Plagued by Ghosts

When I was born, my parent’s house was haunted. I lived there up until the age of five and the place was fairly badly haunted by the ghost of a small girl that used to play with my sisters toys, which would be found scattered over the house when my parents came home. My father at one point set up some search lights in the garden to catch what was going on, but never caught anything. My mother would be bathing us and would hear my father come home; come in the front door, walk up the stairs, open the bathroom door, but no-one was there and he didn’t come home until much later. My grandmother had problem with the porch door once and it jammed open (!). Everyone tried to close it, but it wouldn’t budge. After leaving it for a while my mother closed it normally. My sister used to wake up screaming practically every night. The local priest did an exorcism on the place and according to my mother it all stopped, but when my parents separated when I was five and we left, my father always claimed that things continued at that old place, but was someone else, a man.

The house I’ve just left was haunted too. I used to feel guilty that my daughter, and later my son, would be in the room that I would never sleep in myself. Over the years we have had lodgers, and my mate Claire used to have that room. She once freaked out because a woman came through the door and stood by her bed. Much later, my wife’s cousin lodged in that room and woke one night to find a woman bending over her. The descriptions of the woman were the same. We had the place “cleansed” but something always remained and there was a funny atmosphere at the top of the stairs. Both of them slept with the light on for the time they stayed there.

We moved house this March. Guess what!
Several times I’ve gone to the door when the doorbell has rung to find no-one there. It’s a decent stretch to the road down the steps and no-one could run off before I saw them. It happened twice last night, once luckily when my daughter was near and she heard it too, because otherwise I’d think I was going crazy. What really is weird is that it doesn’t sound exactly like our doorbell! It’s the same ring, but it’s louder and more shrill.
We hear footsteps upstairs running around, like a small child, but on inspection ours are fast asleep. I didn’t think much of it at first, but now it’s getting strange. I’ve heard a conversation going on upstairs on more than one occasion and talking about it with my wife yesterday, she now confesses that she has been hearing whispering while standing on the landing. We had a couple of friends stay over recently to babysit, and they were quite alarmed at the sound of running on the landing and two adult voices upstairs. When we talked it over I mentioned that it was definitely two voices because they talk over each other, they freaked out because they said that was exactly what they heard too, but hadn’t pinpointed that was what they were hearing.

The children don’t seem to be aware of anything luckily, and to be honest, the house has such a wonderful welcoming atmosphere that we are quite happy to leave things as they are, it isn’t a problem, but it’s weird that these things seem to follow me around. We’ll hear something going on practically every night now. The doorbell is getting to be a pain in the butt though (it only happens to me – no-one else has ever had it).

I guess if it gets much worse we’ll have to do something, but it’s a funny old business. I’ll be there on my own for a week in August, and I must admit, I’m not looking forward to that!