Or, A Poltergeist Story

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Woman Haunted By Poltergeist Who Claimed To Be Prince Louis XVII

As part of its Supernatural Week, today This Morning met a woman who claimed that as a youngster she and her family were haunted by a poltergeist, who later apparently identified himself as Prince Louis XVII.

Shirley Hitchings and her family lived in fear of the ghost they nicknamed ‘Donald’, as he banged objects around their house, tore up clothes, and even made them levitate.

Today Shirley joined the show to share her supernatural experience, and how it all began years ago in 1956 when Shirley was just 15.

“A key appeared [on a bed] and then that night we were woken, and it was just horrendous mayhem. Things were flying around, things were thrown. Loud bang, bang, bang. And we all go up… dad went and thought it was the pipes and the electricity, and we that first night we just huddled together in the kitchen.

“I held onto my father and said, ‘please, make it stop, make it go away’.”

Shirley added: “This went on for three or fourth months, night after night, and we were really [scared].”

The family resorted to calling in a priest to perform several exorcisms, as well as holding séances to try to get to the bottom of the supernatural activity, but nothing worked.

“[The poltergeist] was basically laughing at us. My mum called him Donald…. And after it went on and on, we found out who he was.”

A paranormal expert helped the family get to the bottom of the activity, leaving a pen and paper in a locked room to see if the spirit would communicate with them.

“At first it was gibberish, and it was half French and half English, but it gave us a clue. And Mr Chibbett, he was the researcher, he analysed it, took it away, and it was just general things at first.

“But then as time went on and Mr Chibbett would talk to him, and he was writing one day and said, ‘please tell us who you really are’…

“We were all sitting in the kitchen and he went into the back room and there were three or four sheets of paper and he signed himself Your Royal Highness Prince Louis Capet.

“Apparently Capet isn’t a name that the French Royal Family were know by – they were know as Bourbons, so that was the first clue, and Chibbett’s ears pricked up.

“He was the Dauphin, the second son he said of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI that lost their heads.”

Shirley continued: “He said he died escaping here coming across the English Channel, the boat went down, he was with an Austrian count, who was the first cousin of his mother who was instructed to get him out of France.”

All of this was divulged in the spirit’s letters, and asked why he would have turned up in Shirley’s family’s home, she said: “All he would say is I looked like his sister and we never got any more, we didn’t know why he was there, he would never say.”

Obviously skeptics were suspicious of this story, but over the years the family invited a number of paranormal experts as well as members of the media into their home to verify the stories, with one reporter sleeping in the same room as Shirley – who had her hands and feet tied – to experience the sensation of the spirit’s interactions with her.

<3 Anna