Over on another blog, we’ve been talking about science and religion. Discussions about religion sometimes lead one to ponder about whether there is an after-life which prompted me to think about ghosts. One might say that ghosts are the evidence of an afterlife, or, if you are a scientist trying to explain this phonomenen, that they are no more than stored energy, waiting to be picked up by ‘sensitive’ people.
I would say that my mother and sister and I are all ‘sensitive’ up to a point. Over the years we have had strange experiences that could be described as ghostly. Our childhood home was a rambling old house of mixed architecture, bits had been added on over the years but it had a very old part dating from around the 16th century and unsurprisingly, this was where the ‘haunted room’ was. This particular room was the source of a lot of fun when we were children, not because it was haunted, we never really thought of it as haunted at the time and didn’t refer to it as such until years later and we had moved away. What made it really fun was when we played hide and seek with friends. The room was a guest room or ‘foreigners room’ as we called it. My parents had a lot of foreign business visitors to stay and depending on how much we liked them or not, depended on where they slept. We often wondered and innocently enquired how well they had slept in that room which was thoroughly spooky, but no one ever said they had been touched by a ghost, much to our disappointment. The dark wooden floor sloped down towards a row of small windows at skirting level that looked out onto the rose garden. These low small windows made it quite dark. There was also a wig cupboard which was quite roomy and this was where we completely foxed our friends. Unknown to them, there was a loose floor board that could be lifted and provided an escape route down the side of the chimney and into the old kitchen below. They never understood how we were able to disappear the way we did.
The room though, was always cold, winter and summer and had a very strange atmosphere. When we helped to make up the beds in there for guests, none of us ever allowed the door to close until we had left and we didn’t really like being in there on our own. Though we rarely talked about it, we all seemed to feel exactly the same. Compared to the rest of the house, it stood alone with a creepy feeling that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Our mother told us years later that a friend who lived nearby had shocked her one day when she was visiting by mentioning the ‘haunted room’ to her not long after we moved there. She had never said a word to us, fearing that we would be afraid but she didn’t have to, we already knew it was creepy and could sense it ourselves. All the other rooms upstairs had their doors open except this one. I never remember it open, always shut and not to be disturbed.
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My father is not a fanciful man and I do not generally include him in having any ‘sensitivity’ to the supernatural, though he always liked to tell a good ghost story. It is this aspect that makes more believable the events they described to us one evening when we were young. They were driving home from a trip one night when they decided to stop for a drink and a meal. As they were driving along, looking for a suitable pub, all of a sudden much to their alarm, they saw an old fashioned ‘coach and four’ together with a driver, whip in hand, haring towards them. They put their arms up to their faces, defensively and my father braked hard just as the coach was about to hit them. At the point of impact, nothing happened, it completely vanished. In total shock, they drove on a little way to a pub and arrived at the bar thoroughly shaken. The landlord noticing their appearance, poured them large whiskies and asked if they were alright. Feeling rather silly at what he was about to say, my father explained that they had almost had a run in with a phantom ‘coach and four’. To their surprise the landlord told them that it was a common occurance and quite a few people had had the exact same experience. The pub was called The Coach and Horses.
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When we were children we went off to boarding school quite far away from home and after a while our parents bought a cottage nearby, overlooking the sea. They would drive up, collect us from school and we would all stay at the cottage. We had many happy times with lots of friends and family members staying. On one occasion we had a Belgian friend staying who was a little older than we children and a lot of fun. My parents decided to take him and my sister out to the pub for supper and during the meal, fuelled no doubt by some drinks, they began to tell him about the ‘haunted house’ out on the marshes. Having a great sense of fun, he took up the challenge to visit the house after midnight and stay alone there all night.
We had all previously been to the haunted house. We had stumbled across it one day when we were out driving through the marshes. Seeing it was abandoned, we couldn’t resist having a look around. The broken front door gave easy access, it creaked open and we sneaked inside. It was a large sprawling house and had clearly been a lovely family home in it’s day. A sweeping staircase, dangerously broken in places, with missing boards and gaps in the banister, graced the large entrance hall. We carefully picked our way up stairs to the first floor. The quietness inside was eerie, broken now and then by strange far off noises. We wandered off to look around and then came to one room in particular. Houses that have been empty for a while, often have a strange feeling to them but in this room there was instantly something different altogether. Everyone immediately started whispering as if by doing so, we may not be heard, though there was no else around but us. We looked at each other, frightened to death. The room was cold and full of heavy menace. We almost collided in the doorway as suddenly all at once we were desperate to get out of there. We hurried back down stairs and out into the open, relieved to be in the fresh air. We looked back at the house and it stood silent, mocking and we knew we would not want to come back.
That evening as midnight approached, they took our Belgian friend to the house. It was a windy night and a full moon cast eerie shadows, turning the giant cedar tree in the overgrown driveway, a cobweb gray. The front door now swung on it’s hinges and the windows looked like eyes, catching light from the moon. The far off sound of the sea whispered over the shingle as waves rolled up the beach lending a spooky noise to the already wild night. Bravely the men walked towards the house, trees tossing and bending in the wind. Now that it was night, it seemed an even more sinister place. My father was beginning to think it was not such a good idea and our friend was clearly having second thoughts, all bravado gone, but there was a bit of pride at stake here. My mother and sister were too frightened to accompany them and stayed in the car. The men approached the house, the door banged crazily, caught on gusts of wind. This was where he was going to leave our friend. They looked up at the house before them, looked at each other and without a moments hesitation ran as if their lives depended on it. Two figures charged towards the car, faces deathly pale, eyes wide. They leaped in and my father fired up the engine and took off as fast as he could. Suddenly everyone began to laugh, part excitement, part fear and relief and were very glad to get out of there and back to the safety of the cottage.
Not long after this escapade, my grandfather telephoned one day. He said he’d just picked up a book about ghosts. In it he’d found a reference to the house that he recognised from our tales. “It’s one of the most haunted houses in the country”, he said, to our complete astonishment.
More ghostly tales to follow….we stay in a very ghostly Chateaux!
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