A week or so ago I was in our bathroom, about to brush my teeth, when a whole bunch of stuff fell off the top of the bathroom cabinet. I managed to catch pretty much all of it no problem, that wasn't the issue; what bothered me was how it happened. I was looking upwards at the time and was able to watch as the items moved forward, seemingly of their own accord, until they fell from the cabinet and down towards me. Now, there was nothing behind them which could have moved and pushed them forward, and there was nothing for them to get caught on which might have caused them to be being dragged off from where they were perched. Basically they moved forward, on their own, and fell off, on their own. It was very bloody weird.
Then the other day Charlotte thought she heard a musical noise coming from the wall next to the desk. Not from upstairs, not from next door, not from the other room - from the wall. That was pretty fucking weird too.
So is our house haunted? Who can say? It's not like anything really bloody spooky has happened yet. It has set some latent cogs whirring in my head though, and that's something I'm rather enjoying if truth be told.
I've always had a great interest in the supernatural. You know, ghosts, spirits, goblins, demons, all that scary stuff. As a kid I got great joy - a perverse joy - from sharing all the scary stories I'd either heard about in books or been told by others with my friends, generally frightening the willies out of them.
There was one brilliant story about some kid who got sucked into the vents at the bottom of the large swimming pool in the Felixstowe Leisure Centre just after it had been built. According to the story, this kid had been sucked under by some weird plughole effect and had drowned in the drains under the building. Now his ghost would haunt the pool, and occasionally people swimming there would feel as if they were being tugged under the water by some unforseen hand. To me now this isn't even vaguely scary, but as a nine-year old kid, taking a break from football at lunchtime and huddled at the far end of the playing field with his mates, this was a bit frightening. We used to talk about how one of the houses that backed onto the field was haunted. We'd watch the dark windows of this house and occasionally one of us would say that they'd seen a dark figure moving around even though the house was empty. Scary! I suppose it was one of those situations where the more you dwell on it, and the more you become obsessed with the myth, the more you are able to convince yourself that it is all real.
I had a couple of great books. One of them had a great story in it about how the Romans used to nail dead people's blood to the floor as they believed that doing this would stop the spirit of whoever it was who had died there from floating about and being all pissed off. There was also one about a two-headed ghost dog that roamed the New Forest. That one scared the absolute shit out of me. The other book contained more specifically English stuff. Stories about the most haunted house in England (can't remember where it is I'm afraid) and the most haunted place, which is apparently some road in Kent (I think) where highwaymen, etc. used to be hung. Lovely, eh? That's the kind of stuff that gets a little boy right on edge.
There was one time, when I was about 10 years old, where I thought I had seen a goblin. I was sleeping over at one of my mates houses and was completely 100% mega-sure that I had seen a little weird bloke-type creature scuttling out of the room. This had to be complete bollocks, I mean, a goblin? Yeah right geezer, whatever. But I was utterly convinced. Nobody could tell me it was a load of rubbish. I suppose we're more succeptable to believing rubbish when we're kids. I once convinced one of my mates that I'd been abducted by aliens when we lived in the States, back in 1983. I invented this elaborate story involving my family, the American media, newspapers - loads of really far-fetched stuff that everyone would have heard about if it had really happened - and my mate ate up every word of it. He believed everything I was saying every step of the way. I kept the story going for about two months (that was how big the story had become - it required two months in which to tell it) and he was totally obsessed with it. So you could say he was just really gullible, and you could also say that I was pretty mean for stringing him along for so long, but like I said, when you're a kid you tend to believe the things you're told. So I don't think he was gullible; he just wanted to believe that this fantastical thing had really happened.
When I hear ghost stories now I still tend to believe them without question. My opinion is that until somebody can prove to me that this stuff definitely doesn't exist then I'm going to believe that it's all possible. My ex-stepmum told me once about how she'd seen weird green-glowing lights floating around in a graveyard (that one scared me a bit), then she told me another one about how she'd been staying at a hotel in Rome, I think, and had been lying in bed one night when she felt something gripping itself around her ankles. She'd tried to move but the grip just got tighter and was pulling her down the bed. She looked down the bed but couldn't see anything there, despite feeling something pulling and squeezing at her ankles. Unfortunately, I can't remember how that story ended and won't be able to find out seeing as she's not my stepmum anymore, but rest assured that it totally scared the crap out of me.
Rather sadly, I also have a semi-obsession with Most Haunted, the cheesy overblown ghost-hunting TV show featuring an ex-Blue Peter presenter, a bunch of amateur cameramen and a lovely gay Scottish psychic. Their last psychic was also gay and Scottish. Is there a pattern appearing here? What is it about gay Scottish men that makes them seemingly more inclined to be psychic? Anyway, I'm going off-subject here. Currently they are doing a Most Haunted Live! extravaganza in Transylvania (yes, I know) on a hunt for the spirit of Vlad the Impaler. It really couldn't be any cheesier if it tried, but for some reason I really enjoy watching it. I like the way that it makes me feel when 'things' actually happen. When they hear some weird noise, or see some strange unexplainable thing. It makes me remember how I felt as a kid, inherently believing this stuff because I wanted to, because it scared me. Part of me is always saying "Tim, this a load of old toss", but then another part tells me "Yes, but some of it may actually be true, and nothing you say is going to prove otherwise!" So I have inner turmoil. Inner turmoil caused by Most Haunted. And it's not even like I have to put up with Derek fucking Acorah anymore.
But I really would love it all to be true. Ghosts, ghoulies - the whole shebang. I'd also love to hear everyone else's ghost stories. Anybody got any?
