Westhoughton poltergeist and Wingates Grove today

It was in 1993 a family became convinced a poltergeist had taken residence in their home on Wingates Grove

The family told The Bolton News would claim to find mysterious pools of water and an ‘oil-like substance’ appearing on ceilings and walls, as well as objects moving.

A medium was called to perform an exorcism, a local vicar was called to bless the house and supernatural activity stopped - for five years

It was in 1998, a Westhoughton resident two doors down reported similar activity in her home.

Some of the activity that started happening in her home was markedly similar to what the previous family had experienced, with some new additions too.

Elizabeth Hulton said the bedroom ceilings in her family home were coated with a “baby oil” type liquid – something that had been reported in the first ‘haunted house’.

The plumbing and heating in their home went inexplicably haywire too, and engineers failed to ever get to the root of the problem.

She also said her husband had seen a “ghostly figure” at the bottom of the house stairs and her two-year-old son was having regular conversations with a “little man” in his bedroom.

Talking about her son at the time, she said: "The little man used to sit on his bed and tell stories and talk to him and used to wake him up and play with him.

"He would see him on and off about five times a week. He didn't seem all that bothered about it, it didn't scare him.

"But my two elder children were afraid to go upstairs on their own."

Mrs Hulton eventually contacted Bolton Council for assistance on what became a growing problem.

The council took samples of the unusual liquid on the ceilings to try to identify the substance, but the results returned inconclusive, as the sample wasn’t large enough to analyse.

And the mother-of-three said that some members of the council became too frightened to enter the house.

Bolton Council advised Mrs Hulton to contact the same medium that had performed an exorcism on the previous house as a last-ditch attempt.

"The psychic said that poltergeists don't actually go away, they lie dormant for a few years and then try to re-attach themselves to something," Mrs Hulton said at the time.

The medium’s remark ultimately led her to believe that the poltergeist had attached itself to her.

It wasn’t until later on when the Hulton family moved to Liverpool that the hauntings ceased.

Even a spokesman for the Bolton Council at the time acknowledged that something strange was afoot in the family home.

"There is something, but we don't know what it is basically,” the spokesman said.

Mrs Hulton insisted that the poltergeist’s return to Westhoughton was a matter of when not if, but the area or Wingates Grove property has not reported any unusual activity since.

The Bolton News visited the street as Halloween approaches to see if residents had noticed any ghostly going-ons.

At the first door I knocked on, when the poltergeist came up in conversation, the resident simply said ‘no thank you’ and ended the conversation – clearly a sore subject! Zach Harrison reports

One Wingates Grove resident said: “There’s supposedly one here, not a poltergeist, but we call him Oscar.

“The council workers wouldn’t come in on their own to do repairs

“It was predominantly when my children were here when they were about 15/16 and 14, they’re in their 30s now.

“It was little things, like the lights would go on and off and the electrics would turn themselves off.”

She continued: “If there’s no carpet on the stairs you can hear footsteps.

“At the time I was asked do your children attend Westhoughton High School, but they didn’t. There had been something with Ouija boards there.

The resident described the being in their house as looking like an ‘old miner with a cloth cap’ and that he is a little old man.

Her son added his own experience with Oscar, saying: “I was looking at my monitor, glanced up and saw the reflection of someone about 40 but looked 60 because he was a smoker.

One resident, who used to work for Bolton Council housing department, told this story of a poltergeist from the 90s.

He said: “When I went to work one morning, there was a commotion on about the plumber who was on standby.

“He said that when we he went to this house on Wingates, there was water running down the wall, but they couldn’t find any pipes or anything.

“He went back and called the manager out, the manager looked all through the house and couldn’t find anything, no water, but water running down the wall.

“They moved them out of the house after that.”