EVIL SPIRIT tried to kill our puppy!
Why was our CHEEKY GHOST turning more SINISTER by the day? By Beverley Clark, 65
Sinking back into the bubble bath, I let out a sigh, relieved the day was nearly over. Moving to the other side of the country was stressful enough, not to mention doing it as a newly single mum with five kids.
What made it even worse was knowing we’d have to do it all again soon. The house we’d moved into, a three bed in Milton Keynes, was just a temporary stop until the council finished renovating the place they’d lined up for us.
‘At least this house is nice,’ I thought to myself, beginning to relax finally.
Plus it was close to my youngest’s school and my friend Philip* who I’d known for years.
Suddenly, an object came flying at me from the windowsill, plopping into the water behind me. A tin of talc.
Jumping out of the bath in shock, I remembered what my daughter Felicity, 17, had said downstairs earlier about the place being a bit spooky.
‘Don’t be silly, you’re just tired and imagining things,’ I’d told her.
Well, the same could be said for me. I was exhausted. But even though I tried to ignore what had just happened, more was to follow…
One night, a week later, I was downstairs watching telly when I heard Felicity scream. Rushing upstairs, I found her in the dark, white as a sheet and shaking.
‘A boy in a red jumper just turned off my light and ran away laughing,’ she sobbed.
Felicity was scared of the dark and always slept with the light on. All four of her brothers were in the other room and the door was shut. Besides, Felicity would have known if it was one of them.
‘You must have been dreaming,’ I soothed.
We kept what had happened to ourselves so when Felicity’s then 10-year-old brother Alex began seeing the boy too, I started to get creeped out.
‘Tell that boy to leave my stuff alone!’ Alex said coming downstairs half-asleep as I was watching telly one night. ‘Which one?’ I asked.
‘The one in the red jumper!’ ‘Yeah, I’ll tell him,’ I said, taking him back upstairs and tucking him in.
After that, the other boys saw him too, all apart from my youngest, Harry, seven.
Mostly it was in their room, but more stuff was thrown about in the bathroom, too, like the time a toothbrush came hurtling through the air.
‘I’d give my right arm to see that!’ Philip gasped, when I told him. He loved anything to do with the paranormal and didn’t understand how unsettling it was for me.
Up until then, my only spooky experience had been 20 years earlier when a glass had flown over my shoulder and smashed while I was staying in my mum’s old cottage in Cornwall. I didn’t relish the thought of living with a ghost, even if he did seem harmless enough…
When the kids were about it wasn’t so bad, but then something happened about a month later while they were at school. I was on my way upstairs to tidy their bedrooms when I spotted a shadow coming out of the boys’ room and spreading across the landing.
I froze on the spot.
It was the shadow of a young boy, aged about five, his head, shoulders and arms clearly visible. He was waving his arms about like he was playing with something I couldn’t see.
Gathering my nerves, I walked towards it telling myself it was probably a kid who had climbed the tree outside the window in the boys’ room – but as I got closer, the shadow vanished and the tree was empty.
After that, I wore a crucifix hoping it might keep the boy away. And we got a puppy.
‘This is Maddie,’ I told the kids, showing them the tiny
She was white as a sheet and shaking
Labrador cross I’d got from a local breeder.
The kids fell in love with her on the spot and I liked that she’d keep me company while they were at school.
Maddie seemed happy enough in the house but was always scratching at the door to play in the garden.
‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,’ Philip said, when I told him. ‘Besides, the boy obviously doesn’t mean you or her any harm – try not to be scared.’
Philip offered to pop round the odd evening to keep us company and I eagerly accepted. One such night, I’d left Maddie alone in the kitchen where we were toilet training her, while we were watching telly with the kids when we heard a blood-curdling scream. ‘Maddie!’ I cried.
Rushing in, I saw Maddie’s crumpled body in the corner. She was dead!
But then, she stirred and began whining.
‘Thank God,’ Philip breathed, gently scooping her into his arms. ‘She’s OK.’
She seemed unharmed but there was wee across the floor leading from the spot where she had been sitting. Someone had thrown her across the room – and she’d been so petrified she’d wet herself.
Philip looked at me and I knew what he was thinking. Who had tried to hurt her?
‘That ghost wouldn’t do that surely?’ I asked Philip, out of earshot.
‘I don’t know,’ he shuddered. ‘But I don’t think it’s fair you keep Maddie. She could have been killed.’
I agreed, so we returned her to the breeder, after three weeks of having her, saying that she hadn’t settled in.
By now I was petrified, but I tried convincing the kids that there was nothing to worry about and that Maddie had hurt herself running about.
Each day, I prayed that the call would come from the council to say the new house was ready so we could escape. With five kids, it was too much to ask anyone else to have us stay with them.
After that, nowhere felt safe in the house. Until now, the spooky activity had only ever been upstairs but now it was in the kitchen, too.
I’d be washing up and hear the heavy fire door on the annex open and close, followed by the kitchen door as though someone invisible was walking through.
I didn’t want to call in a medium as I was scared of what I might be told. All I knew was that the houses on our row used to be home to police officers and their families and dated back to the 1960s.
Then, the following January, after four months of this, I finally reached breaking point. I’d had a doctor’s appointment and couldn’t collect my two eldest boys, Adam and Alex, from school so had given them a key to let themselves in.
Only when I got home, I found them running up the street towards me.
‘Why aren’t you inside?’ I asked, seeing the scared looks on their faces. ‘What’s happened?’
‘We were about to go inside and then a face appeared through the glass of the door!’ Alex breathed. ‘It wasn’t human… it looked like a monster!’
I felt sick. After everything that had happened, I believed every word.
The boys had been waiting outside for hours for me to get home, but now I didn’t want to go in either.
After checking the place was clear inside, I got straight on the phone to the council and begged them to move us.
‘The work is nearly finished,’ the lady replied. ‘You can move in right away if you don’t mind a few builders milling about.’ We couldn’t get out fast enough!
The kids are all grown up now, but they remember everything that went on. Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about what happened and realised there were two spirits there; the boy who lived upstairs and the evil entity that lurked in the kitchen and hurt Maddie. Perhaps the child didn’t know he was dead or was being prevented by the evil entity from crossing into the afterlife, which is why he seemed stuck there, hiding away upstairs.
The house is still there and being lived in. Either that spirit has gone or the new residents are braver than I am…
I finally reached breaking point