Real lives
Swear words in the carpet pile and moving furniture — what was going on in our new home?
The old cottage with the neat front garden seemed the ideal home for my four lively boys.
‘It looks perfect,’ I said to my husband, Alec, as we walked up the path.
We weren’t moving far, but because this house in Barnstaple, Devon, was on the edge of town, it felt more remote.
On the day we moved in, our boys, aged five, eight, 10 and 12, rushed upstairs, excitedly claiming their bedrooms. Following them, something stopped me in my tracks.
Written in the thick pile of the landing carpet were the words: F**k Off. ‘Who did this?’ I asked the boys, sternly. ‘It’s nothing to do with us!’ protested Jamie, 12.
I shot him a look and immediately brushed the carpet to cover up the words, before going back downstairs. Ten minutes later, I took some bags up to my bedroom. The words were back again! But the boys had since gone into the garden, I thought.
‘There’s something odd going on,’ I told Alec.
Later that night, Alec discovered an old horseshoe nail hammered into the bathroom window to keep it closed.
Alec said he’d take it out but when I went into the bathroom later, the nail was still there.
‘Why haven’t you removed that nail?’ I asked. ‘I did!’ he said. ‘But it’s still in the window,’ I replied. ‘What? I pulled it out and threw it away,’ he told me. What was going on? I thought.
Ornaments and knick-knacks would move around too, but with four mischievous boys, there was always someone we could blame. The strange antics continued. I reassured myself that if we did have a spook it had never harmed us. People often said there was a lovely aura to our house so maybe it was a friendly ghost.
One day, I was returning from a toddler group with the children I worked with.
One of my little charges had an urgent call of nature.
The back door was stuck fast, as though someone was holding it shut from the inside.
‘Let me in, Ghost! Laura’s desperate for the toilet!’ I shouted out. With that the door flew open. By then, me and Alec were convinced our house was haunted.
Soon after, Alec talked to our window cleaner who knew the area well.
He told us that 100 years earlier, there had been a church next door to us and the vicar had been murdered on the land where our house now stood.
Was his ghost still around? I wondered.
I did some researc
