Ghosts made us marry
I fell in love on a ghost hunt!
As the handsome man sitting on my sofa smiled at me, my heart skipped a beat.
‘Will you…?’ he began. ‘Yes?’ I breathed excitedly. ‘... Come on a ghost hunt with me?’ he finished.
I'd never been to a paranormal investigation before. The thought of going looking for ghosts scared the living daylights out of me.
‘You what?’ I spluttered. ‘You must be crackers!’
But the thing was, I really liked Steff Richards. I'd been introduced to him, then 28, by a mutual friend on Facebook. Steff and I hit it off straight away, started messaging each other every day. Soon we were spending hours chatting on the phone. I knew there was something special between us.
Seven months after we were introduced, Steff drove from his home in Manchester to visit me at my flat in Glasgow.
Meanttobe
Steff was slim with big blue eyes. Although, at 44, I was 16 years older than Steff, the second I saw him, I got the feeling we were meant to be together.
As we sipped coffee in my living room, Steff told me he was a keen paranormal investigator. I thought he was crazy!
But when he asked me to go to an investigation with him, I liked him so much that I agreed.
A couple of weekends later, Steff picked me up and drove me to our first date - a ghost hunt in Bolling Hall, a haunted stately home near Bradford, West Yorkshire.
As we wandered round the spooky, torch-lit rooms, I was utterly terrified.
‘Don't let go of my hand!’ I warned Steff.
But after an hour. I found myself relaxing and enjoying myself. In fact, I was hooked!
And it wasn't just ghost hunting I fell for that night. I fell madly in love with Steff, too!
Although some of my friends were concerned about the age difference, it didn't bother me one bit. In April 2009, seven months after we'd first met, Steff moved to Glasgow and moved in with me.
In September 2013, we got married, with Alan and Debbie, my grown-up children from a previous relationship, by my side. Steff and I run our own paranormal investigation team,
Lanarkshire Paranormal. We've held investigations in haunted locations all over the UK, had so many strange and creepy experiences.
Paranormalfootage
We captured footage of a spook lurking in a disused swimming baths in Glasgow. During World War II, the pool was drained, used as a makeshift morgue to store bodies of locals killed in bombing raids.
And at Cockenzie House, East Lothian, Steff had a chilling encounter with the spirit of girl with a twisted body who crawled along the floor. After he helped lift her to her feet, she disappeared.
Nine years after we first met, Steff and I are still blissfully happy. Life's so short, you've got to grab joy when you can. And as I'm a great believer in fate, I know we are meant to be together.
Ours wasn't the most conventional first date, to say the least. But I'm so lucky because I fell in love with Steff and ghost hunting at the same time!