Can You Hear Me Now ?

The semi-detached house in Windsor Avenue, Thornton,where Mr Jones lives looks as normal as all the others but is what paranormal investigators call 'A Paranormal Magnet.'

Almost 40 years ago a family were terrorised by what was known as 'The Thornton Thing' bed covers were pulled while they were asleep.

They also told how they sensed a vile smell and felt something breathing in their ears.

Isn't that called being married and sharing a bed?

The Gazette was told in 1971 how " there was a lot of banging and an earthy smell in the house.

Then one night I was lying in bed and a mist came across the room."I wanted to shout out at it, but I couldn't get my words out.

My face seemed to be paralysed. It all got too much for me when that happened."

It sounds like the signs of a marriage after an egg an onion sandwich to this reporter, though the banging usually stops after the ceremony.

Mr Jones's daughter, Maureen, 30, also recalls experiences with the 'Thing', including taps coming on full force and the house being "ransacked".

The clothes weren't put into laundry baskets and just left on the floor, lights were mysteriously left on and the toilet wasn't being flushed in a ghostly manner leaving the smell as if the devil himself had pinched off a loaf.

Mr Jones had his house cleaned and exorcised 12 years ago to get rid of the thing . He added: "A lady came to cleanse the house. She said a man was trapped between two worlds and there was a cat stuck in the attic ."

Five years ago after Mr Jones suffered a double tragedy when his son Steven, 32, died from a brain tumour and wife Sadie, 69, died from a heart attack three months later.

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Mr Jones, who runs his own scrap metal business, said: "Just after Sadie died I came home and I felt like I didn't want to go in the house, dishes don't wash themselves."

Then strange things started to happen again "I got a missed call on my mobile, but it didn't ring. The call was from my own home number, but there was nobody in the house.

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Then when I went inside there was a smell like cigarettes which Sadie used to smoke and the smell of her perfume."

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Mr Jones said the family has also received strange text messages, which they believe to be from her.

He added: "She always had a mobile with her. We buried her with her phone.

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There have been messages with words Sadie would say like 'moron or gullible idiot' but there's no number."