This story happened when I was about 7 I'm now 43 and still puzzled over what happened. What makes this more puzzling was that it happened to 3 kids me 7 years old, my brother Allen 6 years old, also my cousin Keith 8 years old,
Ok here goes
We lived in a small 4 bedroom house with a closet under the stairs nothing unusual about that the closet would narrow as it comes to the bottom of the stairs so not really much storage space at all. All our family and my cousins family were in the house all the kids were playing hide and seek me, Allen and Keith went to hide under the stairs, we ran in to the closet under the stairs but this time there was a stairway leading further down into the ground what was strange was it was made with really old stones and there was flickering light coming from bellow we started to go down the stairs Allen first then me and then Keith behind me. As we got further down the light was getting brighter and we realized it was lights from a fire at this time. We were all getting scared I was pushing Allen to continue down and me and Keith followed him until we could see a great fire in the middle of a room with a cauldron on top of it. We heard only sounds from the fire no other sounds and we kept slowly walking down the stairs and then I saw what looked like a 3 pronged fork coming up from behind and over to the right of the cauldron as if it was being put up into the air that's when I saw the arm holding the 3 pronged fork that was enough for all of us we ran upstairs and out of the closet very upset in what we had seen and we didn't really talk about it
We all eventually told our parents what had happened and they just laughed it off
Over the years I have spoken to Keith about what happened he basically says the same as me he still wonders about it himself but Allen doesn't say a lot about it. On speaking to him recently he says "all I will say to you pat is that it happened but I don't want to talk about it and if you tell anyone about the story and I was involved I will deny it".
I often wonder what Allen saw as he was down 3 or 4 more steps than me and Keith he must have seen a lot more. I still wonder today what I saw and how one day we went into that closet and there was another stairway leading elsewhere.
If anyone has any ideas what it could be please let me know as I'm interested
'Stankards' refers to a number of ponds or 'stanks' which were part of the farm (more a small holding), it was originally part of Houstoun House estate and I believe had several holdings within the area. These though were more akin to crofts which wouldn't traditionally have had 'cellars'. It may be possible that prior to the land being used as holdings there was other buildings on the land. I know for certain that where the newer 'Old folks home' is situated there was a castle believe it or not, similar in design to Niddrie Castle in Winchburgh which dated to around 1100 AD. Whether there may have been out buildings associated to the Castle built around the area where the housing now stands I don't know, but I guess it's entirely possible.