Tonight, we’re going to be heading back to Stony for a deeply unsettling story. This time, it’s about a house that seems to have been cursed by water, fire, and a restless spirit. I knew that sooner or later, I’d encounter some dark corners of the grid, but before I start Rita’s story, I’d like to warn readers— this one is particularly disturbing.
Rita shared her experience after I posted about my project on Facebook. It’s one of the most vivid and chilling accounts I’ve heard — and it stayed with me long after we finished chatting.
For years, Rita lived in a house on Debbs Close in Stony Stratford — a house that she now believes was never quite at peace.
“It started when I was still married,” she explained. “We were laid in bed watching a film, with the children at the end of the bed, when we noticed a figure in the doorway. My husband said, ‘Did you see that?’ and I said yes.”
Nothing more happened for a few years. But after her husband removed the old water tank from the garden — and the couple separated — strange things began to escalate. That New Year’s Eve, her teenage daughter wanted to stay home to host a party, but Rita insisted she come with her to her sister’s instead. Later that night, her son called in a panic: the ceiling had collapsed and water was flooding the house.
A friend investigated and confirmed a nut in the airing cupboard connected to the boiler had mysteriously come loose, causing the leak. Insurance covered the repairs. But when the following New Year’s Eve rolled around, the family were faced with another flood. Again, a loosened nut was the cause, but this time was even harder to explain as this one was up in the loft and connected to the water tank.
Rita began to grow uneasy. She asked the decorators if they’d noticed anything odd, and they told her, “our tools kept going missing — we’d find them lined up neatly in the next room.”
When she turned to a priest for help, he told her: “It’s working through your daughter.” A plan was made to bring in someone with holy water to move the spirit on — but her daughter refused.
Driven by a need to understand, Rita began digging into the local history. At the library, she found a book on hauntings in Stony Stratford — and there, staring back at her from the pages, was a name she couldn’t ignore: Joshua Debb.
The connection to Debbs Close was impossible to overlook. Joshua, it said, had once lived in a barn that stood where Rita’s estate now lay. His life ended violently — murdered among the trees that once stood nearby. And every New Year, according to legend, his ghost returned to drink from a blue water pump close to the barn.
Rita’s garden, even now, was threaded with old tree roots. The water tank her ex had removed sat close to where that pump might once have been.
It’s hard not to see the pattern — how the disturbances intensified after the tank was taken away. How water, in one form or another, kept coming back.
Whatever was behind the strange events, it seemed to respond — sharply — when Rita’s daughter tried to engage with it. “One night my daughter was trying to copy what it said in that book,” Rita recalled. “And a lamp took off — just missed her head. It came unplugged, but it was still on.”
The activity continued. One night, while Rita was watching TV with a neighbour, a clay ornament lifted off the mantelpiece and smashed itself against the wall. On another occasion, her ex-husband’s vinyl records — stored upright — were flicked through, one by one, as if by unseen hands.
Eventually, tragedy struck — the final, most devastating escalation.
“We went to my son’s engagement party,” Rita told me. “At 11pm I got a phone call — my house had been gutted by fire. We only had the clothes we stood up in.”
It was the last blow. The end of any hope that whatever this was might settle down, or fade away. The house was no longer just disturbed — it was destroyed.
Rita never lived there again but she returned occasionally, and never comfortably. “It was a boiling hot day,” she said of one visit, “but inside it was deathly cold.”
The house was eventually sold to a friend of her son’s, someone who knew its history. After the next New Year, Rita called to check in — and sure enough, another pipe had burst. He moved out soon after.
Even then, the ordeal wasn’t quite over. The disturbances followed them to their new home. “We were all in the kitchen,” Rita said, “and water started coming through the ceiling. The bath was overflowing — no reason at all.”
Only after her daughter left home did the activity finally stop.
A final eerie note: her neighbour in Debbs Close once described seeing a woman climb her stairs, followed by a pack of dogs, only to vanish at the top. On another occasion, the neighbour was troubled by a foul smell in her attic, and asked if any of Rita’s children were living in the loft on her side — they were not, but it was a detail that matched the haunting described in the book Rita had found.
Now, years later, Rita reflects on the experience with clarity. “I’m very interested in ghosts,” she said. “So this didn’t scare me — not until the fire.” She’s happy for her story to be shared, and hopes it helps others who might be facing similar experiences.
The photos below don’t show the actual house where this all took place — at least, I hope not. I didn’t ask Rita for the exact address but I’ve included these pictures to illustrate the Close and give you a sense of how ordinary the area is — it really is one of the last places you would expect a such a disturbing series of events to take place. Of course, if this is a little too close to home for anyone reading, please contact me.
For me, what stands out most in Rita’s story isn’t just the intensity of the events, it’s also the rhythm of them. Multiple floods, each on New Year’s Eve: water, then fire. A house that refused to settle. A haunting that seemed to write itself in cycles. Not random, not chaotic, but deliberate.
In many poltergeist cases, patterns begin to emerge. Each is different, but they all seem to speak in a certain voice: one that escalates, builds, waits for its moment. Poltergeists seem to do more than just haunt houses — they perform. They have a signature. They leave a fingerprint.
Rita’s haunting left these in water-soaked floorboards. In fire damage and smashed ornaments. In things that moved when no one was there to move them. And ultimately, in the trauma of a family forced to leave their home behind.
The fire was the final blow. After everything else, it took the one thing they had left — safety. And yet, Rita’s telling of it isn’t bitter. She’s curious, open and generous in her sharing of it. Her daughter, she says, won’t speak of it. And who could blame her?
To Rita and her family — I’m wishing you peace, and no more midnight floods or flickering lights.
Even after fire and flood, Rita’s still here.
Still walking forward.
Some stories don’t end in fear — they end in strength.
Thank-you to Rita for her bravery in trusting me with this story, and thank YOU for reading!
If you have a story of your own to share, I’d really love to hear it.
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