In 1933, a Leicester home was flooded not by rain or burst pipes, but by jets of water from its walls, launching a mystery that remains unsolved to this day
What most thought was a burst pipe turned out to be something far stranger.
In the summer of 1933, jets of water began gushing from the walls and ceilings of a modest terraced house at 22 Bell Lane, Leicester.
At first, it seemed like a simple plumbing issue, until engineers ruled out leaks, burst pipes, blocked drains, and even rising damp.
The water came without warning, sometimes in pencil-thin streams, sometimes in full cascades—and left no trace behind.
What many initially dismissed as a burst water main soon took on a different shape. A water poltergeist, some whispered.
Whatever the cause, it drove a family to the brink, baffled a small army of professionals, and left behind one of Leicester’s strangest unsolved cases.
The tenant of the house, 74-year-old Mr Samuel Long, was not one to leap to ghostly conclusions.
“I am going back again as soon as the builders have left,” he told the Leicester Evening Mail. “It is my home. I have nowhere else to go.”
But the house had other ideas.
The first incident seemed like nothing more than a leak. But soon, whole rooms were being flooded.
In the front bedroom, the bed was drenched and the floor awash.
Mr Long had to fold up the linoleum into a trough to divert the water into the bath, collecting dozens of bucketfuls.
In the back bedroom, his 13-year-old adopted daughter was found taking what the newspapers called “a shower bath” under a stream spurting directly from a solid brick wall.
And it didn’t stop there.
Water began gushing above the fireplace in the living room, and even from the opposite wall.
Some of the jets came from a wall just four and a half inches thick.
The bedding was ruined, and the family had to seek shelter with neighbours.
With the outbreak escalating, experts of every kind descended on Bell Lane.
Plumbers checked every pipe. Builders pulled up floorboards. Water engineers examined nearby mains and old drainage maps.
Detectives were called in. Even a spiritualist reportedly visited.
No one could explain it.
“You can take it from me that no one knows how the water gets into the walls,” one official told the Mail.
One particularly damp moment came when an inspector was cracking jokes about ghosts—just as a stream of water poured from the ceiling and soaked him.
“Spook water,” declared the Halifax Evening Courier, with a dry nod to the absurdity.
The same report noted that the wallpaper was somehow never damaged, even after direct hits.
Theories poured in.
Some believed there was an ancient spring beneath the property, disturbed by building work.
Others blamed house sparrows, suggesting blocked guttering had caused rainwater to back up into the walls.
But this didn’t hold water—there hadn’t been any heavy rain, and the neighbouring houses remained perfectly dry.
At one point, the house was locked and left empty. No water appeared.
Mr and Mrs Long moved back in. The water returned immediately.
Mr Long was making tea when a jet shot across the kitchen, soaking the table and smashing four gas mantles.
Mrs Long resorted to cooking Sunday dinner in a mackintosh and hat.
“We cannot go on living here,” she told reporters. “My furniture is being damaged by the water and we cannot get a minute’s peace.”
The city’s Health Department eventually stepped back.
“There is no reasonable explanation,” said one official.
The Water Department also withdrew.
“It is nothing to do with us,” said another.
By November, even the police were involved.
The jets would erupt every half hour during the day, soaking everything in sight—yet never at night.
Mr Long kept a diary, noting each outbreak.
“This thing is driving us mad,” he told the Leicester Evening Mail, after being hit in the face by another spontaneous spout.
The “water spook” of Bell Lane was never solved.
And whatever haunted that house in 1933 did so not with chains or whispers—but with jets of clean, inexplicable water.
Have you seen or experienced anything like the Bell Lane water spook? Tell us about it in the comments section below.
