Battersea Poltergeist — London Family Endures Decade of Violence Including Stones, Slapping, and Levitation

From 1956 to 1968, the Hitchings family of Wycliffe Road in Battersea, south London experienced what became one of the longest-running and most extensively documented poltergeist cases in British history. The phenomena centered primarily on teenage daughter Shirley Hitchings and escalated from thrown objects to physical attacks, automatic writing, and apparent communication from an entity that called itself Donald. The disturbances began with unexplained tapping sounds and a key mysteriously moving around the house. They escalated to stones being thrown, objects flying across rooms, Shirley being slapped and scratched by invisible hands, and her bedsheets being pulled off at night. On several occasions witnesses including police officers reported seeing Shirley levitated from her bed. Donald communicated primarily through automatic writing, producing messages claiming various identities over the years including a claim to be the ghost of Louis XVII of France. The messages were detailed and internally consistent, and investigators tested the communications with historical questions that were answered accurately. The case attracted attention from researchers including Harold Chibbett, who investigated for over a decade and documented hundreds of incidents. Scotland Yard investigated but found no evidence of fraud. The phenomena subsided as Shirley reached adulthood and married. She maintained her account of the events throughout her life and co-authored a book about the experience, published posthumously.