The Black Monk of Pontefract: the Pritchard family poltergeist "Fred"

The Pritchard family moved into 30 East Drive in 1966. It was a 1950s-style three-bedroom council house on the Chequerfield Estate, on the south side of Pontefract in West Yorkshire. The household was Joe and Jean Pritchard, their son Phillip and their daughter Diane. The sources disagree on the children's ages.

August 1966. A bank-holiday weekend. Joe, Jean and Diane were away in Devon. Phillip stayed home with Jean's mother, Sarah Scholes.

Mrs Scholes felt a cool gust of wind blow through the house. Then she and Phillip watched a cascade of chalk-like dust fall from just below the ceiling. Pools of water kept appearing on the kitchen floor. A neighbour and a man from the Water Board saw them, and Marie Kelly slipped on one. Green foam came from the kitchen tap, while a wardrobe in Phillip's room began swaying back and forth and thumping on the floor.

After about two quiet years, the activity returned in late 1968 and ran to mid-1969. This time it centred on Diane. One Yorkshire Post snippet dates the return to 1972 instead. The family first called the presence "Mr. Nobody". Jean named it Fred.

Tapping and bangs. Lights switched on and off as the house turned suddenly cold and foul smells spread. A candlestick floated into the air, while a carton of eggs flew across the kitchen and smashed against the wall. The grandfather clock toppled down the stairs. Plants leapt from their pots, and bite marks appeared on food.

Then it turned on Diane. In the retellings, Diane was flung to the ground and dragged kicking and screaming up the stairs. The dragging left marks on Diane's throat. Joe's sister, Maude Peerce, had suspected the children of tricks. After one night in the house, Maude reportedly declared: "You've got the Devil in this house!"

In the kitchen next door, the neighbour Mrs Mountain saw "a tall figure dressed in a black monk's habit, with a cowl over the head." The face could not be seen. The figure "looked quite solid." Then it was gone. Joe and Jean reportedly saw the same black-cowled shape in their bedroom. Newspapers dubbed the entity the Black Monk.

Reverend Davy, a local vicar, saw a brass candlestick jump off the mantelpiece. An exorcism was attempted and failed. Police officers are said to have witnessed events, though no records have been found. Tom Cuniff of the Doncaster Psychical Research Group claimed contact with the ghost of a monk hanged during the reign of Henry VIII for the rape and murder of a teenage girl. Other tellings place the hanging in the 15th century and tie the monk to Pontefract's Cluniac priory.

In 1980, Colin Wilson visited. In Poltergeist! (1981), Wilson wrote that "the ground itself contains some peculiar force that favours 'manifestations'". Wilson linked the activity to Phillip's psychological tension and Diane's "undeveloped mediumistic powers". Sceptics note that no verifiable contemporaneous evidence of the most dramatic claims has been produced, and that later retellings were embellished.

Pat Holden turned the story into the 2012 film When the Lights Went Out, and admitted embellishing it to fit a horror movie template. Producer Bil Bungay bought the house in 2012 for £80,000. It is now rented to ghost hunters. Most Haunted filmed there in 2015, and Yvette Fielding called it "the most violent, most evil and most haunted place we've been to to date." Rue Morgue discusses it alongside the Enfield poltergeist. The debate goes on.