Post by JoannaL on Jul 25, 2023 15:45:15 GMT -5
'Haunted' Rocking Horse up for Auction
A “haunted” early 20th-century wooden rocking horse once owned by a trance-medium by the name of Dick Godden is being auctioned by Canterbury Auction Galleries in the UK. Godden, who was the great-grandfather of the present owner of the item, is said to have used it during séances.
As late as the 1970s, Godden, who began his career in the 1940s, investigated a haunting in a local theater, where a young boy is said to have been killed in 1945 by an extractor fan that fell from the ceiling. This particular investigation was featured in Phantom Ladies, a collection of supernatural tales by Andrew Green.
“Kelly,” Godden’s great-granddaughter and the current owner, explained that the dapple-grey horse has been passed down through generations in her family.
Spiritualism, she added, runs in her family and her mother took her to her first séance “at just 15-years-old.” Now working as a holistic therapist in Ashford, Kent, she claimed it was only when she renounced spiritualism and became a devout Christian that she decided she didn’t want the horse in her home, however, she felt it wasn’t fair to pass the item out of the family without a warning.
Kelly recalled her great-grandmother’s telling stories of the rocking horse, which was kept on the landing, moving about on its own. “One day my great-grandma Irene came home to an empty house and the horse had been moved into the middle of the living room. She assumed one of my cousins had been playing on it, as they used to let themselves in to [take] a shower after going to the beach, as they often did, but no wet towels were hanging in the usual place.”
And there have been other problems. “I remember going from our home in Hampshire to visit my great-grandparents when I was about seven,” Kelly remembered. “It was a three-story house and the top bedrooms always felt quite eerie.” She admitted to “feeling uneasy going up and down the steep narrow staircase on my own to the top floor where the horse was kept. ... On more than one occasion, I would hear a huge bang from one of the rooms upstairs. Thinking it was something falling off a window sill, I would rush up there and absolutely nothing would be out of place. It did make me wonder.”
Godden apparently held séances at his home and believed a young girl named Angela was playing on the toy horse – after he allegedly “raised” the girl’s spirit and she told him she had been riding the horse.
The rocking horse, which will be auctioned July 30, is approximately 36-inches in length and stands 33-inches-high, and is expected to fetch £200 to £300 ($257 to $386). A spokesperson for Canterbury’s insisted, “The supernatural element of this item has not determined the estimates put on it.”
Those interested in bidding on the item may do so here.
Sources: Maureen Mackey, Fox News, July 23, 2023, and Canterbury Auction Galleries.