The Haunting at No. 16

Waterdales as it looks today

Poltergeist activity is usually clearly centered around one person: most often a child or teenager.  However, what makes the following case unusual is that the paranormal activity did not appear to be fixated on any individual, but on a house.

No. 16 Waterdales is a small, semi-detached residence in Northfleet, a town about twenty miles from London.  The house was built in the 1930s, and for years showed no sign of being anything other than the common run of unassuming council houses.  That all changed very suddenly and dramatically in 1962, when Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Maxted and their three young children moved in.

The first sign that something unusual was going on came only a short time after the family moved in.  When the couple was downstairs, they began hearing sounds like footsteps in the front bedroom, which was located directly above the living room.  It was as though someone was pacing back and forth over their heads.  The Maxteds did their best to persuade themselves that the sounds were merely caused by residents of the adjacent house.  Just the sort of thing that happens when two homes share a party wall.  Nothing to be concerned about.

Then the Maxted children began hearing scratching noises under their beds at night, and invisible hands yanking off their bedcovers and slapping them.  The disturbances became so frightening, the children insisted on sleeping in their parents’ room.

The Maxteds were far from happy at No. 16, but felt they couldn’t afford to give up housing that was both inexpensive and convenient.  They rapidly changed their minds thanks to one night in February 1965.  Around 2 a.m., Mrs. Maxted got up to change the diapers of her youngest child.  After dealing with the baby, she was startled to see a small child coming into the bedroom.  Assuming it was her four-year-old, Linda, she called the child’s name.  As the figure approached her, it suddenly increased in size, until it became a giant form looming ominously over her.  When she screamed, the thing instantly disappeared.

The Maxteds did not wait around to see what else the house had in store for them.  The following morning, they gave their notice and moved out.

The town council allocated the home to another young family:  Eric and Margaret Essex and their baby.  Eric had heard of what the Maxteds had experienced, but felt the need to have a good home outweighed the risks of possibly sharing it with a ghost.

Trouble for the new residents started out the same way it had with the Maxteds:  with the sound of mysterious footsteps in the upper bedroom.  As the days went by, the family was also troubled with strange and unpleasant moldy smells throughout the house.  They would also sometimes hear a low-pitched hum echoing through the rooms.

As had been the case with the previous tenants, the couple did their best to ignore these disturbances until they were confronted with something too frightening to overlook.  One night in August 1966, Eric was awakened by the now-familiar sound of footsteps, but this time located in the hallway and on the staircase.  When he went to investigate, he saw and heard nothing.  After he returned to bed, he began hearing a weird whistling sound.  Then the bed started shaking violently.  When he sat up, he was confronted by the figure of a woman in a long dress, glowing with an orange light.  A woman lacking her head.

The family fled the next morning, vowing they’d sooner live on the streets than go anywhere near that house again.

After word got out about this new horror, the council found they had a hard time finding tenants for No. 16, especially since neighbors continued to hear uncanny sounds emanating from the empty house.  Margaret Harrison, who lived in the adjoining house, often heard heavy footsteps going up and down the stairs next door.  One night, she heard a loud booming sound, as if some heavy object was thudding around the house.  The pounding noise then hit the hall ceiling, which was directly above her bedroom, followed by a noisy scraping sound.  It was as if something underneath her was trying to scratch or claw its way up into her room.  She was so frightened by the experience that she too moved out.

What makes this reported haunting even stranger is that it appears to have ended as inexplicably as it began.  A house that had been tenanted without incident for nearly thirty years suddenly became the site of paranormal terror.  Then, after about four years, it ended.  The house still stands today, with no further reports of any unusual activity within its walls.  This relatively obscure case is an excellent example of how the more one looks at poltergeist reports, the more difficult it becomes to find a “one-size-fits-all” explanation for the phenomenon.