She decided to settle in Bournemouth, and in 1980 tried for several months to sell her London home. But each time a buyer turned up, the sky would darken and there would be a foul smell in the house, or so she told her cousins. This happened so often that she ruled out coincidence. She cleaned every room obsessively and threw out all her books on spiritualism and the occult, to no avail. Finally, believing that the religious artefacts that filled the house must be exerting some malign power, she packed them all into five suitcases and deposited them in the vault of Barclays Bank in Hampstead. The very next day a young couple came to see the house in bright sunshine, loved it and bought it.
“Rosemary Tonks, the lost poet” at www.theguardian.com