For those of us who lived on our haunted farm the everyday occurrences cause very small ripples upon the pond of family life. Things tended to become much more interesting when we had guests to stay. I had two Aunts who between them spent almost the entire summer with us, I loved having them around when I was a child and spent most of my summer holidays in the company of one or the other of these ladies as I often shared a bedroom with them when they were visiting. One of these Aunts was of a nervous disposition and preferred not to have any dealings with the supernatural......lucky for some. She never saw a thing but she knew of the farms reputation and was always hearing bumps in the night or detecting cold spots on the stairs. During her stay she would become increasingly nervous and as she slept in my room I often witnessed her having a fit of the fan-tods.
One night as she sat combing her hair at the mirror the swore that someone was standing behind her, I assured her that there was no one behind her, quite truthfully because the nightly spectre was sitting as usual at the foot of my bed, unseen by Aunty thank the Lord!
One summer evening while she was staying with us my father, who loved a joke decided to play a prank on us all, He quietly donned a white sheet and slipped out into the garden, I saw him go out and decided that I would give him a fright and slunk out side with a sheet of my own. Unbeknown to me I was observed by my brother who thought that he would turn the tables on me and so out he went complete with sheet to try his luck.
It was getting quite dark and as I rounded the dairy I saw my father passing in front of the kitchen window , I crept up behind him stealthily and was about to try a ghastly moan when around the other corner another ghostly form appeared. Now I had only expected to see one other ghost, my brother had expected to see only one other ghost and my poor father had not expected to see any more ghosts at all. Each of us gave a shriek and ran as fast as possible. No one in the house had spotted us and so the only people who got a fright were the three of us, especially when mother saw the state of her white sheets.
Later that night we all woke to hear a violent hammering at the front door and my father went down to see what all the fuss was about. As he opened the door the knocking came again this time at the back door., and no sooner had my father reached the back door the knocking came again at the front. My mother shouted downstairs to let the ghosts alone and come to bed. Aunty fidgetted about all night and I got not a wink of sleep. We all agreed next morning that the ghosts definatly won that one.
On a much more serious note, our family has for as long as anyone can remember had a spirit who appears to one of us whenever there is to be a death in the family. “The Visitor” as we call him takes the form of a tall figure draped in black and no matter how dark the room is he is always blacker still. I first saw him when I was twenty three, he heralded the death of the Aunt of whom I have been speaking. This apparition always terrifies me, I must have seen him a dozen times and the effect is always the same. During the past couple of years I have not seen him because he now visits my poor son who hates him as much as I always did. He is a sort of inheritance and passes down the family preferring to seek out the younger members, he is never wrong.
As my home was so far off the beaten track it was decided, when I started courting Pa that we should stay at each others home on alternate weekends. This presented me with a problem, should we tell him about the ghosts and risk scaring him off, or causing him to think we were all lunatics ,or should I keep quiet and hope for the best. I was only sixteen and so head over heels that the thought of loosing my new found sweetheart could not be countenanced. In other words I wimped out and said never a word. The very first time he stayed over night he slept with my brother
who had been sworn, on pain of terrible retribution to say nothing of our peculiar problem.
Pa was tucked up in bed and my brother had gone to say goodnight to mum and dad when I heard a shriek from Pas room and he leapt down the stairs in a couple of bounds, all thirteen of them, gibbering about the strange things that seemed to be going on in his room. The game was up and we had to tell all. I am happy to say that I was forgiven and we are still together. Pa had the last laugh though, I stayed at his home on the following weekend and discovered that he had a ghost of his own. This gentle spirit was not half as scary as his dragon of a mother as I discovered to my cost!
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