Spooky or what?

Halloween is just around the corner and that makes me think of the true story my mother always used to tell when ghost stories were in order.

When she was young she and her family lived in an old cottage in Ely, Cambridgeshire. She had two brothers and three sisters, but unfortunately, the youngest died when only about six years old of diptheria. My mother loved her and was very distressed. One day about three weeks after her death, Audrey came running into her room to wake her up as always and then ran giggling down the hall. Only when Mum got out of bed to chase her did she remember that her beloved sister was dead.

If that wasn't spooky enough, as a trainee teacher, Mum started sleeping in the big end bedroom where two of her sisters had slept, but one was dead, the others had left home. Some time later, Mum began to hear footsteps coming into her room each night, but they were not the pattering steps of a young girl - more like the tread of a man. Each night He came to her bedside and looked down at her. She felt his breath on her face but kept her eyes shut and he went away. She said she didn't feel that "he" wished to harm her.

However, soon after this she got married and she and my father went to live there. A few nights later Mum heard the footsteps but this time the atmosphere was different. "He" was angry and instead of looking at her he placed his hands about her throat and tried to strangle her. Mum cried out and my father struggled to light the candle - no electricity in the house - but three times the flame was blown out. On the fourth attempt he managed it and immediately the hands left my mother's throat.

After that they slept in the middle room whenever they stayed at Nanna's house.

Is it a true story? Both my mother and father swear it was - and my mother was good at reading the cards, perhaps too acurately. She foreold her father's death and I think her own. She told me a few days before her death that this time her illness was different and she feared she would die soon.

Do I have this gift - or is it a curse? The only time something spooky happened to me was at a house in Devon. As we walked uder an arch I felt terribly cold and felt something bad had happened there. Later, when I read the guide book I discovered it had been a prison for prisoners in an early war and several of them had died there.

Happy Halloween.

If you like Vampires and sppoky stories you can get "When Darkness Falls" /Anne Ireland free from amazon this weekend.


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Best wishes and have fun. Linda Sole