BBC Radio’s Danny Robins reveals how the story of a seemingly innocent spook took on a sinister new dimension amid the racial tensions of 1970s Britain
It’s the 1970s, inside a terraced house in Walthamstow, East London, and Tyronne’s sister is saying odd things: “She started talking about the Blitz, Hitler, rationing. It disturbed my mum, because it was coming out of a two-year-old!”
Then, one day, Tyronne’s mum walks into the kitchen and sees a little old lady by the sink. She says a shocked “hello”, the woman says “hello” back, and then… disappears! Tyronne’s in his forties now. We’re standing outside his childhood home, as he tells me about “the old lady”, who, after that initial appearance, appeared “practically every day”. Had she lived there in the past? What worried Tyronne’s mum was that he and his sister seemed to be chatting to the ghost on their own. Those stories of the Blitz had to be coming from somewhere, so she took the step of calling a priest. “He told the lady she was free to remain,” says Tyronne. “But to just leave the children alone!”
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So far, so creepy, but things got worse when the family moved out a year or so later. They started getting reports from their old neighbours saying that whoever moved into the house never stayed long. The old lady had got nasty! But then things took a disturbing turn: the neighbours reported that the families being chased out of the house were all of Indian and Pakistani origin. So was the old lady actually a racist?
East meets east
This story feels personal to me as I’ve lived in Walthamstow for the last decade. In Old English, ‘Walthamstow’ means ‘Welcome Place’, and over the years, people from all over the world have made it home. Sadly, that diversity hasn’t been celebrated by all – back in the 1970s and 80s, there were protests in the streets by the far-right National Front.
Speaking to AbdulMaalik Tailor, an expert in British Muslim history, I get a first-hand account of what Asian immigrants faced. “It was a tough time,” he says, recalling the abuse and the shocking ordeal of having petrol and lit matches put through your letterbox. He gives me an interesting perspective on how Muslim families might have viewed ‘the old lady’, perhaps thinking of her as a djinn – an Islamic term for a spirit or demon that attaches themselves to a place. Overall, I’m fascinated by this blending of Eastern supernatural tradition with an East London ghost story. But was it true? Could there have really been a ghost who discriminated against Asian families?
I decide to delve into the local history archives, checking who lived in the house before and seeing whether one of the residents was an old lady who died in the 1940s. But what I actually discover is a shock – a big shock. Looking at the electoral register, I see that the house did not actually change hands as often as Tyronne’s neighbours claimed, and there were no inhabitants from an Asian background whatsoever. In fact, it appears to have been a family ghost story that became an urban myth in the hands of the local community. The old lady morphed into some kind of manifestation of all the racial tensions in the area – a folk demon.
It’s a lesson in never taking any ghost story for granted. If she did exist, maybe she really was just a lonely old lady, wondering why Tyronne’s family were in her house…
This article was first published in the December 2021 issue of BBC History Revealed