Readers Stories Finally At Rest? I am 42 years of age and live near Glasgow, Scotland but grew up in a place called Clydebank, famous for shipbuilding and in fact as a youngster I watched the QE2 being built at John Brown's shipyard adjacent to my primary school. I'm unclear about exact dates but around 1967 when I was six the family moved from our small tenement apartment to a bigger place, part of a row terraced built just after the war. The house had become available when the previous tenant had apparently committed suicide by gassing himself in the kitchen. My parents being Catholics invited the local priest to bless the house after we moved in. A short time after moving in strange things started to happen in the house and most of these were recounted to me years later by my mother. The house consisted of a ground floor containing living room, kitchen, hallway and a bedroom. Upstairs had two bedrooms and the toilet, my parents occupied the downstairs bedroom while my two younger sisters shared one of the bedrooms upstairs and I had the other to myself. Around this time we got a dog, which was black retriever. At this time my father worked night shift at a local factory. While he was working in the evening when my sisters and myself would be in bed, my mother would hear footsteps on the stairway outside the living room door and the dog's hackles would raise and he would growl. Thinking it was one of us playing around on the stairs she would check only to find no one there; this happened many times and proved very frightening for my mother. All during the few weeks that this was happening the dog could not be compelled to go upstairs at any time but would whine and growl. I remember clearly on two occasions awakening sometime in the night to see the figure of a man standing at the bottom of my bed looking at me. There was just sufficient light from streetlights outside to silhouette the figure and although I couldn't see any clear features I knew it wasn't my father who was shorter and stockier of build. This frightened me deeply and for years afterwards I would sleep with my head under the blankets so I wouldn't be able to see if anyone was in the room. I don't remember telling anyone about this at the time. While these events were occurring the family were prone to bouts of nausea during the night but despite the doctor being called there was no apparent cause and was put down to us kids eating too many sweets! A second visit by the priest didn't stop these things happening and by now my father who was initially sceptical had heard the footsteps on the stairs and had seen the behaviour of the dog. Meanwhile a new gas cooker was delivered and when the gas fitter was installing it he was shocked to find a gaping hole in the gas pipe behind the old cooker which all this time had been leaking gas. He told my mother that we were all lucky to be alive and the only thing that had saved us was my mother's habit of leaving bedroom windows open during the summer months. The gas leak had been responsible for us getting sick and of course explained the so called suicide of the previous tenant who had come home from the pub and put the kettle on only to fall asleep in the kitchen and never wake up. My mother contacted the previous tenant's mother who lived nearby and explained that her son hadn't committed suicide but was the victim of a tragic accident instead. My mother recalls that she was very grateful and took comfort from the explanation saying that she couldn't understand why her otherwise happy son would take his own life and that she had been distraught since his death. According to my parents the footsteps stopped after this and never occurred again in the years we stayed in the house. Incidentally, afterwards the dog would go upstairs but never into the room I occupied... These are the events as told to me by my parents and my own recollections, which remain vivid after so many years. My mother is reluctant to talk about it but my father and I had a conversation recently and he believes that these strange events did happen as we remember them and central to all was the recent death in the house. Tony from Scotland
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