The Fountain Head's 1969 disturbances have the shape of a classic poltergeist case, physical, disruptive phenomena with no attributed presence at first, rather than a ghost story that begins with a name and a known tragedy. Bottles behind the bar are said to have exploded without warning, and furniture was found rearranged in ways staff could not account for, disturbances serious and persistent enough that the police were eventually called in, an involvement of official authority that distinguishes this case from most of the more purely oral traditions recorded elsewhere in this register. Officers reportedly investigated footsteps heard coming from an upstairs room on more than one occasion, only to find the room empty each time they checked.
With no obvious natural explanation forthcoming, a medium was brought in, as was common practice for poltergeist cases investigated in this period, and offered an identification for the presence: a man named Peter Andover, said to have been stabbed to death at the property while attempting to rape the landlord's daughter. This is a serious and specific claim, naming both a victim and a violent crime, but it rests entirely on the medium's own account rather than on any documented historical record of a killing at the address, and no independent confirmation of Andover's existence, his death, or the assault he is said to have been attempting has been traced for this entry.
The combination here, physical disturbances substantial enough to draw police attention, followed by a dramatic but entirely unverified explanation supplied after the fact by a medium, is common enough in mid-twentieth-century poltergeist cases that the Fountain Head fits a recognisable pattern rather than standing out as unique. It is recorded with appropriately low confidence: the disturbances themselves have some degree of external corroboration through the police involvement, but the story attached to explain them does not.
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