At the end of a long hot exhausting day, what better way to wind down than to sit outside with a glass of wine and exchange ghost stories with an audience of young children? One year ago, almost to the day, we took our first ever family vacation in Bude, Cornwall, but not everything was listed in the tour guides, and to this day, we don’t know what the children saw that night.
Its a ten hour drive from Heysham to Bude, though much of that travel time involves very little movement. Birmingham is particularly gnarly. We arrived at the holiday park after 6pm, checked in to our chalet, unloaded the car, and then went to the restaurant for something eat. I had steak, with chips, it was very nice, and a few beers. After a long drive, its good to just chill out with a cold beer, but that can be quite boring for young children, especially when the only thing we can give them to drink contains sugar. We wanted them to sleep at some point, so we went back to the chalet to enjoy the first night of our holiday.
Cornwall is the nearest thing we’ve got on the UK mainland to a warm temperate climate, and our stay was no exception. The weather was glorious, and while mum ensured that the clean underpants found their way in to the correct drawers and stuff like that, I sat outside with the boys and a bottle of beer, and as we watched the sun sink toward the sea, I asked them. ‘Boy’s, what know you of the green flash at sunset?’
‘The what?’ They said.
The story I planned to tell would have been far more interesting to them if they’d paid more attention while they watched Pirates. But I explained the legend anyway, of how the setting sun sometimes emits a green flash in to the sky as it dips below the horizon. Its a real thing, not just Disney, and if you believe such things, it signifies the return of a soul from the afterlife.
That got their attention, and we all watched the sun sink lower and lower.
Waiting for the flash
There was no flash, maybe the hill got in the way, maybe no souls got lucky that day. Either way, their imaginations were piqued and they wanted to know more. Is it real? Have you seen a ghost? Do you know any ghost stories?
The answer to all three questions of course is yes. The green flash is real, its an atmospheric optical effect and I found pictures online to prove it. Yes I have seen a ghost, I have a couple of tales to tell from my own experience, but in my favourite story I like to recall I can’t remember seeing the ghost, but everyone else did and I was at the center of it all.
Many years ago, on the night before I was born, my mother caught a bus to the hospital for a check up. When she walked toward the reception desk to check in, she was intercepted by a passing midwife who grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and said ‘Come with me love, your baby’s in distress’. My mother was then ushered in to one of the delivery rooms, and a few hours later I was born, blue, and the with the umbilical cord wrapped twice tightly round my neck. My mother never got the chance to thank the midwife, without whose intervention, I might have not survived, or to ask how she knew I was in trouble. Whoever she was, she didn’t stay for the birth and none of the staff recognised her from the description my mother gave.
I was always intrigued as to how that midwife knew that I was in difficulty so when my own children came along, I took the opportunity to tell this story to the midwives, and to ask them how that midwife could have known, from a distance, that I was in distress. They couldn’t explain it, and they hadn’t heard of it happening elsewhere. It remains a mystery.
My dad is a down to earth pragmatic realist. ‘No such thing as ghosts’ he’d say, but even for my dad, sometimes seeing is believing.
When I was taken home, I was given the smallest room and slept in a crib. The larger two rooms were taken by my sisters and my parents, and my arrival changed things in unexpected ways. My sisters, aged 7 and 5 at the time became unsettled, reluctant to go to bed, and when they did, they were anxious and sleepless, and were bothered by the old woman that stood out on the landing at night. There was no woman on the landing, my mam was the only woman in the house, but they had both seen it, and they both described the visitor with earnest sincerity.
My Dad laughed it off of course when he heard. ‘Children, tsk’, and he remained opposed to the existence of the nightly visitor even when my mother saw it herself, standing in the doorway to my room. This figure didn’t talk, didn’t wear a sheet, she wasn’t transparent; she stood there is silence, occasionally parting an assuring smile The visitor would appear most nights, but only when she wasn’t expected, and my dad laughed off every new silly sighting.
One night however, the visitor stopped being silly, a hysterical figment of the imagination, and instead became very real. That was the night that my dad needed to take a midnight trip to the bathroom. I don’t know if he’d made there or not, but the clatter of the bedroom door, and the thud of objects in the dark being clumsily displaced by a hasty return to bed woke up my mother, who slept lightly anyway. My Dad jumped back in to the bed and pulled the covers over his head.
‘You’ve seen her, haven’t you?’ she said.
‘Yes, stood in Michael’s door, she looked at me’
‘Did she do anything?’
‘No, just looked at me. She was old looking’
‘I think its my Grandma’ my mother said, ‘that’s how I remember seeing her when I was little’
‘What do you think she wants?’
‘Nothing bad’ my mother reasoned, I think she’s watching over Michael’
After that, the sighting got less and less, until no one saw my guardian angel at all. After my traumatic birth, I had started to thrive as a big bouncing baby boy, but I have no recollection of that time, how could I? But I do have some strange memories from my early days, and very weird and symbolic dreams, and I can’t help but wonder about the other things in life that go on beneath our noses, before our eyes, but forever unnoticed, except in times of need. Did I really have a guardian angel to watch over me? Is she still watching over me? Perhaps I’ll never know, but its a nice thought.
My story though, unfortunately, had the opposite effect on the kids to what I’d intended. The plan was that they would listen to some spooky stories, and then go quietly to sleep, and I would drink wine on the veranda with my wife. Now, however, they were more energised than ever, and they bounced around the chalet front like zombies on a sugar rush, and there was no silencing them. They were overstimulated and I had only myself to blame.
But all of a sudden, the oldest stopped the hyperactive silliness and came over to stand next to me. He tugged on my arm and pointed over to horizon where the sun had set. ‘What’s that?’ He said.
I couldn’t see anything, except the dying light of the dusk. ‘Whats what?’ I said, there was nothing out of the usual.
‘Its there!’ He said again, pointing, and this time more urgent, he took a step backwards to stand behind me. ‘Its getting closer…’
And then he ran in doors, and the yongest followed him quickly inside, he shut the door behind him, leaving me outside on my own.
Misty dusk
I scanned the horizon again, looking for anything alarming, but there was nothing, and no motion to be seen, just the beautiful evening sky.
I went inside to join the children and ask them what they saw. ‘Doesn’t matter’ the oldest said.
‘Do you want to go outside again?’ I asked them both.
‘No!’ They replied in unison.
‘Why not?’ I asked again, but the reply was always the same, It doesn’t matter.
It wasn’t mentioned again, but for the whole of the stay, they wouldn’t stay out to watch the sun or play outside after dark, and at night time, the curtains were to be firmly closed.
This was back in the Eighties while I was cataloguing the tales of the White Lady, one of England’s more prolific spectres, and it was my last trip of the project that brought me to Thurnscoe in South Yorkshire.
I had found lodgings at the Station Hotel, a pub with seldom used guest rooms run by a feisty middle aged scots woman. What she lacked in height she atoned with fiest and she’d very kindly offered to introduce me to some of the locals that might be of help. As luck would have it, they were all regulars at her bar; an old fashioned working man’s pub, with over bright lighting, threadbare carpet and nicotine stained walls. The tobacco smoke hung thick above the customers, thick as fog, exacerbating my asthma. I couldn’t stay there long.
Everyone I spoke to knew of a different story about the White Lady, where to see her, what she looked like, who she might have been in life. I suppose that made it the oddest thing. While the stories differed, everyone had one. Though few people claimed to have seen her themselves, everyone knew someone that had.
“Hit by a train she was” one of them would say, “taking a short cut back in the 1900s, she stopped for one train but got struck by another, her body was thrown down on to the path with such force that she never knew she’d died, now here she stuck forever looking for a way off the path and back to her home…”
“Raped she was” Another, older, man told me. “Back in the twenties, everyone heard about it. Poor young thing taking a short cut over the heaps…Now her spirit lingers up there, warning travellers to take care and never travel alone…”
“Don’t listen to them” yet another would say, “It was Marian Spitch, wife of Tommy Spitch, she killed herself after the pit collapse back in 1947”
“No no no, they’re all wrong” A haggard old man told me, “She been walking that path long before the pits came. These were milking pastures back in the day, and the white lady was a cow girl, dressed in a white apron…”
The night went on this way, everyone had a theory on who she was, and my note book grew fat with anecdotes, but I had spoken to almost all of the patrons before anyone confessed to having seen her themselves. But maybe that was the alcohol loosening the tongues of the later evening that drew forth the crazier tales.
“I saw her” A younger man, in his twenties, said, “up on the tops. I was walking up Goldthorpe way when it started to rain. Sile it down it did. I was struggling to cover my eyes and keep my cig lit, and I ended up tripping and stumbling on the grass. I got up again and carried on, but I tripped again on a slab or stone or something. When I got up, she was there, stood in front of me, I felt her hand on my shoulder, like ice”
“What did she look like?” I asked him, I was glad of the first hint of a real encounter that entire evening.
“Just white” he said, “I had rain in my eyes and it was dark, couldn’t really make owt out”
“You must have seen something”
“Yeah, she had a face, nose and eyes and stuff, but soon as it twigged what it was, or who, I was outta there. Turned right round, back on the path. I ran home without another glance.”
“Was she old? Young?”
“I said I couldn’t tell, it were dark, shouldn’t have seen her at all up there. That’s how I know she was a ghost; she had this glow about her”.
“Did she say anything?”
“As it appens, but it were like the wind shouting at me, ‘go back she said’, and I did, never ran so fast in my life”
“What else do you remember?”
“That’s about it really, but she did remind me of me mam, telling me off”
“Could you show me where it happened?”
The coloured drained from his face.
“You’ll not see Nige up on that hill in a month of Sundays” An older guy piped up”
“Chicken he is” Another said. Nigel looked agitated as the whole pub burst in to laughter.
“You didn’t see what I saw” He said.
“That why you turned down the council job intit Nige” The old man piped up again before turning to me. “Fifty a week he was offered to go up there and clear out the trees for the new lights”
“Fifty quid, that was a lot back then” I said.
“It’s a lot now” One of the rougher looking men said, “What you on about?”
I didn’t answer him. This was the height of Thatcher’s recession, jobs were few and far, and this was a community with its heart torn out. Tensions were high, and I was already too aware that mine was the only jacket with leather elbow patches. Everyone else wore Parkers, jeans or shell suits with trainers, and looked just a little under nourished.
“Is that pit still open?” I asked no one in particular, “I was sure I saw trains coming out of there?”
“It’s on run down now, clearing out stocks and decommissioning, all us lads from the shafts are now on the dole”
“I’m sorry” I said, “I didn’t realise, “When I wandered round the village earlier, the whole site was alive”
“It’ll all be gone soon, 100 years gone in a wink…”
The mood was changing, and I wanted to get back on topic. Eventually, I did manage to coax a small map out of Nige with enough detail to convince me I would find the place.
—
I woke the next day to a foul head, the strong ales and interesting quality storage had left me feeling seriously hung over. My very best effort saw me leave the hotel at just after midday; I decided to skip the beef dripping chips that Beryl offered for breakfast.
It was a warm day for October, if a little blustery at times, but I was adamant that I would at least find the spot as directed by Nige. Ghosts of course have a tendency to only present themselves in darkness, and when there is enough ambiguity in its presence, but I wanted to at least give it a chance to appear.
The old pit lane, as it was called, runs between the two mining villages of Thurnscoe and Goldthorpe, over the old pit head, along the side of slagheap.
To reach the lane, one had to walk toward the colliery itself, about half a mile from the Station Hotel, past a long line of dreary old blue brick terraced houses, the likes of which might have been torn down in the fifties. Eventually, I came to a junction, where vehicles could access the site from the main road, and the pavement would follow the road down toward a number of low bridges that carried the rails serving the pit overhead. Despite the diggers and lorries in the main complex, there was an eerie silence about the place that served to exaggerate the already intense sense of abandonment and disrepair about the place.
There were gaps in fences, pot holes and weeds abound the old tarmac pathway, and panels missing from the street lamps exposed live wires to the elements.
Approaching the first of the over bridges, beneath which the narrow path veered to the right, the blue brick bridge supports obscured the route ahead, and the tip tap sound of foot falls, muffled voices and children’s laughter, distorted by the sound funnelling effect of the bridges preceded the passage of two young girls and their push chairs.
A light on the underside of the bridge flickered on and off and beams of light shone through between the girders above, while drops of water dripped rhythmically, seeping through the tracks above like a lethargic shower.
From that darkness, the pathway broke out in to daylight and climbed steeply up to the height of the track on the bridges before levelling off for a little. From here I could see coal wagons in the marshalling yard and the faded yellow skeletal form of an abandoned Coal Board locomotive, stripped of parts and rotting at the edge; and running parallel to the tracks, an enormous floodlight tower, rested where it had been felled and lay waiting its final fate.
Onward the path began to climb in a long steady uniform line up the hill, bisecting the huge manmade mountain that had grown up over the years from the displaced material excavated from the mine.
The ascent itself was gentle, but relentless, and took a full fifteen minutes to reach the summit, but the view was reward enough. The surrounding countryside was beautiful, gentle slopes punctuated by woods and spires rolling in to the peaks of the Pennines, but in the foreground, a sprawling mass of black industry scared the landscape.
Sloping east from the summit of the path, the hill rose for a further five yards or so, though this was fenced off with a high metal chain link fence, and I overcame the usual impulse to trespass; all of the stories focussed on the path itself, so that’s where I would look.
I pictured Nige at home; laughing at the naïve southerner following a wild goose chase as I looked around the area he had directed me. There were no distinguishing features on the path, or along its edges; just grassy scrub, the fence, and the occasional tree.
It was easy to imagine, however, why these stories might arise. The whole ascent is quite isolating, even with the full daytime foot traffic, all of which smiled, or nodded, or greeted me with a firm Yorkshire Ay’up. But it was the unearthly stillness that seemed the creepiest. A hill like this should be windy, but the bulk of the hill seemed to protect this side from the prevailing easterly wind, and no sounds carried from the village or the pit below. I could see diggers, bull dozers and tipper trucks below clearing away the abandoned buildings, but there was no sound of this.
This I think was enough to settle my curiosity. I have come across few places so genuinely calm and incongruently spiritual as this one. It was too much to expect to actually see a ghost as well.
—
I returned to the B&B with a clearer head and a resolved appetite where I was fed a monumental serving of homemade shepherd’s pie, (made with beef mince I might add) and baked beans for some reason, and mushy peas, and a slice of buttered white bread. I coukd not recollect a time I had been so well fed and I decided to stay another night and try out the path under darkness, just to test my luck.
Once night fell, I dressed warmly and made sure I was kitted out with my ghost recording kit. It was nothing as fancy as the Ghost Busters might have; just a Dictaphone, a camera with flash, a torch and my homemade mobile barometer. Intrepidly, I stepped out into the night, fearful more of the disenchanted youths that loitered by the market stalls and the entrance to the unmanned Railway Station that might give me some grief than the ghost, but this evening was unusually quiet; it must have been a school night.
I retraced my steps from earlier that day through the deserted streets. It was blustery as before, but warm, and the low clouds passed swiftly above, illuminated by the deep orange glow of the argon street lights; the air itself heavy with the acrid weight of a thousand open coal fires.
Passing beneath those bridges was daunting. One could imagine an ambush, were one minded that way. A tale of ghosts on paths, a trap irresistible to the feeble southerner on his quest for knowledge, the men of the Working Man’s Club would lay in wait for their prey. I imagined.
I entered the passage that led down to the bridges, and again, they echoed with the chatter of others traversing the path, an ambush? The scent of old spice and Brylcreem preceded them, just moments before a small group of seniors emerged from the bridge, suited and booted, ready for their night at the WMC.
I passed the set of bridges without incident and began the accent. I rose up above the village, I could see the town illuminated beneath, but the old colliery works were shrouded in night. It must have been quite the sight ten years ago. The floodlight towers, now strewn across the marshalling yard, would have bathed the whole complex in a bright white light, and trains would be heard rattling around all times of day. For the villagers though, this was an unwelcome peace.
A brisk walk brought me to the summit after about ten minutes, and I allowed myself a break to catch my breath. Occasionally, I noticed, the wind must have dropped or changed direction, and the eerie silence would be replaced by the sound of traffic, a train passing on the railway below, or a bus toiling its way out of the valley, but as soon as it began, it would drop off again, and the hill returned to silence.
Occasionally though, I could hear, just at the edge of my hearing, the sound of children playing. There was a play area at the bottom of the hill, across the road from the start of the path, but this was in darkness too, and the children should be long in bed. Almost certainly another effect of the odd microclimate here, but then I noticed the lights on the ground and my imagination ran away with me.
Willow the wisp, marsh lights or corpse lights, as they are sometimes known. Tiny flames believed by some to spirits of children, believed by others to be nothing more than combustible gases seeping through the earth. Either way; this was only the second time I had seen such things, and the first time I had done so with a camera to hand.
I took out my SLR and began snapping, two frames at a time, one with flash, the other without. The strange little dancing lights took on a life of their own, and it was hard to even speculate on a rational explanation for them as again, I heard the muffled sound of children laughing, and it grew grow louder as I followed the lights on to the damp grass.
This was amazing, and far more than I could have hoped for, if not a ghost itself, then a rational explanation for the stories, and with pictures to boot. I even remember laughing out loud, scarcely noticing that the ground beneath me had become muddier, wetter, and a little spongy. Not until I felt something on my leg.
I froze on the spot, as the terror dawned on me. My foot was stuck in the mud, it was as if a hand gripped tightly to my ankle, and it took all of my strength, and the sacrifice of a boot, to break free, and when I did, I was so off balance that I found myself face down and struggling against the mud as each attempt to find my footing felt like another hand grappling with me, pulling me down. Panic began to set in.
Darkness surrounded me, but for the silhouette of my own arms flailing against the orange sky above as I grappled with some unknown attacker. I had strayed from the path and I would need to find solid ground if I was to escape the cold clutches of the treacherous heap.
Again, I felt an unseen hand on my ankle, and my leg sank knee deep into the mud. The struggle was exhausting, and the fight had disorientated me. It was all I could do to free my leg and roll on to my back, where I awaited my fate. I expected a final blow to finish me off, dragging me to muddy depths, but there was silence. The battle seemed to be over.
I lay there, quietly gathering my thoughts. Perhaps whatever foul creature had attacked me now thought I was gone, or dead, perhaps it too was blind and waited on my movements before it could attack again. Maybe it had gone for back up. Whatever the truth, I could not spend the night here. Already, I felt the mud around me rising, who knew how deep I might sink.
I cautiously looked around, unwilling to disturb the mud, but saw no distinguishing features against the turbulent sky above. Raising my head, I saw no sign of the path. Thoughts of my mortality ran through my mind, what would the papers say? Would my body even be found?
As the last of my hopes sank with my spirits, I caught sight of something to my left just in the corner of my eye. A figure in white stood nearby, but only when I looked away. Like the Seven Sisters in the northern sky that fade from view when directly looked upon; this figure too vanished when looked at. So turning my gaze to the right, the figure again appeared to my left. Was this the white lady? I remembered that she was always seen on the path in the stories, and whether she was the ghost, or a reflection of light from a road below, salvation was that way.
I tried to find my feet, but this only caused the mud to rise higher. A new tactic was required, and anything was worth a try. I tried rolling on to my front. This too was difficult, as the mud seemed to have moulded itself about my hulk, but eventually, with the last of my strength I managed it, and once moving, I burned my second wind to keep my momentum, rolling my way to the left, back toward the grassy verge and the refuge it offered. Exhausted, but on solid ground, I rested just long enough to find my strength for the hobble back to the pub.
—-
Almost two hours later, I arrived back at the Station Hotel, exhausted and barefooted on one side. Having passed no fewer than five people on the way, all of which greeted me politely, but none offered help. I pushed open the double doors and hobbled inside where the iridescent lamps brought my plight into deep relief.
“Goodness me” The landlady shouted from the bar, “Where the devil have you been?”
“Back up the pit lane” I told her,” looking for your white lady.”
“Did you find her” One of the old punters cried out.
“I think I did” I said, but I was drowned out by another
“Looks like you been rolling in the slag up there” one of the others warned, “Want to be careful up there”
“You could have died up there, what on earth is a grown man like you doing trespassing on the heaps” Beryl came round the bar and took me in to her care. “Let’s get you sorted upstairs”
“The heaps?” I said
“Yes” Beryl said, “now let’s get you out of these filthy black clothes”
I hadn’t registered how I looked. My suede jacket and corduroy pants were thick with black wet mud that was now starting to dry to a dull grey at the edges. My face and hair caked too. I must have been quite a sight walking through the village.
“Tracy” Beryl said to one of her staff, bring him a shot of Bells up will you”
I went upstairs to the communal bathroom and tried to the close the door behind me, but was surprised to find Beryl had followed me in.
“Come here love, stand in the bath while you get undressed, don’t want no slag on the floor. There’s a basket here for your dirties…”
She was interrupted by a knock at the door. It was Tracy with my shot of whisky.
“There you go love”, she said, placing the shot glass on the drawers by the bath, “I’ll leave you to it. Come down when you’re ready, I’ll have a steak and kidney pudding waiting down stairs.”
So I had a nice hot relaxing bath and reflected on my experiences, the absolute silence of the place, the laughter, the corpse lights, the unseen hand reaching out of the ground, and then the white lady herself. A lucky escape definitely, but it couldn’t be too good to be true. If only my train wasn’t the next the morning, I so wanted to visit the site again in daylight and gave thought to an early wake up call.
–
Hungry, I tore myself from the bath, put on a pair of jeans and woolly jumper and went back downstairs to the bar area, where, as promised a steak and kidney pudding and a generous portion of chips, peas and gravy were waiting.
“There you go love” Beryl said, handing the hot plate of food to me across the bar. “Get that down you”
I did as I was told and was left in peace to eat my evening meal, but ever aware that I was drawing some attention, and the very instant that my knife and fork hit the empty plate I was surrounded by men, and Beryl, her arms firmly crossed. I began to worry that I had broken some local taboo.
“Do you know how lucky you are not to be dead?” Beryl bleated.
“Bleedin idiot you are!” Another voice croaked from the back. What had I done?
“What did I do?” I begged, unsure what might follow.
“Did you not see the signs?” Beryl said again.
“Or the ruddy fence” someone else laughed out.
“It’s a slag heap up there! It’s like quick sand!”
“Aye, once the slag’s got you, there’s no coming back”
My heart began to pound, I had no idea of the dangers, but they were laid out to me, somewhat painfully and repetitively by the locals, whose concern was only matched by rare opportunity to teach a scholar something new. But things soon settled down, and the usual business of drinking returned to full swing and I was joined again by just Beryl.
“So did you find your ghost?” She said.
“I’m not so sure anymore” I told her. “I saw the marsh lights, but I can explain those, and for a moment, I thought I saw the white lady, leading me out of the mud”
“That’s not all though is it” she said. She could tell I was hiding something, and I confessed about the hand, but the triumph I’d felt before, of overcoming some monstrous being from the underworld, was now just the utter embarrassment at my naivety of all the industrial dangers that surrounded this place. I had simply got my foot stuck in some mud.
Instead of visiting the path again, I quietly gathered my belongings, packed my bags and made a discreet departure the next morning, but I did leave with a promise from Beryl that she would forward a number of newspaper cuttings that she had collected over the years about the ghostly reports in the area.
—–
Six months later, I was making sense of my notes and typing up accounts of my ghostly encounters across the hills and valleys of England. I had looked further into the tales I’d been told and was confident in both my subject matter, and the appeal of my latest book. Where the White Lady of the Old Pit Lane was concerned, I was most ambivalent. I certainly had a creepy encounter, and all of the stories checked out. My meticulous research uncovered several key truths in the myths that haunted the village of Thurnscoe.
Millicent O’Donnell age 17, hit by a train in 1907.
Victoria Connelly, raped and murdered on the Pit Lane in 1927
Marian Spitch, found dead in 1947, drug over dose
Henrietta Swardle, a milker’s Maid, trampled in the 1800s
There was an interesting history here, and maybe one worthy of a more substantial investigation, but I was also ashamed of my behaviour.
By sheer coincidence, it was at the very moment I had decided to drop the case of the White Lady of Old Pit Lane that I was given cause to reconsider. There was a knock at my office door and I opened it to see the college porter holding up a large brown parcel.
“Sign here” he said.
I took the parcel back to my desk and carefully open the letter that was attached with sticky tape to the top.
Dear Doctor Bosthwell,
As promised I have gathered up some of my newspaper cuttings from the local history group and sent copies. What I think will interest you more though is the local news from two weeks ago. In the 70s a young boy went missing, he was last seen following some older boys through Goldthorpe village, but when quizzed they said they hadn’t seen him. The area was searched, including the slag heap where you so foolishly wandered, but no body was ever found. It seems that search wasn’t thorough enough. That whole area is being reclaimed now and the diggers moved in just after you left us. You can guess what they found, and you can read the terrible details in the papers I have included, but what I think you’ll find most interesting is what was found in the boy’s hand. The police won’t release it to me; you’ll have to collect it yourself, but I have included the photograph they gave me…
My hands trembled as the thought of that gruesome struggle came back vividly to mind, and I turned over the enclosed photograph.
‘I always feel silly about this bit‘ I told the vendor, ‘But full disclosure is full disclosure. Even ghosts‘. The vendor was a young man, late twenties, and as well presented as my three bed detached house he was trying to sell.
‘Ghosts, eh?’ he said, rubbing the back of his neck, ‘one man’s ghost is another man’s creaky floor board you know‘
‘Quite true‘ I said, and I had to agree with him, ‘but you know how it is now. They changed the law to protect the buyer and seller alike. Anything you mention now, you can’t be sued for later; and we’ve already covered the physical, social and geographical sections‘
‘I know‘ he said, sighing. ‘I know‘
‘I should probably put down that creaky board too‘ I said, ‘just to be on the safe side‘
There
had been something of a scandal in the property market of late, with lofty
booms and deep depressions, accusations of misleading descriptions, dirty
dealings, gazumping and gazundering, and legal actions taken to recover any and
every misspent penny. The inevitable
outcome of course, was the full disclosure clause. A catalogue of features, good and bad,
compiled by the seller and presented to potential buyers. A full service history for the home; every
dripping tap, noisy neighbour and molehill went in to the report, and if
necessary, an estimate on the cost of correction. If you knew about something, but failed to
log it, you could be, potentially, liable for hefty losses.
The
vendor fell silent and rubbed his neck again.
‘I’m guessing by your silence that you have something else to disclose‘ I said.
He laughed dryly, as if choking on ash. ‘It’s crazy‘ he said. ‘How can I disclose the presence of something I don’t believe in?‘
‘Do you believe there is a presence?‘
He
stared through me, his eyes glazed.
‘Just tell me what you know; we can let the buyer make up their own mind.’ I pulled out my notebook to record the details.
His face dropped. ‘That’s what worries me‘
It was a tidy little house, only one year old and with one careful owner. It sat in an ample sized plot, its garden commanded an uninterrupted view down the long valley and the ocean beyond. A typical modern middle class home, it was of a unique design among its neighbours, and it was hard to imagine how a house of this standard would fail to find a buyer in the current market.
‘We bought it in a rush‘, the vendor explained, ‘with the baby on the way and the unexpected job transfer; we found ourselves moving back out west. Found this house as part of a new development and moved straight in, just one week before baby was due.‘
That was August, last year. A real heat wave, I remember it all too well. While I celebrated my promotion to Associate Member that night with altogether far too much alcohol and a skinny dip in the Tamar, the vendor had had a celebratory barbecue at his brand new home.
He took me outside to show me, and his tale unfurled.
‘We were out in the back garden‘ he said, ‘When I first thought something was up‘
‘Over there‘ he said, pointing to the neighbouring street that backed on to his land, ‘That’s Elms Walk now, but when we moved in, that was the edge of the wood‘
‘We were all out here drinking; having a laugh, scoffing Evie’s minted lamb burgers and caramelised bananas. It was a beautiful day, practically tropical. It must have been about seven o’clock though, when the sun started to dip behind the trees, casting the garden in to shade, and at that same moment, the wind picked up. The whole yard cooled down, and, this might just be the booze, but the shadows from the wood seemed to dance menacingly toward us, and creepily, and far faster than I would expect the sinking sun to cast.‘
‘I had hoped we get more sun in the back than we did, but I didn’t mind.’ He went on. ‘The setting sun was just an excuse to light the chiminea. This was when Evie asked me to get her a blanket from indoors.’
‘I did as asked and went inside, everything was still in boxes, even some of the cupboards were still in flat-pack boxes and waiting to be unpacked and assembled. The Nursery had become an unofficial laundry room while we got sorted, and as I pushed open the door to collect a fleece blanket, something rustled behind the boxes. I only saw its shadow, but my best guess was a cat, or a small dog; I could hear it rustling the plastic bags as it tried to evade me. It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption, the doors and windows had been open all day. Anything could have got inside; my only worry at the time was getting bitten by some rabies infected mog.’
‘And then I thought it was a bird because when I crept cautiously round the boxes and found nothing, and walked round around again. I was certain, then there was a tap and the window, a flutter of wings and it was gone. I thought no more of it as I picked up the blanket.’
When I got back outside, Evie was sat up on the bench, nursing her huge baby bump. I was very protective of my wife and bump, and I didn’t care for the worried look on her face.
‘It got cold very quickly, she told me, as I wrapped the fleece around her shoulders.’
‘I asked her if the baby was ok, and she assured me that everything was fine, but that she’d felt something, like someone had been touching her tummy, stroking her, pressing down like an obstetrician might examine the baby. She said that she must have imagined it, but that it felt so real with her eyes closed; when the shadow from the trees moved across her, she was sure someone was stood there’.
‘That sent a right chill up my back,’ he said, ‘and Evie never really shook the feeling that someone was stood over her shoulder where ever she was in the house. I wished I’d listened to her at the start.’
‘After the barbecue, we only had a week to try and sort the house, but so much of our stuff was still in storage that we just couldn’t feel at home; and the bare walls and polished floors made for a cold and empty feeling. It was harder to settle in than we’d thought, especially after the weird dream I had that night, I had enough doubts about the house and moving without some haggard looking grey skinned witch with wiry green hair screaming “Idiot, you got the wrong house!” at me. I woke up with a scream, my vest soaking; I very nearly set off Evie’s labour.’
‘About a week after later, we were both in bed, and I’d made Evie a caffeine free coffee for a Sunday snuggle and snooze, but we both heard a noise. We sat upright, and heard it again. A high pitched, but stifled giggle, like an excited schoolgirl trying keep her cool as she met her idol.’
‘“She’s on her way” The same hushed voice called out. And in the next moment, Evie was gripping my arm. Her waters had broken. I won’t bore you with the slippery details, but twelve hours after that, we had a beautiful baby girl, and the creepy voice was right. And after that, things started to get weird.‘
‘Got weird?’ I said to the vendor, ‘as if the creepy voice and groping thing was normal?’
He led me back inside and up the stairs to the master bedroom.
‘We kept baby in here with us to begin with, for the first two weeks’ he explained, ‘but she was so unsettled, and it began to interfere with our sleep. She would wake every three hours for a feed, which is normal, but we started to have weird dreams. Both of us dreamed that she was in the bed with us, and we’d wake at the same time looking her under the sheets. It was like we were having the same dream, at the same time, and it was only when one of us looked up to see her in her crib, that we realised that we’d been dreaming it, but it was hard to shake when it was so realistic, like something had been there with us in the bed.’
‘That is weird’ I said, ‘Spooky even’.
‘That’s not the worst of it‘ he went on.
‘One night I woke up in the small hours. Evie was sat on the end of the bed, with her head slumped. I asked if she was ok, but she shushed me. I went over to see what was wrong, and tapped her on the shoulder’.
‘She snarled at me, muttering that I’ll wake the baby, but the baby was in her crib, and I told her this. Then she opened her eyes and saw her empty arms. “Where is she, where is she!” She almost screamed the house down’.
‘It’s all right, I told her, gripping her upper arms to steady her, though by now baby was screaming too, and ready for a real feed’.
‘It was after this I suggested that baby be moved to her own room. I’d hoped that things would get back to normal if at least one of us would get some sleep. Evie took some convincing to let the baby sleep in another room, but she knew it was the right thing to do, and she wasn’t very far away, and we had the pressure matt, and the sensor, and the night vision camera streaming to our phones, which meant that we were effectively in the same room wherever we were’.
‘On the very first night in her own room, just as we had settled her in her cot and stood admiring her, Evie spun around, adamant that she had felt a breath on her neck. I shrugged it all off at the time, but if truth be told, I felt it too, and not just the breath. I also felt a nudge, like someone was pushing their way between us’.
‘As the baby grew older, a couple of months or so, she began taking an interest in the corner of the nursery, always that same corner. I tried sitting with her facing the other way round so that she couldn’t see it, but that would agitate her, and she’d wriggle her way round, and I’d have to give in and face that wall anyway. This went on for a few weeks, always the same corner, and if you can imagine, a two month old girl, laughing and smiling at a plain empty corner. Even I had the creeps by now’.
‘ It could be my imagination, and it probably is in all fairness, but one night, she woke up all grumpy, needing a change and a feed. Evie was doing her dead to the world thing, so I got up. It would have been about five am, and she was cradled in my arm, glugging down the milk, and as normal, I was staring at those gorgeous big brown eyes. She smiled back at me, gargling cheerfully on the milk, but she wasn’t really looking at me, she was looking past me, and this is where my eyes must have been playing tricks, because there was something there, moving over my shoulder, reflected in her eye’.
‘I froze at first, and my skin tightened as the Goosebumps formed, forcing the hairs of my arms to stand on end. Baby just chuckled though, and I had to force myself to find reason. If someone was behind me, it was either Evie, or I had an intruder to deal with’. The vendor continued his story, and even I was starting to have goose bumps. ‘I turned to see an empty room. I was beginning to agree with Evie, and that we weren’t alone here. Baby eventually fell asleep and I placed her back in her cot, but I didn’t really want to leave her there on her own’.
‘I did go back to bed though, eventually, and snuggled up to the sleeping Evie, wanting to wake her, tell her what had happened, and if she’d seen or heard anything more, but I heard baby was awake again, although this time, she didn’t cry. I was happy enough to listen to the monitor and leave her to laugh herself to sleep, but as she giggled and gurgled, I made out another, distinct voice in there’.
‘Evie, not as asleep as she’d made out, heard it too, and we both sat, bolt upright, at the same time. We leapt out of bed and ran down the hall to the nursery, terrified by what we might see, but driven on by parental instinct. I got there first and turned the light on. Baby was alone and now sleeping again, quietly in her cot’.
‘Evie yelled at me, Now do you believe me! I did’.
‘I really did, but I didn’t want to believe her. I’d heard it myself, seen things too, inexplicable things, but if I confessed to this, it would make it real somehow, and it can’t be. So, “It must have been the wind or something” I told her’.
‘She harrumphed at me, and we both crept back to our room. I turned the monitor screen on, and angled it so that we could both see it, and the cot on the night vision screen where the baby was now sleeping soundly, and we listened to every blip…blip…blip of the pressure mat that vigilantly reported every breath and heartbeat, ready to alert us to any lack of movement’.
‘Evie turned her back to me, and I felt terrible for dismissing her fears. But we both loved the house, for all of its weirdness, and accepting it really was haunted would destroy that. Instead, I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the screen‘.
‘Do you ever get that thing, where you’re looking at an everyday thing‘, he went on, ‘and it looks normal, but there is something different with it, but you can’t say what. Like when a colleague gets a haircut‘.
‘Well, we had neighbours living on either side of us now, and when a car drove up the road, the head lights would shine through the curtains and cast a shadow on the back wall of baby’s room that was clearly visible on the monitor. By this time, the neighbours were up and leaving for work in the darkness of the winter morning, and each time a car passed the house, their headlights shone upon the wall the outline of branches from an enormous bare tree. I’ll attribute my slow conclusion to my lack of sleep, but it did eventually dawn on me that there are no trees outside, and certainly not between the window and the road’.
‘There was nothing outside that could cast anything even remotely similar to that shadow, and I didn’t just look out the window. I investigated this properly, taking in to account the height of the window, the level of the road, the direction of traffic; I modeled exactly where a tree would have to be to cast a shadow on that wall’.
‘What’s more, I have the recording from that night, and the shadow is there. I didn’t imagine it, it shouldn’t be there, but it is‘.
The Vendor was starting become agitated by his own story. It was hard enough to imagine that someone would make this up, especially as it could affect the value of their home. ‘Maybe it was a trick of the light‘ I said, trying not to over stimulate him further, ‘Maybe the tree was further away, down on the main road’
‘It really wasn’t‘ he said, ‘And if it was, that wouldn’t explain the leaves in the nursery. Everyday we’d have to vacuum, but the windows were never open, how they blew in is a mystery‘
He walked me back through to the nursery and we looked out the window, ‘See,’ he said, ‘these windows were never opened, Evie was terrified baby would fall out one day and it was better not to get in to bad habits.‘
Outside, he was right, there were no trees, just shrubberies. The whole wood had been cleared for the housing development, much to the protest of many conservationist and pressure groups at the time. ‘Show me where the phantom tree would have been‘ I said, and he pointed out a recently disturbed flower bed.
‘Just there he said, I dug it up, found a bunch dead roots down there, but nothing of note’.
‘That’s where you thought the rabbit warren was isn’t it?‘ I said.
‘Yes, but as we discussed, the investigation found nothing down there, and no on-going concerns’
‘Yes, it’s all in the report, and there’s sign of pests. No sense going over old ground, is there anything else I should put in the disclosure?‘
‘That’s everything I can think of‘ he said.
At that, we shook hands and I
returned to the office to type up the brochure.
It was about a
week later when, I received a visit from an interested buyer, and we spoke at
length about this house, in particular, the spooky goings on. I was worried this would put them off, but
she was illuminated by the prospect and she went on to make a very generous
offer, generous enough that I wanted to give the news to the Vendor in person,
so I could see his face.
We met in the Kings Arms pub next to
my office and he beamed as I gave him the news.
Cash buyer, no chain, wants to move quickly. It’s the best part of the job for me, seeing
someone’s plans work out.
‘Who is she?”‘He asked me, taking a long celebratory sip of beer.
‘Didn’t like to pry‘ I said, ‘but she gave me her business card‘ and I slid it toward him. ‘It’s got a photo of her it’. His eye brow rose as he picked it up to inspect it closely.
‘Cornish Dryad Society?‘ He said, reading the words on the card beside the picture, ‘That’s the old woman from my dream!’
I recently joined a Facebook group that shares True Scary Ghost Stories and started thinking about my own real ghost experiences, and I posted this account on the group page.
Whenever I’m asked if I’ve seen a ghost, I always think ‘No, of course I haven’t seen a ghost‘ and the conversation dies or moves on to something else, or both. But later, sometimes hours, sometimes days, I’ll start remembering the weird things that happened that could well have been ghosts. Its a bit like when someone asks if you know any jokes and your mind goes blank.
This morning I remembered something that happened over twenty years ago in the student house I shared with six other students. It was a big old terrace, with three floors and a cellar, and a yellow door.
At the time, I was having a bit of a personal problem with one of the house mates, a storm in a tea cup really, and I was in the kitchen discussing it with one of the others. Everyone else was out and my house mate was preparing a lunch to take to campus while we chatted. He finished making his packed lunch and left the house for the university, leaving me in the house by my self.
I was very cross that day and used the large colourful magnetic letters on the fridge to leave a hurtful message for my troublesome roomie. Pleased with my mean comment, I made myself a coffee, but when I turned back to the fridge, just moments later, I saw that my cutting words had been scrambled.
I can still feel the way that the hairs on my head, arms and legs stood on end as I saw that my message on the fridge had changed. The magnetic letters been pushed to the edges and formed a thick band around the two words in the center of the fridge door. Its simply said “No Mike“.
The house was definitely empty. The kitchen was at the end of a long narrow hall, impossible to get to without being heard. The house itself was big and lofty, but every door and floorboard in the ancient building made its own identifying sound and betrayed the location of any one moving around the house. It was impossible to not know if someone else was home, you could even hear the neighbours on either side at times, coughing, laughing, or closing a door. The silence of the house during the daytime, when everyone else was out was deafening, and the sound of the fridge, grumbling and gurgling alone in the kitchen, seemed all the louder for it. No person could have changed those words, no one was there.
The problem with the roomie soon resolved itself, as these thing usually do, and I am grateful for what ever force intervened in my quarrel that day, as somethings are best left unsaid.
Duggan's Dig 