Chester Chronicle Article on a Family of Ghosts in Lane End"

54, Chester Road, Buckley

26 January 1968

"A HAUNTED HOUSE IN BUCKLEY" by Neville Dunn (7.2005)

Richard Holland wrote a weekly column in the Welsh Edition of the Daily Post concerning psychic happenings in Wales. The following is a story he had published on 23 June 2005:-

Wales of the UNEXPECTED with RICHARD HOLLAND

A psychic slideshow they could do without

John Massey was one of five children who lived in a haunted house in the late 1960's. The haunting features an unusual phenomenon I can only describe as a psychic slideshow.

Mr Massey wrote to tell me about his family's experiences and included with the letter a contemporary cutting from his local paper, the Chronicle. The Massey's home was a modest, three-bedroomed house in Buckley, Flintshire. The hauntings began soon after they moved in.

Mrs Massey awoke one night to see a tall young man standing at the foot of her bed. She hardly had time to react when the figure vanished into thin air. The ghost reappeared some nights later and became a regular - and very unwelcome - visitor to Mrs Massey's room, which she shared with her two daughters. In an attempt to avoid the ghost, Mrs Massey moved all three beds to a downstairs room.

Unfortunately, the apparition followed her. Shortly afterwards it brushed past her while she was sitting in the downstairs room with her husband; he saw it too. Mrs Massey decided she might as well return to her own bedroom. Once again the ghost made an appearance and Mr Massey made a dive for it - but it vanished into the wardrobe.

The weirdest aspect of the haunting took place on a Monday afternoon. Mrs Massey and her daughter Kathleen, then aged 11, saw a glass partition in the downstairs room turn black. It then became the 'psychic slideshow' I mentioned above; a series of strange images presented themselves. To quote the Chronicle report:

"The same figure of the tall young man appeared transposed on the screen. It vanished and in its place was an old woman with white hair, witch-like features and shrivelled skin. This was replaced by an older man and then by a very old man with a white, straggly beard.

Mrs Massey then sent her daughter to fetch one of her sons, James. While she was away a man with several small children appeared standing on a hill. Her son and daughter then came in the room and the three of them saw a white horse, complete with halter".

That night Mr Massey was talking to one of the town's oldest residents and he was told that a 'strange family' named Williams, who had managed an undertaking business, had once lived in the house; they had owned a white horse to pull the hearse. Mrs Massey learnt from a neighbour that they were not the first to have seen the ghosts and that the house had a reputation for being 'unhappy'.

The Masseys were rescued, in a way, by the council which bought their haunted house simply to knock it down as part of a redevelopment. John Massey tells me that the site is now a car park".

Author: Holland, Richard

Chester Chronicle Article on a Family of Ghosts in Lane End"

54, Chester Road, Buckley

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