The Haunting of Oriel Cottages, Faringdon
16 September 2024
In his 1973 book A Gazetteer of British Ghosts, author and parapsychologist Peter Underwood wrote of a ghost that terrorised a Faringdon family in the winter of 1963-4.
'Ghostly rumblings ...'
The haunting seemingly came out of nowhere. The Wheeler family had spent 18 uneventful years living at Oriel Cottages, Park Road, Faringdon when the trouble started.
In December 1963, the family found themselves disturbed by 'ghostly rumblings, bangings, cold draughts and strange shadows', apparently so alarming that the family called the police. An officer spent the night in the cottage but could offer no explanation or assistance. In his report he stated:
There is no doubt there are strange noises ... there is nothing the police can do about it."
With the police unable to help, the Wheeler family were forced to look elsewhere for help.
About Oriel Cottages, Faringdon
Although Peter Underwood refers to the 'lonely 100-year-old Oriel Cottage', the building in question is actually two semi-detached houses. It is not clear in which of the two the Wheeler family lived.
Standing on the busy A417, the building is also considerably less 'lonely' today than it was then. At the time of the events, the house was half a mile outside Faringdon on a quiet lane leading to Wicklesham Farm Lodge. The building stood next to the old railway line, which had ceased to be used for passenger trains in the 1950s but was still occasionally used for freight transport.
Could the 'strange rumblings' and 'strange shadows' experienced by the Wheeler family have been caused by the lights and reverberations of passing trains? It's possible, but considering how long the family had lived there, it would be surprising if they weren't familiar with the sights and sounds of the nearby railway.
Given how much Faringdon has expanded since the 1960s, I was heartened to see that Oriel Cottages are still comparatively untouched today, an island of Victorian elegance amid a sea of sprawling modern housing and industrial estates!
"We are sick with fear ... it's all so uncanny"
Underwood reports that 'a mysterious shape was seen by twenty-one people who stayed the night at the cottage' (a somewhat crowded and uncomfortable night I would imagine!). The same people also experienced unexplained draughts for which they could offer no rational explanation.
The haunting took a heavy toll on the mental state of the Wheeler family. At the height of the disturbances, Mrs Wheeler is reported to have been on the verge of a nervous breakdown and the Wheeler's four children (aged between 5 and 19) were so afraid that they refused to sleep in their bedrooms, instead sleeping huddled around the living room fireplace.
Floorboards were ripped up and architects called in to examine the building in an attempt to find the source of the disturbances, but to no avail.
An exorcism at Oriel Cottages
In desperation, the family contacted a spirit medium, who informed them that their home was haunted by the distressed ghost of a former lodger who had lived in the property before the Wheelers moved in and who had died by suicide.
The Wheeler family contacted the Churches Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Studies, who visited to perform a 30-minute service of exorcism.
After this, Underwood reports, the disturbances ceased. A somewhat anticlimactic end to a dramatic story, and one which leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
I'd love to know more, but Peter Underwood doesn't explain where he got his information about the haunting. It's clear that this is not one of the various cases mentioned in the book that Underwood heard about first-hand. I'd assume that the story may have appeared in the press, but my searches of online newspaper archives have turned up nothing.
Other accounts I've read of the haunting (see 'Sources' below) just provide briefer versions of the same details, leading me to suspect that they are using Underwood's account as their only source.
A curious case of theft at Oriel Cottages
Before the 1960s hauntings, the most unusual incident associated with Oriel Cottages was a 1909 case in which a young woman living at Oriel Cottages was accused of the theft of a quantity of human hair!
17-year-old Florence Hobbs had been caught redhanded after entering the house of her neighbours, Dan and Lizzie Smith, on 22nd April and stealing human hair worth an estimated 1s 6d from an upstairs draw. Mrs Smith had collected the hair as part of her work as a hairdresser. Florence had apparently chosen the hair over a quantity of money also in the house.
The crime might had been overlooked by the petty courts if Florence was not already awaiting trial for the crime of stealing a lockbox containing £8 16s (over £800 today) from a shop in Faringdon. Florence pleaded guilty to both charges. In her defence, her father stated that Florence had suffered very bad sunstroke some nine years previously and he believe she had been ‘not quite right in the head ever since’.
Sources
- 'A Gazetteer of British Ghosts' by Peter Underwood (Pan Books, 1973, ISBN: 0330237284)
- 'Curious Oxfordshire' by Roger Long (Sutton Publishing, 2008, ISBN: 9780750949576)
- Ghosts from Berkshire Places (www.berkshirehistory.com)
- Faringdon Advertiser and Vale of the White Horse Gazette, Saturday 1 May 1909 & Saturday 3 July 1909
