After leaving 74 we ended up moving into a small two bedroom pokey little bungalow on the outskirts of the village, me and my sister were completely confused as it was a considerable downsize and we would have to go back to sharing a bedroom which as you can imagine did not go down well. Lil was in her early teens and i was eighteen so we were at odds at the best of times but throw into that mix the little sod stealing my clothes and make up continuously all hell would break loose on a weekly basis. This house would prove to be one of the less active places we lived in and nothing happened for the first few weeks after moving. I was still struggling horribly with my mental health and had stopped going and meeting with friends for a while, i didn’t want to drag people down with my low moods but isolating myself did not help at all. There was a lot of tension at home and we were all under each others feet given the tiny space we had to share so my only viable option for escape and quiet time were in the garden or cooped up in my bedroom.
One early evening i had done just that, shutting myself away i had been doing some artwork and after growing tired of that our naughty dog Louis roused himself from his sleep on my bed and started nose prodding at me to play. I sat on my bed which was against the wall and was throwing a bright pink ball up in the air for him to catch before wrestling it off of him, nipped fingers and all and repeating it again. It was about the size of a tennis ball, it was his favourite and he had a thing for bright pink toys which has always made me question whether dogs are really colourblind. You could line up identical balls in a range of colours and time and time again he would choose the luminous pink one. After a few minutes of doing this i threw it in the air, Lou by my side was poised and watching like a hawk waiting for it to descend low enough he could jump up and retrieve it in his mouth when inexplicably it poof..vanished a few feet above us.
I would have thought i was going stark raving mad if it hadn’t been for the dog sat beside me looking up still patiently waiting for it to come down. After a few seconds he looked at my hands thinking i had somehow tricked him and had it hidden but i opened them to show him they were empty. I was confused but tried to rationalise it any way i could, it may have landed on top of the wardrobe next to my bed or fallen between the two so i jumped up to fetch a chair from the dining room a mere eight foot away and came back. Louis by this point being impatient and wanting his favourite ball back had started pulling up my quilt and pillows with his paws and though i was certain in my heart it had not gone on top of the wardrobe i climbed up on wobbly legs and had a look. My initial thoughts were confirmed it was no where to be seen and knowing that the wardrobe was pushed up against the wall there was no way it was rolling behind it. I scanned the small gap between the two pieces of furniture and it was not there either.
Louis in this time had grown bored of the mysterious shenanigans and cleared off into the living room to entertain himself with something else. I was climbing down from the chair when i saw him through the open door running back towards my room with something in his mouth….. I shit you not it was the pink ball. I stood there hands on my hips and a frown etched deep into my brow wondering what level of fuckery all this had just risen to all the while the dog is back on my bed mauling his ball like a hyena at a carcass ready to go again. I wish i could tell you that i have an explanation but i don’t. Was it a glitch in the matrix kind of event? Was it that elusive moment when a spirit moves an object to another place within the home and i just happened to witness it in real time? I will let you guess in the comment section because i am stumped.
A few weeks later i was at a real low point emotionally and mentally, i was living in my pyjamas eating nothing more than mash potato and gravy, copious amounts of cheese and cake! I hadn’t shaved my legs in several weeks or washed my hair in four days. It was not a high point in my life and sadly would go on for a couple of years. I remember crawling into bed one night my sister on the other side of the room was sound asleep already and i lay there awake staring at the ceiling with a thousand and one thoughts racing through my head, swirling in a tornado of nonsense, pain and pessimism. I will be honest i was thinking incredibly dark thoughts. I do not want this blog to be a self pity party and i don’t want people to leave my page thinking Jesus she is a Debbie downer but my thoughts had turned to ending it all. Judge away… it is what it is and i am in a good place now but it was hard. I felt like i had been tossed out to sea and was drowning in my own sadness. At some point my eyes grew heavy and i started to nod off and the feelings, disturbing thoughts and memories grew quiet for a few minutes.
Then i felt a hand stroke my hair and cold lips softly kiss my forehead, my eyes shot open as i wondered what in the hell my sister was doing creepily kissing me in the night and scanned the room….she was fast asleep. At first i was alarmed at the intrusion but a deep sense of calm washed over me and i knew in that moment someone recognised how i was feeling and tried to comfort me. I know many will think it quite possibly was a dream and yes it could have been, but i also know some people will have awoken from something in the darkness knowing that what they had just experienced was not a dream at all. Your gut registers something different like after a match has burned out and you can still smell that distinctive sulphur scent. Even if it had been purely a dream it brought with it a feeling of peace and that everything would be OK after the storm had passed. I do not know who had kissed me but i thank them for that one simple action that gave me a bit of light in a long dark night.
The next significant event that occurred in this house was not experienced by me but by my sister and my mum. Lil had awoken one night in the early hours to use the bathroom and left the door open while she did her business, still half asleep she looked up to see a small girl with dark hair and old fashioned clothes stood in the darkened living room staring at her, she said she was as solid as you or i and after a few seconds she simply vanished. Mentioning it to mum the next morning they agreed they had figured out where she had come from. We are a simple family and a good day out for us is going to a car boot sale and finding bargains. Mum used to go most weekends during the warm months with her then boyfriend Colin to the large car boots around the county we lived in. One day ( roughly a week before this happened) she came home with a white wicker chair and they thought that this particular apparition was somehow attached to this piece of furniture. I have other thoughts about that but i will get into that at the end. Several nights later mum had woken up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and she explained to us the next day how she switched on the light and made her way down the hallway she brushed away from her eyes what she described as thick spiders webs, she said that she wafted this stringy like vapour out of her face several times before reaching the bathroom and becoming a bit more alert. It was only then she thought that maybe it was not random webs dangling in her face as she had initially thought as she had to tried to wipe whatever it was from her vision the whole length of the hall. On returning to her room she scoured the hallway ceiling looking for the offending dangling strings of web but couldn’t find any. Putting the two events together they were convinced it had been the same spirit trying to get their attention in different ways.
I have no doubt that both of them experienced something strange over that three day period but i now believe that the spirit was not attached to the chair but had followed us from number 74. When i first went for a reading with who would turn out to be my teacher she had mentioned about a couple of spirits who had attached themselves to me and had followed us to our new house, one was Simong and the other was a little girl. Now me and Lil knew that there were children in the house, she had heard their voices and i had felt the little waist height fingers prodding me in the ribs. Even thought the previous house had been ominous and heavy with sinister vibes it also had it’s bursts of childlike energy that anyone who has experience with child spirits will understand where i am coming from. So that is my theory on the little girl and she is still with me to this day. Strangely enough as i write this out now there is some knocking sounds coming from the cupboard doors behind me…
Photo by Ruvim Noga on Unsplash
The spirit in my shadow 