Case Update: The Haunting on Debbs Close, Stony Stratford

There’s something quite wonderful happening around this project – some of the stories are starting to take on a life of their own, and I’m discovering layers that go beyond the accounts that have been shared with me.

Tonight, I’d like to bring you my first case update, and this one really is fascinating. You might remember Rita’s story from when I first shared it back in May – Rita was one of the very first people to get in touch when I asked for local stories, and her account was chilling. If you missed it, Rita and her family lived with a dark presence in their Stony Stratford house for several years: they experienced an apparition in their bedroom followed by a series of escalating disturbances including household objects that moved on their own, a targeted attack on a family member after a failed blessing and two unexplained floods on consecutive New Year’s Eve’s before a devastating fire eventually drove them from their home.

Rita told her story with such incredible openness and bravery – it’s one of the ones that’s stayed with me most, and really did underline the premise that started this whole project – Debbs Close looks totally normal on the surface, and you would never believe that behind those ordinary doors, the most remarkable events were unfolding.

Rita had looked into the history of the local area to try to understand what was happening in her home, especially as the disturbances had all started after renovation work to remove an old water tank in her garden. At the library, she found a book on hauntings in Stony Stratford – and one of the stories stood out – the tale of someone called Joshua Debb. This was a man who had been murdered in a local woodland , and was said to haunt the area – but this was a weirdly specific legend – every New Year’s Eve, he’d return to drink from a blue water pump.  The connection to the name of her street was impossible to overlook, so Rita asked at the library for the plans of what had been there before the street – and her house – had been built. Behind the houses, there was a field with a building called Debbs Barn. Just beyond that, and where her house now stood, the map showed trees, and a blue water pump. 

It’s hard not to see the link that Rita made here – how the disturbances had started after the tank was taken out of the garden, which she remembered had been heavily threaded through with old tree roots, perhaps the site where Joshua had been killed. How the unexplained floods had both happened on New Year’s Eve.

I included this in my original post about the haunting, and I did try to find the book that Rita mentioned, but never managed to track it down… but then I met Terrie.

One of the things that I love most about this project has been how it’s connected me to people around the city who have expertise in areas that massively outstrip mine! Dr Terrie Howey-Moore really is the go-to person for Milton Keynes folklore – she’s a brilliantly gifted folklorist and storyteller who runs regular walks around Stony Stratford. and we recently got talking about our shared interests. I mentioned this case to her. She said it sounded familiar, and amazingly, she managed to track down the actual story and shared it with me. It’s from a book published in 1928 called Romance Around Stony Stratford by R. Ewart Barley.

The story is called Debb’s Barn and the Blue Pump. It’s told to Barley by his grandfather, who begins by recounting that one day in Holloway’s barber shop, the talk turned to ghosts in general, and Joshua Debb in particular. I’ve got to quote from this part:

The very name of Debb used to put the fear of death into nervous women and young girls in the old days. My own mother never mentioned the place without a quiver in her voice. I have heard her tell how pedestrians have been scared out of their very wits by apparitions flitting fleetly by the blue pump and over to the mill fields. Sometimes they took the form of a big black dog, howling and moaning. At other times a human form with a ghastly pig’s head would run squealing and yelling down the road toward the spinney near Barratt’s farm […] and the road smells strong of sulphur for an hour after.

A local painter called Bishenden boasted he had seen the ghost himself, and the town crier Ashton was only too eager to join in with the stories. The barber laughed, and Barley’s grandfather scoffed at their “old wives’ tales,” but before long a midnight expedition was arranged to put the matter to the test.

That night, the three men gathered at the pump. As the cracked bell of Wolverton struck twelve, the handle began to squeal and move of its own accord, water gushing into the trough while unseen lips smacked and grunted in the dark. Then came the terror: a hulking, half-seen figure rose and bounded from behind the pump. Barley’s grandfather lashed out with a stick, striking something solid enough to shriek like a demon before vanishing. His friends fled, but the next day the barber himself appeared with two black eyes and missing teeth – the same man who had laughed at Barley’s doubts. Barley always suspected he had beaten no ghost at all, but the tale didn’t end there. Years later, a human skeleton was unearthed in the nearby spinney, lending grim weight to the old stories of foul deeds at Debb’s Barn.

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I love that we have this old account that overlaps so beautifully with Rita’s story – the pump, the corroboration of the New Year’s Eve connection, the fact that Joshua was already a notorious figure, and that he was so well known that people were talking about him in the barber’s shop, and even went on a ghost hunt to put the legend to the test.

And there’s even more of an overlap. One part of Rita’s story that I’d forgotten until reading this was the note she shared right at the end about things that her neighbour had seen on Debbs Close:

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.

…are you thinking the same thing I am, about the legends that Joshua appeared sometimes as a dog but always accompanied by the scent of sulphur?

I know, it’s easy to get carried away with these things. But how absolutely fascinating to have this historic account as well as Rita’s recent story – it feels like that both embeds the modern haunting in a deeper historical context, and helps bring it to life.

And it’s all thanks to the connections I’m making and the community that’s starting to build around the stories which really does feel awesome.

This project is important to me in so many ways, but with these links that are starting to grow, it really is starting to feel very special indeed.

With very grateful thanks to Terrie for her expertise, generosity and time.
If you have a story to share, I’d love to hear it.