What happened
In the summer of 1966, while Joe and Jean Pritchard were on holiday, their mother-in-law and 15-year-old son Phillip saw puddles of water appearing on the dry kitchen floor of the house on East Drive, Pontefract, and foam gushing from the taps. After a brief episode things went quiet, but in 1968 the phenomena returned with new force, now centred on the younger daughter, Diane: furniture overturned, crockery flew out of cupboards, lights went out, rooms turned icy and the girl, the family said, was dragged up the stairs. They called the ghost “Fred”. In time people began to speak of a tall figure in a black habit and to link it with a legend of a monk executed nearby centuries ago. For years the case remained a local curiosity.
Witnesses
The Pritchard family, relatives and neighbours; their accounts were collected years later by the writer Colin Wilson.
Explanations and hypotheses
The case was made famous by Colin Wilson’s book “Poltergeist!” (1981), based on interviews with the family and neighbours; it also loosely inspired the film “When the Lights Went Out” (2012). Sceptics stress that the accounts were recorded more than a decade after the events and that the “monk” and the execution legend are later additions with no historical confirmation. Teenage pranks and plumbing faults have been suggested as mundane explanations. The house on East Drive now attracts ghost hunters.
Disputed A likely explanation exists, but some of the facts are still disputed.