My Haunted Childhood

This is my first story that I've written here. It's about the house I used to live in as an only child with my parents from the age of 2 - 13. During this time, I had a number of weird and wonderful experiences, a lot of which I still talk about today.

My parents and I moved into a converted stables (by which I mean, it was already converted from the stables but not up to a standard that you could raise a child in) - and over a year or so, they refurbished it. It was beautiful, large and high-ceilinged but still retained the feel of a stables or a barn upstairs with the parts of the roof that were sloped still kept in and the old, heavy windows that had been there since the previous owners converted it. Little did we know that the previous owners hadn't left.

It was when I was around 2 years old that my mother noticed that I would baby-talk to a certain corner of my room. This was in what we later called the 'spare room' next to the room I would eventually move into when I was around 4 - right at the end of the long corridor leading to both bedrooms. I seemed very happy and giggly whilst having these 'conversations' and she did later reveal to me that it may have been her late brother who was talking to me. We tragically lost him while she was pregnant with me.

It was around the time of these conversations that both my parents would wake up in the mornings to glorious classical music, only for it to fade when they became fully awake. After experiencing this for some weeks, my mother asked my father if he had heard anything - he was shocked and relieved that she had heard it too and they both gushed about how beautiful the music was. This was also the same time where I was said to walk around the home singing at the top of my voice in Italian. My parents never taught me this language, nor did I learn any language at school until I was at least 7 - I just picked up a few words of Spanish here and there from our holidays! I believe as a child, I was hugely perceptive, as most children are and I feel that I was picking up on entities in the house and perhaps 'copying' them.

My grandma also used to tell me the story before she passed off when I scared her witless when I was 4 or 5. I was sitting opposite her at the kitchen table eating what she had made for me, when I suddenly looked up and asked, 'Who is that man behind you, grandma?' She always said her skin turned to ice and she didn't even want to turn around! However, she did and nothing was there - she just put on a brave face and continued with her crossword!

Frequently, strange things would happen in the house that I always put down to my own body being slightly weird. For example, I just assumed that everyone always had goose bumps running from the very tip of their head, right down to their toes. I had that more times than I care to count at that house and never experienced it after we moved. I do wish that I could feel it again though; it wasn't an unpleasant feeling, just very, 'Wow! What's this?!' - If that makes sense!

I now put this down to the spirit walking through me or touching me. I never felt threatened when this happened, it could happen whenever and wherever in the house. We also had two cats when I was around 10 who would come into our living room, hiss, get their heckles up completely and then run away. Also when we first moved in, my mother would find her magazines she had just bought put in the trash can (which bearing in mind was 5 feet tall and outside which a 2 year old could not reach and my father was at work). I should also mention we had CCTV cameras that didn't work fixed up to deter burglars (as we had had a scare before) so it was very unlikely that someone took them. When my mother was in the house on her own, she always locked all the doors and windows because I was so young.

I'll tell you a bit more about the spirit we had in our house. To cut a long-winded story short - we were being haunted by our next-door neighbour's grandfather. The reason we know this is because one day, when I was about 5, my mother was drying my hair for me in front of a long mirror in my parents' bedroom. She said she looked up, saw a man in the mirror standing in the doorway (who looked very much like Mussolini - but wasn't! Just to give you a description). She looked down, without feeling threatened, just a bit confused, looked up again and he was gone. She has always said he didn't look scary, he was just watching us. After this, my parents were invited over to our next-door neighbour's house which was attached to ours (a semi-detached house with a courtyard separating them in the middle). They were a lovely older couple with two grandchildren and a very happy life. There were many family pictures in their hallway, which my mother immediately looked at as she was very interested in their lives - they had travelled extensively. Among these photos was a very old picture of the man she had seen behind her in the mirror. She was obviously very shocked and then went on to find out exactly who he was and she told them that she had seen him. They then told her that he used to live in our house and died of a heart attack at the start of the corridor that lead down to my bedroom. At the time, my parents didn't tell me about this; it was only after we moved that they relayed all this information to me to clarify what I had been experiencing. Some friends of my mother's also reported seeing this man walking into our front door.

The exact place where he died could, in my opinion, be felt. It was between the airing cupboard and the small spare room where we kept photos etc. I never liked that little spare room and neither did many of my friends. Before I knew all this, I used to dream of someone being at the end of that corridor, right where he would have died. It was usually a man but sometimes a little girl. I don't think this is hugely significant to the haunting but it could explain why I felt so uncomfortable there and like something was always watching you, but not in a nice way. I do not believe that this was the man who died; I believe it was something else. Luckily this 'something else' didn't make itself a burden.

When I was around 8 or 9, my parents looked at selling the house and moving somewhere else. I'm not sure why, but I know it wasn't anything to do with the spirit as they have both told me since that they were quite happy to live with him. However, one day, I was carted off to my grandparents' house suddenly after school while my parents 'sorted out the house.' This sorting out of the house turned out to be clearing up the flood that had started in the kitchen thanks to rags (from beside the sink) being put in the plugholes and the taps being turned on. As I stated earlier, all the doors would have been locked as my parents had been out at the time and there was absolutely no one who had keys and no evidence of forced entry. We have always thought that our spirit did this to tell us he didn't want us to move as later, real estate brochures were chucked in the trash whilst everyone was out. We would just find them resting on top of the rubbish already in the trash can.

I remember being in the living room downstairs when I was about 13 (which was directly under my room) and hearing someone walk into my room (as it was an old house, we could hear the floorboards creak and I can still remember the order of them even though I haven't lived there for ten years!). I was with my friend at the time and I remember thinking, why is my mum going into my room?! (As a normal teenager would think!). It turned out she hasn't been anywhere near my room in the last two hours. This also reminds me of the time someone came to fix the house alarm when I was very little and he actually refused to finish the job because he could hear someone walking around upstairs very clearly when everyone else was downstairs (they physically had to be, otherwise the alarm re-setting wouldn't work).

The most memorable event happened when I was about 10 years old, which I still remember as if it was yesterday. My two friends and I were in 'that' corridor playing with toys we hadn't touched in years so we were sitting there just having a great time. All of a sudden out of nowhere, we hear this huge growl. We didn't have any pets at this point, apart from two cats that were both outside - as they were never in around the daylight hours. In any case, cats do not growl like that. It sounded like someone was growling at us from a height from behind, but there was no one there. Being the eldest, I tried to pass it off as a burp to try to not scare my friends! It didn't work whatsoever and we ended up running screaming downstairs to the adults who denied anything being wrong. My hairs on the back of my neck were standing up like they did when I was 'walked through' as I like to call it, and I will never forget that sound.

The last encounter happened one night when it was raining very heavily and storming outside. I had woken up needing to use the bathroom, so I walked down the corridor very sleepily. I remember hearing the thunder and holding onto the wall next to me to make sure I didn't stumble as I hadn't bothered to turn the lights on. At the moment when I reached the end of the corridor, a very definite finger tapped on my head twice. I have never forgotten it. It was so icy cold, it woke me up from my daze and I thought there was a leak where I was standing because of the rain. This theory was later disproved by my parents - there was no leak in the first place and there couldn't have been because of the positioning of the insulated loft over this particular spot in the corridor. At the time, I daren't have turned around so just put it down to a leak. I now know the spirit was playing around with me!

I also had my stereo set off in my room, toys would be neatly placed in their homes only to be in other places when I got back, and my computer always used to 'click' loudly when I was going to sleep - never in the day. It was a computer I rarely used and I understand from talking to various people that computers sometimes 'click' and make noises after being turned off and used regularly. However, it was hardly ever in use at all.

I never felt threatened by this man, nor by the other darker thing that obviously lurked around the little spare room. This darkness could have been down to his untimely death just outside this room and I feel perhaps the energy was still there from his fear. In any case, I reckon if there was anything bad there, he took care of it for us as looking back on these experiences, I think he was just a very playful spirit having some fun with a family of three.

As my parents split up when I was 13 (this being the reason we had to move), the activity seemed to stop from what I can gather. I think he recognized that we were going through a very hard time, and my grandfather had to go into a nursing home around this time too. So I think he left us alone for a while. However, shortly before we moved, I was trying to get to sleep one night and heard mumbled talking in the room next door (this was the same room where I used to baby-talk to someone) - my mother was staying in it at the time because of the separation. At the time, I thought my Dad was speaking to her and I had previously heard a few footsteps quietly walking up the corridor. I definitely heard two voices and felt rather uncomfortable that my parents were having this obviously very personal chat so late at night. I spoke to my mother about it and she said Dad hadn't been anywhere near her room. I was a bit skeptical at first as I knew I was young and she was trying to protect me from all the rough times. However, I asked her when we had moved out and when I was around 15-16 and she still maintained there was no one there with her. She is a very sensitive person and believes in the supernatural very much. I think the spirit was just letting us know that he was there and perhaps replaying a conversation. Maybe even trying to talk to my mother to let her know it was okay. It sounded comforting and not an aggressive conversation at all.

I hope you enjoyed my story and if you've got this far, thanks so much for reading! I enjoy reading other people's stories and gaining more insight into all these different experiences. I feel grateful for what I experienced even if I wasn't lucky enough to see him outright. I am glad he chose to play with us and keep us on our toes - even if it was a bit scary sometimes! Nothing bad ever happened to me and I'm glad I got to have those experiences with a spirit who obviously didn't want to hurt us - but maybe just scare us once in a while!