‘A haunted house at the top of your street is fantastic’
“The haunted house at the top of your street is amazing,” says Pontefract resident Caroline Gibson.
Although not everyone agreed with her, Caroline and other residents in the town’s East Drive area embraced the paranormal activities that made a property there notorious.
The street in Pontefract, a town more famous for its eponymous liquorice treat than for its ghostly activity, is certainly not a typical setting for a ghost story.
The residential road consists of former council houses dating back to the 1950s and a community center built in 2004. It doesn’t quite provide the ingredients for a haunting horror tale that will leave you sleeping with the lights on.
But legend has it that an aggressive poltergeist lives in number 30, an otherwise unremarkable semi, with reports of strange activity dating back to the 1960s.
The house is already popular with paranormal investigators and ghost-hunting tourists, but a new BBC podcast Telling the story of 30 East Drive brought the mystery to a new audience.
Caroline Gibson has lived just a few doors down from the property for the last five years and she absolutely believes it.
“When we first moved here, I walked past it and it looked like there was a kid standing in the window,” the 36-year-old recalls.
Caroline has never been inside the house, but owner Bil Bungay, who has written a book and even made a film about the house’s legend, says it has welcomed hundreds of visitors through its doors.
Bil admits he was a “rabid skeptic” until he had a paranormal experience on the property.
He said that while he was doing the dishes, he turned around and saw an object fly towards his head and hit the wall behind him.
“That was the turning point for me,” he says, recalling the exact incident in 2016 all the way back to Sunday.
“It was real and it was crazy.”
The house has not been lived in since 2001. Bil bought the house in 2012 and has never lived there himself, but the filmmaker maintains the 1970s aesthetic and rents the property to ghost hunters for overnight or day visits.
Bil, who only visits during the day, says other more recent reports of unusual events include people being scratched, pushed and hearing “evil growling” sounds.
Caroline Gibson enjoys exploring the mystery of 30 East Drive [SteveJones/BBC]
According to the UK National Folklore Survey, Caroline and Bil are not alone.
The survey, conducted last year with a representative sample of more than 1,7000 adults, found that more than a third of respondents believe in ghosts.
Folklore and contemporary legend expert Dr. from Sheffield Hallam University. “That’s why we watch horror movies or read spooky stories; we’re fascinated by things that are beyond our perception, behind our reach, or beyond our reach,” explains Diane Rodgers.
“At its core, people love stories.”
According to Dr Rodgers, legends such as 30 East Drive continue to fascinate audiences because “we can’t prove something, but we can’t disprove it”.
“People ask, ‘Is there life after death?’ they like to think. “That’s the biggest question on our minds.”
Caroline says the thought of a ghost a few doors away intrigues her rather than frightens her.
“My children love just being able to see something that is so monumental to Pontefract, they’ve heard of its history – it’s amazing,” the mother-of-five says.
“We can park visitors all the way down the street, which is really nice.”
Despite regular tourism, East Drive is an ordinary street where people go about their daily lives.
Still, Caroline thinks the alternative appeal is there, along with the best Pontefract has to offer.
“That’s good because it’s an issue that people in the community are interested in looking at.
“There’s the city center and the castle with the ruins; the haunted house at the top of your street is amazing.”
But where there are spooky activities, there will always be skeptics.
One of the local residents declared that he was a staunch non-believer and did not want to engage in further discussion, while the postman declared that he had never seen anything strange there during his visits.
Another woman, who has lived on East Drive for 26 years, says she has never seen anything out of the ordinary on her street but is comfortable with others coming to check it out.
“People like to believe what they want to believe, so let them go with it.”
The woman says her father told her that a red glow around the property’s windows was first noticed by a group of miners, noting that the story of 30 East Drive goes back decades.
Now it looks like the mystery and intrigue will live on for a while longer.
Listen to the highlights West Yorkshire on BBC Soundsfollow the latest developments New episode of Look North.
