It looked like any other council house in the row, a sturdily-built home, close to local amenities and perfect for a growing family – but it hid a haunting secret.

More than half a century ago, there were some distinctly unsettling occurrences in a house on Beecheno Road on the Larkman Estate in west Earlham.

And it wasn't the first time that this ghost – described as a small woman with grey swept-back hair had gone walkabout on the estate – there were reports of her being seen that stretched back as far as 1949. The story was reported in the Evening News

Mr and Mrs Ronald Parker, along with their 15-year-old son David and 13-year-old daughter Margaret, hit the headlines in January of 1964 when they packed up and left the home where they had lived for a decade.

Ronald told how they had heard strange noises when they first moved in but then, after six years, he actually met the ghost on the stairs but kept quiet about it because he didn’t want to frighten his family.

Then, during one weekend more than 50 years ago, the family fled after several apparitions, moving curtains, the sound of footsteps and a blood-curdling scream from an upstairs bedroom.

It seemed as if the 'little old lady' was very active.

Bangs, bumps, footsteps...they all built up to a crescendo late on the Sunday night when mum and dad heard their son scream.

Ronald rushed to his bedroom to see the ghostly figure of the woman standing over his son's bed, watching the teenager intently.

 

Eastern Daily Press:

He woke David, grabbed him and then Margaret and the family spent the night together, all locked into one bedroom, terrified.

“We all spent the rest of the night in one room. We didn't sleep at all. We stayed awake all night with the light on,” he added.

The following day the family moved out – driven away by the 'little old lady' of Beecheno Road.

The Parker family was not the first to be disturbed by the apparition of a senior citizen – a similar apparition was seen at another home in the street on Boxing Day of 1949.

A young woman told how she was sitting alone by the fire when the ghost suddenly appeared – sitting in the chair opposite.

She had grey hair, drawn straight back from her forehead. She just sat there staring, not speaking.

At the time it was thought the apparition was that of the woman's grandmother... she had never met her. She had been dead for 22 years!

Swingeing cuts to budgets may be striking fear into the hearts of council workers at the moment, but other ghostly terrors have haunted the sector for decades.

Weird Norfolk has previously told the tale of the haunted council house of Tharston, near Long Stratton which beguiled readers of the Eastern Daily Press in the late 1930s.

Built just after the end of the First World War, the semi-detached council house became the home of the Brown family – a mother, a father, a four-year-old girl and her 13-year-old brother, a young man called Herbert – in November 1936. 

The problems began within weeks. Knocking on every day of the week - bizarrely other than on Thursdays – which was so loud that it drew crowds.

The ghost of a woman has been spotted and heard in a council house in Ashmanaugh while others have been heard, felt or seen at other Norwich, King’s Lynn and North Walsham homes that once belonged to the council.

One of the most famous poltergeist cases in the UK, the Enfield haunting, was at a council house in Brimsdown in Enfield from 1977 to 1979. The vast majority of the poltergeist activity reported above were from homes where teenagers lived – you have been warned.

* Do you have a story for Weird Norfolk? Have you seen a ghost? Is your house haunted? Have you seen a UFO? Contact stacia.briggs@archant.co.uk