THE HAUNTING OF WILLINGTON MILL | real story

During the last two months of 1834, the nursemaid employed by the Joseph
Proctor family tried her best to ignore the eerie noises that she heard com-
ing from the deserted room over the nursery. Each night when she was left
alone to watch the children, she would hear the sounds—dull, heavy treading,
like someone slowly pacing back and forth.
Finally she decided that she had had enough of the strange sounds that
so disturbed her sleep. She was convinced that a ghost occupied the upstairs
room. In a state of nervous agitation, she asked to be discharged from her ser-
vice in the Proctor home.
Proctor saw no reason why he should attempt to talk the woman into
staying with them. She was obviously a highly imaginative woman who had
frightened herself by supposing that she was being visited by supernatural beings.
It wasn’t long, however, before he—and his wife and the other ser-
vants—also heard the sound of heavy feet in the upstairs room. Although puz-
zled by the treading of invisible feet, the Proctors convinced themselves that
there was undoubtedly a natural explanation for the strange sounds. In spite of
their refusal to believe there was a supernatural element to the noises, the
Proctors purposely omitted any mention of the disturbed room when they
hired a new nursemaid on January 23, 1835.
On her first evening in the nursery, the girl came down to the sitting
room to inquire who was in the room above her. The Proctors evaded her ques-
tion, putting the whole matter down to the usual nightly noises of an old house.The next day, Mrs. Proctor heard the steps of a man with heavy boots walk-
ing about in the upstairs room. Later that same day, during the family’s dinner, the
nursemaid came down the stairs and blinked incredulously at Mr. Proctor. She said
that she had heard someone walking in the room above her for five minutes. She
had come downstairs to assure herself that it wasn’t the master of the house.
“But if it isn’t you, sir,” she inquired, “who is it?”
Proctor inspected the room that night. Trickery seemed out of the ques-
tion. The door to the room had been nailed shut for some time; the room’s
only window had been boarded up many years before with wooden laths and
plaster. Inside the room, the floor was covered with a thin, undisturbed layer
of soot, which in itself was proof that not even a mouse had been walking
about. Proctor descended even more mystified than when he had gone up to
conduct his investigation.
On January 31, the Proctors heard a dozen loud thuds next to their bed
as they were preparing to retire. During the next night, Joseph Proctor heard a
metallic rapping on the baby’s crib. There was a brief pacing overhead and
then the sound of footsteps, which were never heard again in the upper room.
But what followed for the next several years included such a remarkable
range of visual and auditory manifestations that the initial plodding footsteps
were to seem like a baby’s first steps in comparison. What is nearly as remark-
able as the intense haunting of Willington Mill is the fact that the Proctors
persisted in living in the house for over 11 years before finally surrendering to
the paranormal disturbances that invaded their home.
Thomas Mann, the foreman of the mill that was separated from the
Proctor’s house by a road and a garden, told Proctor that he had heard a pecu-
liar noise moving across the lawn in the darkness. At first, Mann thought it
came from the wooden cistern that stood in the mill yard; he suspected that
some pranksters were attempting to spill it. However, upon pursuing the noise
with a lantern in hand, he found that the cistern had not been budged. Mann
also told Proctor in the strictest confidence that even before this peculiar dis-
turbance, he had on several occasions heard a sound as if someone were walk-
ing on the gravel path, but when he went to see who it was, he saw no one.
Shortly after Proctor’s confidential conversation with Mann, both
Mann and another neighbor observed the luminous image of a woman in a
window of Proctor’s house; both parties saw the ghost independently of each
other. Mann gathered his entire family to witness the phantasm, which was
fully visible for more than 10 minutes.
About a year after the phenomena at Willington Mill had started
becoming increasingly frightening, Mrs. Proctor’s sister, Jane Carr, arrived for a
stay. One evening, a few minutes before midnight, she was awakened by a noise.very much like that of someone winding a large clock. After this bizarre noise,
her bed began to shake, and she clearly heard a sound like that of a heavy sack
falling on the floor above. Several strong knocks sounded about her bedstead,
and the unmistakable sound of shuffling feet surrounded her bed.
In addition to the sounds of thudding feet, the ghost had soon acquired
fists with which to pound on walls and added bed-lifting to its repertoire of
supernatural phenomena. The invisible force manifested under the bed of the
Proctor’s eldest child and began to raise the mattress higher and higher, until
the child finally cried out. Next, the thing hoisted the mattress of the bed on
which Mrs. Proctor and a new nursemaid were sleeping. Mrs. Proctor
described the sensation as feeling as if a large man were underneath the bed,
pushing it up with his back. Later, the haunting developed an ability to whis-
tle, talk, and materialize into a number of grotesque phantoms.
The Proctors’ sons, Joseph and Henry, were awakened one night by a
loud shriek that emanated from under their beds. Upon investigating, Joseph,
Sr., heard an odd moan coming from somewhere in the room. One of the beds began to move, and the voice uttered what sounded like, “chuck-chuck.”
These sounds were followed by a noise similar to that of an infant sucking a
bottle. The youngest child, Jane, was moved to another room, but her reloca-
tion did not spare her the torment of having her bed levitated.
The phenomena had begun to leave its domain on the upper floor, ven-
turing to the lower floors during the night. The kitchen seemed to be a
favorite target for its nightly forays, and on several mornings the cook would
find the kitchen chairs heaped in a disorderly pile, the shutters thrown open,
and utensils scattered about the room.
Mrs. Proctor’s brother, Jonathan Carr, spent a night filled with so much
commotion that he declared he would not stay in the house for any amount of
money. Jane, Mrs. Proctor’s sister, was much more strong-nerved than her
brother; judging from the journal that Joseph Proctor kept, the young woman
spent many evenings in the afflicted house. One night as she shared a room
with Mary Young, the cook, the two women were terrified to hear the bolt in
their door slide back, the handle turn, and the door open. As an invisible enti-
ty moved across the bed the women shared, the bed curtains began to rustle,
and the bedcovers were suddenly lifted and thrown off the bed, revealing the
two trembling figures. Both women saw a distinctly dark shadow against the
curtains that hung from the bed frame.
Little Jane Proctor was sleeping with her aunt Jane one night when she
saw a strange head peeping out at her from the bed curtains. The four-year-old
girl later described the head as being that of an old woman, but she became
much too frightened to continue her observation and tucked her own head
under the covers.
Joseph, Jr., was disturbed nearly every night by some facet or other of the
phenomena. He reported hearing the words “never mind” and “come and get”
being repeated over and over, without any apparent meaningful application. As
he attempted to sleep, he constantly heard footsteps shuffling around his bed,
and he both heard and felt forceful thumps to his pillow and other bedclothes.
A medical doctor named Drury arrived and asked Proctor’s permission
to carry out an examination of the haunted upper room. Proctor consented
and allowed the doctor and his companion, a young chemist, to make prepara-
tions to spend a night in the disturbed room.
At about 1 A.M., Proctor was awakened by a piercing scream of terror
coming from the upper floor. Drury had come face to face with the ghost of the
wizened old woman. The two curious would-be investigators spent the rest of
the night drinking coffee in the kitchen. They left the house at dawn. Proctor
noted in his journal that the doctor and the chemist had received a shock that
they would not soon forget.
One of the most incredible materializations in Willington Mill was that
of an entity resembling a monkey. One day eight-year-old Joseph, Jr., was seat-
ed atop a chest of drawers, pretending that he was making a speech to his sis-
ter, Jane, and his brothers Henry and Edmund, when his presentation was
rudely interrupted. Suddenly, in full view of all the children, a monkeylike
creature appeared and began to tug at Joseph’s shoe strap.
By the time Joseph, Sr., came running in response to their excited cries,
the children were scurrying about the floor, trying desperately to play with the
mischievous monkey. Two-year-old Edmund, the youngest Proctor child, con-
tinued to look under chairs and tables until his bedtime, trying to locate the
entity that he identified as a “funny-looking cat.”
Years later, the memory of that incident was still vivid in Edmund Proc-
tor’s mind. In the December 1892 issue of the Journal of the Society for Psychical
Research, he wrote: “Now it so happens that this monkey is the first incident
in the lugubrious hauntings, or whatever they may be termed, of which I have
any recollection. I suppose it was, or might easily be, the first monkey that I
had ever seen, which may explain my memory being so impressed that I have
not forgotten it.… My parents have told me that no monkey was known to be
owned in the neighborhood, and that after diligent inquiry no organ-man or
hurdy-gurdy boy, either with or without a monkey, had been seen anywhere
about the place or neighborhood, either on that day or for a length of time.…
I have an absolutely distinct recollection of that monkey, and of running to
see where it went to as it hopped out of the room and into the adjoining
[room]. We saw it go under the bed in that room, but it could not be traced or
found anywhere afterwards. We hunted and ferreted about that room, and
every corner of the house, but no monkey, or any trace of one, was more to be
found.” Aunt Jane Carr did not see the monkey, but she reported that she had
heard what sounded like an animal jumping down off an easy chair.
The white face of what appeared to be an old woman was seen more
and more often, but Joseph, Jr., soon added an old man to the list of material-
izations. One of the more astonishing visual materializations also occurred to
the younger Joseph; the haunting force fashioned a double of the young boy.
Imagine the boy’s shock upon discovering his mirror-image peeking at him
from the shadows beside his bed. He was about 10 years old when this facet of
the phenomena manifested, so his powers of observation must be given some
credence. Joseph, Jr., said that his spectral self-image, which was even dressed
in a manner identical to his, walked back and forth between the window and
the wardrobe before it gradually dematerialized.
Shortly after this dramatic episode, the Proctors decided that they had
endured enough. Patient Quakers though they were, 11 years of living amidst
incessant supernatural disturbances had been enough for them. They had also become fearful that the “plague-ridden dwelling” would inflict permanent
injury to the minds of their children.
In 1866 Proctor obtained a residence at Camp Villa, North Shields,
and after completing the arduous task of packing their belongings, he and his
wife sent the servants and the children on ahead to their new residence. Mr.
and Mrs. Proctor stayed behind, alone, to properly close up the house; their
final night in Willington Mill was perhaps the most frightening of all.
The constant sound of heavy thuds prevented them from getting any rest
at all. The house echoed with the sound of boxes being dragged down the stairs,
but the house was empty, save for them. All of their boxes had been moved out
earlier that day. Yet they continued to hear footsteps walking across the floors,
dragging invisible furniture. The Proctors were, in effect, hearing a ghostly reen-
actment of all the noises made by the family and their servants as they were
engaged in their various moving chores. The Proctors wondered with some
panic if the ghosts were packing in order to move with them to the new house.
It was with indescribable relief that the Proctors arrived at the new resi-
dence to find it completely free of the former horror that had blemished 11
years of their lives. Their residency in the new home was blissfully untroubled
by knockings, whistlings, footsteps, and phantasms.
After the Proctors moved from Willington Mill, the house was divided
into two apartments. According to later testimonies of the new occupants,
only the occasional haunting phenomena occurred. However, in approximate-
ly 1868, when two new families moved into the apartments, they were so
greatly disturbed by ghostly manifestations that one family moved out and
refused to return.
After a number of years had passed, the mill was closed and made into a
warehouse, and the old Proctor house was divided into a number of small ten-
ements. When Edmund Proctor visited the place around 1890, none of the
tenants claimed to be troubled by ghosts. It appeared that whatever ethereal
beings had plagued the house at Willington Mill had moved on.

From - REAL GHOSTS,RESTLESS SPIRITS,ANDHAUNTED PLACES book