When I Lived in a Haunted House

Now, I will recount in full what happened to me and my partner in a house we used to live in, before my first born was around.

It was the winter of 2000, myself and my partner were expecting our first child, after we had been told that we couldn't conceive, so we were jubilant at this fact, as you can well imagine.

We had to find a new home, after having to move from our previous home, and so you can guess, moving is a stressful time, especially when your partner is expecting! We had to find somewhere pretty quick, so we settled for a mid terraced property in the Bentley area of our town. It was a proper dump. Functional I suppose, with barely enough room to move about, and a tiny kitchen. we had no option to wait there until we could find a more suitable house in the next few months.

I had just started a new job working as a security guard in order to keep us going, and it was OK. The spare time I had, I spent it with my partner, usually visiting friends and family.

One day, I visited my sister, and happened to meet my brother in law's sister, who had also come down to visit at the same time. We all chatted and the subject of our recent house move came up as topic of conversation.

"Where about in Bentley are you moving to?" She asked.

"Askern Road" I replied.

"We only live a few streets away from there, and my friend has just moved out of a house there a bit ago" She answered.

She asked me then what number I was at, so I told her the full address. Her face dropped when I told her.

"I know all about that place" she said.

"That was where my friend used to live, and I could tell you things about that place" she continued "But don't listen to me"

"Why what happened" I asked

"Someone was killed there, a while back, but don't worry, they put it down to an accident"

I continued to try and quiz her, but she clammed up and wouldn't let anything slip, so the subject slipped by and we got onto other things.

For a few days, we kept asking our new neighbours and local shop workers, if they knew anything about it.

Most of them had not been around long enough to know much about the street, but a few knew about the incident a few years previous, but they didn't like to talk about it, only to add to the information we already had with things like, "Nobody has ever stayed the full contract since the old lady was killed/slipped etc. on the stairs"

We never could find out who she was, or the identity of the would be assailant.

A few more weeks went by, and there started to be a sudden shift in the overall feeling of the house. Things would disappear and reappear from time to time, though we put this down to us forgetting or misplacing them ourselves.

The carpet on the stairs would slip from its fixings, and I nearly fell down quite a few times, only catching the banister in time. It was a good job that my wife only went up and down the stairs with my help as I hate to think of what could have happened to her and the baby inside her.

The atmosphere had become more oppressive as time moved on, the feeling that a presence was watching our every move put my wife into a constant state of paranoia.

She started to refuse to stay in the house when I was on nightshift, preferring to stay at her parents.

The trouble began when one day, she was in the kitchen cooking our dinner one night.

She had her back to the doorway of the kitchen, and felt a presence standing there. Assuming it was me she continued the conversation we had been having earlier, unaware I was in the living room! She even saw a figure standing there out of the corner of her eye, but when she turned to face, what she thought had been me, there was no one there!

After that, all of the activity worsened.

Larger items and money started to go missing, only to reappear in totally bizarre locations, such as the spare room cupboards, some never to appear again.

The events took a turn for the worst when, we were out one day at my sisters again. I always go round, checking I have turned off the heating, cooker, fires etc. before I leave the house and lock up, its a force of habit, as I'm sure many others do. All the power was switched off.

We returned later that night to find that ALL the lights had been switched on, the TV and CD player were turned up at full blast, and again items had been moved.

My first reactions were, we had either had a break in, or my landlord had been rummaging around the property.

After an inspection, while things had been moved, they were still there. We also pulled the landlord up and virtually accused him of unauthorized access to the property. He knew nothing about it, and our next door neighbours confirmed that no one had been seen entering the house.

Confused, we both agreed that with things the way they were, we would try not to spend much time in the house, due to the strange activity that was unsettling my wife. It wasn't good for her and the baby.So from that day on we spent very little time as we could there, just to escape the weirdness.

On one occasion, my father in law came to the house while we were out. He knocked at the door thinking that we were in and that we may have been asleep (I worked nights, so was usually in bed in the day) A figure peeped out of the front window, looking down to see who was there. Assuming it was us, he began shouting through the letter box, wondering why we wouldn't answer the door. He then rang my mobile phone, to ask me why we wouldn't let him in, to which we answered, we couldn't because we were out! He thought we had had an intruder, again there was nothing.

The incidents kept happening and it became increasingly difficult to not feel uneasy.

Then one night, around the early hours of the morning, I was in bed with my partner. I was in a deep sleep and was enjoying a nice dream, when I heard an all mighty racket. I woke up and jumped up quickly to the sound of a mans voice and a woman's voice, arguing to blazes down stairs in my living room! I thought to myself we must have burglars and woke up my wife who was asleep next to me in bed. She panicked and told me to sort it out. I then picked up a wooden stick I had in the bed room next to the bed, and started to walk towards the door to investigate and hopefully scare them off. But they had heard me creaking on the floorboards, and as I got towards the door, I heard "Shhh, be quiet some one's coming!" I ran down the stairs making a din in order to scare the , what I thought were robbers away, turning all the lights on, only to find that there was no one apart from myself and my wife there!

That was a really terrifying experience, first being scared that there were intruders, then to find that they were ghosts instead!

A couple of days later the presence on the stairs came back, and for the first time I actually could perceive it slightly, so I got out my wife's Polaroid instant camera, and started taking pictures of the stairs.

Lo and behold on two of the shots a glowing Christ like, energy form had been captured, we were excited by this and proceeded to take more shots, and started getting braver until all the film was gone.

Later the next day, my father in law came in for a cup of tea, and we told him about the voices, showed him the photos and he became quite on edge about the place.

On his way back down stairs, the carpet gave way from the fixings again (This had been fixed down properly and shouldn't have done so) as he turned to stop himself from falling, he felt only what he could describe as a horrible feeling, as if something had passed through him. He had had encounters with a poltergeist at a previous address before, but this encounter had really scared him. He actually ran out, colour drained from his face, refusing to ever set foot in the house again, and he never did!

Things had got too much in the house, and after we came back from our holidays a week later, we found a new place. Our baby was nearly due, and I didn't want anything to compromise the birth, so we moved on.

Months later we discovered that the previous tenants, had been party to the spirit in there and were also forced to move out for similar reasons.

A bit of the truth came out about the incident on the stairs as well, it had been an old lady who was pushed by an attacker down the stairs, when she had tried to confront him. The woman had slipped on the loose carpet and fractured her skull and later died.

I will never forget that house, and I hope that you will never have to live or go there.

Will Grundy has been involved in matters of the occult and the spirt since he was young, he runs the Doncaster Ghostwatch Project (DGWP) a Doncaster, UK based paranormal group http://www.doncasterghostwatch.webitsmart.co.uk and can be found also on the DGWP forums of which he runs http://www.dgwp.proboards57.com. If you want to contact him for any reason, email him at grun577@aol.com and he will be happy to chat to you about all things strange...