30 East Drive, otherwise known as the most haunted house in Britain, is not easy to find.
Inconspicuous on the Chequerfields council estate in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, the ordinary looking semi-detached is home to a violent poltergeist, named Fred by the Pritchard family, who claimed he terrorised them in the 1960s.
It’s also where I’ll be sleeping tonight, after conducting a series of tests with other ghost hunters to try and gather evidence of Fred’s presence - and he’s far from shy.
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Over the next few hours, the poltergeist will - and yes, there’s some room for interpretation here - set off all manner of ghost hunting apparatus, ask me 'politely' to stop trying to film him, and at one point impersonate an 11-year-old boy who died in 1912.
Meet Fred the Poltergeist and the Black Monk
“The scariest thing is that it’s just a normal house. It could happen to anyone.”
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That’s Lisa Rawding, our host, who’s worked for ghost hunt company Haunted Happenings for 17 years. She has attended around 9,000 paranormal investigations, 800 of them at 30 East Drive. She refers to the haunted property as her ‘second home’ and Fred as her 'spiritual husband’.
Fred has a lengthy rap sheet. According to the Pritchards - Jean, Joe and their children Phillip and Diane, whose story was told in Colin Wilson’s 1981 book Poltergeist - Fred dragged Diane up the stairs by her hair and left visible finger marks on her neck.
When the family tried to banish him by singing the hymn ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, Fred ‘conducted’ them using a floating pair of Jean’s gloves.
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Lisa insists Fred is as active as ever six decades on. She tells the 12 of us on tonight’s ghost hunt that he once caused everyone staying overnight to flee in terror after they heard a man’s voice say “get out” in one of the bedrooms. She claims he's also left guests with cigarette burns and once broke a man’s leg in two places after he ‘blasphemed’.
“God,” I murmur. “I mean, gosh.”
On that alleged supernatural bone breaking - I later check in with Alex Ford from Haunted Happenings who confirms someone did end up in a cast after one of the company's ghost tours 'way before' his time, describing the incident as 'very strange'.
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He says: "A guest complained of a slight pain in his ankle during the evening, during an experiment in one of the rooms.
"He continued throughout the night. The following day our host on the evening saw the guest and was in a cast."
But Fred - who may or may not be guilty of GBH - is not alone in 30 East Drive.
His supernatural housemate is apparently the seven-foot tall Black Monk, who Jean and Joe Pritchard allegedly saw standing over their bed and who is apparently still knocking about. People see him as a long shadow or a shape moving past the frosted glass on the living room door.
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“It can be a bit overwhelming for people,” Lisa says. You think?
‘I was pushed down the stairs by the Fat Controller’
Among the attendees tonight are Amy, 19, and her grandmother Sarah - not their real names, Sarah asked to remain anonymous to avoid being mocked for her belief in the supernatural.
They’ve traveled over 150 miles to be here, and both claim to have seen ghosts as children. Sarah says a ghost who looked like the Fat Controller from Thomas the Tank Engine - whom she named Charlie - pushed her down the stairs when she was six.
Amy says she shares her bedroom with two ghosts - one of whom is the spirit of a 19-year-old boy who used to throw candles and crystals at her as a child, until she told him ‘very plainly to stop’.
“You can see him enough, but you can see through him at the same time,” she says. “We’ve walked in and seen him on my bed.”
Most of the people here tonight are true-blue believers, and we’ve all been primed to see something otherworldly.
“If you’re really negative, you’ve got no energy,” Lisa says. “If you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I’m so excited or nervous,’ you’ve got so much energy coming out of you.”
The ‘haunting’ begins
From 10.00pm until 3.00am, we’ll be using modern and Victorian techniques to gather ‘evidence’ of Fred’s presence. Eerie things start happening from the off. A ‘cat ball’ (a cat toy that lights up when moved that’s been repurposed as a ghost hunting tool) lights up in Phillip’s bedroom, appearing to move on its own.
Then, a music box that’s also triggered by movement starts playing when we move onto Jean and Joe’s old room - seemingly in response to Lisa’s questions.
“Is this Fred? Make it go off,” Lisa says.
Creepy music plays.
“Can you make it go off again then please Fred if you’re happy that we’re here?”
It sounds again, as if on command.
Soon, an EMF Meter, which measures spikes in electromagnetic fields that are commonly associated with the presence of spirits, starts lighting up too.
“Now he’s stood near the box,” Lisa says. “Oh, that’s strong.”
All of these ‘experiments’ take place in the pitch black. Lisa says our other senses are heightened when our sight is limited, but this also makes it hard to tell if someone stretching their leg set off the music box, or a subtle shifting of weight triggered the cat ball.
Fred declines Lisa’s invitations to open doors and knock on the walls.
Saying this, he may just be camera-shy. My girlfriend Eleanor - who’s also along for the ride - and I head to Diane’s room on our own, hoping to tempt Fred into showing himself on camera with the promise of going viral on LADbible.
The poltergeist refuses to play ball, until I eventually ask: “Fred, if I stop filming for a bit would that make you less shy?”
A few seconds later, the door clicks open. We both jump.
I head outside and there’s no one in the hallway. When I shut the door again it immediately pops back open, but when I close it a second time one of the other ghost hunters jumps up and down right by it and it remains firmly shut.
I ask Fred to confirm if he was the one to open the door, but he leaves us hanging, choosing not to play with the cat balls and EMF Meter we’ve left out for him.
‘Fred’ impersonates an 11-year-old child
Back downstairs, six of us try and speak to Fred via glass divination - a Victorian ghost hunting method.
We all place one finger on the glass - ‘piano fingers’, Lisa advises, telling us not to apply pressure - which Fred will then move to one side of the table for yes, the other for no.
“I’d rather nothing happen than someone pushing it,” Lisa says.
We begin our questions.
“Do you want us to leave this room?”
The glass slides so far towards ‘yes’ it almost falls off the table. We’re impressed, but stay put regardless. Sorry, Fred.
“Are you a poltergeist?”
Another yes.
Then a second spirit seems to take over. We tease out details - he’s a boy who died aged 11, a violent death, in 1912.
We ask Lisa if she knows of any boys like that with a connection to the house - but she has another suspicion.
“Are you really a boy?” she asks.
It slides to no.
“You’re Fred still, aren’t you?”
A yes.
“He’s got too much energy for a young child to get that glass going like that.”
In the moment, it’s a chilling twist. But I noticed one of the other ghost hunters did not seem to be using ‘piano fingers’ on the glass. I’m 99 percent sure she was pushing it.
One final scare
3am comes around before we know it. If you’re inclined to believe in the supernatural, Fred has put on quite the show. Even Eleanor and I - who are more inclined to be skeptical - found ourselves creeped out on several occasions.
Half of the ghost hunters leave, and Eleanor and I tuck ourselves into sleeping bags in the living room, with Sarah, Amy, Amy’s mum, and a family friend taking camp beds to the bedrooms upstairs.
As we’re about to drift off there’s a strange tapping sound at the top of the wall - around the height a seven-foot-tall monk might stand. It goes on for a minute or two. Eleanor seems genuinely afraid and I admit a shiver runs down my own spine. Then in the morning, we learn Amy heard ‘growling’ while she tried to sleep.
Like everything else that’s happened, if you believe in the supernatural, this was 100 percent a ghost; if not, it’s our imaginations filling in the blanks in a very creepy house.
Haunted Happenings hosts regular ghost hunts at 30 East Drive, as well as a number of other infamously haunted properties around the country. You can find out more here. Ghost hunts at 30 East Drive start from £65.
Simon Fearn