The Suicide House: Andrew Green and the Mystery of 16 Montpelier Road

A teenager swings his leg over the stone parapet of a high Victorian tower. His gaze locked entirely on the crazy paving seventy feet below. He feels absolutely no fear, only an intense, overwhelming mental command to step forward off the ledge into empty space. Fortunately, his father follows a sudden internal impulse. He rushes up the ladder, and grabs the boy by the scruff of his neck. Completely unaware that this narrow escape will launch a sixty-year forensic hunt into the built environment of the supernatural. How do you assess a location when the regional folklore, the official reports, and your own physical senses all claim that a house can actively compel its residents to die?

This intense near-miss wasn't a standard scene from an old horror film or a manufactured piece of modern internet folklore. It was the first-ever field investigation conducted by Andrew Green. A young man who would grow up to become one of the most prominent, scientifically minded ghost hunters in British history. For over half a century. The sprawling Gothic villa at 16 Montpelier Road in Ealing, West London, served as Green's personal research focus. Earning a terrifying local reputation as the ultimate "Suicide House." Let's sit down and systematically break down the chronological timeline of the property. The bizarre eyewitness testimonies, the strange chemical tracking logs, and the cold scientific realities that surround this classic piece of urban ghost research.

While researching this case, you can explore our complete database of phenomena over on our master Ghosts and Hauntings Archive.

The Construction of Ellerslie Towers and the First Outbreaks

To really understand the structural history of this location. You have to track its records back to the very beginning of the estate. In March 1883, the land was purchased by a man named Robert Henry Wallace Dunlop, who had previously served as a prominent colonial judge in British India. Dunlop proceeded to construct a massive, rambling Gothic-style building on the plot, which he originally named 'Ellerslie Towers.' The architectural layout was grand and complex. Featuring a high, circular brick tower situated on the northeast side at the back of the property.

By 1894, land registries recorded Robert's widow, Mrs. Lucy Wallace Dunlop, as the sole resident in charge of the large estate. She maintained her primary residence at the villa for several decades. Remaining listed in the local borough directories until at least 1916. The road itself underwent a formal municipal renaming in 1903. Shifting from Mount Park Road to Montpelier Road, at which point the large Gothic villa was officially numbered as 16 Montpelier Road.

According to later genealogical interviews with descendants. The Wallace Dunlop family was a proud, upper-class unit that gradually came down in the world, eventually losing their entire fortune and being forced to sell off the property. The subsequent tenancy of the house shifted rapidly through a string of brief residents. Frank Strange took custody in 1917, followed by Edmond Gibbs in 1920, and a Mrs. Nellie Theresa Demery who held the lease between 1922 and 1927. In 1929, a practicing physician and surgeon named Garfield Carse briefly occupied the rooms. Before the property passed into the hands of Harry and Kathleen Barnard, who maintained a quiet tenancy from 1930 until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1940. After which the massive house sat completely vacant for ten long years.

The Requisition Inspect and the Haunted Woodmen

The modern paranormal timeline of the house truly sparks into life in May 1944. Because the ongoing Blitz had devastated massive swaths of London. The local borough council was actively seeking empty suburban properties to store domestic furniture salvaged from bombed buildings. Andrew Green's father, who served as the official wartime rehousing settlement officer for the borough of Ealing. Marched into the vacant house at 16 Montpelier Road to conduct a structural suitability audit.

His formal report back to the Town Hall indicated that the villa was sound, showing no active signs of rising damp, wood rot, or structural wood beetles. However, the senior Green noted one highly peculiar detail. A faint, unpleasant odor resembling stale gas or burning sulphur was present inside a single first-floor room. Because the smell could not be traced to a broken line or a natural source, and was only reported to manifest about once a month. The council recommended the house be requisitioned immediately. Ordering only that the specific room containing the chemical smell remain securely locked shut.

A few days later, the first and only delivery of salvaged furniture arrived at the front gates. A team of five municipal workmen marched into the halls to unload the crates. Within minutes, every single man complained of a dense, unnatural, and "cold and shivery" atmosphere settling over the rooms.

The men hastily began packing up their gear. Only to discover that the standard hand tools they had carried inside for basic repairs had completely vanished from their toolboxes.

Suddenly, the distinct sound of heavy, rhythmic footsteps echoed from the empty corridor directly on the first floor above them. Terrified by the unseen sounds. The five workmen abandoned the crates, sprinted out of the building, and flatly refused to ever step foot inside the property again.

When the stored furniture had to be removed to a different municipal warehouse a few weeks later. The local laborers struck, forcing Green's father to recruit removal men from a distant township because the terrifying reputation of the house had already spread across the Ealing workforce. Seeking answers, Green senior paid a visit to the Ealing police station, where a Sergeant Smith casually informed him that 16 Montpelier Road possessed a dark, official history of multiple resident suicides.

Andrew Green’s Kodak Box Camera Audit

In September 1944. Green's father had to return to the secured villa to perform a routine property check. Intrigued by the rumors, he invited his seventeen-year-old son, Andrew, to tag along. Asking him a simple question: "Would you like to visit a haunted house?"

At this point in his life, young Andrew was completely ignorant of psychical research or spiritualist lore. But he did possess an intense, passionate interest in standard mechanical science. Viewing the haunting as a simple technical mystery to be solved. Andrew eagerly agreed, grabbing his basic Kodak box camera on his way out the door.

The moment they unlocked the front door, the pair were met by a thick, musty smell. Their footsteps echoed loudly through the massive, empty halls as if they were exploring a vacant museum or a deserted church. Equipped with a copy of the original floor plan. Andrew left his father on the ground floor and began a systematic, room-by-room audit of the house. Working his way from the dark cellar toward the roof.

Because the main electrical power was completely disconnected. The teenager lit his way by striking standard matches and rolling up an old newspaper to function as a temporary taper torch. Reaching the first floor, he approached the locked door where the monthly sulphur smell had been reported. Peering closely through the open keyhole, Andrew was surprised to see the interior fully equipped as a chemical laboratory. Complete with Bunsen burners, test tubes, and scientific jars. The presence of the old lab equipment provided a logical explanation for the monthly chemical residue, though it left the periodic nature of the smell completely unresolved.

The Compulsion on the Suicide Tower Parapet

Andrew continued his ascent, climbing a narrow spiral staircase that led to the top level of the rear tower. He discovered a small, circular room with a heavy wooden trapdoor leading out onto the roof, accessible only by a tall wooden ladder.

Andrew began climbing the rungs. When he was exactly four steps from the top, he distinctly felt a firm pair of human hands reach up from behind and lift him up by his torso. Assuming his father had quietly followed him up the stairs to offer a physical assist. Andrew reached up, unbolted the heavy trapdoor, and turned around to thank him. The ladder below was completely empty.

Puzzled but undeterred, the teenager hauled himself out onto the flat roof and stood up. A gentle breeze wafted across his face as he looked out across the horizon toward London. Watching a pair of wartime barrage balloons riding the low clouds in the distance.

As he stood admiring the vast view, Andrew slowly developed a profound, inexplicable, and overwhelming psychological urge to step over the stone parapet. The compulsion was so incredibly intense that he swung his leg over the edge, sitting directly on the stone coping. An internal voice began repeating in his mind, commanding: "Walk over the parapet, it's only 12 inches to the lawn. You won't hurt yourself."

He prepared to launch himself off the edge, looking down at the crazy paving seventy feet below with total calm. At that exact second, his father, driven up the stairs by a sudden, intense impulse, burst through the trapdoor, lunged across the roof, and grabbed Andrew by the scruff of his neck. He pulled him violently back onto the safety of the roof boards, exclaiming: "We don't want any suicides in the family!" Green later noted that the moment he was pulled back, he was still completely convinced he would have survived the fall without a scratch.

The Strange Symbols and the Girl in the Window

As the two men caught their breath. They noticed a series of unusual, distinct geometric symbols carved deeply into the stone coping where Andrew had been sitting. The senior Green frowned closely at the markings, muttering: "Black magic signs. I suppose that could account for it, but I can't see how."

Andrew wondered if the twenty reputed suicides before him had been driven by the exact same external compulsion he had just survived. The pair walked back down to the ground floor, and at roughly 2:30 PM, Andrew strolled out into the overgrown back garden. He became conscious of a dense, heavy atmosphere of pure malevolence settling over the weeds. He raised his Kodak box camera, snapped a single photograph of the rear facade, and they departed for home. Dropping the film off at a local chemist's shop for processing on the way.

A week later, Andrew returned to the chemist to collect his developed prints. Upon receiving the paper images, he proudly told the shopkeeper that the photos showed a verified haunted house. The chemist looked closely at the print and remarked: "Oh yes, and who is the girl in the window?"

The chemist pointed his finger directly at the top left-hand corner of the photograph, where the image clearly showed the distinct silhouette of a young girl standing inside a window pane with a heavy curtain pulled halfway across the frame. Puzzled, Green immediately ordered a professional enlargement. The resulting image was a double anomaly. Not only was the figure of a young girl clearly visible, but the curtain was sharp. Yet Andrew knew for an absolute fact that in September 1944, the house was completely bare and there were no curtains hanging in any window of the property.

The 1887 Tragedy of Anne Hinchfield

Intrigued by the photographic anomaly. Andrew returned to the Ealing police archives to gather more historical context. The police clerks confirmed the exact data they had shared with his father. The Gothic villa possessed an official history of roughly twenty distinct suicides over its lifetime. With every single victim choosing to leap to their deaths from the exact same tower parapet. According to the old records, the very first death occurred in 1887, when a twelve-year-old girl named Anne Hinchfield climbed the tower and jumped to the pavement below.

Green wondered if this child was the exact figure caught by his box camera. A year later, working alongside a certified member of the Royal Photographic Society. Andrew returned to the Montpelier Road garden to try to recreate the exact lighting and shadows of the original shot, but the replication attempts were a complete failure.

His ongoing research was interrupted by a two-year stint of mandatory National Service. Following his demobilisation in 1949. Green appealed to the local public by writing a short historical article for the London Evening News, mentioning his personal field investigations at an old, unnamed house on Montpelier Road.

This public print triggered a swift, furious response from a property developer who had recently purchased 16 Montpelier Road and converted the massive villa into separate apartment units. The new owner flatly denied any existence of paranormal activity on the grounds and threatened Green with immediate legal action for defamation of property value. Reluctantly, Andrew was forced to abandon his plans for a second on-site investigation.

The Company of Thirteen and the Castlebar Flat Rehearsal

Seeking a new creative outlet away from psychical research. Andrew turned his attention to amateur dramatics, joining a local West London theater group known as 'the Company of Thirteen.' The group was managed by a professional BBC producer named Kenneth Yandell. During Andrew's very first organisational meeting. Yandell announced that the company was actively seeking a new play to produce for the upcoming season.

Slightly tongue-in-cheek, Green stood up and proposed they perform The Poltergeist. A popular contemporary script written by Gordon Harker. To his surprise, the entire company reacted with immense enthusiasm.

The excitement grew when Yandell stood up and offered his private flat to serve as the permanent rehearsal space. Informing the actors that he believed his residence was actively haunted. Yandell explained to the group that he and his wife had been plagued by the sound of phantom footsteps, a periodic sulphurous smell, and the fact that their pet terrier went into violent, frothing fits exactly once a month.

The actors were thrilled by the novel idea of rehearsing a play about a poltergeist inside a real haunted house. Yandell then read out his home address. It was an apartment located just off Castlebar Road, specifically, the newly remodeled flat inside 16 Montpelier Road.

Keeping his utter astonishment and his past near-death experience entirely to himself. Andrew quietly attended the first rehearsal the following Monday evening. Arriving at the property, he found the gloomy, vacant villa of 1944 completely transformed into a series of comfortable, brightly lit modern apartments. The Yandells occupied a ground-floor suite. Andrew noticed that the old chemical laboratory where he had peered through the keyhole had been completely gutted and remodeled into the couple's pristine new bathroom.

Mrs. Pyatt’s Trance and the Footprints of the Limping Butler

During that initial rehearsal evening, five out of the seven theater group members suddenly stopped speaking. Claiming they could clearly hear the sound of rapid, light footsteps crossing the hardwood floor of the flat. Andrew himself heard absolutely nothing and was tempted to attribute the group reaction to simple psychological autosuggestion. But the atmosphere shifted when a young actress named Mrs. Pyatt suddenly slumped into her chair, falling into a deep, somnambulistic trance.

She began muttering distinct, fragmented sentences into the quiet room: "I only wanted to go into the garden, but the roof was higher than I thought... My name was Anne... I didn't kill myself." These bizarre comments completely mystified the actors, except for Andrew, who immediately recognised the historical correlation to twelve-year-old Anne Hinchfield.

Within a few minutes, Mrs. Pyatt regained full consciousness. Looked around the room confused, and was completely unable to remember or explain the unusual comments she had just muttered. The theater group eventually dissolved due to a sudden string of intense personal misfortunes. The intended male lead was killed in a violent car crash. The company suffered severe financial problems, and two core members moved away. Meaning The Poltergeist was never staged.

Andrew took the opportunity to quietly interview the other residents living in the building. A couple occupying an adjacent apartment reported hearing the distinct sound of an old man’s footsteps limping heavily through their flat. The sounds walking straight through solid bedroom walls accompanied by the sharp tap of a physical wooden walking stick. Another couple, the Merianths, who occupied the small apartment built directly into the rear tower. Spoke of watching their external mechanical doorbell button being physically depressed by an unseen finger in broad daylight. The residents registered formal complaints with the property owner, but their notes were met with total silence.

The Emergency Sulphur Poisoning of Kenneth Yandell

Two years later. Andrew happened to run into Kenneth Yandell on the street near Ealing Broadway and learned that the BBC producer had just been discharged from the hospital after recovering from a severe case of emergency 'sulphur poisoning.' Yandell explained that following a busy weekend party at the flat where several guests stayed over. The beds were completely full. Yandell had volunteered to sleep on a makeshift bed of pillows arranged inside the pristine bathroom.

He didn't get much rest. At roughly 2:00 AM. His wife was awakened by the sound of violent gasping and gurgling noises coming from behind the bathroom door. Rushing in, she found her husband half-conscious on the floor, fighting frantically for breath. An ambulance was summoned, and Yandell was rushed to the King Edward Memorial Hospital for emergency treatment.

Andrew later tracked down and interviewed the puzzled ward matron who had treated the producer. She confirmed that Yandell had been nearly asphyxiated by a dense pocket of gas and would have died within thirty minutes without medical intervention. She stated: "Nobody gets sulphur poisoning lying in a bath, but the odour of the fumes in his lungs strongly resembled stale gas or sulphur... so that was what was recorded." Yandell also confessed to Green that he had recently been forced to put down their family dog because its monthly fits had grown far too violent to manage.

The periodic chemical anomaly manifested yet again in 1960. Andrew was participating in a live broadcast of an ITV advertising television show called Jim's Inn, hosted by Jimmy Hanley. While waiting in the studio's artists' lounge. He closely overheard an exchange between a crew member and a television scriptwriter named Jack Edwardes, whom Green knew slightly.

Edwardes was loudly complaining to the staff about a persistent, baffling issue with a smell of gas inside his new apartment. Edwardes stated: "The gas men refuse to come any more. They have been six times now to my flat to try to find the source of the smell in my bathroom and have given up."

Andrew later noted in his journals that he hardly even bothered asking the writer for his home address. Edwardes was the new tenant occupying the bathroom flat at 16 Montpelier Road. Alongside the monthly sulphur smell. The scriptwriter confirmed he regularly heard the sound of someone walking through his empty rooms late at night.

The Mrs. Laycock Letters and the Kensington Palace Crest

In 1971, while conducting extensive field research for his comprehensive book Our Haunted Kingdom (published in 1973). Andrew returned to Ealing only to find that the old Victorian Gothic villa had been completely demolished by developers. A modern block of flats had been erected on the plot. Green noted: "The new building lies several feet away to the south of the original and the actual site of the suicide tower is now empty air."

Yet despite the complete destruction of the physical bricks. Residents occupying the new modern complex still complained to managers about hearing strange, rhythmic banging noises vibrating the air. Following the publication of Our Haunted Kingdom. Green endured a massive stream of public phone calls and letters offering further historical context regarding the Ealing plot.

A local reporter went to conduct interviews in the neighborhood and discovered that 22 Montpelier Road, situated directly opposite the old tower site. Possessed an independent reputation for being haunted by violent shrieks, moans, and thumping noises. Archival checks revealed that No. 22 had been the scene of a brutal double homicide in February 1954. A man named Ronald Chesney murdered both his wife and his mother-in-law, a Mrs. Menzies, before fleeing the country and shooting himself in a forest near Cologne.

Most extraordinary were three lengthy letters received by Green in 1976 from a Mrs. Laycock of Stockwell. She recalled serving as a fifteen-year-old maid inside 16 Montpelier Road between January and April 1922, back when the villa was occupied by Mrs. Nellie Theresa Demery.

Mrs. Laycock’s memories were highly specific. She remembered a head housekeeper named Mrs. Thompson and a butler named Tanner who had formerly been employed at Kensington Palace. Tanner walked with a distinct, heavy limp because his right leg had been permanently crushed in a past accident involving carriage horses.

Mrs. Laycock claimed that while she was clearing out old boxes inside a dark lumber-room, he discovered a loose floorboard. Lifting the timber, she uncovered a hidden wooden case containing four antique cutthroat razors featuring gold and tortoiseshell handles. The razors were tightly wrapped inside old 1888 newspaper cuttings detailing the 'Jack the Ripper' whitechapel murders and the private life of the Duke of Clarence. The maid claimed that the lid of the razor case was embellished with an official royal crest and the words 'Kensington Palace.'

The Black Room Rituals of the Tower Flat

The maid’s testimony took a darker turn when she discussed the behavior of the owners. She recalled a persistent rumor among the domestic servants that the female owners of the villa were practicing witches. Her suspicions grew when she noticed that exactly once a week, on Friday evenings. Some form of secret ceremony was held inside the circular top room of the rear tower.

The entire interior of the tower room had been painted solid black, and none of the domestic staff, save for the limping butler, Mr. Tanner, were ever permitted to enter the space. Following the conclusion of each weekly ritual. Mrs. Laycock had to collect the brass candlesticks from Tanner for cleaning. Regularly scraping out the melted stubs of black wax candles. A few months after she left the property's service. She heard that Mr. Tanner had died from a massive overdose of laudanum, though the family had managed to hush up the suicide as an accidental death.

While these claims were deeply intriguing. Green ultimately concluded that Mrs. Laycock’s letters were likely a case of an active imagination heavily influenced by the popular, well-publicised books circulating in the 1970s that sought to link the Royal family to the Ripper murders. When the leading 'Royal Ripper' hypothesis was officially exposed as an elaborate hoax in 1978. Green dismissed the maid’s story from his active investigation files.

The Archive Inquiries of the Ealing Law Lecturer

The investigation took a fresh turn in the autumn of 1989. A young legal scholar began teaching law part-time at the Ealing College of Higher Education (known today as the University of West London). Because the original structure was long gone, he didn't visit the site immediately. But in 1995. He ended up legally representing the widow of the owner of the Taj Mahal restaurant. The oldest established Indian dining venue in Ealing, founded back in 1959.

After successfully resolving her legal case. The lecturer sat chatting with the widow about local history, folklore, and Ealing ghost stories. Casually mentioning the old records of Montpelier Road. The widow reacted instantly, stating: "I remembered hearing that story! The suicide house! It's the house where the ghostly girl appears at the bottom and beckons to people to jump down to their deaths off the tower!"

The lecturer was fascinated to discover that the legend had penetrated deep into the local Asian community and restaurant circles. Growing significantly in the telling. He launched a research project inside the Ealing library archives.

He managed to track down the names of every past resident listed in the land directories. He could find absolutely zero official records of multiple suicides on the plot. More alarmingly, the shocking 1934 nursemaid murder-suicide case mentioned by Andrew Green's mother was completely absent from the local press archives of the era. It seemed highly implausible that a double death involving an infant thrown from a roof could be completely hushed up by the local newspapers.

However, the lecturer’s legal career had taught him that official versions of history can be corrupted and manipulated. In his own practice. He had uncovered a massive medical cover-up dating back to the 1930s involving falsified birth registration details and bribery designed to conceal the parentage of a child. A deceit that those involved maintained for decades. Similar official manipulation has been exposed in modern historical inquiries like the Bloody Sunday investigation in Northern Ireland or the challenges to the original coroner's reports following the Hillsborough stadium disaster.

But it remained highly possible that Mrs. Green was simply mistaken. Perhaps there had been no double murder, or perhaps the event was a quiet domestic tragedy like a botched abortion or a stillbirth, followed by a private suicide. It was equally possible that no deaths had occurred on the lawn at all.

The 1996 Battle Conference and the 27 Witnesses

In September 1996. The Ealing law lecturer finally met Andrew Green in person during a weekend residential course on hauntings held at Pyke House in Battle, Sussex. Green was sixty-nine years old at the time. Discussing the evidence over coffee. Green openly admitted that his own exhaustive archival searches had similarly drawn a blank. Yielding a fascinating collection of resident names but zero statistical proof of multiple suicides.

Green explained that historical police records, including the internal files at Scotland Yard, were routinely destroyed after a few years to clear storage space. Furthermore, the widespread social censorship of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras frequently erased family scandals and suicides from public record.

Green had written a vital warning in his manual, Ghost Hunting: A Practical Guide. "This mixture of scraps of genuine information and incorrect dates is fairly commonly encountered, and a pitfall to watch for... Don't be deceived, either, into assuming that all official information need never be questioned."

Andrew Green passed away in May 2004. Exactly three months after the Ghost Club held a special lecture and award ceremony to celebrate his sixty years of continuous paranormal research. At that final lecture, Green chucklingly recalled that while many people looked at his 1944 photograph and saw a young girl in the window. Other readers wrote to him claiming they could clearly see a small child, a man wearing a top hat, or a dog. Green told the audience, "Since 1971, the total population of that window now stands at 27."

The Deathbed Interview with Ian Wallace Dunlop

Between 2010 and 2012, the Ealing law lecturer took formal custody of Green's private archives. Sorting through three different published versions of the Montpelier House story and two unpublished book manuscripts. Shortly after reading Green’s final 1985 account. The lecturer experienced a remarkable piece of personal synchronicity. He was hired to advise on a complex will settlement concerning a recently deceased lady in London, and the legal name of her surviving common-law partner was listed as Ian Wallace Dunlop.

Startled by the exact match to the family that had built the house. The lecturer immediately traveled to a flat in West London to interview Mr. Wallace Dunlop, an elderly gentleman in his early eighties. The flat was packed with heavy antiques and historic family portraits. The lecturer discovered that Ian was terminally ill with advanced cancer. Yet he maintained a cheerful, impish sense of humor.

The moment the conversation shifted to the history of Montpelier Road, the old man grew highly somber. He pointed to a large oil painting on the wall depicting his grandfather, Robert Henry Wallace Dunlop. The colonial judge who had constructed the villa. Ian explained that the antiques surrounding him were the exact relics salvaged from Ellerslie Towers when the family's fortunes waned.

Ian recollected hearing faint family stories regarding the death of a female servant on the grounds in the late 19th century, "possibly suicide", but he knew absolutely no details. He flatly did not recognise the name Anne Hinchfield and was highly emphatic that neither the Wallace Dunlops nor their domestic staff made a habit of killing themselves. They left the villa simply because they ran out of money. Not because of ghosts, hauntings, or black magic rituals. Which he dismissed as completely ridiculous. His grandfather was simply a massive snob who had purchased a separate house near Balmoral just to claim he lived close to the Royal family.

The Electromagnetic Recording Theory

When we review the total history of 16 Montpelier Road. It seems highly probable that the location hosted a genuine, low-level physical anomaly consisting of unexplained walking sounds and a periodic chemical smell inside the first-floor bathroom. But through decades of local storytelling and tavern gossip. These minor disruptions grew into the grand legend of a malevolent spectral girl actively compelling twenty residents to jump to their deaths. Beyond pure hearsay. The only verified example of anyone experiencing a genuine compulsion to leap from the tower structure comes straight from the personal testimony of Andrew Green himself.

What triggered Andrew's sudden suicidal urge on the ladder remains impossible to determine. Privately, Green admitted that he felt haunted by the house and its history for the rest of his life. Deeply unsettled by the bizarre string of coincidences that constantly brought the property back into his path. Yet throughout his career. Green fiercely rejected traditional spiritualist explanations, refusing to believe he had been possessed by a conscious ghost.

Instead, he formulated a scientific theory that apparitions are essentially passive recordings stored somewhere along the electromagnetic spectrum. He believed that under unique environmental conditions. These physical impressions could be captured on photographic film, but their capacity to actively manipulate or harm the living was non-existent. He thought a residual mental image left behind by a past resident might account for the figure in his box camera shot. But he always remained completely open to entirely mundane explanations involving light, shadow, and double exposures. Ultimately, the true nature of the Suicide House remains locked within the empty air of Ealing. Serving as a luminous monument to the extreme psychological and historical challenges that confront modern ghost hunters.

The Suicide House Frequently Asked Questions

What was the Suicide House of Montpelier Road?

The Suicide House was the local nickname given to 16 Montpelier Road, a large Gothic-style villa built in Ealing, West London, in 1883. The property gained a terrifying reputation due to rumors that roughly twenty distinct residents had committed suicide by leaping from its rear tower.

Who was Andrew Green in relation to the Suicide House?

Andrew Green was a highly influential British ghost hunter who conducted his very first paranormal investigation at 16 Montpelier Road in September 1944. While exploring the roof tower as a teenager, he survived an intense, sudden psychological compulsion to step over the parapet before being pulled back by his father.

Who was the girl in the window in the Montpelier Road photograph?

In September 1944, Andrew Green snapped a photograph of the empty house. The developed print revealed the silhouette of a young girl and a curtain inside a top left-hand window, despite the house being completely vacant and bare. Local police records indicate that the very first suicide at the villa was a twelve-year-old girl named Anne Hinchfield in 1887.

What caused the monthly sulphur smell inside the house?

In May 1944, borough inspectors noted a periodic smell resembling stale gas or sulphur inside a first-floor room, which was later discovered to be equipped as a private chemical laboratory containing test tubes and Bunsen burners. However, the periodic, monthly nature of the smell remained a mystery and nearly killed a resident tenant via asphyxiation in the 1950s.

Did the Wallace Dunlop family confirm the suicides?

In a deathbed interview with a legal lecturer, Ian Wallace Dunlop, the grandson of the colonial judge who constructed the villa, confirmed that family stories did record the tragic death of a female servant on the grounds in the late 19th century, possibly a suicide. However, he emphasised that the family left the estate due to declining wealth rather than ghosts or black magic scandals.

Does the Suicide House still stand in London today?

A: No, the original Victorian Gothic villa was completely demolished by property developers in the late 1960s. A modern block of apartment flats was erected slightly to the south of the original footprint, leaving the actual spatial location of the historic suicide tower to exist entirely as empty air.

Sources and Further Reading

• Green, Andrew. (1973). Our Haunted Kingdom: More Than 350 Authentic Hauntings. Wolfe Publishing. (The primary published text introducing the Montpelier Road architecture and the 1944 photograph).

• Green, Andrew. (1977). Ghost Hunting: A Practical Guide. Granada Publishing. (Contains the definitive methodologies developed by Green following his Ealing tower experience).

• Bondeson, Jan. (2015). The Murder Houses of London: A Historical and Forensic Guide. Troublesome History Press. (Contextual study regarding the brief survival span of public memory concerning haunted real estate).