THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT!

Actually it was not so much a bump,more a blood chilling shriek,and it certainly gave my son and I the jim-jams.

It was Sunday night,around midnight. I was about to turn in and my son was in his room writing, the night air was still,all was quiet when from high in the air and to the right of the cottage an ear splitting shriek made me almost jump out of my skin.

The shriek became a dreadful wailing and had moved quickly to a position in front of the house. I am finding it impossible to describe the terrifying sound,it was certainly not animal,we are used to the peculiar sounds made by foxes and the horrible screaming of their victims, this was no fox.

Nor could it have been human,unless able to fly! By now whatever it was it had taken up a station beneath my bedroom window on the orchard side of the house and the noise through the open window was appalling;it was at this point that my son heard it too.

By the time we met on the landing the screeching and wailing was coming from the churchyard and in the course of a few moments it was back where it began and had circled the house completely.

Once again all was quiet and had my son not also witnessed the event I might have though I had dreamed the whole thing. Even though the cries had stopped somewhere in my head I could still hear it and this continued for several hours. Much later I went to make coffee as I could not sleep, my son,also sleepless met me on the landing. Coffee made my son quite out of the blue asked me if what we had heard could have been a banshee!

There is in my families genes a little of every country that makes up the British Isles and so the answer could be yes. We laughed it off and went back to our rooms ,this time to sleep just as dawn was breaking.

Now here is the really odd bit of the story,although Pa was wide awake and in spite of the fact that whatever the beast was it performed for some time under his open bedroom window ,he heard nothing, not a squeak!

This has me almost convinced that one of my family's harbingers has paid us a visit for this one is peculiar in so far as it can only be heard by those related by blood to the family it haunts.

This is the first time for me and I fervently hope it will be the last................perhaps I should rephrase that last remark!