2024 01 Spring with bleed V4 - Flipbook - Page 8
Our article in the last edition about ghostly goings on in the village
prompted Chris Cope to contact us with a series of unexplained
encounters in his own house.
Reeds Farmhouse, where we live, was
once called 8Reeds and Hammetts9. In
the 1930s, 8Reeds and Hammetts9
passed to Cyril Hobbs and his wife
Phyllis on the death of his father. When
Mr and Mrs Hobbs died within six weeks
of each other in 1979 the property
passed to their daughter Brenda.
Brenda let out the property and a young couple and their two children
moved in. The orst ghostly sighting was made by the elder daughter.
One morning at breakfast, she asked, 8Who is the little old lady who
comes into our room after you9ve put us to bed?9 Her mother scolded
her for telling untruths, at which the younger child, a boy, piped up that
8It9s true9. The two children shared a double bed at the east end of the
house. The next incident occurred a few months later. It was about
midnight. Both the parents were sound asleep in the main bedroom.
They both awoke with a start at the sound of heavy footsteps coming
up the stairs. The stairs were
uncarpeted. On reaching the top, the
sound suddenly ceased. The husband
went out to investigate, but there was no
one there. So could it be that the old
lady who went into the children9s room
was Mrs Hobbs, and that it was Mr
Hobbs who came up the stairs as heard
by the parents? The tenants moved
out. In 1981 it was sold to Peter and
Norma Gutteridge. Peter told me the
following.
We slept in the bedroom at the east end, where the children had
seen the old lady. Suddenly, early one morning (it was beginning
to get light), I awoke with a start and was conscious of an
unfamiliar face scrutinising me as if trying to recognise who I was.
It was a lady of perhaps early middle age dressed in loosely 昀椀tting
8
for extra content— www.kingsnymptononline.com/additional-material