A Ghost or Two Really isn’t a Problem
It was some twenty years since I had last visited my childhood village and there was a true sense of homecoming as I drove down into the valley nestled within the English hills. Had I really appreciated how pretty this area was when I was growing up? Its twisting lanes and thatched cottages, the village duck pond and the four pubs serving the modest population. It seemed idyllic now.
As I drove through the village, I noticed one of the pubs had now been converted into a private house. My old home sat in darkness.
Although I now lived hundreds of miles away, I had been attending a conference nearby and my old friend Ros, took the opportunity to invite me to her mother’s eightieth birthday party being held in an old tithe barn. The celebrations were in full swing when I arrived. Despite her age my friend’s mother could still throw a good party.
It was wonderful seeing old faces. Mr and Mrs S who would always hold amazing Guy Fawkes parties in aid of charity, Mrs P who would scowl at us as children when we cycled over the edge of her immaculate front lawn.
‘You must meet the people who now live in your old house,’ said Ros as she filled my glass. She then led me up some rickety steps to a platform where the music was quieter, and introductions were made.
They were very friendly, probably in their early sixties. The wife, Nicole, was French which I found rather comforting as my mother had been Spanish. It somehow gave a Latin slant to a very English situation.
After some pleasantries I finally gave way to the question that was burning on my tongue.
‘So, have you met the ghost?’ I asked.
‘The ghost!’ she exclaimed.
Damn, I thought to myself. I shouldn’t have said anything. She must think I’m mad.
‘Ah, yes, the ghost,’ she continued. ‘Let me tell you about the ghost.’
At this her husband raised his eyes to the heavens.
‘Well, if you’ll excuse me,’ he said ‘I’m going to move. I’ve heard this so many times I can’t take any more.’
And then she recounted her tale.
How it all Began
I was six years old when my father bought our house. I say my father because my mother never saw it beforehand, apart from the sales details. She had three children already and was about to give birth to a fourth, so she waived the option to make the long trip and trusted my father’s decision.
In those days, a property’s sales particulars would merely comprise a picture of the outside and some room dimensions, so information was sparse. But the house seemed perfect. An Elizabethan black and white Tudor house with a large garden, available at a good price. It had some down sides: it was currently divided into two flats and the interior was painted grey throughout, being owned at that time by devout Plymouth Brethren. But these drawbacks were merely cosmetic, and my parents snapped it up.
It was three months after moving in that my mother had hysterics. I don’t remember this personally as I was in bed, asleep at the time, but I heard it recounted regularly over the years.
She was feeding my baby brother during the night in his low beamed bedroom when she looked up to see the figure of a man wearing a dark outfit with a wide white collar. Between her hysterical gasps she insisted that we sell the house immediately. My father said that wasn’t possible. We couldn’t sell the house when we had just moved in. We stayed.
Time passed and we settled in the house and the house settled with us.
Although I wasn’t a particularly fearful child I never did like the dark and would burrow under my bedclothes to avoid looking out into the void at night. A couple of times I imagined (or thought I had imagined) seeing the silhouette of a figure standing near the end of my bed. It was better not to look.
I could keep my eyes closed but I couldn’t avoid the sounds. The rattling of the lead paned windows in the wind, the odd clunk in the dead of night. I never could work out what that clunk was.
In reality, living in a mildly haunted house doesn’t usually meet a crescendo like some Hammer House movie. It doesn’t always unravel in three-act form. But there was a sense of ‘something’ subtle, almost like a silent echo. My brother would often sleep on the floor of my parents’ room at the bottom of their bed. My sister would get a distinct feeling that she wasn’t alone, when in fact there was no one around.
Even as a teenager I would be frightened of being in the house on my own, one time being terrified as my younger brother, my ward, was asleep upstairs. The sounds were not from my brother. I sat curled up in a ball in the snug, next to the inglenook fireplace where a caste iron plaque closed off an old bread oven. It read 1666.
As I grew older, I convinced myself that that all these ideas of the house being haunted were mere fantasies — an over-emotional mother and my simple childhood fears. I was convinced I had grown out of them. Until one summer evening many years later.
My parents had been spending much of their time abroad and I was living and working in London at the time. The city was hot and muggy, and I felt like getting away to the country, so I invited a friend to come and stay for the weekend. I was to take the train down to the nearest station and a taxi from there. She would meet me at the house later that Friday evening.
The heatwave had broken, and it was raining when I opened the terrace door. At first the door stuck but it always had a tendency to swell when it was damp. Beads of rain dropped off the rambling roses above my head. The door rattled as I practically fell into the hallway.
I wasn’t nervous at all about entering the house. I was an adult. Any illusions of ghosts were way behind me.
Except I heard voices.
They seemed to be coming from upstairs, beyond the gallery where the hallway led to the guest room at the far end of the house. Were they actually voices? Perhaps it was a lorry driving on the road outside, making a burring noise. But then I thought I picked out some words…
‘She doesn’t know we’re here,’ followed by muffled laughter.
I would have left the house immediately. I would have caught the train straight back to London. But this was in the days before mobile phones and my friend was on her way.
I slammed the back door shut and hurried to the kitchen at the other end of the house turning on the radio full blast. If someone was up there, physical or non-physical I didn’t want to confront them. When my friend arrived, without recounting my fears, I took her up to the bedroom. Nothing was out of place.
I never heard the voices again.
Eventually my parents decided to sell. Things started shifting. A speaker fell off the balcony in the high vaulted playroom, odd things would break. Our dog would growl and bark when there was nothing there.
My mother said the house wasn’t happy and wanted to be heard. But the decision had been made and we moved on.
Back to the Party
‘The ghost,’ Nicole said, spreading her slim hands on the table in front of us. ‘We got used to the ghost.’
She told me that her husband never noticed any unusual activity, but her daughter was sensitive to it. As a teenager her daughter, who had my old bedroom, refused to get dressed in her room and would take her clothes into the bathroom to change. She said she didn’t want to get dressed in front him.
When her daughter married and moved away, my old bedroom was mostly empty. It would be chilly when Nichole went in, and she felt it was polite to talk to the presence whenever she entered.
‘But he’s gone now,’ she said.
‘Gone?’
‘Yes. It just happened, just like that.’
‘For no reason?’
‘Not quite,’ and she explained.
‘One day I had to go into the room to put some clothes away and as usual, the room was chilly. I apologised to him as I entered. I said “I’m sorry to disturb you but I won’t be long. I just want to put these away in the drawers and then I’ll leave you in peace.” On the word Peace I saw him.’
‘What, you actually saw him?’
‘Well, not with my eyes, but here,’ and she pressed her hand to the side of her forehead.
‘He was dressed as if he was from the civil war, maybe a Roundhead. And his face…’
‘What about his face?’
‘Half of it was missing.’ A note of disgust and shock still rang in her voice. She was totally genuine.
‘Then what happened?’
‘Nothing. I just felt a sense of calm and I knew he was gone. And that was it. He was gone. And he’s never come back.’
Maybe it was that magical word.
Peace.
In a way it was comforting to know that my memories of a ghostly presence were not imagined, and I felt totally convinced that Nicole was telling the truth. The shadowy figure in my room had probably been a soldier from the civil war and now it seemed he was at peace.
But what about the voices on that summer evening?
Had I imagined it all?
