WoooOOOOooo

I had an unusual thought for a blog post while I was making coffee this morning. I thought: I'll write about the houses I've lived in that were supposed to be haunted. I love a good ghost story, and I can ask my readers what ghosts they've seen and yes yes it'll be brilliant.

The first blog I read this morning with my coffee was ELOHSSANATAHW and bugger me, her new blog post was on exactly the same subject. Haunted houses she's lived in, and the request for readers' ghost stories. So there are more over there to read, and they're better than mine.

You see, I am not sensitive to ghosts. I feel I'm missing out, and yet I'm glad I can blithely crash through life unaware of any cold, dead eyes staring at me from the corner. I take others' word for it that ghosts exist. I've talked to sane, intelligent people I know well and trust 100% not to be raving lunatics, and the things they've seen/felt are extraordinary. A ghost could swing its naked bollocks in my face and I wouldn't have a clue. So, my ghost stories are rubbish. I have lived in two haunted houses, and all I know is that there was Something Rum about them.

The first haunted house was the youngest house I've ever lived in. It was only about 50 years old, a spring chicken by English housing standards, and it was 47 Hallfield Road, York, where I lived in my second year at university.

The story was that a previous occupant had fallen down the stairs and broken her neck. I have no idea if this was true, or how one would go about finding out. But there was obviously Something in that house, because it freaked the shit out of friends of ours who came to stay.

No one ever saw the ghost, no one ever heard it, but some people sensed it very strongly. On a number of occasions, in the small hours of the night, our frightened house-guests crept upstairs to see who was awake and pleaded, white-faced, to be allowed to sleep on someone's bedroom floor instead of the comfortable sofa downstairs, because there was "something going on down there." It soon became an accepted part of the house and a frequent topic of everyday conversation.

I liked the idea of living with a ghost. The thing never bothered me. When I was alone in the house I would go to the living-room and talk aloud to it: I just told it lots of everyday stuff and probably bored it rigid. I couldn't really ask how it was doing, so I always just said I hoped it was all right and didn't mind me talking to it. I never asked if it minded the all-night parties. Who knows: perhaps it enjoyed them.

One vaguely paranormal thing I recall from that house was that on two separate occasions, I had the same dream as Maja, the only other girl who lived there. Once we each dreamed that the other was terribly cross with us, and dreamed it so vividly that we avoided one another for a couple of days. Eventually I told her about my dream and she, astonished, told me she'd had the same one, also very vivid. There was another shared dream, but I forget what it was. It was an odd house. I am very conscious of the vibe of a house; I like my own home to be laid-back and welcoming, and there was something in that house that made everyone - residents and guests - a bit unsettled, no matter how comfortable we tried to make it.

The second ghost was in the house we lived in before this one. 23 Montford Place, Kennington, about 170 years old. Three storeys high: the middle floor creaked like a ship when you walked across it.

The Thing made its presence known shortly after we moved in and began arranging the place how we wanted it. On the back wall of the downstairs room, next to the window, there was a bare patch of wall above an alcove that begged to have something hung on it. I hung up a picture.

When I left the room, the picture fell down.

I hung the picture up again.

When I left the room, the picture fell down again.

I examined the nail, and the solid wooden frame of the picture. I put the picture back up again. I poked the picture to see if it were dangling precariously. It was not dangling precariously: it was hanging very solidly on the substantial nail that was firmly stuck in the wall.

I left the room. The picture fell down, as though hurled.

I remarked to Ian that I had the distinct impression that we seemed to have a ghost: Something did not want that picture hanging there. Ian scoffed light-heartedly at this.

A few days later, we had the record decks set up upstairs, and Ian was going through his collection of vinyl by bands called things like Throbbing Anus and Thirteenth-Floor Buttfuckers. He put on a particularly unpleasant Residents album and there was a CRASH from downstairs. We looked at each other. I said I would go.

I went downstairs: a dish that had been on a high kitchen shelf was now on the hallway floor, six feet away from the kitchen.

I told Ian to turn down the Residents. Our resident clearly didn't like them.

I felt that something unseen in our house wanted to remind us we weren't the only ones there. I had a talk to it when Ian was out, just to say hello, acknowledge it, apologise for trampling all over the place and whatever. I bought a huge, beautiful wall clock for £120 and hung it by its precariously shallow, fragile metal rim on the nail the picture had been thrown from. It stayed perfectly in place and never fell down once, despite some rigorous parties.

The only time I was really and truly afraid was when I was alone in November, about a month after we moved in. Ian had gone to India on business, had just left that day.

I came home from work ready to get through the door and relax completely into my own personal space. I planned to put my slippers on, make some hot chocolate, put on some good music, read a book. Enjoy having the house to myself.

I opened the front door and heard the distinctive, familiar and unmistakable sound from upstairs of my kneeler chair-on-wheels being pushed backwards sharply from my desk. I say unmistakable with absolute confidence, because I have excellent hearing, like radar. (This is great if you want to get 100% in an aural test or locate a ringing mobile phone, and a total cocking nightmare if you want to get to sleep and stay there.)

I backed out of the house again and slammed the door shut, breathing in a panic. A burglar! Fuck.

I walked around the block without the faintest clue what to do. It was dark, and cold, and I was out of mobile-phone battery, and I needed to pee. Should I call the police from a phone box and get them to go in the house with me? No: that would be stupid. I paused outside our house, walked around the block again, then decided I must have disturbed the burglar and they would have made their escape out the back of the house by now. I opened the door again, absolutely terrified, and went in, banged about downstairs a lot, and listened. Nothing. I did a lot more ridiculous banging-about before finally tiptoeing upstairs, armed with knives.

There was no one there, and nor had there been. The doors and windows were unfucked-with. Nothing had been rifled through. And yet I know with 100% surety that I heard my chair being pushed back from my desk. I knew that sound because I made it happen fifty times a day, and there was no other sound like it.

I had the impression, again, that Something in the house just wanted to remind me I wasn't the only one there. Still, I was so relieved to think it was just a ghost. I was far more afraid of burglars than ghosts: ghosts are just company. The best sort of company, too: people you can share silence with.

Our present house is 173 years old, and it has no ghosts whatsoever. I sort of miss having an unseen housemate to talk to: I liked the companionship of the haunted houses I lived in, whether it was real or not.

So those are my shit ghost stories. Jesus what a long post. If you have a ghost story I really want to hear it, so if it's too long for a comment and you turn it into a blog post, please tell me where to find it, and I will NOT stay up late and read it before going to bed. I'll have it with my coffee tomorrow.