Noisy dressing gown

My father, Barry Gibbons, and my aunt often told me the following true story, and I recently got my father to write it down. He is from Boston, Lincolnshire, but now resides in Denmark.

“In the 1970s, when I was 21, I went to Warrington [in Cheshire] to find work. I found lodgings at an old lady’s house. Her husband had recently died. Over breakfast she said: ‘Would you like my husband’s dressing gown? I only bought it for him just before he died. It’s silk.’ After two weeks the lady fell ill and I had to find other lodgings. I went to sleep in my new lodgings with my new dressing gown in the wardrobe, only to be woken by my bed being violently shaken. This happened several times during the night. I was so scared that I stayed under my blankets until the morning light came. I immediately packed up my belong- ings and went to stay with my parents in Boston. I didn’t want to go back to the lodgings.

“At my parents’ home, I went into my normal room, hung the dressing gown in the wardrobe and climbed into my old bed. That night there were loud bangings on the ceiling and roof, so frighteningly loud that my parents heard it in the next bedroom. We all got up, asking ‘What the hell was that?’ My father and I were about to go to the front door to check what it was, when the banging started on the front door – so loud it was frightening. I returned to Warrington the next day, and forgot to take the dressing gown. My mother rang me up two days later, and said that more bangings on the door had occurred while I was away. My sister heard it too. We worked out that it must be the dressing gown. After throwing it away, the disturbances ceased.” Ayeisha Kirkham Newark, Nottinghamshire

“When I described the second dog, she said it sounded like her dog that had recently died”