Readers Stories Our Home of Spirits. My wife, daughter and I live in a town house on the main street of a small town in Northern Ireland. We bought the house almost fifteen years ago to tide us over for a year or so until we could find what we were looking for in the country. My eldest daughter lived with us then, though she was only five years old and my youngest two. The man who had the house before us (and had died in the bathroom) was a very Christian man and had left the house to the church whose grounds tie up with the back garden of our house. The property was built in 1856 and was once a boarding house for the local gas works. The day I bought the house, I started immediately to remove the old kitchen after I had finished work that night. I had my two Irish wolfhounds with me for company. As I ripped off doors etc I heard footsteps coming down the stairs and walk across the floor above my head. I thought that it must have been one of the dogs exploring but when I heard the dogs behind me I stopped what I was doing and went to the bottom of the stair well and looked up. The dogs wouldn't come with me at first but stood at the front door as if urgently wanting out. I was about to go up the stairs to investigate, as the property had been empty for at least three years before I bought it, I was concerned that someone may have broken in to squat. I had only gone up a few steps when Rory the youngest of my dogs rushed past me blocking my way and stood with the hair on his neck sticking straight up, baring his teeth and growling fiercely towards the landing just above us. Just then the footsteps started again going up the stairs along the corridor into the back bedroom and the bedroom door banged closed. I could see that there was no one on the stairs when all this took place. I must admit I was quite frightened so I switched off all the lights and left the house. A few days later I returned to the house taking my other dog Grainne who followed me everywhere. I was aware of my feelings on the previous night as I entered the house but tried to put the fear behind me and carry on working. When I entered the kitchen, the doors I had removed were neatly stacked in a corner, the splinters of wood and nails, dust, broken glass etc was brushed into a neat pile by the door. I know for a fact that I had left everything strewn all over the floor when I left the night previously. I remember feeling nervous as I carried on removing the rest of the kitchen and soon settled myself and put all behind me. After about two hours or so Grainne was at the back door wanting out, so I decided to take a break and let her out to the toilet up the back garden. On climbing the steep steps to the garden I got the strongest feeling I was being watched from the bedroom windows at the back of the house. After a few more hours working and almost having the kitchen 'Gutted' (cleaned out) we left. Almost every time I worked in the house I would hear something, either on the stairs or walking across the dressing room or bathroom floor, or doors banging closed up stairs. My wife and I joked about it to ease or hide the underlying fear we had. When the builders moved in they used to thank me for tidying up each night after they had left. I pointed out to them I hadn't been near the house and told them of my experience on the stairs. They finished the work quicker than anticipated. Not long after we moved in, my eldest daughter could be heard talking to someone from midnight every night, sometimes until two in the morning. We used to think it was in her sleep and at times when we would go to her room to check her she would be sitting up in bed and tell us she had been talking to her angel who watched over her each night. My daughter related every detail that this 'angel' and spoken to her about. When she had got her first pair of shoes, who she was, how and when she met her husband James. How he was a 'thrasher' and with horses had drawn the thrashing machine up the country to Kells in Country Antrim. She also mentioned her son Alexander who incidentally was the man that had died in our bathroom three years earlier. On telling some of the stories to a neighbour who had known both Alex and his mother (who had passed away some twenty years earlier than her son) he laughed and mocked our stories until one or two of the stories we couldn't have found out locally. Conversations that he had had with the mother and son that only they would have known. While the mother was talking to our eldest daughter the son (Alex) was visiting our youngest daughters room and played with her and her dolls. The house was quite dust in all the rooms with the builders having just left except our youngest daughter's bedroom. It was always clean and tidy. Things would settle down and we would hear nothing for months and then just as I started work in the house, (i.e. painting, papering, new carpet etc) things would start up again. Lights would be switched on in the middle of the night when we were in bed, doors opened, things moved or go missing only to be returned one week later. We used to joke about it to take the worry out of it, until one weekend I decided to ask a minister friend of my wife's to remove the spirits. He and his wife came to our house for a meal one night and while our wives sat in the living room, he and I stood in the kitchen with a glass of wine. Footsteps came down the stairs and across the dressing room floor just above our head towards the bathroom and a minute or so later returned, only this time instead of going back up the stairs started down the stairs. The minister's wife who knew our children said I'll open the door when they get to the hall, they will be surprised to see me here. Before she got to the door the handle turned and the door opened, no one was there but feet could be heard shuffling across the floor into the kitchen stopping between the minister and myself. I started to laugh only to be told off by the minister that it was funny! I explained that it was, as when we moved into the house the upstairs toilet had been blocked for years, so Alex had been using the outside toilet in the yard for years before his death. I had been standing with my back to where the back door used to be before I re-sited it and I was probably blocking his exit to the toilet. I was told not to be stupid when I moved aside the shuffling could be heard going out through a door that no longer was there. After a few minutes the shuffling could be heard returning through the house back up the stairs closing the doors behind it. The minister said he would remove the spirits when he returned, as he would be away for a few weeks. In the mean time my eldest daughter told 'her angel' that spoke to her every night she wasn't going to speak to her anymore unless she could see her. The spirit promised her she would let her see her soon. I am very involved in traditional Irish music and was away for a weekend singing, when a friend from the west of Ireland stopped me in a pub I was singing in and we had a short conversation. He asked was I still living in the same town as he was due to call in it within the next month with his work. I informed him I had moved house and gave him my new address on piece of paper. Just then his wife walked in (we had never met before) and he handed her the piece of paper asking her to mind it for him. We agreed to meet later for a few songs and parted, his wife was standing with the paper in her hands looking at me. I bid her goodbye and turned to leave, when she said out loud "You have a presence in your house, in fact you have two and you want someone to remove them". The bar went quiet and everyone looked at us. I took her arm leading her to one side and asked her what she meant. She was able to tell me everything that had happened in my house, every conversation my wife and I had had over the past week leading up our meeting beside her husband. She described our house in great detail, she knew my daughters names, my dogs and other personal and family things my wife and I had been worrying over. I was stunned! She informed me that she was in touch with them as we spoke. She told me the minister could remove them but wouldn't, in fact the reason he wouldn't was he was planning to go away for a short while but it wasn't going to work out as he had planned. He will be gone for three days and will be forced home and never be the same person again she stated. Then she told me that she had informed the spirits they had to move on and that I had asked for them to leave. She told me she would remove them but I had to help, I had to have someone give me a piece of rosemary (herd of remembrance) I wasn't to ask for it and I wasn't to thank them. After we discussed this, she said she would send me a slip of rosemary but I was not to thank her for it. She gave me an envelope with a prayer in it. I was to keep the envelope warm (on my body at all times) I would receive by post the slip of rosemary and I was to plant the slip and read aloud the prayer within the envelope and then burn the prayer. The spirits will leave within three days but I was not to worry, as my home was a 'happy' home and nothing evil had or ever will happen in it. The slip arrived and I did all I was asked (that was on a Wednesday). On Friday night I arrived home, approx. nine PM, collected my dogs and walked to a nearby park. I was told that my eldest daughter had a friend staying for a sleep over and my wife had been teaching them to knit. On arriving back from walking the dogs I found my daughter's friend sitting on my wife's knee crying something about a ghost. My wife said to go up to my eldest daughter quickly. On entering her room she told me that her friend and herself had been sitting knitting by the light of the street lamp coming in at the window (as they were supposed to have been asleep) when a woman appeared beside them and sat on the bed. The friend jumped up and ran downstairs crying, "It's a ghost". My daughter spoke to the woman asking was she her angel? The spirit replied "I am what you think I am but we have to go, as your father has asked for us to leave, besides we have no reason to be here anymore". "Before we leave, I will make you one more promise". "We will all meet again, though not for a long time, but when we do all meet we will all be very happy", she then walked out the door and according to my daughter, "she just wasn't there anymore dad!". The story should finish there but doesn't! My wife went to a spiritualist meeting with a friend who wished to contact her mother. My wife didn't join in with the meeting but sat at the door waiting on her friend. Half way through the meeting all three of the people who were taking the meeting turned and looked at my wife, they each came over and to her that there was two young girls by her shoulder who were going home with her that night. They did and we still have them all these years later. Friends of ours have seen them and describe them as early twenties and mid twenty years old, always smiling and happy looking. They have come into my bedroom when I was lying down Unable to open my eyes or move; they sat on the bed stroking my hand and my cheek. They whispered to me saying, "not to worry about an operation" which I was due to have on my hand and "I was going to be all right". They told me I would be going into hospital for an operation later and be all right but would be back in within a very short time but again I would come home all right as they would be with me all the time to help me. I told my wife what had happened and on her advice wrote all down in case I forgot, I told a few friends who scorned. I had the operation on my hand and it was fine. Two months after I discovered I had cancer and was taken into hospital once again, had the operation and was let home. I was only home three quarters of an hour when I was rushed back into hospital with meningitis and given two hours to live at one point. Needless to say I pulled through and am fine and well again. Our spirits are still with us and can be heard almost everyday. I feel content with the feeling that they are looking after my family.
Eoin.
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