Do you believe in ghosts ?

[Huskyxantia]

One for CitroJim

Remember when I said about a true story ....



June 1983 - Late at Night (Corrected & Edited) help from ai

JUNE 1983: LATE AT NIGHT
Names have been omitted to respect my family's privacy.


I was about 9 or 10 years old. I remember hearing thunder rumbling around while I was partially awake. Then, I heard some rummaging from my sister's bedroom and my mum's voice asking where my sister had put her bed sheets. Being a very hyperactive kid, I went straight for the obvious, walked into the room, and said something like, "You wet the bed"—that was the short version. Dad got out of bed and made me go back to mine. As I drifted off to sleep, I heard Mum say, "Why have you put your sheets in your desk?"


That was it. I woke up the next morning and everything seemed normal. I got up, went down to the rear bathroom, had a wash, got dressed, had breakfast, and went to school.


My older sister is three years older than me, and my younger sister is a year younger. We went to the same school at the time due to our ages. I used to have a friend call for me, and his mum had to walk him because he was like a magician—he could get back home before she could! He was terrible, hardly ever at school, and when he was, he was always trying to run away.


When we arrived at school the following morning, everyone was talking about the thunderstorm from the night before and saying how bad it was. My big sister was with her friends, who were a larger group than mine, and they were all chasing each other around the wooden classrooms (my old school had lots of wooden huts for classrooms, long gone now).


I decided to go see if she would tell me about what happened the night before. She answered, "Nothing," and ran off. After a while, their game came to a stop, and she came back to the bench I was sitting on with a mate. So I asked, "Why did you put your bedsheets in your desk?"


She said, "It wasn't me." I asked her what she meant, and what she said back to me scared the life out of me.


She said that as the storm was getting worse, she felt her blanket being pulled, then she was shaken as her lower bedsheet was pulled out fast from under her. She said she saw her desk lid was up, the sheet went into it, and the lid slammed down right at the same time as a huge clap of thunder.


My other sister was asleep all through it, so she didn't know anything of what happened. My elder sister then said Mum came into the bedroom because of the noise, thinking my sister was sleepwalking or something similar, but she wasn't—she was sat up in bed in sheer fright. I asked my sister if she saw anything pulling the sheet. She said no, the room wasn't lit and she was too scared to move. But when talking to Mum a day or two later, she told Mum she thought she saw a man with pointed things on his head and a horrible-looking face.



To be continued... (22nd October 2025)
So, being woken up again another night, I thought I saw a boy playing with what looked like something that made steam and burned flames. Remember, I was only a child, so I really wouldn't have known what this was. I sat up in my bed, rubbed my eyes, and the image was gone.


The next morning, it was bright and sunny. I was woken by Dad; he was working in the back garden using a cultivator. I made my way downstairs; my sisters were eating breakfast, and Swap Shop was on TV. I did the normal routine to get ready for the day, and while I was in the bathroom, the door got knocked.


I said, "Hold on, I'll be out in a minute." There was no answer back, so I opened the door—no one was there.


I remember looking out the side door of the house, as it was the only entryway. The house was a semi-detached property with a front garden, a driveway, and a path that led up to the side entry door. I stood just outside the door. My sisters were playing on the garden swings, and Dad was walking behind the machine, turning the garden over. It was a council property, and the garden was about 2.5 acres, so Dad had a big task ahead of him, though he was very good at landscaping.


Mum was hanging washing on the line—she normally did this on a Monday, but was doing it on this Saturday because the weather was due to get a bit wet again.


As I stood watching everyone, something made a scratching sound followed by a thud behind me on the stairs. I spun around, but there was nothing there. So, I decided to go watch TV since it was still on.


Mum came into the living room and said, "Oh, you're up then. Coming into our room at 4:00 this morning—what was up?" That was news to me. I said, "It wasn't me, I was asleep." "Oh," she said, "might have been one of your sisters." "Mum," I asked, "did you knock on the bathroom door just a moment ago?" Her reply was, "No, not me, everyone was and still is out in the back garden."


Come Monday morning, it was very cloudy and spitting light rain. My mate, the great school skiver, didn't go to school, so I walked on my own. I bumped into another friend and told him about the thing I saw in my room on Friday night, the noise behind me while standing in the doorway on Saturday morning (the sound from the stairs), and the knock on the bathroom door.


"Oh heck," he said, "maybe your house is haunted." My gut turned, but I just laughed and said something like, "Oh, shut up, no it ain't." It didn't feel like it was, but now, as a full-grown man writing this down, how would someone below the age of 10 have known what a haunted place was or felt like?




Months passed, and life seemed normal, apart from my elder sister. She started keeping herself to herself, and several times while out in the garden, I saw her talking to someone who wasn't there. I didn't really take much notice, to be honest—being hyperactive, I was too busy trying to be Evel Knievel.


No one owned up to the knocking on doors and other sounds in the house over the months that passed, and why should they, when it wasn't them? One day, I remember Mum and Dad talking downstairs in the kitchen. Dad was saying things like, "She said he was a strange man, he wasn't very nice, maybe we should get someone in," and stuff like that. I didn't take much notice; being a kid, you're too busy trying to jump over 14 double-decker buses.


One weekend, Dad was working round at the house next door. The neighbor's name was Anne. She was a Londoner, and she was amazing—her cooking was out of this world, and some of her life stories were brilliant, from working at County Hall in London as a charlady to meeting Winston Churchill and making tea for all the bigwigs. Anne would become very important to us as time went by, not just for her jams, pies, and cakes, but as the link that put this story together. I say "story," but it's not made up—it's all true.


Dad was cutting back damson trees and giving her garden a good tidy-up, and I helped stack the branches so we could burn them the following weekend. At one point, I recall lifting a large branch when it felt like something had pushed me so hard in the back that I fell forward. The branch hit Dad on top of his head, and a pretty big, pointed piece went into his scalp.


It scared the crap out of me. "Dad, Dad, are you okay? I'm sorry!" I cried. He fluffed my hair and said, "Don't worry, it was an accident." I said, "Dad, something pushed me in the back and I fell towards it." Anyway, Anne looked at Dad's head and said, "You better go to A&E."


So we went. They pulled the wood spike out of his head, cleaned him up, and said he was lucky. They asked how it happened, and Dad said, "Clearing garden trees, my boy fell and this hit my head." They said it looked like someone had done it deliberately. Dad said no, it wasn't, so that was that. We walked the four miles home. Dad was okay. We went back round to Anne's so she knew he was alright, had a cuppa and a cake, and then went back home.


As we were leaving, Anne said to my dad, "That lot who swapped that house with you—did they tell you anything about it?" Dad said, "No, why?" Anne replied, "Not when the boys are around. We'll talk tomorrow."




Several days, maybe weeks, passed. I noticed stuff being placed around the house: items being hung up in specific areas, a large cross in the hallway, a crucifix in my parents' bedroom, and certain types of plants positioned in specific spots in the home. I didn't read into this much—I mean, I was a kid. As far as I remember, us kids didn't ask questions.


I recall a poem written by Anne and given to my parents. It was hung up on a wall near the bedroom window (if you were looking out of the window, it was on the right, covering the built-in airing cupboard door in the wall). It went something like:


As down life's road you wander,
The pathway twists and bends...


(The middle part seems to have disappeared out of my head, but it ended:)


For just keep going forwards,
For just around the bends,
The things in life that
Get you down
Will sure and truly end.


I used to read this over and over, just standing in my parents' bedroom reading it. I asked Mum who wrote it, and she said Anne wrote it for me and Dad; it was really nice.


As the days went by and the older I got, I would find myself standing looking out of my Mum and Dad's bedroom window for ages at a time. I couldn't understand why I was doing it, but Dad would find me and bring me downstairs. "Go play in the garden," he would say, so I did.


One day while in the garden, I found a square, weird concrete area sort of under the grass—the material was blue. I told Dad, and he said, "Oh, it's nothing, just a shed floor." "Where's the shed?" I asked. "I don't know," he said.


Coming home from school one day, my uncle was helping Dad break up this shed floor and get rid of it. I went and spoke to them and said, "Can I help?" Dad replied, "Yeah, cup of tea for two." "Oh good!" I was excited, so I ran into the kitchen and started making everyone a drink.


I was filling the kettle when Mum walked past in the hall behind me—or at least I thought it was Mum. Mum was actually down at the shop with one of my sisters! Anyway, I made a drink, the kettle popped, and smoke came out of it. I ran out to the garden. My uncle came down the garden and said, "Where's them drinks, boy?" "Kettle popped," I said. My uncle came in to look, turned it on, and nothing happened. So he changed the fuse, and we were back up and running again. He finished making the drinks and took them up the garden.


As we were coming out of the house, the bathroom door slammed shut with such a fierce bang that my uncle jumped, losing half of the cups' contents, so he had to go back and top them up. I went to look at why the door did this, and as I was pushing the door after turning the handle, Mum shouted, "What are you up to?" as she walked in the front door with my eldest sister.


This made me jump, and I felt like something blew past me. It was so forceful I sort of fell sideways against the wall. Mum looked at me with a scared look—I'd never seen Mum look scared before. She said, "Go help Dad up the garden," so I went out.


As I was walking up the garden, Dad was talking to his brother. I heard him say, "Anne also said it's best to get rid of this shed floor because of what he made in here," but he soon stopped talking when he saw me. I asked what he was going to do with this newly reclaimed piece of garden, and he said, "We're letting the grass grow back over for now." As long as I can remember, that patch of ground always had a different colored lawn area, looking just as simple as the old floor, right up until the day we all moved.


Dad and his brother were around the home on and off a lot. They had both recently been made redundant from the local mill, so they had time while looking for other jobs. Then, all of a sudden, other people started turning up—even more uncles. This is when I learned Dad had a big family: 16 siblings.




We broke up for October half-term. The weather was fine but cold; it must have been around 1985. We were off for Halloween and Bonfire Night.


A couple of Dad's brothers helped do stuff around the garden and build a bonfire heap. Things were going on in the house, but to me it felt normal; my sisters never said anything, so I wouldn't have known if they heard or saw anything. I used to hate bedtimes solely due to the fact that I would lay there and hear scraping sounds. Sometimes I'd get out of bed and go to my sisters' room to see if it was them messing about, but they'd both be asleep. I'd wake up Mum and Dad and tell them about the noise, but as soon as they came to check it out, it wasn't happening—it had stopped.


This was a regular occurrence. It went on so much that I remember Dad baiting traps because he thought it was mice. He never caught anything, and the traps were never touched.


Until one night, I was woken by a trap being snapped shut. I woke up, sat up, and looked at the trap—it was still set. As I went to go back to sleep: snap! The noise happened again. Opening my eyes, my room looked foggy and misty. I didn't like to have the light off, so Mum got me a small bedside light with a tiny 10-watt bulb in it, like the ones in modern ovens. As soon as I got a better view of my room, it was clear and normal. After a few weeks of the mouse traps and someone from the council coming to the house, it was confirmed there were no rodents in the house.


It was now two years since the bedsheets-in-the-desk incident. Things to me were normal: sisters being sisters, kids being kids. We used to play board games together—The Game of Life, Sinking of the Titanic, and others (not sure if we played those games quite as they were supposed to be played, but we just played them).


One time, my eldest sister went to the loo, so me and my younger sister waited for her to come back. As I recall, she was in there so long that I got bored waiting and went out to ride my BMX. After a while, I needed a pee, so I dropped the bike down to the ground with a thud and ran indoors to see Mum outside the bathroom door telling my sister to open it.


"Hurry up, Mum," I said, "I need a pee." In the end, I went round to Anne's and used her loo.


Anne said, "How are you and your lot doing?" "Oh yeah, we're all good thanks," I replied.


Anne asked why I wanted to use her loo, so I told her my big sister was in the loo, Mum was trying to get her to unlock the door and had been in there for ages, and I was going to pee myself so I came round to use her loo because I was desperate. Anne laughed and said, "Why don't you kids come round for tea?"


So I said okay, I'll ask Mum. Anne rang Mum, and by the time I got back home, Mum said, "Your three can pop round Anne's for tea, she's made a homemade steak and kidney pudding with all the veg to go with it." (Veg: no. Pudding: yes.)


So all three of us kids went round and had a very nice tea indeed. While we were there, I asked my big sister why she was in the toilet so long, and she said, "The man wouldn't let me leave."


At this point, Anne was walking back to the dinner table with a homemade plum pie and custard. She said, "What man's that then, lovey?" My sister said, "The old man that lives upstairs in our house." I dropped my spoon and a cold shiver ran up my spine.


"Oh, don't be silly, you're just imagining things, eat up, you three," Anne said. "Then after, we'll light the fire and have a nice hot chocolate drink, and I will tell you about when I was a girl living in the East End of London."




The next day, I made a "Guy" and met up with my mates, and we went round doing "Penny for the Guy." We were all given the pep talk by my mum not to be rude to people and to thank them if they gave money. When I said "Guy," we put my mate—dressed in old clothes that were no good—in Dad's wheelbarrow. We set up outside our local shop so each time someone passed in or out of the shop we'd say, "Penny for the Guy."


Some ignored us, but a few stopped, laughed, and dropped some money into our jar. At one point, the shopkeeper came out to see how we were doing and gave us some penny sweets. "Don't be causing any nuisance to anyone," he used to say. "If you behave, you can stay till the time you lot need to be back home." He was a nice shopkeeper.


Then, all of a sudden, a girl with very long black hair came running over, laughing at the Guy as she knew us. She spoke and asked how I was liking—or if I liked—the house I was living in; she used to live in it before me.


I said, "It's ok, I like the back garden more." She then said, "You do know it's got a ghost?" With that being said, our Guy—who was a mate dressed up—jumped up from the wheelbarrow, scaring us all half to death! "What?!" he shouted. "This house is haunted?!" "Oh, you're real!" she laughed. "And yes, the house has a real nasty ghost of an old man in it."


Turns out her mum used to be the target of this thing's doings. After a few minutes she went, which left me trying to find answers to the questions my mates were asking. I replied, "I don't know, I ain't got a clue." But in my head, I was thinking: What if these noises I was hearing were the ghost? What if my big sister had seen this man? What if it was this man's ghost that pulled her bedding off her bed and placed it in her desk? I felt very nervous all of a sudden.


It started getting dusk, and we all decided to go home. I asked my mates about the money, and they said, "We'll do this again till Bonfire Night, then share what we made between us." We made about a pound each, all in loose change.


So Halloween came—that was fun. Then Bonfire Night—that was really good! Mum did some great food: burgers, hot dogs, baked spuds. Dad did the fireworks. Some neighbors came round; it was a really good night.


I heard Dad talking to another elderly neighbor. Dad was asking him about the man that used to live in our house, so I listened in on their conversation:


"He was in my tank regiment. Right nasty piece of s**t, he was. No one's friend, horrible bloke," the neighbor said. "When he moved into your house all them years ago, he hardly spoke to anyone. Kept himself to himself, not even sure what happened to his wife or kids, never saw them. He was always in his shed. He would go round to chat with Anne's husband, Harry, when he was alive, and Harry used to say to me he wasn't that keen on him as he didn't like the feeling he gave off." Dad was shocked. "So he wasn't very nice then, Bill?" "No," Bill said, "nasty. Used to shout at kids if they played out front, too. Why you asking all about this man?" Dad replied, "Stuff happening in the house. My eldest daughter says she has seen him, even spoke to him." "That's not good," said Bill. "I've asked the people before us who had it after him, and they won't talk. My boy told me the other day one of the girls that lived here spoke to him when they were doing their 'Penny for the Guy' the other day, and she told my son it's haunted by a right nasty old man." Bill replied, "Boy, yes, that's true, they hated it here."

I was then seen by my dad, who said, "You alright, boy? You enjoying the fireworks and stuff?" I nodded, then walked over to the fire for a warm-up. Mum came out passing some food around, so I grabbed a hot dog, stood by the fire, and had all this stuff going through my head from what I heard being spoken about. I remember looking back at the house, which was being illuminated by the flickering fire, and almost seeing a dark figure in my bedroom window. I again rubbed my eyes, and looking again, there was nothing there.


I went back over to Dad and Bill. I said, "Why was this man or ghost here?" Bill said, "Oh, don't worry, what you can't see can't harm you, it's nothing to worry about."


So I walked away to hear Dad say, "I've been scratched, Bill, a few times. A sharp hot pain. I lift my top, the wife looks, and says, 'Oh my God, your back has been scratched!'" Bill replied, "Speak to Chris next door, he's with the church."




The following day was the last day of half-term, so I made use of it. I met my mates, we rode our bikes, and spent the money we made from "Penny for the Guy" on cheap half-penny chews and a 5p portion of chips for our dinners. The day was calm, the weather was chilly but dry, and you could feel that winter feeling in the air.


It was time to all get back home. I didn't want to, but I did. When I got back, Chris was in our house with Anne. Mum called me into the living room and said, "Go say hello to Chris, he lives next door, and you haven't formally introduced yourself properly to him since we moved in."


So the hellos and small talk were done. He was a nice person—a grammar school teacher and very clever. I got my tea out of the oven and sat in the kitchen on my own eating it. I could hear parts of the conversation, things like:


Anne saying, "My Harry used to get a little fed up with him because he always used to pounce on him whenever he went out to the garden."
Then Chris said, "I just used to say hello to him, but he would just ignore me."
Then Mum spoke of my big sister standing at their bedside shaking, saying, "I just saw someone standing next to my bed, and they had horns on their head," so Mum let her sleep in with them so as not to wake the house up. Mum said this was getting regular and talked about her locking herself in the bathroom and taking ages to make her come out.
Dad even said they heard my sister speaking as if someone else was in the room with her.

The next day was school, and my mate for once turned up at my door to walk with me. We spoke about the fun we had during half-term and agreed it's horrible going back to school.




The day went off okay until I got back home. I must have taken two steps up the front path when Anne next door flung the kitchen window open and called me: "Come round here, quick!"


So I went round, wondering what the heck was going on. I looked back towards my house as I walked round to Anne's, and it seemed dark—the windows looked darker than Anne's. As I walked into Anne's house, Mum was sitting next to the fire, shaking and as white as a sheet. I couldn't recall seeing my two sisters.


I said to Mum, "What's up?" She said, "I'm not going back round that house, something attacked me."


She showed me her left arm and the side of her face—it was bruised. I didn't know what to do; I felt scared, and I mean real scared. Mum said, "Keep an eye out for your father, he will be home from work soon." He had managed to get a job back on the roads in civil engineering.


It felt like ages, but I heard a lorry pull up and Dad jumped out of it. Anne quickly flung open the window and called to him: "Round here! They're all round here!"


Dad walked in, and Anne made him a cuppa. My dad looked at me and said, "You okay?" I nodded. Then Mum said, "I'm not getting back in that house again." Dad asked why. Then Mum said to me and my sisters (who had just come back from the shop with Anne's daughter, who had recently moved back home), "Go out the garden and play, we'll call you when tea's ready."


I said to Mum, "Can I change out of my school clothes?" She said, "No, just don't get dirty."


My sisters were doing their thing; I was just hanging around by the door to Anne's house and could hear Mum saying to Dad, "I am not bloody well going back in that house." Dad said, "What are we going to do then?" Dad then said, "Right, I'm going round to have a look."


I ran up the garden so as not to get caught listening. Dad came out and said, "You lot stay here, I'm just going to get something from home," so off he went.


I went back down to the door of Anne's house, and Mum was saying to Anne, "Every time I use the spin dryer, it throws me against the wall." (Now, she thought it was the spin dryer!) She then said, "I've even had times when hovering, it grows into a big black shadow and charges at me that fast it knocks me to the ground. It's got so much strength I can't stop it from doing it." Mum was bruised very badly; it looked like she was hit by a truck.


After a while, Dad came back round. We all went into Anne's house. I recall Anne saying, "The kids can stay here for the night if you want, and you both go back when you're ready and we'll see what happens." Mum looked at Dad, and Dad said, "Okay, if that's not a problem with you, Anne," and Mum agreed, too, though by the look on Mum's face, I could tell she didn't want to go back round.


So Dad came back with our pyjamas, kissed us all goodnight, and said, "You lot be good."


Anne let us play out back for a little while, then called us in as it was fairly dark. We each had a bath, then got our pyjamas on. We made beds on the sofa and put chairs together to make a third bed, then we had a hot chocolate drink. Anne spoke and told us more of her times when she was a girl growing up in London.


I fell asleep very quickly as I was very tired. I woke up the next morning—it was cold. Anne was getting the coal fire going, and it soon warmed the house up. I got sorted, washed, dressed, and wanted to go see Mum and Dad, but Anne said, "Your mum will be round in a bit."


Dad went off to work, and Mum came round. She took us to school that morning. I can't remember much of the school day, but I remember coming home and going round to Anne's again for tea.


This time, we did go back to our house. Stepping back into our house felt different from stepping into Anne's house. Even though Mum was getting a fire going, it felt cold and not very inviting.


Later that night, I was woken by my eldest sister screaming. Mum and dad rushed into my sister's bedroom, and I went in there, too. Dad was standing next to Mum; Mum was kneeling on the floor, comforting my sister.


My sister was saying, "He don't want us in his house!" My dad then said, "Who?" She said, "The old man that lives here! Why can't you see him? He wants us out of his house!" I laughed and said, "Don't be stupid, you had a bad dream."


I went back to bed. I thought my sister was just playing Mum and Dad up.


The following weekend, I was playing in the garden. Dad was talking to Anne and Harry, and I heard Dad saying she told us what this old man was wearing, and how he was sitting on the bottom of her bed with a walking stick, waving it about and saying, "I'm going to get you people out of my house!"


Anne then went into her house, and Dad carried on chatting to Harry. (I wished to add here that Harry was very ill, had a serious lung condition, and was told he had only months to live; he was a nice old man, very quiet, but very kind.)


Anne came back out and said to Harry, "Is this ok to show them this?" It was a photo Anne handed to my dad. Dad took one look and said, "Bloody hell, that is exactly what she described, down to the walking stick!"


Harry then said, "That was taken eight years ago, late '70s. He was a nasty piece of work. Don't even know why the photo was taken." Anne then said, "I do, their daughter got into photography and was taking pictures for some college art thing."


So now Dad knew what this man looked like. I asked my dad constantly over the years, and he said, "Leave it, I don't want to talk about it."




Then came the time when all the electricity went out in the house. Dad went round to Anne's, and she was okay—no power cuts, as the street lamp was on, too. We had to have candles; I didn't mind that, being a '70s kid, this was normal.


"Tell you what," said Dad, "we're all sleeping downstairs tonight in the living room. I will keep the fire going all night, and we'll all be safe and warm." Mum and Dad brought their mattress down, so us three kids slept on that, and Mum and Dad made beds with the sofa and chairs. It was exciting.


We had a bad winter. Anne had taken ill, and Harry had passed away. A lot of weeks had been and gone, and the winter seemed to last forever—the frost settled in October and didn't shift till March the following year.


Anne was in a home as her house had a burst pipe, and the water went through the floors and damaged the bottom ceilings in the house, plus she was too ill to come back home. She eventually moved into a small ground floor flat four miles away from us, and I missed her like mad.


Then, one day coming home from school, Mum was upset. I said, "Is it that ghost again?" She said no. It had been very silent for a long time, but she said Anne had passed away. My world fell apart; I'd lost my fave nan a few months back, and now this other lady who was like a second nan was gone, too. It was horrible: no Anne, nowhere to escape this ghost man thing.


Things got worse in the house. My big sister's behavior changed—it was very bad. Things in the house would fall off walls, and things banged and slammed in the night.


Dad was talking to his brother one afternoon, and I heard everything:


Dad said to his brother, "Remember that concrete shed base we busted up in the garden a few years back? Well, that was that old bastard's shed. Remember I said I kept finding wooden shavings up the stairs and I kept blaming the kids? Well, turns out he built his own coffin in that shed, then took it into the house, put it in our bedroom, and was found by council workers who had to gain entry to the house and found him dead in the bloody thing."
"He knew he was going to die and did it. He drove the people out of the house not long after they were allocated the place, and now he's doing it to us, and he's affecting my eldest kid. He's attacked me several times, attacked the wife to the point she wants to pack us all up and go. We can't go to Anne, as she's dead."

Dad talked about the photo Anne showed him, and how it matched my sister's description. My uncle then said to my dad, "You need the church to bless the house. Go round, speak to Chris next door, see what he can do."


Hearing all that and seeing how angry my dad was did make me sort of scared, but happy, because I'm now thinking: That ghost, you're messing with my dad, and he will sort you out.


The next day I came home from school, the house was full of people. Dad said, "Right kids, get in the car, we're going out to let these nice people sort something." Dad took us to a park with a chip shop nearby. Mum got us chips and a drink, and we sat in this park at a bench eating our food, then we played on the swings and so on while Mum and Dad sat at the bench talking. I didn't know what they were saying as I was flying in the sky on the swing.


We finally arrived back home. The house was empty; Dad went round, got the keys off Chris, and we went back into our home. It felt different—it felt warm and fuzzy and happy. Everything was good. Months went by, nothing was happening, Mum was happy to do her housework and even said she wasn't having anything happen like it used to.


By this time, I was at secondary school, and my big sister all of a sudden started acting up again. To cut a long story short, she was diagnosed with juvenile schizophrenia at the age of 13. This was another struggle, as there weren't any places for her to go because she was too young, and doctors didn't believe this age got this condition.


Then it all started again—this thing was back, and even worse. It was the hardest time in my life; me and my other sister were on eggshells. I won't go into too much about this, but will say Chris came back on the scene with lots of church members, and we had to stay away from the house the whole night. I can't remember where we stayed, but I remember coming back home the next day.


By this moment in time, my big sister had a placement, was receiving help, and was being introduced to medications as several brain scans and tests revealed brain damage. Dad was given forms to sign my sister away for good; he ripped them up and threw them back at the doctor. Our own family doctor shook my dad's hand and said, "Well done for doing what you did."


So we're now back to the day after the night before. Chris, lots of his church friends, and a minister blessed the whole house and stayed in it all night long. Returning back home was amazing; it felt even better than the first cleansing and stayed like it.


When I turned 16, we moved from this house. My sisters were given a flat to share; I lived with Mum and Dad for a few years. We hardly spoke about the happenings we all went through.


I still returned to the old neighborhood as I was starting a gardening business, and several of the old neighbors gave me their gardens to do—one of them being Chris. One Friday while doing his garden, the new people in the old house were there. The wife was hanging washing out on the line and saw me over the fence, called me, and asked me to go round, so I did.


She then asked me if there was anything wrong with the house, as things were happening. So I said, "Go get help, speak to Chris next door, get the place blessed."


A cousin of mine was living in Anne's old house and used to inform me that things had started again. They moved in a year after Anne died, and the house was repaired, so he knew the stuff we went through. One afternoon I got home from work, and my cousin was at my home talking to Mum and Dad. I got to the front room, and he saw me and Dad, then said, "Come listen to this."


He explained that the new people in the house didn't believe in using churches and so on—thought it was all stupid, that we were all mad. Then, when they woke up the following morning, every single thing that was hung on a wall was all smashed on the floor. My cousin said that they wanted out. This family never got help; they lived like it. The wife ended up leaving the husband and took the kids, and as far as I know, the man is still living in this house on his own.


I saw my cousin a few years back, as I live many miles away from that place, and he told me he went to visit his mum (my aunt), and she said that this man in my old house was mad and wasn't very nice, and no one had anything to do with him.


It's 2025, and as far as I know he still lives there, and his wife never came back. His boys are full-grown men with their own families and don't have anything to do with him, neither does his wife. Now I often wonder if they went to ask for help, would things have been different?