LIVE24SEVEN // Local C LAI R E IN THE COUNT Y
Ghosts are for life and not just for Halloween
Claire Thayers retells her nights of horror…
I have to admit I have always had an interest in ghostly stories, especially as Prestbury near Cheltenham is regarded as the most haunted place in the UK and I have owned every book there is on the subject.
I didn’t really grow up expecting to hear rattling chains or see ghostly figures but looking back, I have had more than one encounter – some funny, some not so funny but it’s a good time to share those stories with you.
Happily married, living in Cornwall in a pretty barn conversion (it was a chicken shed once, or so I was told and converted a mere 20 years earlier), I was so very happy living the dream; chickens, terrier and horses – bliss!
We had just moved in, children settled and all my world was well – until I was told at a horse show that the tiny hamlet in which I lived was haunted, ‘oh you don’t want to live there – no one stays there long, always a tragic story... blah blah blah’.
Not really what you wanted to hear when you had just invested half your life’s savings and thought you had a perfect marriage and a perfect house and a perfect life.
A few weeks later with the husband away and children tucked up, I was toasty warm, heated blanket on (one of those you CAN leave on all night) when I woke up, with icy cold legs and a weight on them – unable to move.
I managed to move my head to look at the clock so that I knew I was awake, 3am. I tried to move to turn on the light but literally paralysed with fear – managing to force my eyes open, I saw the shadowy form of a monk sat on the end of the bed! I was talking to myself in my head, ‘don’t be
silly...move your
/ 104
little
fingers...move your hand...turn the light on’ NOTHING... all I could hear was my heart thumping, mouth dry and terror, REAL terror! Again, I gave myself a stern talking to. I still couldn’t move so I recited the Lord’s Prayer in my head – and I am not even religious but so terrified I decided I would go to church every Sunday if this would leave the room.
I don’t know how long that lasted – the weight, the icy cold, the paralysis but when it went I knew immediately – I managed to turn the light on, turn the TV on and sat bolt upright and didn’t sleep a wink. Once the safety of the dawn flooded in through the window the fear subsided and I decided it must have been a nightmare and had to pull myself together, so when the husband rang I felt foolish but decided to confess. I was shocked – far from telling me to pull myself together he said it had happened to him and he was lying next to me.
The following week, being invited to the house next door, which was the original farmhouse, out of the blue, without me saying a word they said, “Settled in ok? You know this house was haunted – we had to have it exorcised – it’s ok now but it was once the site of a monastery”. I nearly fell off the sofa....
We had many strange, unexplained events happen whilst we lived there and my youngest was terrified and often said she heard and saw figures and odd bangs and bumps. Even on New Years Eve we all sat in her room, watching Big Ben at midnight, with friends and there were 3 loud knocks on the window. Everyone ran round the house, and NOTHING. We literally lived in the middle of nowhere, so that was pretty hard to explain.
A wonderful man came to dowse the land and he said there was negative energy so he drove copper stakes into the ground to clear it. He then dowsed the house where he picked up a young lady who had been there to look after me and as he ‘set her free’, I felt grief like I have never felt before and sobbed my heart out. Once she had gone to the light, it went – like turning a tap off.
He even picked up on a monk who prowled my room at night – how could he know that? So when you think of ghosts on 31st October and think that it is all rubbish – remember it could happen to you, and it could happen at any time and although you may think it is all balderdash – think again… Happy Halloween!
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