Readers Stories Ghostly Encounters. I'd start with the saying while growing up my dad used to scare me with 'Stories' of ghostly encounter which he (Ben), and my mom, Cathy, as well as my grandmother encountered many years ago. This happened when they just got married, as a young couple moving into their first house. It was a small house close (few hundred meters) from the town graveyard. It started already the day before they moved in. My mom cleaned the whole house out, everything was set for the move into the house, just one thing, and they couldn't get the back door unlocked. My mom walked through the still empty house, and discovered a pair of very old-fashioned glasses (those with the thing wire frames), and a back door key, in the kitchen, in front of the back door, (where she had just cleaned and polished). Once they moved in, they regularly heard strange sounds and frequently got woken up by a crying baby (usually around 2am in the morning), right outside their master bedroom window. My mom said it was such a vivid cry, it sounded like it came from under her pillow. My dad, being the 'brave man' of the house, wanted to dig there to check if he could find anything, but my mother discouraged him from doing so. Strange things would happen in the little house like footsteps, and a tall figure with a top hat would appear to my dad, doors opening and closing... all the standard warnings. My Late Grandmother was terrified, and never wanted to set foot in the house, until one day she was convinced by my mom to come for some tea in the kitchen. While making tea, my granny offered to get sugar out of the pantry, as she entered the pantry the door behind her slammed shut, with no way of opening it from the inside. Luckily my mom was around to help her out, needless to say that was the first and the last time ever my Granny was in the house. They, not surprisingly, moved out of the house shortly after, but my dad always said the figure with the top hat had followed him, whenever they moved house. This I thought was a bit much to believe. Now I'm the youngest of 4 kids, and this all happened easily 20 years before I was even born. BUT when I was 5 years old, we moved back to the same neighbourhood, 3 kilometres from the original house. One night I was awoken by Cynthia my youngest sister, and my Grandmother (whom was now living with us), both were in my sisters room screaming. Upon investigation, my sister told us that an old man with a top hat walked through the one wall of her room where she was playing cards with my Grandmother, and out through the other wall of her room. My dad laughed it off, and said at least after so many years he had proven a point. (Once again my poor grandmother went into total shock!) This happened twice more, with my oldest sister Sonya, and my brother, Berend, bearing witness to a man in a top hat coming out of the ground in the back yard of our house, and walking through the garden then disappearing as quickly as he came. My friend Johan lived in a house a few blocks away from us and as kids a few years before puberty struck, we engaged in lots of wholesome boyish fun making up games in their back yard to get us through the school holidays. Located in the backyard, was an out-room where the maid used to stay. Since they didn't have a live-in maid, the room was quite deserted, except for a lonely king sized bed standing in the middle of it. This bed, one could see, had been around quite a long time. It didn't have any covers, and the white (or at least what used to be white) mattress was stained beyond repair. One particular game we used to play involved 2 friends tying the 3rd up with rope, or whatever we could find. Tied to a broom or something (as I said we made these games up as we went along!) and then tying the kid to the bed, and dumping as many things in front of the room door so the kid can't get out. This room was old. Dusty, and had no electricity running to it, with the only light coming from the small dusty windows, with a bit of light creeping through. We did this, then checked who took the longest to get out! My turn to get gagged and bound by my friends finally came along, to my horror, with only a few minutes of sunlight left. As soon as the door closed and I was alone in the room, my mouth tied up, my hands and feet tied behind my back, with a broom to stop me from using my legs to free myself from the bed, I started smelling this very bad scent. This damp odour that filled the room, was so bad that I wanted to puke! Unlike anything I've ever smelt. It was a cold yet damp smell. I was horrified, as the sunlight disappeared I lied there screaming at the top of my voice for about 20 minutes (felt like forever), until finally I freed myself from the now broken broomstick. I ran into the door at full force pushed everything out of the way, straight into the house. For my friends it was quite notable that I was in shock. I later found out that Johan's Uncle died of a heart attack on that bed, and the stains on the white mattress is from him loosing his bodily fluids after his death. Last year, I moved into a flat, which I shared, with my best friend. He's a raver; I'm more into alternative types of music. Thus I go out till 3am, and go home, he only gets home later the next day when the rave bunnies go home. The Flat we had was double storey with a wooden staircase leading to the two bedrooms upstairs. When we moved in and cleaned the flat we noticed there was crosses varnished onto both the bedroom doors upstairs, but never questioned it, as they probably did it cause they wanted to mark the doors to be upgraded next, but never got around to it. My girlfriend and myself would wake up from someone opening the front door, hear footsteps coming up the wooden staircase and go into my friend's room and hear the bedroom door close. We'd get out of bed, and go to my friend's room, only to find it empty. This happened LOTS. When we moved out, we asked the owner what the crosses where for. He said he used to live there with his brother, and it was him that painted the crosses on the doors, because he believed the flat to be haunted. He moved out, and that's why the flat was available for rent!
Neville Howard,
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