A SPOOKED mum claims a poltergeist has returned to haunt a Westhoughton estate. And baffled council bosses today admitted: "There's something, but we don't know what it is." Mother-of-three Elizabeth Hulton says the spirit has moved from the original house in Wingates Grove where it was blamed for unexplained "happenings" affecting another family five years ago.

Mrs Hulton, aged 27, believes the poltergeist had come back to her semi-detached home just two doors away and attached itself to her.

She said bedroom ceilings had been dripping with a "baby oil" type liquid - in exactly the same way as the first house.

Her tot had SPOKEN to "a little man" in his bedroom on many occasions and husband John, aged 39, had seen a ghostly figure at the bottom of the stairs.

The house's plumbing and heating system kept working and breaking down - but engineers could find nothing wrong.

The council have taken samples of the baby-oil liquid but say the results of tests were inconclusive because there hadn't been a large enough amount to analyse.

Mrs Hulton claimed some council workers had grown too scared to enter the house.

She was told by Bolton Council bosses to contact the same medium who performed the exorcism of the original "haunted house".

And she claims the medium told her the poltergeist had probably come back and attached itself to her.

"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," she said.

"I am quite intelligent and rational. I didn't believe it was a poltergeist at first.

"But it always felt like somebody was there when there wasn't. I would go to sleep and then wake up and sit bolt upright expecting someone to be there."

Mrs Hulton, who has now separated from her husband and is living in Liverpool with her three children, said the haunting started about a year ago when the radiators began to act "strangely".

Then in June, her two-year-old son began seeing a little man - sometimes sitting on his bed and sometimes in the corner of his bedroom.

Mrs Hulton explained: "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."

The ceiling then became wet but the council plasterer couldn't find what was causing the damp. Mrs Hulton said the "haunting" stopped when she moved to Liverpool.

But each time she has visited the house again, a terrible smell is present on the day before she is due to arrive.

Mrs Hulton added: "There's something wrong with Wingates Grove.

"You walk there at night and it's terrifying - it just feels weird."

"It's jinxed.

"I've sat and counted and all but four houses have had people who have been married but then broken up.

"It's now happened in two houses, it's going to happen again.

"It's just a question of when, but it will happen."

A spokesman for Bolton Council said: "The substance which appeared in the house has now apparently stopped.

"We had a sample of wallpaper analysed which had this substance on it but the results were not conclusive, apparently because the sample wasn't large enough.

"If the problem persists, we will be looking at investigating the matter further.

"Last time we called in a medium. We could do the same thing again.

"There is something, but we don't know what it is basically." *THE original story of the haunting in Westhoughton was reported in the Bolton Evening News in March 1993. Exorcism at Wingates Grove How the news broke in the BEN in '93 A TERRIFIED family claimed they had been driven from their home by a poltergeist.

The couple and their three children reported mysterious pools of water appearing on ceilings and walls, and objects flying around.

They called in a medium who performed an exorcism. Westhoughton vicar Rev Simon Tatton-Brown said prayers in the house. The story attracted national publicity and a team of "ghost-busters" were due to arrive from the Poltergeist Research Unit in Kings Lynn, Norfolk.

The house now appears to have gone back to normal - apart from a window which mysteriously keeps opening. New tenant Susan Barton, who has lived there 18 months, said: "Nothing has been happening except in the room where it was considered to be going on, the window keeps opening. I don't think there is anything here, but I can't explain the window."

The 35-year-old mum-of-two, said she wouldn't move even if the poltergeist had come back to the estate.

She said: " I like it here."

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