Real lives
Our home was full of spooks, and none of it made sense…
Pulling the covers up over my Nan head, I closed my eyes tight and willed sleep to come. It was the time I dreaded most. Sure enough, as I lay still trying to nod off, the sound of raspy breathing filled my pitch-black, bedroom.
While my eyes remained shut tight, I could hear footsteps and my senses told me that a man was walking around my room.
The closer he got, the louder the breathing became.
It was the same each night and I often woke up in a cold sweat having had a nightmare.
‘That man was in my room again last night,’ I told Mum the following day.
Her face dropped as she pulled me in close. Like me, she was deeply spiritual.
‘Maybe it’s your grandad, coming to say hello,’ she said, trying to reassure me.
Grandad had died from a severe lung condition which would have explained the heavy breathing.
But the spirit in my bedroom felt scary — and unfamiliar. If it wasn’t Grandad, who was it?
Our 1960s bungalow wasn’t your typical haunted house. But our estate had been built on an old mine shaft, and quite a few neighbours had had their homes blessed by priests to ward off spirits.
So maybe we weren’t the only ones to be having spooky visitors.
I decided that the spirit in my bedroom was probably a miner who’d lost his life down the pit.
Days later, it was Mum who came to breakfast in a state, her face deathly pale.
‘There was a man in my room last night,’ she said.
My heart thumped loudly as she told me about her midnight encounter.
She had been lying in her bed when she felt someone pull back the covers and clamber in next to her.
‘I thought it was you at first,’ Mum said.
But as she stirred, her eyes opened to see a man, a complete stranger!
As they had locked eyes, he reached forward and ruffled her hair, before completely vanishing.
Time passed and our spooky visitors began to change form.
One night, when I was 18, I’d gone to bed feeling upset after a break-up.
As I lay crying, mascara staining my bedsheets, I heard a thud from above me.
Then I felt little paws climb over the bed and fur brushed against my cheek.
A meow came out of thin air, before the room echoed with contented purrs.
‘Hello?’ I said.
I knew it was our cat Alec — only Alec had died 16 years earlier.
A few nights later, Mum had a visit t
