Here is the first submission in what will hopefully be a regular stream of viewer`s articles on their own favourite paranormal experience.
This excellent first post is from Alan Williams and concerns a home haunted by a gentle old lady.
There’s been a few times in my life when I’ve experienced unusual things but always brushed them aside as ‘a bit weird’ I’m a natural sceptic and dismissed stories of hauntings, ghost and ghoulies as a road of cobras! Also as a Buddhist it doesn't sit with my philosophical ideals.
However in summer 2002 I moved into a bungalow in the middle of Maldon. A perfectly ordinary detached dwelling in a quiet road built in the 1950’s.
A couple of months after moving in I was awoken by LOUD music coming from the hi-fi system in the lounge. It was just beginning to get light - after a few ‘is this really happening’ moments I concluded that I might be being burgled. I decided to be brave and storm in and scare off any intruders. To my amazement (and relief) there was nobody there nor any sign a break in . I should point out that being in the music retail business I have a rather extravagant system - to play a CD you need to load it into the player, turn on the CD player, turn on the separate amplifier, select the output source and then adjust the volume. I stood there confused, but relieved and felt the urge to calmly speak out aloud and decreed that I don’t mind sharing this place with ‘you’ but please don’t ever do that again.
A few weeks later I was chatting to my immediate neighbour, she was about 90 and more or less housebound. She asked me if I knew the previous occupant. I explained that I was renting the property from an English lady who’d moved abroad, but I believed that it was originally her mother’s bungalow. She confirmed that was true and told me that her mother had gone over to visit her daughter in America a couple of Christmas’ back. Unfortunately she was taken ill whilst there and sadly passed away. ‘I told her not to go’ the neighbour said. I thought it unfortunate but, well, old people die and by all accounts she had led an active life right up until the end.
Nothing else happened for a while, but a couple of years later on Christmas morning the kitchen clock suddenly started whizzing round backwards. Luckily a friend of mine was there and we both stared at it, thinking it was unusual but maybe it’s malfunctioned.
A few months after that I found a perfect circular pool of water on my desk, I had a couple of guests staying with me so asked them if they’d been into the office. They said that they hadn’t and all three of us looked at amazement, it was a summer morning and hadn’t been raining, there was no logical way water could have got there. We tried to recreate it by way of spillage but couldn’t.
Another year passed without incident. I met an old friend one evening and suggested that she might like to come back for a nightcap and chat. I went to the bathroom and on my return she said, ‘I thought you said you lived here alone?’, ‘I do’ I replied. ‘Well, what about that old lady standing in the kitchen door?’ She told me that she is perceptive to the paranormal and the old lady had told her to tell me not to be afraid, that she likes me but not my music taste!
The next ‘event’ happened the following year. It was a summer’s afternoon, I was having a lazy time watching TV when a heavy framed piece of memorabilia was ‘picked’ up and placed on the floor. It didn’t fall, it was as if it was being lifted and put down. I smiled and said ‘Can’t you do anything useful like the washing up?!’
The following Christmas a friend and I were going away for a few days. We were just leaving when we heard an almighty bang come from the kitchen, my friend jumped out of his skin. Upon investigation nothing had dropped or been moved, I suggested that the ghost was telling me that I’d forgotten something. I checked money, tickets and passport – all there, so off we set. It was only when we arrived that I realised I’d left a bag of clothes at home.
The last experience that I encountered was about 18 months later. I had a pile of clothes on a chair and was sorting through them, I got about half way down when I reached a jumper that was so hot it was almost too much to touch. All of the other clothes were unaffected; it was nowhere near a radiator, totally unexplainable. When I eventually moved out I found my car keys which I’d lost about 2 years previous close to that spot – maybe she was trying to tell me something.
During my time there I’d met my wife and told her about these occasional happenings. Nothing occurred when she was there, but about a month before we left she told me that she’d just seen the old lady in the kitchen. It was broad daylight and she’d seen her walk through the kitchen to the back garden.
Despite all of these happenings I never ever felt frightened (apart from the first time), and the bungalow had a really lovely homely feel about it. For the most part I lived there alone and it was as though this old lady was looking after me.
Copyright 2011 - Alan Williams.
This excellent first post is from Alan Williams and concerns a home haunted by a gentle old lady.
There’s been a few times in my life when I’ve experienced unusual things but always brushed them aside as ‘a bit weird’ I’m a natural sceptic and dismissed stories of hauntings, ghost and ghoulies as a road of cobras! Also as a Buddhist it doesn't sit with my philosophical ideals.
However in summer 2002 I moved into a bungalow in the middle of Maldon. A perfectly ordinary detached dwelling in a quiet road built in the 1950’s.
A couple of months after moving in I was awoken by LOUD music coming from the hi-fi system in the lounge. It was just beginning to get light - after a few ‘is this really happening’ moments I concluded that I might be being burgled. I decided to be brave and storm in and scare off any intruders. To my amazement (and relief) there was nobody there nor any sign a break in . I should point out that being in the music retail business I have a rather extravagant system - to play a CD you need to load it into the player, turn on the CD player, turn on the separate amplifier, select the output source and then adjust the volume. I stood there confused, but relieved and felt the urge to calmly speak out aloud and decreed that I don’t mind sharing this place with ‘you’ but please don’t ever do that again.
A few weeks later I was chatting to my immediate neighbour, she was about 90 and more or less housebound. She asked me if I knew the previous occupant. I explained that I was renting the property from an English lady who’d moved abroad, but I believed that it was originally her mother’s bungalow. She confirmed that was true and told me that her mother had gone over to visit her daughter in America a couple of Christmas’ back. Unfortunately she was taken ill whilst there and sadly passed away. ‘I told her not to go’ the neighbour said. I thought it unfortunate but, well, old people die and by all accounts she had led an active life right up until the end.
Nothing else happened for a while, but a couple of years later on Christmas morning the kitchen clock suddenly started whizzing round backwards. Luckily a friend of mine was there and we both stared at it, thinking it was unusual but maybe it’s malfunctioned.
A few months after that I found a perfect circular pool of water on my desk, I had a couple of guests staying with me so asked them if they’d been into the office. They said that they hadn’t and all three of us looked at amazement, it was a summer morning and hadn’t been raining, there was no logical way water could have got there. We tried to recreate it by way of spillage but couldn’t.
Another year passed without incident. I met an old friend one evening and suggested that she might like to come back for a nightcap and chat. I went to the bathroom and on my return she said, ‘I thought you said you lived here alone?’, ‘I do’ I replied. ‘Well, what about that old lady standing in the kitchen door?’ She told me that she is perceptive to the paranormal and the old lady had told her to tell me not to be afraid, that she likes me but not my music taste!
The next ‘event’ happened the following year. It was a summer’s afternoon, I was having a lazy time watching TV when a heavy framed piece of memorabilia was ‘picked’ up and placed on the floor. It didn’t fall, it was as if it was being lifted and put down. I smiled and said ‘Can’t you do anything useful like the washing up?!’
The following Christmas a friend and I were going away for a few days. We were just leaving when we heard an almighty bang come from the kitchen, my friend jumped out of his skin. Upon investigation nothing had dropped or been moved, I suggested that the ghost was telling me that I’d forgotten something. I checked money, tickets and passport – all there, so off we set. It was only when we arrived that I realised I’d left a bag of clothes at home.
The last experience that I encountered was about 18 months later. I had a pile of clothes on a chair and was sorting through them, I got about half way down when I reached a jumper that was so hot it was almost too much to touch. All of the other clothes were unaffected; it was nowhere near a radiator, totally unexplainable. When I eventually moved out I found my car keys which I’d lost about 2 years previous close to that spot – maybe she was trying to tell me something.
During my time there I’d met my wife and told her about these occasional happenings. Nothing occurred when she was there, but about a month before we left she told me that she’d just seen the old lady in the kitchen. It was broad daylight and she’d seen her walk through the kitchen to the back garden.
Despite all of these happenings I never ever felt frightened (apart from the first time), and the bungalow had a really lovely homely feel about it. For the most part I lived there alone and it was as though this old lady was looking after me.
Copyright 2011 - Alan Williams.
