Looking forward to your Grandpa's tales of terror, K-Bone.
Going back to my own...
When me & my older brother, Pete, were nippers, we shared a bedroom. One night, when we'd not been in bed long, a chap came into our bedroom. There was nothing ghostly about him, he was just an old chap, wearing a suit, rain mac and flat cap. I'd guess he was in his 60's. I was only little, and don't remember what he was saying, but as far as we were concerned, he was just a visiting relative, being very chatty and jovial like elderly relatives are on visits.
He sat on each of our beds, having a chat and acting a bit giddy.
But when we spoke about it the next day, my mum & dad thought we were making it up. They were adamant that nobody had visited.
We said we thought it was Uncle Wilf. I don't really know who Wilf was, but he was some relation of my gran's (she lived with us) and not really an uncle. He's someone who I vaguely remember meeting once or twice as a very young child, though I don't recall him making any efforts at jolliness. But that was who this man had looked like.
They were insistent that nobody had been to the house, & they hadn't seen Wilf for years. Nobody could have got in without them knowing about it, because we always had dogs that would sound the alarm when anyone approached. The front door was always locked, so anyone entering would have had to go through the kitchen & living room, where they'd definitely have been seen. Plus they'd have to come up the long drive at the front of the house, which is overlooked by the living room window.
When we were grown up, & my mum moved away, she admitted that she'd lay awake many a night, listening to various movements and banging & rattling sounds going on around the house. She reckoned my dad never seemed to hear them at all.
But, she said that years ago, before I was born, my dad had once been convinced he'd seen a bloke wandering about on our landing, who, he'd said, bore a resemblance to Uncle Wilf, though it wasn't him. Apparantly, they'd looked at each other for a few moments, then he'd just disappeared.
And another incident involving my dad, the great 'disbeliever', also only came to light after moving out. Again, before I was born, my dad had apparently come streaking downstairs in terror, because while sitting soaking in the bath, he'd suddenly been accosted by an overwhelming sensation that there was someone sitting in the bath behind him. It was a bloke with a cut throat (I think).
when I was 13, my parents announced we couldn't go on holiday because my gran was too frail to be left alone. So, for the purely selfish reason of wanting to be away from my parents for a fortnight, I offered to stay with her while the rest f the family went.
During that time, I'd helped her get into the bath one day, and told her I'd leave all the doors open so she could just shout when she was ready to get out.
I was sitting reading in the living room, and enjoying the peace & quiet, when I heard the dog growling, and looked to see what was up. (It was the excellent dog, Spike, that used to go robbing in Asda
). He was on his haunches near the living room door, looking upwards at the kitchen ceiling, and his hackles were up. As I followed his line of vision, I saw a small ball of light shoot suddenly downwards at an angle and disappear. He barked and snarled at it, but it was gone in the blink of an eye.
Then I heard a massive bang upstairs, and charged up, thinking my gran must have got out of the bath and fallen (though it seemed too loud unless she'd dragged a wardrobe or something over with her). I was panicking like mad, and Spike was at my heels.
But when I got there, she was still in the bath & hadn't heard anything. Nothing was out of place.
There was a similar bang from upstairs a few nights later when a friend was sitting in with me. It jolted us and we looked about but there was no obvious cause to be found. I told her it was the norm around that place, but she was spooked and left double quick.
The screaming from the hall happened on several occassions, and one of our neighbours was there once when it happened. It's the only time I heard him swear.
Another time, when Sue was little, she was running upstairs to the loo, and she thought one of us was chasing her to beat her to it. She said she didn't look round, and was laughing at the chase. She got there 1st, and was wrestling with the door for a bit before managing to lock it, while one of 'us' was trying to force it open. But it wasn't me or my brothers. We'd not followed her up, and were all together playing cards downstairs.
Pete once woke while sleep-walking, to find himself trying to get through a wall. He said he'd been convinced there was a door there. My mum had tried to get through the same non-existent 'door' while sleep-walking with me in her arms when I was a baby, and my dad had steered her back to bed. At some later point, my dad somehow located the blue-prints of the house, and there had actually been a door in that exact spot when it was first built in 1749.
Do you see why we refer to the place as Hell House?
The things that went on there have shaped me to some extent, because I've grown up actually knowing, without any doubt, that there are some odd things that go on which there is no plausible explanation for.
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