A most haunted house Page 2
John: I immediately thought what was wrong with it? This was in good economic times, not like now with the credit crunch and there was me thinking that someone would outbid us, or we would not be able to afford it and now the woman was desperate to get what she paid for it, not what it was valued as. Was there subsidence or damp or bad neighbours? There had to be something, but it seemed that woman and her kid just wanted to get out of there. I thought that maybe her and her husband had split up and she just wanted out. I don’t think she was from around here. There are a lot of people down here in Pembrokeshire because of the military bases or oil refineries in the area.
Sarah: I took John into the garden, a lovely long garden with a shed at the end. We stood on the decking, I knew John would love the decking and I just blurted, “Let’s do this. Let’s go for it”. We could afford it on our wages, it was a bargain and it had a garden and spare rooms and it wouldn’t work out much more than what we were paying for at the flat.
John: I admit that the place seemed really nice, I won’t exaggerate and say that I sensed there was something wrong or that there was a feeling of foreboding. There was nothing like that at all, just a nice house. I said to Sarah that we need to think about it, need to talk first and work it out. I remember Sarah beaming like a kid who has been told they can have a present if they are good. As I said Sarah was smart and if we went for this then she would work out how we could do it. It was nice there on the decking with the sun shining. I love the summer and I can’t abide the winter. I started imagining us living there, making plans for the decking, like we already lived there. That’s always a mistake when you move in, imagining and creating in your mind. On the walk home Sarah was quiet; she was always quiet when she was computing in her mind. She was processing and organising everything that needed to be done; It’s an amazing skill to have.
Sarah: John left everything to me, which was for the best. He of course came with me to the mortgage advisor and to the bank and to the estate agents. We put in an offer of £105K and it was accepted straight away. I was so anxious that it would all go wrong and we would lose it but on September 6th 2003 we had the keys. It happened so fast, it was incredible.
John: You have to give all the credit to Sarah, she worked so hard to make sure everything was in order. I was of course sad to leave the flat, but once you started boxing things up and changing your details for the post, you kind of disconnect and look forward to the new place. I was excited, I just wanted to click my fingers and be there in the new house with all the furniture in place. Plus we could have SKY TV at our new place which was exciting and Sarah started talking about kittens and puppies.
Sarah: John was like a kid because we would have SKY TV.The night before we were to have friends and family help us move in, he went over and cleaned the empty house from top to bottom, everything!
John: I actually spent the first night there on my own, cleaning, tidying, and organising. My Dad popped over with a bag of cleaning stuff and I showed him around. He loved the place, the house seemed much bigger as it was empty of furniture and clutter from the woman and her daughter. You came in through the front door into a tiny little hallway and then a door led you into the living room. In front of you was a big old fireplace with a window to your right. Off from the living room was a dining area with two doors and under the stairs was a little alcove. One set of double doors took you to the kitchen and through patio doors to the decking area and garden. The other door led to the bathroom. The stairs had no railing and had a small landing. The doors up here were thick and heavy with black latches, quite old fashioned but I liked them. One door opened to a small room which overlooked the street, another door to the main bedroom and finally the third to an attic conversion which was a low ceilinged room with wooden floors. You couldn't stand straight but it was long and quite wide and this part of the house due to its design was not attached to any of the other houses. Immediately I thought DEN! I could play music and not annoy the neighbours, drink wine, and play video games in this room. Sarah had designs on it to be a spare room, but we did compromise. The room was weird, like some do it yourself enthusiast had gone mad with little cupboards, nooks and crannies. There was a door to the boiler at one end and a little door as you came in that ran the length of the room and was filled with Christmas trees and decorations from previous occupiers. I have to say that I felt nothing untoward that night. I had the radio on and I thoroughly cleaned the place and scrubbed the decking too. Dawn came and the sun shone through the one window at the front of the house and I loved the place, Sarah was right. It was a good place at that time.
Sarah: We didn’t have much to move and some good friends and family got vans to help us, it was fun, the bed belonged to the flat and we had a few bits and bobs but not a huge amount. Family gave us a dining table and we bought a fridge and found a second hand washing machine that was advertised in the paper. We didn’t even have a bed but John said don’t worry we will sleep in sleeping bags till it arrives and have fish and chips for our first official night. Both of us were eager to get unpacked. We just had to wait for a proper sofa and for the bed to be delivered.
John: First night was kind of romantic, snuggled up on the bedroom floor in our sleeping bags, big grins, madly in love. We had work the next day and I slept fine, not a peep in the night.
Sarah: First night was absolutely fine. My alarm goes off at 7 on the dot and Johns literally a few seconds later. So I’m lying on the floor when my alarm goes off and then Johns; he shuts it off and the door to the bedroom just opened. It swung open. I could have sworn it was on a latch and the carpet was thick so you had to push it. John laughed and said “Ok, Ok, we're getting up” like the house wanted us up.
John: The bedroom door opened on the first morning, just swung open, I said something like “Someone’s fed up with us after just one night”. I thought I heard the latch lift but I won’t swear to that.
Sarah: To be honest I didn’t think much about it after as we had to go to work, everyone was excited about our move plus we still had lots to do with deliveries and unpacking. I had a lot of planning to do and of course a day’s work too.
John: The door opening, I love stuff like that; well I used to love stuff like that. When I used to live back at my fathers I liked all the shows about ghosts and I loved the X-files. I loved it on Christmas Day when the family got together, someone would always have a ghost story.
I remember with the door that it opened a little bit a first, like someone was peeping through and then it opened fully even on the thick carpet. In my mind it was like when I was little and my Gran or Dad would open the door a little to see if I was still asleep and when they saw me waking they would come on in. I miss my gran very much.
Sarah: I feel bad about this as I gave John hell but I used to keep all the important documents for the house in a file in a draw. You know, all the mortgage details, bills and so on and I kept everything organised. He didn’t have to do much but sign where he had to sign. One day John and his mate were moving this big old heavy leather sofa, very old fashioned, that we had bought from a second hand furniture shop. I needed to send off a document and I couldn't find it in the draw. I checked where I thought it could be and thought it’s definitely in the house as I had it here yesterday. John is struggling to get the sofa in and I ask him where it is and he said he didn’t know. I said he must, as I didn’t have it and it had been in the top draw. John and his mate get the sofa in and he’s sweating and flustered and says “have you checked the top draw?” of course I bloody had and we had a row. It was the first time we had rowed in front of a friend before. He swore on his life that he had not touched them. We calmed down and I kept looking, I couldnt find them and had to go through all the hassle of getting them re-done, so I got on my mobile and rang whomever it was I needed to get it sorted with.
John: She was adamant that I hid them from her, why would I do that? I like a prank as much as anyone, but not with important stuff but I never doubted h
er, she was that organised, but moving house is stressful and maybe she had just forgotten where she had put them. I wasn’t cross with her, it was just the settee weighed a ton and it was a nightmare to get into the house and a joke that maybe the hamster had them did not help at all.
Sarah: I was so upset that they had gone missing but John said he would help me look and we would find them. To make matters worse, a few hours later, I decided I did not like where the settee was placed as I wanted it under the window. John and I pulled it across the room and John was staring at the floor. He looked so confused and there they were, the documents had been under the sofa. John swore they were not there when he put it down and I thought I would never leave something so important lying on the carpet with the front door wide open while they were getting the sofa in.
John: I couldn't explain it at all; I honestly did not see them when we brought in the settee and maybe I wasn’t paying attention. My mate who was helping said he didn’t see anything but as I said maybe we just didn’t pay any attention. Sarah went very quiet as either she doubted herself or she blamed me, it was a strange afternoon.
Sarah: We soon forgot and got on with making the house a home. I was looking in the paper one night and some kittens were free to a good home and it was only a few minutes’ walk away. I told John and he was happy enough and we went and got a kitten.
John: I love animals but that Kitten hated me, I got on better with the hamster. I even bought it a big climbing tree which it only used when I wasn’t there! Anyway, I was sitting on the settee watching a DVD; we had a TV set but no SKY or anything yet, I think I was catching up on the series "24". The kitchen doors were open and it was dark back there, I thought I heard a noise and presumed it was the kitten or the fridge making a noise. As I looked away I thought I saw like a little surge of energy, a small ball of electricity. It was only for a second. I walked through the dining area into the kitchen; I didn't feel nervous or anxious, I thought maybe the cooker was playing up or it was a light from outside reflecting back in. The cooker was off and I went out the back on the decking and there was nothing unusual. I went back to the settee and it happened again. Now, I was worried as I suffer with migraine with what’s called an aura, it’s very common and they impair me so much that I have missed work and get togethers with friends and family as I’m useless when they strike. I can’t see, I can’t talk, and I have numbness in my arm and then have a cracking headache over my eye. I’m not afraid to admit but sometimes the pain is so severe that I've cried. One of the symptoms I have affectionately called the worm, it’s a light that impairs my vision, like a blue worm across my vision which makes it difficult to focus. It’s the first symptom and I thought “Oh no, not a migraine!” No migraine came so I just shrugged it off and never mentioned it to Sarah.
Sarah: One night I came out of the Bathroom after a shower and John was taking pictures of the kitchen in the dark. I thought he'd gone mad and he said that he thought the kitten was playing on its climbing tree in the kitchen and he wanted a photo. The kitten was upstairs sleeping on our bed. I just thought it was John being John. You know, he was kind of kooky.
John: A few nights later I saw the little light again, and this time I ran and got our camera and took a few pictures. I got them developed a few days later and there was nothing to see just the flash on the patio doors and the kitchen and the cats climbing tree. Sarah must have thought I'd had some kind of breakdown.
Sarah: I didn't feel that anything strange was happening and we started settling into a nice routine. We would finish work and John would have a bottle of wine open or a pot of green tea and we had a TV now. We'd snuggle up on the sofa I’d have the kitten all cwtched (snuggled up) up with me and we had just got into "24", the TV series.
John: We'd settle down for the evening and watch DVD’s and I remember so vividly seeing something out of the corner of my eye towards the kitchen. We had this cream carpet and the light from the TV made everything look brighter but around the kitchen and bathroom area was shadowy. I was very aware of something moving, at first I just thought it was the flickering of the TV casting shadows, playing with my mind. This blur would disappear into the shadows and be gone but every night it came back. I could only see it from the corner of my eye and couldn't focus on it directly. At one stage I was so sure that I saw it that I got up to look, Sarah asked what was I doing and I said I thought I had seen a rodent, a rat or something moving by the kitchen. That is how convinced I was. This happened for a week and I did not utter a word to Sarah after I said I thought I saw a rat as I didn't want to upset her after everything with the bedroom door opening, the documents moving and the lights in the kitchen. Then one night this shadow, this blur moves up to the armchair we had across the room and it just stood there for a minute and disappeared back into the shadows. As I'm telling you now it has my hairs standing on end. It was a few feet tall and it seemed as if each day it got braver or stronger and got closer and closer. The night I knew something was happening and I hadn’t gone mad was when it made its way in front of the TV and Sarah grabbed my arm.
Sarah: I had seen it for days, slowly moving by the kitchen and disappearing in the shadows. It was small, maybe 2 feet tall, it had no real form just something in the corner of the eye and the night it stood in front of the TV you could see it, a strange black blur, it is so strange to describe, you would have to see it to understand. I squeezed John’s arms so hard it bruised and then the TV went black for a second and the thing was gone. That was the last time we saw the blur, it was moving around the room at floor level for around two weeks every night and then it made itself known and we never saw it again.
John: Sarah and I were really calm about it, we were of course a little frightened but as far as I knew we had a ghost. It was as simple as that.You hear so many stories of hauntings and pretty much everyone I know has a story about a ghost or a UFO What can you do, call the police? Get a priest? This thing did not seem bad, I did not get a sense of dread, it just spooked me. I thought it was cool at the time, maybe get some evidence, get a picture and make a fortune but we decided not to tell anyone as people would be coming over to stay and visit and we did not want to upset them. I thought I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. It's mad to think that things got so bad that I began to dread the night, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Sarah: I was upset, really upset. I didn't want to believe in such things, I told myself that there had to be an explanation. John loved it, I knew he did, but I hated it. My first thought was that maybe there was carbon monoxide in the room or something that was causing us to hallucinate. It was always at the same time of night, around 10pm, and both of us had seen it. John got mad when I made us watch TV with the light on. I asked my dad to come over and he put in a brand new carbon monoxide detector and checked the boiler and everything. He said it was fine but I still got the gas man to check, he said everything was in good working order. John started staying up later after I went to bed to watch DVD’s but I knew he was down there with his camera trying to get a photo. I just wanted him to come to bed and snuggle, not be a ghost buster. I was terrified on my own.
John: I have to say that it did excite me to the extent that I thought, if we could record evidence we could be rich and famous! I know it sounds stupid now, but that’s what I thought. It was my very own x-file! I was like the people on "Most Haunted". Sarah thought it might be the boiler, or radon gas seeping through the floor, plus there was all this fuss about this new mobile phone technology that was going to be used in the area; leaflets came through the door saying that it needs to be stopped, petitions need to be signed and protests attended as the technology was based on cold war weapons, made people depressed and ill and could even cause diarrhoea. Berserk I know, but it’s a theory and who knows maybe it was responsible. The house was quiet too; the walls were so thick that you never heard the neighbours to either side of us, no TV; there were no arguments heard and not even a headboard banging in the night. The Walls were
stone and probably a few feet thick.
Sarah: Nothing seemed to happen for a few weeks and the nights began to draw in and the house seemed warm and comfortable, John, the kitten and the hamster all seemed settled. John hates the winter as he suffers from a seasonal disorder that makes him prone to depression. I didn't fully appreciate at the time what it is, but it’s awful to see someone so bright and cheerful become more and more down and sorrowful, but he would always try and fight it. Well, he did but I guess he just got worn down by everything that started to happen.
John: The cat and I started to get on a bit and it would chill out more and sit by me on the settee. The hamster would roll about in its big plastic ball on the carpet and they both got on well. One evening I walked from the kitchen into the dining room and there on the settee the cat was hissing at something, its ears back and tail snaking around. I thought what’s up? I said “Lucky”, Lucky was the cats name and it just growled this insane growl and I walked towards the settee and it was like I had walked into something absolutely freezing. We had radiators on, we had been cooking and Sarah had been in the bath so the house was warm and cosy. I could literally map the area of the coldness with my hand, it was about four feet tall and maybe a foot across and from the top to the carpet it was freezing. Then in a second it was back to normal temperature and the cat just scarpered upstairs. I have since read about cold spots but it was like there was something there, just stood there, staring at the cat and the cat could see it, sense it, I don’t know how to describe it but the cat was certainly aware of it.
Sarah: John told me about Lucky; but animals, particularly cats, always have a tendency to do that weird hissing and staring at the wall thing. I just thought the cold spot was a draft or maybe something to do with the fireplace, it was blocked up but maybe a brick had come loose. I wasn't there so I can’t give any more information on that.