This is a true story that happened to me and my family back in 1959 when I was 15 years old. I come from a family of 7, Mum and dad and 5 youngsters. (4 boys 1 girl).
We lived in a terraced house in Liverpool, England. Each Saturday some of us Kids would take a bus ride and visit our maternal grandparents, who lived some 5 miles away. Being the eldest I always got to visit and was responsible for my younger brothers and sister throughout the trip. We all enjoyed seeing our Granddad and Grandma and my Aunty, my Mums older sister, who was unmarried and still lived at home. We would spend the afternoon playing in the large garden and then later watch TV, which we thought was great because we didn't have our own TV at that time. My Granddad always made a special tea for us with sandwiches and loads of cakes. Later in the evening my Mum would turn up to fetch us all back home again. This was a weekly family ritual and went on for years.
This particular night was in mid November 1959. We kids had had a great day and another fine tea. Our Mum had turned up and we all watched a bit of TV together. We usually left for home around 10.pm. It was a cold night and the room curtains had been closed earlier and the gas fire turned up full. However about 9.30pm there was a noticeable drop in the temperature and the room became very cold, even though the fire was turned up full. My Mum commented on how icy it felt. Suddenly- there came three very loud knocks on the window and everyone all shouted out at once- Who could it be? I felt my hair stand on end and my sister said the very same thing; her scalp was prickling with fright. My Granddad, who was a very "no nonsense" type, grabbed a walking stick, opened the front door and went round the side of the house to check what was going on. The room window was pretty much unreachable from the pavement as it was set back and behind a garden wall and a hedge of privet. Granddad soon came back inside, saying that no one was out there and that it must have been the wind blowing a branch from the garden tree onto the glass. However it was not a windy night, just a cold one.
Everyone was still pretty much alarmed at the incident and as we tried to settle down and all of us have another cup of tea, the same three knocks came again- only this time from the ceiling of the room we were in! Everyone jumped up and we all spoke at once, my sister was crying with fear and my Mum was trying to calm her down while calling to my Granddad who was in the kitchen. My Aunt spoke out and said she thought somebody must have got in behind her father's back when he first went outside. This "intruder" was now upstairs and knocking on the floor of the room up above! Granddad again got the walking stick and flew upstairs, searching everywhere, but finding nothing, no intruder and no easy explanation of the three knocks. After that things calmed down and as the adults put the events down to being "inexplicable" our Mum took us excitable kids home.
The tale would have ended there as no one ever spoke about it again. I kept my ears open though and later in the week overheard some adult conversation between my Mum and Dad. It seems that later that same strange night, after we had all gone home my Grandfather was visited by an apparition in his bedroom. He saw and heard his younger, estranged brother calling him by name. When he answered, his brother disappeared. On the following Monday morning the police called at the house to inform my Granddad that his younger brother had just died in hospital on the Saturday night previous. When my Granddad visited the hospital he was told by the nurses that his brother had been calling out for him, just before he died at 3pm on Sunday morning.
This is a true story and my personal interpretation is this. I believe in astral travel and the existence of the soul as an entity.
I propose that the knocking on the window and the later knocking through the ceiling of the room was performed by the astral body of my great uncle who was desperate to make peace with my Granddad before he died. The later visitation to my granddads bedroom happened while my great uncle was still alive and he must have been "astral travelling", knowing he was about to die and visited my granddad in order to make amends for the quarrel they had had many years before. James Eaton Jan 2011
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