Manifestations in Milk Street.

There is a curious street in the town of Congleton in the county of Cheshire that is no more than two hundred yards in length. It is semi circular in shape, one end connects with Rood Hill, the other connects with Mill street. The story revolves around a shuttered vacant property which can be found close to the Rood Hill end of Milk street.

Around 8-9 years ago a friend of mine had formed a paranormal investigation group in the Congleton area, through word of mouth he found out that some residents who lived in the terrace houses on Rood hill would not enter Milk street at night and pass the red brick house seen in the picture on the left, as they felt a disturbing atmosphere attached to the place. They would travel further down Rood Hill and enter Mill street which connects with the other end of Milk street, this would give them access to their back gardens and avoid having to pass the house in question.

According to my friend the local paper found out that he was going to do an investigation of a property in Milk Street, and the owner who back then was aged 81 got to hear about it and phoned him up and warned him against broadcasting the fact that the property was haunted.

An interesting piece of information that the owner did divulge and most people are unaware of is that the house had used to be called Chapel Croft, as the house stands on the site of a chapel. Was there a graveyard here at one time, and has it been disturbed, could this have triggered paranormal activity?

Getting back to the original story my friend along with a few other people visited the property one night around 8-9 years ago, and also in the daytime, back then there were no shutters on the windows. My friend stated that the property was last lived in during the early seventies and when he peered through the windows he said that it appeared as if the occupants had fled the place as there was still cutlery and plates laid out on the table. He says that it was like looking back in time, there was a container of Ajax on the window sill, a packet of Omo washing powder on the kitchen work surface. He went on to say that why would a perfectly good house worth £150.00-£200.00 have remained locked up for 44 years. Did something scare the owners so badly that they locked and shuttered the place up all those years ago?

My friend and the small group that accompanied him took a series of photographs of the property, some of the digital photographs showed apparitions of animals in the windows. My friend claimed that the atmosphere surrounding the place made him ill, so he decided to leave the property shortly after taking the photographs, vowing never to return to the place, as he claims it was the worst place he had ever visited.

He took some photographs using a 35mm camera which he let me use for this story. The first one is taken through the ground floor window and shows what appears to be the top of a cowled figure, which may have been a monk as I believe a monastery used to exist at this location back in the fourteenth century.

I have traced the outline so it stands out better, my friend claims that when he took the photograph only a brick wall could be seen at this spot. The other photograph that I have reproduced here was taken at night, again using a 35mm camera, for some reason the apparition of what appears to be a poodle has revealed itself on the film. What a poodle is doing haunting a 14th century historic site remains a mystery like the house itself.

UPDATE

The latest news regarding this property is that it has now come up for sale. Timothy Brown estate agents in Congleton now have a sign attached to the outside of the property asking for tenders in excess of £60,000. I wonder how the new owners will react once they find out that the place is haunted, and I wonder how long it will be before paranormal activity starts taking place, one thing is for sure I won’t be making an offer!

Another interesting fact concerning this area unrelated to this property is that in front of the white house which can be seen in the first photograph on this page can be found what maybe the largest paving slab n the UK, The house in question had in the past once been a public house and the paving slab is in front of the property on Rood Hill.