30 East Drive

Jean and Joe Pritchard moved into number 30 in the mid-1960s with their children Phillip, then fifteen, and Diane, twelve. The trouble is usually dated to the August bank holiday of 1966. With Jean and Joe away, Phillip and his grandmother reportedly watched a fine chalk-like dust falling from mid-air in the living room, settling below head height; when the children's aunt, Mrs Kelly, went to the kitchen for cleaning things she found a pool of water spreading across the floor with no source. Over the following days the family described green foam rising from the taps and the toilet with the water turned off, lights switching themselves on and off, cupboards shaking, plants leaping from their pots, photographs shredded and furniture shifting across rooms.

After a lull the phenomena returned and grew nastier, and Diane became their focus. She was reportedly slapped, pulled from her bed and, in the most repeated incident, dragged screaming up the stairs by an unseen force that left marks on her throat. Attempts at exorcism were said to make things worse: holy water reportedly seeped back out of the walls, people were shoved on the stairs, and a pair of disembodied hands in large fur gloves appeared to conduct the hymns being sung to drive the thing away. A black-robed, monk-like figure was reported in the house more than once. Jean Pritchard stayed in the house for the rest of her life.

The monk legend came later. In 1979 local historian Tom Cuniff, researching Pontefract's Cluniac priory, alerted the writer Colin Wilson to the case and suggested that a sixteenth-century monk hanged for a crime against a girl had been buried on land beneath the estate; Wilson's 1981 book Poltergeist! made the story famous. Later searches of the records found no evidence of any priory monk being executed for such a crime, and the house was built on what had been open ground near the priory ruins. The haunting, in other words, is well attested by the family; the monk is a story attached to it afterwards.

The core witnesses are the Pritchards themselves, together with neighbours, relatives and the local clergy who came to help, and their accounts were gathered by Colin Wilson for Poltergeist! in 1981 after Tom Cuniff drew his attention to the case. Wilson treated it as one of the best-witnessed poltergeist outbreaks in Britain, though sceptics have noted that it was recorded more than a decade after the events, that it centred on an adolescent girl as such cases so often do, and that the family were the main source for the most dramatic incidents.

The house's second life began with cinema. Bil Bungay, an advertising executive who produced the 2012 film When the Lights Went Out, a fictionalised version of Diane's story, bought 30 East Drive that year for £80,000 so he could hold the premiere inside it. He kept the house furnished as it was and in 2014 opened it to the public for overnight stays and investigations. He has said the property was booked up two years ahead and that a night can cost up to £400, with independent operators running more than a hundred events a year between them. His own account is that activity resumed shortly before the Pritchards sold, and that visitors have reported objects thrown, doors slamming, marbles rolling from nowhere and scratches appearing on their skin.

Television followed. Most Haunted filmed a two-part investigation here that was first broadcast on the Really channel on 18 October 2015, presenting the house as home to the world's most violent poltergeist. Katrina Weidman of the American series Paranormal Lockdown reported being scratched during her stay and called the house home to "a phenomenon that defies the laws of science". Ghost-hunt companies describe it as Europe's most haunted house, and their guests, limited to about ten a night, post a steady stream of recordings of knocks, footsteps and thrown objects. The sceptical view is that a small, dark, deliberately preserved house full of expectant people at 3am will produce experiences; the house's defenders say that does not explain the Pritchards in 1966.

30 East Drive is a private house on a residential estate in Pontefract, West Yorkshire (postcode WF8 2AN), a few minutes from the town centre, the racecourse and the ruins of Pontefract Castle, and close to junction 32 of the M62 and the A1(M). It is not open for casual visits and the neighbours are ordinary families, so please do not turn up to gawp; look from the pavement if you must and move on. The way in is to book. The owners let the house for overnight private hire to small groups, and several ghost-hunt companies run organised investigations here, usually with the option to sleep over in the bedrooms, all strictly for adults and all with a warning that the experience can be intense. The house is kept as it was in the Pritchards' day, with 1960s furniture and decor, and has a kitchen, bathroom and three bedrooms; it is a standard semi with stairs, so it is not step-free.

Bring your own bedding, food and nerve, and park considerately on the street. Pontefract itself has hotels, pubs with rooms and B&Bs within a mile, with more choice in Wakefield, Castleford and Leeds, and the castle, the liquorice heritage and the racecourse give you something gentler to do the next day.