden where she picked up on a middle aged man called Albert. She said he wasn’t malevolent but was angry. He was angry because the house was built on land where he used to grow vegetables and flowers. She said that if they planted geraniums he would go, they were his favourite flowers.
She then went on to tell them that she could feel a lot of energy from the hallway and that there was a portal that crossed the house and that many spirits used it to enter and exit this plain. She said that the portal was the reason they were experiencing so much activity.
She said that she couldn't shut the portal as it’s not possible but she could calm it down. The investigation had no results with the exception of a few noises on a recording device that could have been people outside or noise from neighbours.
Roy and Christine planted the geraniums in the garden and never saw Albert ever again and Charlotte was never seen again, Elizabeth never even mentioned Ballot again.
Finally the house was in peace, they could all sleep properly. Until 5 years later......
She then went on to tell them that she could feel a lot of energy from the hallway and that there was a portal that crossed the house and that many spirits used it to enter and exit this plain. She said that the portal was the reason they were experiencing so much activity.
She said that she couldn't shut the portal as it’s not possible but she could calm it down. The investigation had no results with the exception of a few noises on a recording device that could have been people outside or noise from neighbours.
Roy and Christine planted the geraniums in the garden and never saw Albert ever again and Charlotte was never seen again, Elizabeth never even mentioned Ballot again.
Finally the house was in peace, they could all sleep properly. Until 5 years later......
Roy’s 13 year old nephew, John came to stay for a few nights. Everyone went to bed and John slept on the sofa. Around 3 o clock in the morning, John woke up screaming in fear, Roy heard him and rushed downstairs to find out what was going on. As he reached the living room door, it opened and slammed fast and hard nearly hitting him in the face. He pushed the door open to find John lying on the floor, screaming but not moving. Roy tried to help him up but he couldn’t lift him, it was as if someone or something was holding him down. Once he got John to his feet and he calmed down he told Roy what had happened. He said that he was asleep on the sofa and someone had bit him in the face and he was then thrown to the floor. He carried on explaining that he was held down by an invisible force and that he could move any part of his body. That was his first and last night of staying in the house.
A few weeks later Roy was in the living room working on a project for work when he took his tobacco tin out of his pocket and placed it on the fireplace. About an hour later, he went to go for a cigarette when he noticed that his tin had gone. No one else had entered the room and he had been sat on the same chair in all that time. He searched all around the room but couldn’t find it anywhere. He opened the living room door and walked into the hallway where he found the tobacco tin on a shelf next to some ornaments. At this time there was a terrible smell that filled the whole house that was like sulphur, the whole family could smell it. Roy searched the house looking for the source of the smell and as he walked back into the living room the sulphur smell went but he could now smell urine. On inspection he found the sofa to be wet with the smell of urine. There was no way anyone in the house would have done this, they had dogs and cats but they weren’t allowed in the living room and the door was always shut.
Brandon, Elizabeth and George were now teenagers and they started to see an apparition and hear the voice of a woman. They described as short with dark hair and a long black dress. They’d seen her in the hallway and on the stairs when they’d been alone until one night when Roy and Christine were out. They were playing computer games in the living room when they heard a womans voice coming from the hallway, they looked over at the door and the woman was stood still looking at them. They phoned their parents straight away and they went home. They were all sat talking about what they’d seen and decided to all go to bed. As they were all walking untie stairs, the woman’s voice was heard again by all of them, she then suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs. They all ran back down and stayed up most of the night.
25 years after moving into the house in 2021, the family are still living there and are still experiencing the phenomena.