A true ghost story for Halloween

Do you believe in ghosts? Illogical things happen to logical people, after all.

Here’s a very different set of stories from me (and true ones at that) to make a dark night even darker this All Hallows Eve. And if you don’t believe me, we can have words about this later because as Edith Wharton once said, ‘I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’m afraid of them.’

If you’ve ever lived in an old house, you’ll quickly learn to put up with boxes moving around upstairs of their own accord, a glimpse of someone out of the corner of your eye that isn’t there when you turn to look, the odd touch of a hand against your back as you stand staring out the window, piano keys that press themselves gently forcing the string inside to make a sound while you stand cooking. And if you’ve never had any of this then count yourself lucky. Because all of these things have happened to me, and more.

There are things out there far more frightening than my credit card statement and over the years, I’ve had quite a few. But yet, I keep on living in old houses. What can I say? I just love the room sizes and high ceilings. The one I live in at the moment used to be a boy’s boarding school. Need I say more?

We’ve had a few instances of things that go bump in the night here. Our eldest daughter was haunted when she was a baby but not by anything malicious. Someone very reliable who by day worked in a sensible suit-wearing job, but by night helped spirits ‘move on,’ told us she was being watched over by children she used to know in another time, another place and that we should leave them alone. So we did. Hoping to send them on somewhere else, they simply didn’t want to go and we were ‘asked’ not to disturb them and they wouldn’t disturb us. So we left them alone and they left us alone. Although on the baby video monitor the dancing lights and softly lit orbs continued in her room until she was a toddler and she stopped napping in the day so we took the video monitor out. I wonder if I plugged it back in what I’d see now. I wonder if they’re still there.

When I was a child, my family moved from a semi-detached house to a sprawling detatched home that came complete with servant’s quarters in the attic, although obviously the servants were long gone by the time we arrived in the mid 90s. I’d never known anything as exciting before as a house with a third floor and when choosing my room I immediately rushed to the top of the house, took in the sloped ceilings with one of the only views of the sea and bagsied that as mine while my brother and parents chose the bigger rooms downstairs. I can’t tell you how long after we moved in that ‘things’ started happening but the most memorable things happened to my younger brother. He’d see a man standing at the end of his bed, TV remote controls would turn up in the middle of the garden lawn, while the TVs turning themselves on in every single room in the middle of the night was a particularly favourite ghostly party trick.

This often happened a few hours after any friends or visitors ‘rang’ the old servant’s bell, long disconnected and situated in the dining room, as if they were annoyed someone had pushed it. If we caught anyone rushing forward to push it curiously we’d collectively shout, ‘No!’ at them, which startled many a guest and then we’d have to sheepishly explain why to people who were either so excited they wanted to push it anyway or simply didn’t believe us.

Later, our suit-wearing friend said he’d seen the ghosts but chose not to tell us at the time as he didn’t want to frighten us. They were a family, he told me, long after I’d moved out. They were standing together in the dining room, they felt ‘rounded up,’ and weren’t quite sure why they were there, nor indeed why we were there. There was a grandmother, another woman and man in a bowler hat. Around them were an assortment of children of varying ages. If this all sounds a bit ‘The Others,’ I agree. I wonder if these spirits are just echoes of the past, remnants left behind, rather than fully alert and ‘there.’

The most memorable experience I had in that house was a physical one. In the old servant’s quarters, my little single bed was wedged between the sloped ceiling and the chimney breast that ran the entire height of the house. One night, aged about ten or eleven, I woke up with my feet pressed against the chimney breast. I’d ‘slid’ down the end of my bed and was concertina’d up against it, my body scrunched up. I was also at an upright angle, waking only to find myself in the oddest vertical position for someone meant to be sleeping horizontally. My bed was also nearly upright underneath me. Whatever had angled me and the bed up off the floor gave me a few seconds to wake up and work out something wasn’t quite right. And then the bed fell back down to its horizonal position with a crash and I fell back with it.

I rushed downstairs and told my mum and she placated me with the words, ‘you must have imagined it.’ I went back to bed repeating these words over and over and trying to fall asleep. When I asked my mum about this years later she replied, ‘oh yes, I realised the house was haunted but you were so young I didn’t want to scare you.’

Years later, aged about eighteen and home from university, my boyfriend came over to stay and woke up to find a man in a leather flying jacket standing next to his side of the bed, staring down at him along with a series of lights circling round the room. ‘Oh yeah,’ I said sleepily, by now having had years to take this all in my stride. ‘That’ll be one of the ghosts. We’ve got loads.’

If you’ve had any ghostly experiences, do tell. Hit the comment button and share below. After all, it’s Halloween. Normal romantic fiction newsletters will resume from me after this one. And don’t forget we’re reading Karen Swan’s All I Want for Christmas as our first book club read. I’ll kick start the discussion off in a few days so keep an eye on your inbox for the next newsletter from me.

But for now, Happy Halloween, everyone. Sleep well.

(Image below is about as scary a picture as I was prepared to go and hunt for. You’re welcome.)

Photo by Sivani Bandaru on Unsplash