The Ghosts Made Us Do It

Finally came the incident when we could no longer pretend that our house was a normal house in the suburbs of Essex. The five of us had been out for the day and came back late in the evening to find every door and window in the house wide open, even the garage. Every light was on, and both televisions, some radios and the stereo were blaring at full volume. There was no sign of a break in, and in any case what burglars would break into a house, open every door and window and turn on all the lights and appliances before departing not taking a single thing?

During the months that followed, we were subjected to one paranormal event after another. It was scary for all of us to catch ill-defined shadowy human-like forms out of the corner of our eyes on numerous occasions, never more than a fleeting glance lasting a second but enough to scare us. In many ways seeing these shadowy forms was more frightening than seeing a clearly defined ghost.

I was the only one who saw what might be defined as an actual ghost, although doubts lingered about what I saw. One night I awoke around three to the now familiar but still scary sound of footsteps in the hallway and for some reason was compelled to go to my bedroom window. It was raining heavily outside and standing in the rain under a street light was a man. The bespectacled middle-aged man looked remarkably like the Prime Minister John Major and was attired in a suit and tie, but he stood without an umbrella getting drenched in the deluge staring at our house, not moving an inch. I turned away, then looked back and still the man was standing there, still staring at our house. I turned away again, and looked back, but this time the mysterious man was gone. I never saw him again, and while he did not look like a traditional 'ghost', why would a man in a suit and tie be standing in the pouring rain staring at our house in the middle of the night, before vanishing completely?

The ghosts or poltergeist or whatever was in our house kept up their attack on us with the usual antics; the footsteps, the eerie rapping sounds on doors and windows in the hours of darkness, furniture and objects being out of place, and strange phone calls in the middle of the night, causing the telephone to ring but nothing there when it was answered, or eerie static on the answering machine when we did not answer one of these strange calls. The house would be very cold, inexplicably warm up, then within seconds go back to being icy cold, all regardless of the weather outside.

The stereo, radios and televisions would come on at will as would other appliances and the VCR would record in the middle of the night despite not having been programmed to do so. A grandmother clock that stood in the living room would chime at odd times in the night, sounding as loud as Big Ben. Lights would go on and off without people touching them and one time the refrigerator was turned off on its own, ruining the food within given the weather was hot that day. The ghost or ghosts also began to take an interest in Dad and Leah's cars, once inexplicably removing a full tank of petrol from Dad's car and another morning the engine of Leah's car was warm, despite not her or anyone else driving it for hours.

Visitors' cars could also be a target. Moses came to collect Poppy and Jacob for a day's outing one Sunday, and when he tried to start his car it had been completely drained of petrol. There was no evidence of anyone fooling around the petrol cap to syphon fuel, and while it was not unlike absent-minded Moses to run low on fuel, on this occasion he had filled up his tank on the way around, and had the receipt to prove it.

Simon came to visit us on leave, and we found his car with four completely flat tyres, with the spare also drained of air. Again, possibly it could have been kids but if vandals were responsible, they probably would have slashed the tyres, not taken off the valve caps, let the tyres down then replaced the caps, before breaking into the car leaving no evidence of having done this to let down the spare tyre too? And the car had been left for just five minutes, not long enough to pull off this remarkable feat.

Desperate for answers to our problems but not wanting to make them public fearing ridicule or publicity if the media heard about our house, Dad, Leah and I did some research. I looked at books about ghosts and the paranormal, and we determined that probably we had a poltergeist problem. But this theory had some major flaws, the books stating that most poltergeist hauntings lasted only about six weeks and were connected with a person rather than a building. This didn't seem to be the case with our house.

Adding to the mystery, our house did not seem to be a likely target for haunting. It had only been built in 1981 and just a decade old. Dad and Leah were just the third owners of the dwelling, the first owners living there from 1981-1984, and the second owners 1984-1991, so it wasn't like people were coming and going quickly due to odd happenings at the property.

Nothing bad had ever happened at the house such as a murder, suicide or a nasty death from an accident or illness. When Dad and Leah purchased the house it was for a normal market price, it wasn't abnormally cheap and too good to be true.

None of us had done anything that might account for the strange happenings, such as holding a séance with an Ouija board. In one of the books about the paranormal I read it mentioned that some people had experienced problems when antiques and second hand furniture were purchased and brought into their homes, but we had made no such purchases. The mystery of how we came to be living in a house with more ghosts than Borley Rectory, the Tower of London or Scotland's Glamis Castle remained.

Simon and Moses, like Dad, Leah and I had no belief in the supernatural before we moved to this house, but with both observing strange things when here, not least having their cars messed around with, they were not so sure now. However, both of them put forward sensible, Earth-bound suggestions for the cause of the phenomena.

Simon suggested that perhaps there was a problem with the house's ventilation, and that carbon monoxide leaks might be affecting us. Moses suggested that the house might have a mold problem, and recounted how the family of a woman he knew had weird experiences with a council house they moved into, and it turned out that toxic mold was causing them ill health and associated delusions.

We had the house checked by professionals for problems with carbon monoxide and mold, and neither were apparent. Thorough checks were also done on the electrics, the plumbing, the structure itself and for pests, to eliminate the possibility that mice and rats were responsible for at least some of the strange noises at night. No problems of any description were found. The house was perfect, apart from the small matter of it being haunted.

Selling the house and moving was mooted on several occasions, but there were some problems with this course of action. Property prices had fallen sharply during the recession, and we could not hope to get anywhere near the same price the house was purchased for. A loss on the sale would not leave us destitute, but it would be a significant blow to the family finances.

A second factor was that selling a house was difficult enough anyway in the current economic slump. With our house would the ghosts or poltergeists cooperate and stay out of the way while buyers were shown around by the real estate agents? From what we had seen, probably not.

Thirdly and most significantly, in summer 1991 the five of us went on a long weekend trip to France, catching the ferry at Dover and staying two nights in a nice little hotel in the French countryside. A nice little French hotel that had all the comforts of home, including footsteps, eerie knocking on the windows and doors, plumbing with weird quirks and shadow-like figures one could only catch out of the corner of one's eye.

So unless in some amazing coincidence that we stayed in a hotel in France that had exactly the same type of haunting as our house back in England, then the conclusion was pretty obvious. Whatever was in our house had followed us to France. And if the ghosts in our house could accompany us on a short break to Europe, they could just as easily follow us to our new home.

By May 1992, Poppy and I were aged 18 and Jacob 16, and the three of us along with Dad and Leah were trying to live a normal life in a house that looked normal but was anything but. Dad and Leah attended work, Poppy and I had finished school and were now in the same business college and working part time, while Jacob was still at high school and also had a part time job, much of his spare time taken up with football commitments. We tried to appear a normal family and that nothing extraordinary was going on in our lives, but this was just a masquerade.

Dad, Leah and I while at times afraid of the supernatural happenings in our house, tended to get more frustrated and annoyed by them. Not to mention embarrassed how we all looked like fools given how we had all firmly stated that ghosts did not exist and now we lived in a haunted house.

The youngest Jacob was least affected. Sometimes he was annoyed by ghostly interference to his homework or moving his stuff around, but the ghosts bothered him least and given his comedic nature, he found some of the stuff going on amusing and cool, and something of a novelty.

Unfortunately, the ghosts seemed to save their most dastardly acts for Poppy. As the most naïve, highly strung and sensitive member of the family, the spirits residing in our house saw her as an easy target and were not disappointed, distressing, humiliating and terrifying her at every turn.

Alone among the family, Poppy was the only one to have claimed any physical touches from the entities. These included tugging on her hair, an invisible hand stopping her on the stairs one evening, awakening in the night to something touching her bare feet, having her bra strap snapped and the hem of her skirt getting lifted up of its own accord. It caused the poor girl no end of stress, and unfortunately was just the tip of a very large iceberg.

One morning not long after her 18th birthday, Poppy awoke and could not find any of her knickers aside from the ones she was wearing. Her clean knickers in her underwear drawer and her worn knickers in her dirty clothes hamper were nowhere to be found inside the house. However, the mystery of Poppy's vanishing panties was soon solved, all of Poppy's knickers were located in the front garden, much to my stepsister's embarrassment and dismay. Some teenage boys watched with great interest as the attractive Poppy collected her panties and took them inside, humiliating her further.

Stealing Poppy's panties was only one incident and far from the worst. One time Poppy had run herself a bath, went to get something from her room, then come back to find the tub had been completely drained. Other times the water in the shower would turn icy cold when Poppy was using it, then go back to normal within seconds. Worse still was the supernatural harassment Poppy frequently suffered when she went to the toilet.

Several times, Poppy was sitting on the loo with her knickers around her ankles when the closed and locked bathroom door would swing open, Leah having to close it and stand guard outside so her daughter could have some privacy on the toilet. On another night, something invisible flushed the toilet while Poppy was sitting on it, leaving the distraught Poppy in tears and with a wet bum.

Other times Poppy had the light turned off while she was using the toilet, forcing the distraught girl to feel around in the darkness for some toilet paper. Given that Jacob had on occasion pranked his older sister by turning the light off on her when she went to the bathroom, he was considered a suspect. However, in the new house the bathroom light was inside the bathroom while at the old one it was outside the bathroom door, so Jacob could not be responsible, and in any case this had happened when Jacob was not even home.

Poppy had complained to her mother that on several occasions toilet paper had been snatched from her fingers by invisible hands in the bathroom when she was trying to wipe her bottom. Worse was one morning when Poppy awoke needing to use the loo but could find no toilet paper in either the main bathroom or the ensuite bathroom, nor any in the storage cupboard where it should have been. Poppy got some tissues to use as her toilet paper, but when she had been to the toilet, returned from the loo ten minutes later and entered her bedroom, every missing toilet roll was now on her bed, freaking out and frustrating her in equal measure.

The ghosts seemed determined to prove that they were able play even more spectacular toilet pranks on her at will. Another morning Poppy had eaten something that didn't quite agree with her stomach causing her to have diarrhea and she was obviously desperate to go to the loo, but both bathroom doors were closed and locked tight, and nothing we could do would get them open. Poppy had no alternative but to use a bucket to go to the toilet, but when she finished the bathroom doors opened with no fuss.

Poor Poppy knew no privacy in the house, and the ghosts never gave her a break even when it was her time of the month. Poppy had always had really bad girls' problems with menstrual cramps and a heavy flow so she did not need any additional things to deal with when she had her period, but the mean-spirited ghosts clearly had other ideas.

One morning when she was menstruating Poppy awoke needing a change of pad, but to her horror her sanitary napkins had completely vanished. Going to her mother, Leah found her own pads and tampons missing too. Leah solved Poppy's problem by giving her daughter a clean washcloth and some safety pins so she could attach the cloth to her knickers and this could substitute until Poppy could buy some new pads. Going to the garage to drive to the shops to make these purchases, Leah and Poppy were struck dumb with surprise to find their missing feminine hygiene products in a neat row on the roof of Leah's car, with no rational explanation as to how they got there.

Poppy was obviously too scared to be in the house alone especially at night, but the last weekend in May - a long weekend in England - would see a reduced number of people in the house, which added to her apprehension. Dad and Leah were going away to Devon for the weekend with Dad's brother and his wife, the two couples enjoying a nice break by the seaside in Torquay.

Jacob and his class year group were going away on a school camp to Blackpool for eight days. Jacob's class were leaving on the Friday before the long weekend, while Dad and Leah were taking the Friday off so they had three full days down in Devon. This of course meant that Poppy and I would be together on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, until Dad and Leah returned late on Monday afternoon.

Jacob would not be back until next Friday, and was keen to frighten his older sister as much as he could before he departed. "So Poppy, what are you going to do when Brett goes out with his mates and leaves you alone in the house at night?" he asked as we were in the kitchen on Friday morning.

"Jacob, please don't tease me," Poppy protested meekly. "You know what Mum and Warren said about not frightening me."

"I don't think you need to worry about being alone in the house at night, Poppy," asserted her younger brother. "You have to worry about not being alone in this house at night."

Jacob laughed an evil laugh like a pantomime villain and made ghost noises, achieving his aim of scaring Poppy easily, the teenager squirming in her seat in terror. She looked at me with a pleading look in her big brown eyes. "Brett, please promise me you won't leave me alone in the house over the weekend?"

"It's okay Poppy, I won't leave you alone," I promised my stepsister.

"Hopefully the ghosts won't bother you while you're sitting on the loo like they usually do," smirked Jacob. "Although I have to say they are braver than me, imagine going into the bathroom while you're on the toilet, Poppy. Phew!" Jacob flapped his hand under is nose as though banishing a bad smell and laughed.

"Jacob!" Poppy exclaimed, her face red with fear, embarrassment and indignation.

Jacob checked his watch. "Well, I'd better be going. I'll see you next week. Have fun this weekend Poppy, you and Brett and the poltergeists sharing a dark, scary house."

"Jacob!" the frightened Poppy protested, as her brother left the room carrying his things.

"Bye Mum, bye Warren, see you next week," Poppy and I heard Jacob say as he made for the front door.

"Jacob, have you been teasing your sister about ghosts again?" came Leah's voice.

Jacob's reply contained his mock innocence as he departed the house. "What? Me? Teasing sister? However could one think such a thing of one's own son, Mother?"

"Day one of eight Jacob free days," Leah sighed in relief as she came into the kitchen.

Dad laughed. "Unless Jacob messes around at camp and you have to drive up to Blackpool and collect him, Leah."

Leah also laughed. "I think you meant to say that you'll have to drive up to Blackpool and collect him, Warren."

"Mum, do you and Warren really have to go away this weekend?" Poppy protested, her big brown eyes wide and fearful. "Things have been really bad lately. I'm scared something else will happen."

"Poppy, don't worry you'll be fine," Leah tried to assure her nervous daughter.

"You won't be on your own in the house Poppy," Dad said. "Brett will be here the whole time, he won't leave you alone. Right son?"

"Right Dad," I said. I turned to my stepsister. "Poppy, I promise I won't leave you alone in the house this weekend. After we've been to college today, we'll get a pizza and hire a video on the way home, we'll have a good time and you won't need to be scared of anything."

Poppy did not seem all that convinced and still looked scared as her Mum and my Dad took their things out to the car and departed for Devon.

"Cheer up Poppy," I tried to reassure Poppy as my stepsister looked around the house with her fearful brown eyes, waiting for something weird to happen. "Remember what happened when we went to France that time, and how the ghosts came with us? Perhaps the ghosts will feel like a long weekend down in Devon and will go with your Mum and my Dad? Or maybe they might like a week by the seaside up North and will follow Jacob to Blackpool?"

"No, they will stay here because I'm here and they always pick on me most," Poppy lamented.

Before I could put any counter argument to Poppy to try and make her feel better, there came an eerie sound from the staircase. It was a sound we were well used to, but despite its familiarity, it was still scary. It was the footsteps slowly descending the stairs, one step at a time as in slow motion, the sound echoing in the quiet house like the sounds in the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. And Poppy and I were the only ones in the house.

Poppy looked fearful to the point where she was about to cry. I hastily grabbed our things for college. "Come on Poppy, let's get out of here. Nothing bad will happen to us when we're in class."

I ushered the terrified teenager towards the front door, closing and locking it behind myself. Although it probably would be a waste of time, the ghosts or poltergeists could open any door or window they bloody well chose, they had proven this plenty of times in the past.

Poppy and I walked towards the bus stop, with me looking at the early morning sun and removing my stone washed denim jacket and carrying it under my arm, leaving me wearing a white tee-shirt, stone washed denim jeans and white running shoes. I glanced to one side at my stepsister. Poppy looked cute today, wearing a navy blue jumper, a navy blue pleated skirt that came down to just above her knees and her feet clad in white ankle socks and white sneakers. Her long dark brown hair was loose, but she had styled it with a blue bow.