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Haunted cottages might seem to belong in the section on haunted buildings, but in this case the cottage in question is in fact a small pottery container which might be used to hold biscuits or other small objects. The story starts in Bolton, Greater Manchester, when Mrs Hilary Spence was visiting her Aunt Jean on a trip from the USA. Hilary caught sight of the small cottage and commented on it favourably to which her aunt Jean virtually demanded that she take it as she was most welcome to it. It was very clear that Aunt Jean was glad to be rid of it. The precise way in which it had come into the family and the precise time were not known.

Mrs Spence put her ornament on display in her bungalow in Las Vegas and used it for storing household items such as stamps, pens, shopping lists and so on. Very soon Mrs Spence noticed a strange shadow lurking on the bathroom door which was near one corner of the living room. Then, once or twice, she saw the ghost of a man walking through her house and she focused on the pottery cottage as the source of the haunting.

When Hilary’s daughter, Billie, visited she often said how much she liked the cottage; but on one occasion when she was talking to her mother she suddenly felt tremendously cold although it was an extremely warm day. In addition she felt the materialisation of a ghostly figure standing beside her. But Billie was more fascinated than actually afraid and her mother told her, ‘He won’t harm you.’ On a later visit, when Billie had again commented on how much she liked the cottage, her mother told her she could have it. Very soon after getting the pottery cottage home Billie began seeing the anomalous shadows and the ghostly figure in her home; she too connected them with the cottage. She tried to eliminate the hauntings by putting a variety of different objects into the cottage but none worked until she decided to empty it completely. From that point on she experienced no further hauntings, the implication seeming to be that the figure ‘living’ in the cottage now had enough room in the empty container and had no need to wander about outside.

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