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Anyone Seen A Ghost?

We have discussions of scary staircases on'ereabouts.

In my second childhood home I found the stairs a bit eerie and didn't like looking down them at night.
My mother told me much later that whenever she reached a certain stair, going either way, she'd feel that someone was trying to grab her and shove her down.
The front of the house, had a small passage approx 4ft x 4ft then you entered another door into the living room, at the back of the room & to the right a door, which opened to the stairs (the stairs going right to left).

They where dark & dingy, & even with the light on (at the top of the stairs near to the loft hatch) somehow they still where `dingy` it was as if the darkness consumed the light or sucked the brightness out of the light (if that makes sense)............ We even tried a higher wattage bulb........still the same `oppressiveness`........

Oh & forgot to mention, at the top of the Stairs, bathroom on the right, to the left a passage way which led to two bedrooms, one on the left & straight ahead, id say the front or master bedroom, on a night if i couldnt get to sleep, id lay there & you would hear, most nights footsteps, up & down the passage but they where like soft footsteps (slippers / stockinged feet) but id hear them regularly.
 
Oh & forgot to mention, at the top of the Stairs, bathroom on the right, to the left a passage way which led to two bedrooms, one on the left & straight ahead, id say the front or master bedroom, on a night if i couldnt get to sleep, id lay there & you would hear, most nights footsteps, up & down the passage but they where like soft footsteps (slippers / stockinged feet) but id hear them regularly.
Oh that's fabulous! Ghostly footsteps are fantastic. We get them upstairs here, like someone walking in boots. One of us will wonder why the other is traipsing around so noisily in outdoor footwear, then think 'Oh yeah, it's the ghost.'
It used to alarm me in case there was was an intruder.

Trouble is, when I listen for them I don't hear anything.
 
Oh that's fabulous! Ghostly footsteps are fantastic. We get them upstairs here, like someone walking in boots. One of us will wonder why the other is traipsing around so noisily in outdoor footwear, then think 'Oh yeah, it's the ghost.'
It used to alarm me in case there was was an intruder.

Trouble is, when I listen for them I don't hear anything.
Like my recollection of working in a shop in the mid 90s Escargot, me & my colleague stood talking on the shop floor, just us in the whole place & above the shop, a boarded up `flat`............footsteps, from one side of the room (above) to the other, very heavy distinct footsteps.........they could have been wearing boots........even clowns shoes by the sound of them.......lol
 
Like my recollection of working in a shop in the mid 90s Escargot, me & my colleague stood talking on the shop floor, just us in the whole place & above the shop, a boarded up `flat`............footsteps, from one side of the room (above) to the other, very heavy distinct footsteps.........they could have been wearing boots........even clowns shoes by the sound of them.......lol
The Stoke City footy club shop in Hanley is s'posed to be haunted in a similar way, with footsteps heard from the upper floor and things moved around by unseen hands.I was told this personally by an employee there.

The most surprising element here is that I was in a shop that sells footy-based merchandise as I take no interest in sport. :chuckle:
 
I mentioned on another thread that my partner and I are on holiday for two weeks (until the 17th) at a 15th Century renovation in Wales with his parents. I was going to ask my partner’s mum about any ghostly experiences a bit later and here’s me sitting down in a corner typing, with his dad working on a painting in the same room and he just said, ‘I think I just saw a ghost.’

Me: Where, what?

He said it was a dark shadow passed through the doorway into the hall. This room’s south-facing and has been quite bright all day and he’s the most sceptic sceptic I’ve ever encountered. He was quite serious but not bothered.

So the house itself is lovely, quite rambling and apart from this room and one bedroom rather dark and quite gloomy (or it feels it to me, lots of dark corners) but amazing nevertheless. Atmosphere? Feels okay to me. Creaky floors but very quiet. Anyway, I intend to ask my partner’s mum about any ghostly experiences as the holiday goes on but I thought I would mention this.

(Just some pics)
 

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Nothing much to report except that my partner’s dad still swears blind he saw something but isn’t that bothered because he‘s a sceptic, yes one of those sceptics that wouldn’t believe anything he saw :hahazebs:
The house definitely feels old and ’alive’ though. The upstairs corridor’s not very friendly. There’s a little sofa up there to sit and read and I did, but not really comfortable. (Not the sofa, the landing). But anyway, I was exploring round the back, some of which is gated off unless the whole property is booked and I could see out onto the field and ‘What’s that?’ Not a tumulus (I thought) as it looks too big, at least the ones I’ve seen in Wilts and Berks tend to be much more sunk into the ground. I went onto OS maps online and it’s a motte and bailey! So there have been buildings here a long time.

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Back in the 70s my brother was working on a new heating system in an empty, large 3 storey Victorian house in the Watford area with a work colleague. It was winter and they were having to work late to try and meet a tight deadline. There was no one else working there and, being empty there was only the odd lightbulb fitted and they mostly had to move bulbs with them to light up the room they were in.
His friend was on the top floor and my brother on the middle floor and he decided to pop to the off licence on the corner to pick up some tobacco.
When he got back after only 5 min or so he walked in the front door to see his friend coming down the stairs and appearing to be talking to someone. When he saw my brother he went very pale and told my brother that he had come down to get something and on the middle floor landing (which didn't have a light) he had heard footsteps come from a room behind him and follow him down the stairs, which he naturally assumed was my brother, so was chatting to 'him' on the way down. Needless to say, they didn't work on any longer that evening.
 
Was this in Glastonbury? I have a vague peal of bells happening!
 
Frederick ?Bly/Blythe? Bond!

Is this the same one you are thinking of @escargot?
 
Ha! SNAP! :D
I read a book, supposedly true, where ghostly monks were directing renovations in some ancient building. A monk appeared to the owner, pointed to a modern-looking fireplace and said Sweep it away! Sweep it away! Sweep it away!

The owner instructed the builder to remove the fireplace and underneath it they found a splendid mediaeval one. :cool:
 
read a book, supposedly true, where ghostly monks were directing renovations in some ancient building. A monk appeared to the owner, pointed to a modern-looking fireplace and said Sweep it away! Sweep it away! Sweep it away!

The owner instructed the builder to remove the fireplace and underneath it they found a splendid mediaeval one
I remember reading that too!
 
I've dug at two welsh/borders motte and bailey sites!
I saw the owner (he’s always bombing about on a quad bike and checking things are okay, nice bloke) and I said, I took a look at your Motte! And he seemed very surprised anyone had even noted it, but talked about it. There were also two cottages in a field just opposite (You can see where they were by the rise in the ground).

There’s a definite oddness here. There’s a lot of holly around the building, a LOT, which apparently in the old days was planted against lightning strikes and witchcraft?

Yesterday and today I thought someone walked past the porch window (from where I’m sitting I can see right through to it; see attached pic) It was a person shaped shadow anyhow. I thought it was my partner’s parents who’d just been out for a walk but nothing. And it’s a private drive, people don’t walk past. Then I though maybe it was just a crow flying past, but today it happened again and it did look like someone walking past, left to right, that sort of height. (I just went out and stood in front of the porch window. I’m 5.5 and this definitely seemed taller than I look when standing outside).

Earlier I went to the side gate for no real reason and stood on the bottom bar. The drive is all grit and the lawns are set back from it, but all about the house is grit which you can’t walk quietly on. I heard my partner walking up behind me and expected him to say something or touch me, but nothing. (I started to say something to him then turned round) No-one there. So several times I went out, walked to the gate and waited to see if it was the grit shifting or settling after I’d trodden on it creating a kind of echo of my steps, but that didn’t happen.

The main feeling I get though is that there are more people here than us four :hahazebs: Of course it’s all floorboards that creak like mad and then ‘memory‘ creak all the time, but it sounds quite often as if someone traverses up the little back stairs, the landing with the small sofa on it, then through to the long corridor and all the way down to the room my partner and I are in. Then stops. You can follow the route with your ears once it begins. I truly expect some bewildered person to walk down one of the stairs and say ‘Who the hell are you lot?’
 

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These steps seem to begin up these back stairs which is in the room I’m in behind a door, up to that little landing. I was standing at the connecting door from the landing to the long one to take that pic) So the creak-steps go through that door (which I shut at night because I am a coward :hahazebs: although I’m not sure what it’s supposed to achieve) along that long corridor above the main stairs to the room at the end, where my partner and I are sleeping. It’s happened about twice every day. There are a lot of creaks anyway all the time, but you can audibly track this like you would footsteps. (And at no time has anyone been up stairs. I did think someone was the first few times to find people either in the kitchen, or in my vision, or outside or just reading in the living room).
 

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I'm very liking the sofa on the landing set-up.

There is something about about stopping and 'being' in a space that people usually pass through. To focus on the spaces in-between...
Gives me the opposite feeling. There's something about sitting next to an open staircase like that that I find vaguely unsettling. I think it's something to do with people gradually 'appearing' alongside you, headfirst.
 
I saw the owner (he’s always bombing about on a quad bike and checking things are okay, nice bloke) and I said, I took a look at your Motte! And he seemed very surprised anyone had even noted it, but talked about it. There were also two cottages in a field just opposite (You can see where they were by the rise in the ground).

There’s a definite oddness here. There’s a lot of holly around the building, a LOT, which apparently in the old days was planted against lightning strikes and witchcraft?

Yesterday and today I thought someone walked past the porch window (from where I’m sitting I can see right through to it; see attached pic) It was a person shaped shadow anyhow. I thought it was my partner’s parents who’d just been out for a walk but nothing. And it’s a private drive, people don’t walk past. Then I though maybe it was just a crow flying past, but today it happened again and it did look like someone walking past, left to right, that sort of height. (I just went out and stood in front of the porch window. I’m 5.5 and this definitely seemed taller than I look when standing outside).

Earlier I went to the side gate for no real reason and stood on the bottom bar. The drive is all grit and the lawns are set back from it, but all about the house is grit which you can’t walk quietly on. I heard my partner walking up behind me and expected him to say something or touch me, but nothing. (I started to say something to him then turned round) No-one there. So several times I went out, walked to the gate and waited to see if it was the grit shifting or settling after I’d trodden on it creating a kind of echo of my steps, but that didn’t happen.

The main feeling I get though is that there are more people here than us four :hahazebs: Of course it’s all floorboards that creak like mad and then ‘memory‘ creak all the time, but it sounds quite often as if someone traverses up the little back stairs, the landing with the small sofa on it, then through to the long corridor and all the way down to the room my partner and I are in. Then stops. You can follow the route with your ears once it begins. I truly expect some bewildered person to walk down one of the stairs and say ‘Who the hell are you lot?’
I love bare stone (or brick) walls that are nicely pointed up like that instead of plaster.
 
As long as they are not your standard red brick, that can look a bit 70's
Back then the bare bricks would sometimes be varnished, what WERE people thinking of?

Bare red brick walls are gorgeous. My house is concrete and the only bricks are in the hideous 1980s fire surround.
This proved an advantage as whoever was sent out from the bank to look at the house for the mortgage looked at that and thought the entire house was brick!
We wouldn't have got the mortgage otherwise.
 
Back then the bare bricks would sometimes be varnished, what WERE people thinking of?

Bare red brick walls are gorgeous. My house is concrete and the only bricks are in the hideous 1980s fire surround.
This proved an advantage as whoever was sent out from the bank to look at the house for the mortgage looked at that and thought the entire house was brick!
We wouldn't have got the mortgage otherwise.
Bare brick on the outside, I agree, on the inside, not so much.
 
As long as they are not your standard red brick, that can look a bit 70's
Yes, definitely. I love the old red/orange brick especially the Jacobean era look with the red and blue bricks (often in a diamond pattern). There's a lovely building here, Victorian, but built in the Jacobean style to match in with the building next door, but it's been turned into flats and wherever they've drilled through for pipes/vents etc they've just burst the brickwork off and then just slawmed it up with mortar. (Burst brickwork can be avoided by drilling a small pilot hole first- any plumber/builder worth their salt should know this). Really makes me angry. Another one for the whinge thread.
 

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