'Traumatised' Teesside family claims paranormal activity forced them to flee home

A petrified family on Teesside claim they had to flee their home in the middle of the night following a series of paranormal activity.

Lauren Roth began renting a house in Trimdon Avenue, Acklam, last November but soon noticed abnormal things happening.

This included Ms Roth getting bruises "out of nowhere," lights turning on and off and her son screaming in the middle of the night.

The aesthetics practitioner and her husband Stephen, along with their two children Arabella and Caleb lasted seven months before being driven out.

In the final weekend of June 2022 the family hit breaking point when six-year-old Caleb started screaming in the middle of the night.

The 30-year-old said she believes in spiritual things, so when "weird" stuff began happening a month into their tenancy she soon thought things were not right.

She said: "It got to the point where my son was talking to somebody. They used to sleep all night with no problems at all. My son would wake up and he'd stand at the top of the stairs staring."

Ms Roth also alleges her son told her there was "someone in my bedroom," and four-year-old Arabella claims she saw a cat and woke up with "scratch marks."

She added: "Things were getting moved around the house, and thrown down the stairs, We'd seen something during the night."

Ms Roth also said there was one occasion when she felt like she had "been choked."

According to Ms Roth, the rented house is around 60 years old, and at the end of June a spate of incidents were the final straw.

The family was relaxing in the garden when around 8pm Ms Roth put Caleb to bed where he was said to be screaming "get off me" and "leave me alone!"

The Middlesbrough mother told her brother who was visiting at the time that her son had had a nightmare to prevent scaring him.

She said: "As soon as I said that, the bathroom light just turned off. That night, at 2am, we left home and went to my mam's in a taxi."

To save returning to the house, the family bought caravan and lived on their neighbour's drive before finding a new home.

Ms Roth said the whole saga was "traumatising" and has left her calling in North East Paranormal Investigations to try and work out what was going on.

It is claimed the lights turned off again and when paranormal investigators said, "if you want us to go and leave this property now, turn the light on" - they did.

Ms Roth also said the medium told her to recite the Lord's Prayer and burn sage.

Since the family has moved home Ms Roth alleges that all the abnormal activity has stopped, including Caleb's sleepwalking.

She said: "I believed in it to a point. You see it in movies but you don't think it's going to happen to you.

"We've literally had to get up and move. We had no other choice.

"My son is still wary, he daren't still go upstairs because he thinks that something is there still."

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