The Tale of the Not-So-Haunted House

This story was reported in The Guardian by Martin Wainwright (1999). A judge dismissed a couple’s claims as hokum. Claims telling of ghosts and slime in a haunted cottage case on Monday the 18th of January 1999. Derby county court claimed these accounts to be false. The stories of a pig-faced boy and naked serving girl had allegedly reduced the building’s price by £50,000.

Judge Peter Stratton referred to this case as ‘hysteria and lies,’ making it the first of its kind since the Middle Ages. The judge also claimed that “this house is not haunted and it never [was] haunted”. He ordered builder Andrew Smith and his wife, Josie, to pay £3,482. This was the sum the couple had withheld from payment for 300-year-old Lowes Cottage on the Derbyshire-Staffordshire border.

Sisters Susan Melbourne and Sandra Podmore have lived in the three-storey cottage for years. They experienced no hauntings and welcomed the ruling. Mrs Melbourne said, “We’ve had to live with this for two years – wherever you go, whatever you do, you couldn’t get away from it.”

This was in stark contrast to the Smiths’ descriptions. Spirits had allegedly put their hands up Mrs Smith’s nightdress and walked through a visiting neighbour. They also said the spirits turned an exorcist’s bowl of holy water into an evil-smelling fog.

The couple had read about similar occurrences in The Amityville Horror. Yet, they denied copying plums from the book to avoid paying the full price. Evidence of a vicar testified that ” there was paranormal activity at Lowes Cottage”. Judge Stratton ridiculed this supposed evidence.

The vicar had failed to detect Mrs Smith’s psychological issues and their connection to the house. The vicar also took the couple’s tale on trust “after a half-hour conversation – hardly a rigorous examination.”

Mr and Mrs Smith conducted their own case at the hearing, backed by advisers from a Spiritualist church. Mrs Smith described various unusual happenings, while her husband concluded his three-minute speech to the court: “There is no way I would put my family through all this for £3,000.”

The couple stated, “We are […] very disappointed at the outcome of the proceedings. We have no alternative but to accept the judge’s ruling and will proceed on this basis.”

The couple was later rehoused by Staffordshire council at Burton-on-Trent. It was to be expected that the court’s decision would result in the cottage’s value returning to roughly its pre-ghost level. If anything was to be contested as miraculous, it was this!