Growing up in a Haunted House

When I saw this article, a smile crossed my face. It has nothing to do with what I do now, however, was, for the most part, my childhood. You may think that me and my family are crazy, you might not believe me. That’s completely down to you. I can only relay what I recall and what my family and I have discussed since these instances occurred.

My parents moved me and my three sisters from our three-bed house in Warwickshire to a four-bedroom (which would become five) smallholding in Worcestershire when I was nine. The house had its little quirks from the beginning. It was an old black and white cottage, the type where barely any of the doors and fit the doorframes and there were beams throughout along with creaky floorboards. From what I understand, it was originally three separate farmer’s cottages and when we moved in, we had to go outside to get into the far end of the house.

My parents always told me that the previous owners had looked after an elderly lady who lived in the far end/ separate part of the house, but she passed away in what was her bedroom and that’s when the family decided to move out. As a child, I don’t recall being particularly worried or phased by this. I think I was told in such a “gentle” manner that I didn’t feel any need to worry and was genuinely excited to be living somewhere that had more space, even though I was initially still sharing a bedroom with my little sister, who had the polar opposite bedtime routine to me.

The first “instance” I recall was when I was sleeping in one of my sister’s bedrooms. When they weren’t home it was just easier to sleep in their rooms given that my little sister and I weren’t really compatible roommates. This was about the same time that my dad and grandfather decided to put in an adjoining door to both parts of the house so that we didn’t have to go outside every time we wanted to go down there. I remember that I woke up at 2am for no particular reason. I was facing the window that the bed was butted up against. I lay there, still, trying to get back to sleep, knowing I had school in the morning and then I felt a “tap, tap” on my shoulder. I was instantly gripped by fear thinking I’d turn around and see some kind of demon or monster in my room. I lay there, not knowing what to do, I knew that before calling for my parents I’d have to check the room was clear and that I wouldn’t be getting back to sleep with the fear that there might be something in the same room as me. I had to turnaround. I worked up the courage and did so, there was nothing there, but as soon as I turned around, I was overcome by a feeling of calm and quickly went back to sleep without having to call my parents or leave or even check the room.

Next was the instance where we had to get some work done in the shower room. We got my uncle in as he assured us that he could get the work done. He was upstairs working, and I was downstairs watching TV, he could hear the noise from what I was watching from where he was working, and the rest of my family were out. He had his tools in the landing next to the shower room as would have been tight for space otherwise. He went to get one of his tools from the landing and saw someone cross the adjacent room. He could still hear the TV blaring as I was enthralled in what I was watching but thought “Ok, maybe Lucy just popped upstairs to get something”. He used the tool he needed to and went to swap it out and saw someone cross the adjacent room again. He called out to me, loud enough to be heard in the adjacent room but got no response. At that point, he put his tools down and came and sat with me. He played it down at the time and pretended that he just needed a break, but he prolonged that break long enough for my parents to get back.

At this point my mother decided to get a psychic reading done on the house. I wasn’t there at the time, but it doesn’t sound anything like what you’d see in the movie. There were no eyes rolling back in the medium’s skull, no mysterious pointing, no rasping voices. My mother didn’t tell the psychic what had been going on. The psychic simply walked around the house and when they got to what was the bedroom of the elderly lady, she said that there was an old lady sat in the corner, apparently, she loved the fact that a family had moved into the house and that she had left something in the walls for us. My mother asked if we should look for it, we were told that we would find it in time. We were warned that activity would most likely be more predominant when we were making any kind of changes to the house.

One of the last changes that we made was to update the décor in what was the bedroom that the elderly lady died in and apparently resided. This wasn’t an overnight process with wallpaper having to be meticulously cut around the shape of the beams in the wall. My mother was woken one night and swears that she found herself levitating. She wasn’t scared and she simply returned to the bed.
There have been other changes made to the house since, however, we’ve not noticed anything massively out the ordinary. Maybe we’ve just grown used to it now, maybe the elderly lady is used to us or has found peace. Maybe we’ve learnt to coexist.