Through the wardrobe
Back in 1998, when I was seven or eight years old, my family and I lived in a Victorian building called the Old Rectory in Feltwell, Norfolk. At the time it had been converted into cheap flats, although I believe it has since been refurbished. We had been living there just shy of a year and I was asleep on the top of a bunk bed that I shared with my older sister. I have always been a very heavy sleeper and this night was no different, but I found myself waking suddenly with a feeling that someone was in the room. I sat upright and looked ahead at a built-in wardrobe at the end of the room just as a man walked through it, past where my sister and I were, and directly through the closed door on the left-hand side. This all happened very quickly and I was so shocked and scared that I found myself unable to cry out, until he reappeared walking through the door, directly at us (but as though we weren’t there), and began to walk through the bunk bed at pillow height. I remember very vividly seeing the top of the man’s head in my pillow, realised that he must be walking through my sister’s head and began screaming hysterically. My sister dived out of bed and hit the light switch, at which point everything returned to normal. I remember being physically aware of a kind of mental snap, at the point it all ended. Naturally, my parents ran in to comfort me. (My mother had many experiences of similar events as a child, and was therefore quite sympathetic.) We moved not long afterwards.
This event has stayed with me ever since, and I find myself going through phases of certainty that I’d seen a ghost, to questioning whether I had actually suffered a ‘night terror’ or waking dream. I am sure I’d never seen the man before; he was in his mid-20s, wearing a pinstripe suit but with unusually untidy hair, considering how well dressed he appeared to be. Have any other readers had strange experiences relating to this building or the village of Feltwell?
“I sat upright in bed and looked ahead at a built-in wardrobe just as a man walked through it...”