The Battersea Poltergeist: "Donald" of 63 Wycliffe Road

Battersea, south London. In 1956, the Hitchings family shared a semi-detached house at 63 Wycliffe Road. Walter "Wally" Hitchings drove trains on the London Underground. His wife Kitty used a wheelchair, and his mother Ethel was a retired nurse. Their daughter, Shirley Hitchings, was 15.

Late January 1956. A silver-coloured key appeared on Shirley's bed. Nobody recognised it, and it fitted no lock in the house. Her father left it in the kitchen. The next morning it was on Shirley's bed again.

Then came the rapping. First at night, then by day, mostly where and when Shirley was present. It grew louder until it could be heard from the street.

Chairs and slippers were thrown. Bedclothes were pulled from the beds. A wristwatch came off Shirley's wrist. One account describes the sheets tugged by force beneath her, and then: "we saw that Shirley was being lifted out of her bed."

The family named the presence "Donald." It answered in taps: one for yes, two for no, three for don't know. Then it began to write in "curved capital letters, littered with spelling mistakes and the odd French word," producing some 3,000 to 4,000 messages in all. In May 1956 Donald announced he was Louis XVII of France. He said he had not died in prison but had drowned on his way to exile in England.

In early March 1956 Harold "Chib" Chibbett arrived, a tax inspector and psychical researcher who kept detailed files. After the Weekend Mail took a sceptical line on 15 March 1956, Donald reportedly threatened to set the house on fire. Witnesses then saw a lit match flying through the air. Bedclothes were set alight. Reporter Joyce Lewis slept in Shirley's bed and saw incidents for herself.

Christmas 1956. A note read: "PINS TO PUT UP PAPER... PAPER CREAP... I MAKE MAGIC LANTERNS." Chibbett wrote: "Paper streamers crisscrossed the room." There was a small tree, with a present labelled "For Chib."

Chibbett concluded Donald was a spirit. Ghost hunter Andrew Green heard knocks from some feet away and was puzzled. But he saw Shirley squeeze her eyes shut before tapped answers came. He judged it recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis, with Shirley writing the messages, probably in a dissociative state.

Reviewing Shirley's 2013 memoir for the SPR, Tom Ruffles thought it more likely she was actively and consciously involved; Donald's demands, he noted, served her: a room of her own, money for clothes, attention. Handwriting analysis found the letters almost certainly written by Shirley, while in Magonia Peter Rogerson saw an "overgrown childhood 'invisible friend'." Others blamed foundations built on marshland. Chibbett's one verification, a detail about an eighteenth-century theatre production, had been broadcast that same day. And DNA testing in 2001 supports the view that Louis XVII died in captivity.

The activity ended in 1968, after Shirley had married and left, and the house was later demolished. Shirley said the haunting robbed her of her childhood. In 2013 she and James Clark published The Poltergeist Prince of London, built on Chibbett's files. In 2021 Danny Robins brought the case to BBC Radio 4 as The Battersea Poltergeist, with Shirley as the only surviving witness. Its experts, Evelyn Hollow and Ciarán O'Keeffe, reached no firm verdict.