OK! I’m going to write this as it happened, without any guesses as to what it was, exactly, that I experienced.
The truth is I dare say I’ll never know, and that’s fine.
I moved into a small, (rented) terraced house in the north west in October 2013. It was a rushed decision as I had made a sudden move to be closer to my mother and partner after my father passed away in the April of that year.
Having signed the contract after a relatively quick viewing (I knew the area and had decided to take it for that reason alone), I took the keys and visited alone for the first time around a week later.
I wouldn’t say that I felt uncomfortable, but I did regret having rushed into it. Within an hour the taps sprang a leak, the bedroom ceiling began to drip (!), and the boiler wouldn’t fire up. ‘Bastards!’ I thought. Like you do.
The agency responded quickly and attended to the issues, but a sensation of utter dread remained. I put this down to grief, stress and exhaustion.
However, I could smell a dog.
This only occurred close to the long wall which the stairs and kitchen ran against. The carpets were new and the walls repainted. So I guessed the previous tenant had a dog. Still, the sensation was unusual in that whilst being able to smell a dog, I also felt strongly that it was in distress. Again, I had no real option other than to attribute my feelings to stress.
.......
My partner lived a few streets away, so was present quite a bit during that first week. He couldn’t smell the dog so I left it at that.
Around the two week mark something really disturbing occurred. I won’t beat around the bush here, I will just relate the event as it happened. Around 11pm one evening, sat watching Catweasle series 1 on the bed upstairs, my cat sleeping on the pillow beside me woke suddenly with a start. A few minutes later I became aware that my cat was peering fixedly into a full length mirror across the room which reflected the upstairs hallway.
When he didn’t get bored with this, I took notice. I’m somewhat ashamed to say that after a few minutes of watching him wide-eyed and serious I began to feel apprehensive. This might be regular cat behaviour, but it was unusual for him. So I jumped up from the bed and in that excited way you behave when trying to get your pet to follow you, I thought I’d coax him downstairs for some treats. That ought to do it, or so I thought.
As I reached the top step of the stairs, cat a few inches behind me, the atmosphere here felt charged, unusual. I recall this in slow motion, as I began to walk down the stairs the sensation became stronger, and when I looked behind me to check on him he was stuck, as if paralysed mid-step, hair on end. And I mean stuck-up spiky fright-cat type hair. Like a cartoon.
Whilst I’d heard of such things, I’d never actually witnessed anything like it.
I continued down the stairs and close to the bottom I walked into something which felt like (please humour me!) a large, electrified spider’s web. It was most definitely unpleasant, negative, terrifying. I continued to walk through it and it felt as though it covered my entire body, through my clothes and through every strand of my hair. It felt slightly cold, damp and ‘moving’.
I walked into the dining room to the right and it persisted until midway through. At the point where it stopped I felt every strand of hair on my head release, as if it had been stood up.
Fairly terrified and in shock, I gave the cat some treats but he didn’t eat them. He kept to the front downstairs room and stayed there until a few hours later when my partner came to collect us. We never returned.
I gave up the tenancy at the 6th month mark and stayed with my partner until we found a new place. We eventually moved in together and lived quite happily as a little family until my beautiful kitty passed away last week, at 17 yrs old.
His leaving us prompted me to write this account, which I’d intended to do since registering with the forum - it is my only significant experience of this nature.
I’m not so much interested in figuring out what it was, rather I wanted to share it as an experience in itself.
The house is constantly on the market now. It seems to be an unhappy place.
Interestingly, about a year later I had a dream in which the ‘thing’ or force, or energy (call it what you will, but ‘ghost’ doesn’t fit) tried to overwhelm me. Thankfully I managed to ‘will’ the damned thing onto oblivion.
I am happy to leave it there.