With halloween just around the corner I thought it might be seasonal to suggest some chilling house related stories. I heard recently about an EA who was warned by the vendor to 'mind the stairs'. One day, before showing round a prospective purchaser -it was empty now- he felt himself shoved hard in the back at a certain point and it seems he wasn't the first. Asking around many of his colleagues had similar tales to tell about different properties. Anybody here got one?
do you read Fortean Times cakehead? My story is when I was flatsharing in the burbs about 15 years ago. I was alone in the house having a shower when I heard the front door shut and someone coming up the stairs. Then all was silent. I came out of the shower expecting to see one of my flatmates but there was no-one around. There was a spare room, well boxroom really that we used for guests and I used it when I first moved in, every night you would hear knocking from what sounded like way deep in the walls. You'd also hear china chinking and movement from the kitchen whilst watching TV when you knew there was no-one in there. The atmosphere improved drastically when we all moved out. I've moved into the area recently and pass the house on my way to Tescos - always looks rundown.
That must be where I read it Cat. Interesting housing related story at derelictlondon.com/cemetery under Woodgrange Park cemetery. Negative equity would be the least of your problems
Oops, we don't support links I see. Oh well. I know what you mean about atmosphere Cat, I shared a place in Battersea in the early eighties and you could cut it with a knife, everyone squabbled, got depressed and was thoroughly unpleasant, even attacking one another and as soon as they were outside they were perfectly fine. The only really strange thing I experienced there was when a mirror fell (jumped more like) off a wall when I was having a bath. I made my excuses and left shortly after.
Originally posted by Cat Tyrrell: do you read Fortean Times cakehead? My story is when I was flatsharing in the burbs about 15 years ago. I was alone in the house having a shower when I heard the front door shut and someone coming up the stairs. Then all was silent. I came out of the shower expecting to see one of my flatmates but there was no-one around. There was a spare room, well boxroom really that we used for guests and I used it when I first moved in, every night you would hear knocking from what sounded like way deep in the walls. You'd also hear china chinking and movement from the kitchen whilst watching TV when you knew there was no-one in there. The atmosphere improved drastically when we all moved out. I've moved into the area recently and pass the house on my way to Tescos - always looks rundown.
I had a similar experience, not in a house, but in a Library where I once worked: footsteps approaching me up some stairs when I could see there was no-one there. Later, I found out that this particular library had a reputation for strange happenings, after a murder happened there early in the 20th century. Brr!
behind every successful man is a disbelieving mother-in-law
It's a pity there haven't been more contributors to this thread. It made a change from property is going down/going up/renting is good/renting is crap/buying is compulsory......I get freaked out by mycat in my current flat when she stares fixedly at nothing for a while. What does she see?
Never been in a haunted house but i'm sure the office building i work in is. We often hear doors opening and closing and footsteps even though there's no-one around. I got really spooked one day, i was on my own and just thinking about clearing up and going home. Went out to the kitchen area at the back of the building and while i was there heard the front door open and close with a real bang, went out to the front office and there was no one there but it felt like the temperature in the room had dropped about 10 degrees and there was a really odd atmosphere. Told myself i was just being stupid but still cleared up really quickly and left!
I manage a haunted building at work - there's an old lady ghost living in our cellar, a number of the staff here have seen her out of the corner of their eye a few times & the temperature often drops unexpectedly for no reason.
We call her Mary & often shout hello to her!
When our house was on the market, we had a few viewers asking if it was haunted - it's 400 years old. The couple who are in the middle of buying it were quite disappointed when we said it wasn't haunted - apparently they quite fancied sharing their space with a benign spook!
I lived alone in a large old house for a couple of years, and I was constantly hearing banging, creaking, cold drafts, doors spontaneously opening and closing and the lot. It never occurred to me to do anything more than curse the plumbing and draft-proofing. Perhaps I just have a boring and prosaic mind? People did repeatedly ask me if I wasn't afraid to live there alone, but I never quite worked out why - whether I was supposed to be scared of ghosts or burglars?
p.s. It was a lovely house and I would love to buy it myself and move back.
I work in a University where people live and work in medieval buildings, and we do have a few local legends. My favourite is the ghost who pushes students down the stairs at night. At another college, there was supposedly a poltergeist who didn't like men staying the night in the room, and would only allow women to sleep there. But at my college, the most we ever had was a gowned figure walking the corridors...
I can't find a link but remember reading Joanna Lumley about moving into an old house. As the removals guys were bringing in the boxes, one said, 'you don't belong here' or something of the sort in an angry voice. She thought it incredibly rude and went to look who'd said it but the person wasn't on the team and nobody fitting the description had entered the building. On another occasion she went into a room to find it completely infested with flies. A moment later she returned with help to find it completely devoid of insects. There were other events which have slipped my mind but it seemed seriously weird. During the war my mother rented a house where the dog would growl and it's eyes follow something no-one could see. Other events happened which she was reluctant to talk about but she scarpered not long after so they must have been unnerving as she was not an easily swayed woman!
My gran had a Victorian cottage near the Sussex coast. It wasn't always haunted but we knew when it was. So did she. We knew it was upstairs and she started to live downstairs. We were always sent upstairs to sleep which was one of the scariest things I ever did. None of us kids ever saw anything it was just the atmosphere of someone being at teh top of teh stairs watching you. And then the bedroom door swishing open across the carpet knowing it wasn't gran. The cat would sit under the bookcase watching something invisible cross the room. The front room was alwyas absolutely freezing it was like going into a fridge even with a blazing fire in it or during high summer. I went past it in 2003. The front garden has been paved over for parking, decking in back garden, faux leaded windows and a satellite dish. I thought no spook is going to hang around here.
Originally posted by cakehead: I can't find a link but remember reading Joanna Lumley about moving into an old house.
I remember Joanna Lumley saying something about this in a newspaper article - she claims she looked up one day to see a shrivelled old face right in her face - saying she should get out. So she did!
While I've been reading all these spooky stories, the door to the room I'm in sitting in has been banging and opening and shutting on its own - or is it just the wind that's helping it?
**Accept that some days you are the pigeon and some days you are the statue.**
Oooh, I lived in a particular house, when I was aged between 6 and 16 and I always sensed it was haunted, but never said anything to my family in case they took the mick.
Stuff in my room used to move when my back was turned.. And six (Yes six.) weird fingerprints appeared on my ceiling above where I lay my head in bed.
Also, I used to hear whispering, but they were talking so fast you could not make out what they were saying. Which was very scary. Oh and sometimes you'd walk in to one of the bedrooms and it would be ice cold despite the heating being on.
The presence wasn't a nice type, I could tell, plus you always felt like you were being watched when on the landing.
I confided in a best mate who lived two streets away and she had had similar experiences such as lights going on and off and footsteps on the landing, also when she was in the bath one time when the house was empty she heard "someone" shuffling outside the bathroom door. Her Mum got a psychic in who said that it was a distrurbed monk haunting the house.
Years later we moved from that house and I was in my late teens when my brother and Mum were talking about some ghost thing on Tv when my brother piped up about it being "like the old house" I was shocked and asked what they meant and they sad that our last house was haunted and that my brother had seen a hooded figure at the top of the stairs and my Mum had once felt she was being watched in the kitchen, turned around and saw a tall shadow slowly pass along the hallway! They never mentioned this in front of me at the time so as not to scare me!
Years later I was talking with someone at work and the topic of ghosts somehow came up when the person commented that her old house was haunted by a monk, I asked where she lived and it was same area where I used to live, a few streets away in fact!
Turns out that the area used to be a monestary and was built upon, tho' the old abbey still exists just down the road from my curent house.
I know a copper in North Yorkshire, skipton. About ten years ago, a frail old woman called 999.
Every stick of furniture in her house had been turned upside down, some placed in towers of weird complexity.
There was heavy stuff upended and there was no way she had done it herself, it was just weird.
I've worked in lots of really old but happy houses, and others that really tell a tale, like one in Ilkley where the attic bed room had 2 chains, 3 bolts and one lock on the door! Someone felt really unsafe in that room, and you could feel the vibe!
Some spooks hide your tools and then put them back where you left them, in a place you checked ten times already, sometimes they brush past you, or rattle a door knob.
I worked in a house in Goostry Cheshire once which was really weird, the ghost just became a member of the ten strong team (11 inc the goul) because he made his prescence felt by moving tools, wedging doors closed, knocking things over, banging about, and generally just making his prescence felt.
All the guys working their thought he was an old bloke, dunno why, you just felt that kind of prescence.
I used to work nights in a nursing home which was converted from an old house and like a lot of these places there were several tales of hauntings.One was of two young boys who were seen by the residents who lived at the end of a corridor. On one occasion I went into the stairwell at the end of this corridor which was completely empty. I checked that the fire door was shut, which it was, and started to go upstairs. I turned the corner of the staircase and heard the fire door being opened (it was the sort with the bar that has to be pushed down). I rushed down - nobody was there but the door was wide open. Needless to say I was jumpy for the rest of the night.
My friend's father used to live in an old rectory. He was living in one room at this time, because of infirmity but when his grandson went to stay , he could hear people walking about upstairs, moving furniture etc. The old man just used to say 'them buggers are busy again'. There was also a barn-owl that used to sit on the gate-post in the day time and just stare at you. I hated that house.
