Ghost Sisters

Copyright oggbashan October 2022

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.

(Author's Note: I try to avoid typos, but my eyesight is compromised by cancer. I use two spellcheckers and print out in large typeface before submitting but I cannot guarantee that everything is typo-free -- because I can't see them. That is particularly true of the sub-title because I am typing blindly into a box I can't really see because it is so small.)

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I have a problem. My father was a tenant farmer, but he is retiring and giving up the farm in six months' time. I was running my accountancy business from an outbuilding on the farm and still living with my parents. But I will be homeless and without office space when my parents move into a retirement flat.

I need somewhere to live and work but the new houses being built in the village are far beyond what I could afford.

I couldn't get a council house. As a single man, my needs were so poorly regarded that I couldn't even get on the council's housing list, and even if I were to be on that list, I wouldn't get anywhere until long after I had died.

Then an old abandoned house, known as the Canon's House, that had been unoccupied for decades was put up for auction. It was in a poor state, with holes in the roof, smashed windows, hidden by overgrown wisteria and the garden was a jungle. But it might be affordable for me.

I went to the building society in the town and asked what level of mortgage I could get. They looked at the auction details and told me that the most I could expect was 50% of the stated reserve price until it was habitable. then, perhaps, up to 75% of the valuation but no more.

If the house sold at the reserve price, a 50% mortgage would mean with the money I had saved with the building society I could buy it and have about £10,000 for immediate repairs.

But there was a small note in the auction catalogue:

"The house is reputed to be haunted. Any buyer is warned that the sale is conditional on the buyer understanding that any supernatural events would not void the sale."

I knew that the house was haunted. When a teenager, I like other village teenagers, had visited the house after dark, even at Halloween. We had seen the ghosts and fled from them at Halloween when they seemed far more solid than at other times. Back in the 1860s it had been occupied by two single women, sisters, who had been engaged to Army officers who had died in a shipwreck when on their way to Cyprus.

When the sisters got the news that both their fiancés were dead, they hung themselves from the banisters on the upstairs landing.

Their father had built the house in the early 19th Century on the remains of a medieval building. The foundations of the older building had still been solid, so he had built the new house on those foundations and to the same footprint. The lower part of the house was medieval stone work with brick above.

The father had died from typhoid just after his younger daughter turned 21. He had left the house to them jointly.

After their suicides their ghosts haunted the house, moving through every room except the attic servants' quarters, sometimes crying and moaning.

The house had changed hands several times in the 19th Century until an old bachelor, Silas, bought it in 1895. He wasn't worried by the ghosts because he slept in a bedroom in what had been the servants' attic where the ghosts didn't go.

By the village standards of the time he was a rich man who could have bought any house in the village but he was almost a miser. He saw the Canon's House as a bargain, and he used to say on the evenings he visited the village public house that the ghosts didn't bother him. He claimed that he would often sit in the main living room on winter evenings in front of a fire and chat to the ghosts, Anna and Emma, for hours. No one believed him.

When he died in the late 1920s his heir was a nephew who was very happy with his investments but he didn't want the Canon's House which was a small part of his estate and in a poor condition even then because Silas had spent no money on maintenance. Of pounds spent a few hundreds of pounds on basic repairs and then let it to a succession of tenants, none of whom stayed long because of the ghosts. But it remained attractive to potential tenants because the rent was so low.

The nephew died in the WW2 blitz leaving everything, including the Canon's House, to the niece, his sister.

When she died in 1955 her heir was a relation in Australia who didn't want the house but it was still tenanted. In 1960 that tenant died and the house gradually became derelict and a playground for the local children.

At the auction, the Canon's House was the final lot. The auction room had gradually emptied as the professional bidders had bought or been outbid for the properties they wanted. Apart from me, there were three other people present. One bid half the reserve price but it was obvious that he wasn't seriously interested. I outbid him by a thousand pounds and won, at less than two thirds of the reserve price. I could pay that much without a mortgage. I wrote a cheque, and subject to completion of the paperwork, I was the new owner.

Technically I was the owner from the fall of the hammer and my payment. My father and I, using his farm equipment, cleared the whole garden. When he gave up the tenancy, his farm equipment might be sold to the new tenant, or if not would go to auction. But it was useful now.

I was worried that the village children might continue to access the house even while work was in progress. But the total number of the village children was only sixteen, all going to schools in another larger village. I arranged for them to help move all the shrubs and trees we cut down to a large bonfire, and paid each of them ten pounds on the understanding that they would keep clear of the building once work started.

I used a cherry picker to strip the wisteria from the building and pile the debris to be taken to9 the bonfire.

We made the lighting of the bonfire, early one evening, as a village event with cakes, beer for the adults, soft drinks for the children, and fireworks.

The next day we put hazard tape around the site. The garden was completely bare and I was surprised at its size at over just over an acre. There were also some outbuildings.

Before I bid I had spoken to the village tradesmen about how much renovation would cost -- the roof, the windows, repointing, rewiring, re-plumbing, including two new bathrooms, a new kitchen etc. Apart from the roof and windows which needed doing urgently, all the other work could be fitted around other jobs as long as I could move in before the end of my father's tenancy.

They all gave me rough estimates because until I had bought the house we didn't know exactly how much work would be needed.

I went back to the building society and asked for a mortgage of 25% of what had been the reserve price. That was agreed and I had finance, probably more than enough, for all the work.

Two months after the paperwork had been completed and three months after my successful bid, the house was waterproof, sound, rewired, re-plumbed with new kitchen and bathrooms. All I had to do was decorate to cover up where new electrical cables and new water pipes had been installed and to change the 1940s wallpaper.

I made what had been the second parlour into my office and spent many hours catching up with my work which had been delayed by the house repairs.

On the first evening after I had moved in I was tired. I sat in the first parlour in front of a coal fire, drinking a pint of the local bitter.

I wasn't surprised when the ghosts appeared either side of me. I had expected them. I stood up, turned round and bowed to them. They executed beautiful curtsies, holding out their large skirts.

"Good evening, George," one of them said. "You're not frightened?"

"Should I be? I knew you would be here."

"I'm Anna. This is my sister Emma."

"I am pleased to meet you. Is there anything I can do for you two?"

"It's been a long time since Silas used to talk to us. The tenants preferred either to avoid us or to pretend we weren't here. Can we talk?"

"Of course. Would you like to sit down?"

They both nodded. I brought two chairs and positioned them either side of the fire. We could see each other. They sat down elegantly, more elegantly than I would have thought possible with such large skirts.

"Anna and Emma? You look far more solid that recent reports of your appearances would suggest. Any reason why?"

"Yes," Emma replied. "If people are frightened of us or worried when we are around, we try to be as invisible as we can be. We can't quite disappear, but we can seem to be little more than a shadow or glimpse out of the side of an eye -- like this."

Emma almost vanished. I could see the faint shape of a crinolined woman sitting in the chair but I couldn't see details.

"I prefer you more solid-looking, Emma." I said.

"I know you do," Emma replied.

"But how solid are you actually?" I asked.

"We don't know. Silas wouldn't have liked it if we were more than almost opaque apparitions. I think we would have frightened him if we had appeared as more than he saw, so we didn't. But..."

"But..." I prompted.

"But you, George, are not bothered by us at all, are you?"

"No. Should I be? I knew when I bought the house, and even before then as a child, that you two haunted this house, so I expected to meet you. Now I have? I'm pleased to see and talk with you."

"Anna? Shall we try?"

I didn't know what Emma meant but I saw Anna nod.

Emma stood up and walked across to me. She grasped the back of her skirt, turned her back to me, and sat on my lap. I felt the weight of an adult woman and the slither of her silken skirt across my trousers.

"I did it, Anna! I really did it!"

I was numb with shock. I had not expected a solid ghost in my lap.

Anna walked across to us and very deliberately kissed my cheek, before she stroked my hair.

"Don't worry, George," she said. "We won't harm you. But being able to interact with a live man is amazing for us."

"It is amazing and rather startling for me," I replied.

Emma pulled my hands around her waist and leant back against my shoulder.

"You may own this house, George. You also own two ghosts, or do we own you? It will be interesting to find out which way around it is. Tonight? We two are going to share your bed as solid ghosts. What we and you can do? We'll find out and enjoy the experiment."

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For the next hour I had two apparently solid ghosts perched on my knees and leaning against my shoulders. They told me why they had committed suicide, something the village had never understood.

They had been engaged to two brothers. officers in a Hampshire regiment. The brothers had been staying for a week, intending to stay for a fortnight. But on the Monday morning both fiancés had received letters, forwarded from their parents' address, requiring them to report for duty and take ship to Cyprus tomorrow, Tuesday.

They had hurriedly packed and caught a train within an hour of getting the letters. Apparently part of their regiment was being sent to Cyprus to deal with some trouble there. They both moaned that any trouble would be long over before they arrived, but they had to go -- now.

Three months' later the sisters learned that the ship their fiancés were on had been caught in a storm, had struck an uncharted rock near the Channel Islands and there had been only five survivors who, clinging to floating wreckage, had come ashore on an uninhabited islet.

The survivors had been found a week later by which time two had died.

But three months since they had last seen their fiancés, both sisters had found they were pregnant. They couldn't face the disgrace of being unmarried mothers whose potential husbands were dead so had hung themselves.

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I made ready for bed. When I walked into my bedroom, Anna and Emma, dressed in voluminous cotton nightdresses, were sitting on my bed. I was naked. Both ghosts' eyes dropped to my erection.

"Impressive," Emma said.

"But we don't just want to look at it," Anna said. "We want it."

A few minutes later I was between two sisters who seemed like real people, not ghosts. My head was surrounded by cotton covered breasts squirming over my face. I could feel erect nipples through their nightdresses which they soon shed so I could suck and nibble.

Anna, as the elder sister, claimed my erection first. She was perched on my hips pushing down as my hands massaged her breasts until Emma dropped her breast over my face and I was struggling to breathe.

I was able to hold back, mainly because I couldn't really believe that I was the victim of two ghosts. Anna went into a paroxysm of orgasms before she climbed off and let Emma take over.

But now I was in worse trouble. Anna pushed her wet pussy to cover my mouth and nose. She and Emma were rocking backwards and forwards on me. As they moved up, my mouth and nose were sealed shut by Anna's sex. I could only breathe when they moved backwards and they teased me by holding Anna in position until I was almost out of breath.

It didn't help that the sisters were giggling as I struggled to breathe.

Finally I came into Emma and they lifted themselves off to resume hugging my head in their cleavages.

"I think we have proved that we own you, George." Anna said. "Go to sleep now. We will need you later."

I went to sleep with two ghost sisters wrapped around me and my head resting on two breasts with the other breasts very close to my face.

I woke up struggling to breathe with a breast slumped across my mouth and nose. I pushed it away gently and then I was aware that a hand was stroking my renewed erection. Soon I was being squashed under Anna's pussy as Emma rode me, soon to swap and I came into Anna. Exhausted, I went back to sleep.

In the morning I had two solid ghosts pressed up against me with their heads resting on my shoulders and gently snoring.

When I moved, they woke up.

"George?" Anna said, "You haven't renewed the hall tiles yet, have you?"

"No. Why?"

The hall tiles were worn and uneven with some missing. I intended to try to get some matching ones from a reclamation yard to relay them properly but other things had been more important.

"Our father told us something just before he died. When he was building the house on the old foundations he found a small trap door in the centre of the hall. It was too small for him or any of the workmen to get through but he lowered a lantern on a rope. He had told the workmen that the void was empty and got them to put a stone flag over the trapdoor so no child would fall in. They put flagstones under the tiles for the whole hall, but the one above the trap door is marked with a Christian Cross."

"And?" I prompted.

"Our father said it wasn't empty. There was treasure down there, not gold or silver or anything that could be turned into money, but treasure that would delight an antiquary. Although we pressed him, he wouldn't give any hint of what he had seen."

"Um. That is going to be difficult for me. How can I say two ghosts told me?"

"Simple. You start to relay the tiles, find the marked stone, lift it and 'look what I've found'."

It wasn't that simple. Alan is an archaeologist friend and I suggested to him that there might be a void under the hall. He and I carefully removed the tiles one evening after the workmen had finished for the day. We found the marked stone and I suggested, because it was marked, there might be something underneath. We lifted it carefully.

Alan was expecting something like a child burial but there was the trap door. He tried to lift it but it was so rotten that it came apart in his hands with some of it falling into the cellar with a crash that made us jump.

I could see out of the corner of my eye that the two ghost sisters, almost invisible, were trying to see what we had found.

Alan put a string on a small torch and lowered it. We could see wooden racking on all four walls with two archways to further spaces. He pulled the torch back up and sat back on his heels.

"George? We have work for months. I need to get a team here, check for noxious gases or foul air, and gradually, very gradually, examine the contents. I think what is visible is a library but of very old books. Even one book could change our knowledge of the local history. But there are hundreds. They could be invaluable for medieval research."

"Medieval, Alan?"

"I think so, George. We won't know until we get someone down there. At present that could be dangerous or even fatal. We will have to act very, very carefully indeed."

We put the marked stone back. Alan would speak to the portable finds officer and the archaeology professor at the local university.

That night the sisters were even more demanding. They were excited that the cellar had been opened but disappointed that they were only books.

"Only books?" I objected. "There are possibly more medieval books down there than in the archives of all the museums in England. Who knows what we might find?"

I was excited even if the sisters weren't. But they rode me so passionately that it was late morning when I was woken up by the workmen hammering away somewhere.

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It was three months before Alan could arrange a team to investigate properly. In the meantime the two ghost sisters were using me every night. I was becoming fitter from all the nocturnal exercise and had lost seven pounds.

Carefully Alan and his team enlarged the area around the trap door. They lowered a gas monitor and found that almost the whole was full of carbon monoxide. Although that was a problem, they were excited because the presence of the gas probably meant that everything would have been preserved.

It seemed a long time before Kay, an archaeology student, wearing breathing apparatus, entered the cellar. She took a video camera and a still camera and spent at least an hour recording everything before she had to come up again and another student, also wearing breathing apparatus, went down to remove a couple of items. She took a couple of airtight plastic boxes and put the first two books on the shelves in them.

Alan and his team had assembled a gas tight cabinet into which the first box was placed. Using the attached rubber gloves, Alan carefully opened the first box, took out the book. He examined the title which was unreadable, and turned to the title page.

Everyone crowded around to see. The two ghosts stayed back.

The book was an index to all the books in the library, about 700 of them. The volume was fairly slim, about 25 entries per page, double sided, and obviously well used.

Inside the front cover was a loose manuscript page, hurriedly scrawled, unlike the precise script in the book.

It said when translated from Latin: "This library and the relics were moved here from the main abbey when Henry VIII's commissioners were coming to close us down. This house was occupied by one of the King's courtiers who was unaware that these cellars existed. The access had been under a table tomb in a chantry chapel. The side of the tomb could be moved to allow access to a tunnel. When everything is here, we will seal the base of that tomb and make it look as if has always been solid. We were doing some work to repair the hallway of the Canon's House, so our final exit will be through there and we will cover the hall with heavy oak floorboards above the trap door. We hope to retrieve everything if and when we can return to the Abbey."