Writing for Spooky Isles, Christine Miller describes a house towards the end of West Lane in Haworth, recognisable by a ghoulish stone face under the roof, probably built into the fabric when the house went up in 1757 to ward off dark forces. It has long been suspected of being haunted.
In 1898 a man named E. Oldridge told the Bronte Society about his father in law's stay in the building. Told the house was haunted, the father in law took little notice until one evening he came home and saw a light moving from one upstairs room to another. Assuming someone was going to bed, he was startled to find all three members of the household sitting in the living room.
He also heard noises like the cracking of a whip, which moved away to another room whenever he approached. Most unsettling was the disturbance of his sleep: as he was about to drop off, the four poster bed would heave as if a force beneath it were pushing it up. Each time he got up to look underneath he found nothing.
The account is third hand and dated only by when it was told to the Bronte Society. The source gives no street number, so the pin is placed on West Lane generally. It is an early example of a Haworth haunting recorded in the nineteenth century, separate from the Bronte stories.
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