Chester Haunting

I have always been quite taken with the idea of the paranormal and was luckily enough to live in a haunted house for 8 years. This was a town house in chester and shortly after moving in, we got used to hearing the slamming of the front door, followed by the sound of someone running up the stairs... this, we explained by the fact that our neighbours front door and stairs were just through the wall from ours and we thought it was them, slamming their own front door and running upstairs.

However we quickly came to realize, that our neighbours consisted of a quite slow moving older lady, not given to slamming or running anywhere, and her disabled daughter who couldn't do either. But we never gave it much thought, it was "just one of those things".

Then, one evening when I was working late, my very skeptical partner, was lying in bed, not, he assured me asleep, turning over a particularly difficult work concern over and over in his mind, when he became aware of something standing next to him. On opening his eyes he caught a glimpse of a slight, small figure in white with very blond hair, slipping out of the bedroom. Our daughter was 3 or 4 at the time and had blond hair and was wearing a white nightdress that night, so my partner quickly got up, thinking she had been disturbed in her sleep and come for help, returning to her own room when she thought he was asleep. He found our little girl fast asleep. She would have only been a few paces ahead of him anyway, but she was snuggled down, as warm as toast, and quite deeply asleep.

He checked the boys, both of whom were fast asleep and it was only on returning to our room he realized that he hadn't heard the bedroom door open, it was quite heavy and dragged on the carpet when opening. So now we were a little more aware, not alarmed, but a little more watchful.

We had good friends who lived a few doors away, we held front door keys for each other and would check each others houses, putting lights on, feeding cats etc, if either of us were away from home. A year of so after the bedroom incident, a 3rd friend turned up to visit my friend of a few doors away, "Is C poorly?" she asked, enquiring after my little girl, "No, why?" asked my friend "oh I saw her looking out of her bedroom window, when I passed, she looked quite pale and didn't wave back to me" said the other friend. My friend said she went quite cold when told this and replied "but the whole family are away for the weekend, I opened the curtains and turned the lights out a couple of hours ago"... her husband was called and the 3 of them searched the house from top to bottom and, of course found nothing.

So this was how things went for the time we stayed in that house, every month or so there would be the slam of the door, and then the running footsteps, sometimes you would catch something white on the edge of your vision. Having young children, and this being in the time of negative equity, we kept quiet about it, it didn't frighten us and just became something we lived with.

Then one day I was off work, the middle boy had some childhood illness. And I'd taken the day to be with him. I had just come out of his bedroom, my arms full of dirty bed sheets. He was quite ill. And was about to walk down the stairs, the front door being at the end of the short hallway, right in front of me, when I heard the door slam, of course I looked up to see the door in its usual place, and then the running steps came up the stairs, ran right behind me and disappeared into my eldest sons bedroom. The hairs on my neck certainly prickled! And then my poorly son called to ask if that was his big brother coming home.

On another occasion when the oldest son was 15 he had a very bad bout of chicken pox and was off school, when he heard the door slam and heard the running footsteps. He knew it was too early for either I or his dad to be home and also, as the house was quiet, heard the footsteps run into his room. He phoned me at work demanding why we hadn't told him the house was haunted. He was so angry!

We moved out a couple of years after that. Due to having to relocate for employment reasons, and it was only recently that we told the younger children, who were also put out at living in a haunted house and not knowing... smiles. I can honestly say we, those of us in the house who knew about it, never felt frightened by the experience. The strangest thing was, when we moved out to suffolk, we had to take a temporary house for a few months and then moved into our own home.

On the evening of the move I was completely worn out, it was early summer and my husband said he would take the kids off for a walk while I took myself off for a bath and early bed. I was just getting into bed when I heard the front door slam and the sound of running feet, climbing stairs. I called out a "hi" to let them know I was awake still and got no reply. I realized then that I'd heard the sound of feet running up stairs. The new house was a bungalow. We never heard or saw anything in that house after that. Now my current home, built in the 1700s is quite another story...