The following is a true story, I know I’ve lived it and continue to do so.
You can choose to believe it or not.
It’s long though, which is why I’ve broken it up.
____________________________________________________________________
For as long as I can remember my family has always experienced ghostly activities.
My mother used to tell me tales of how her bed would shake when she was a little girl, how statues of the virgin mary would glow at different times. Ghostly visions would appear in her room, and anytime a crucifix was brought into the house it would mysteriously disappear days later.
Her parents weren’t religious at all, the crucifixes and statues coming from her grandmother as gifts or whatever, so that meant that while she knew about religion and faith from school she was never religious herself. To this day, it remains the same.
She said that as she got older things got worse. The walls would make noises like there were people inside them, whenever she was in a room alone it would get icy cold and when she managed to get to sleep she’d be haunted by the most disturbing and horrifying nightmares.
It got so bad that she pleaded and was given permission to live with her aunt. It was then that her life began to normalise. No more visions, scary noises or nightmares.
But whenever she went to visit her mother or stay the night it would all resurface again.
She put it down to the fact that the house was over 100 years old so it had to have some kind of history to it. Maybe there were a few spirits or whatever trying to make their presence felt.
She grew up, met my father and had me. They lived with my father’s mother until they got their own place. This was the beginning of the 80’s, so when you applied to the council for accommodation, the tower blocks of Ballymun were often one, if not the only option offered in Dublin.
So we shacked up in Ballymun.
My grandmother came to visit when I was still a baby and brought some toys and other things as house warming gifts.
One of my earliest memories is of a dark figure stooped over my bed, just standing there. The feeling of utter fear and dread was enough to make your heart beat to bursting point.
I had nightmares every night, and while I never slept in my parents bed, I used to make either one or both of them sit by the bed until I had gone back to sleep.
I had a little brother by this stage, but he used to sleep like a log, especially when that dark shadow loomed over me.
I remember my mother always giving out to me that I had moved her things, but I could never understand why. I never had interest in her ornaments, let alone enough of an interest to rearrange them.
My father worked hard and my parents eventually bought their first house in Clondalkin. Things were great, no more nightmares or dark figures. I was having a nice normal and happy childhood.
Then my grandmother came to visit. It sticks out in my mind for a couple of reasons. Firstly because she very rarely ever came to visit. Secondly if she did visit, we wouldn’t see her for years again after. Thirdly it was never a visit in the way a visit from a grandmother should be. Very clinical like she was just checking on us for some reason. But she always left “gifts” for us. Again, not the kinds of gifts that grannies usually give. No sweets or toys or even a crappy oversized jumper that she’d knitted.
These were gifts that were never to be touched. Little statues, ornaments and trinkets that were for show only to “make the place look nice welcoming”.
The nightmares began again. The dark figure returned as well, but this time the fear and dread was multiplied. My parents refused to sit by my bed any longer as they reckoned I had to grow out of it, and under normal circumstances they might have been right. It just didn’t help me when I tried to run from my bed in hysterics, but couldn’t as it was as if there was something holding me down and just making me lie there while it terrorised me for no reason.
My brother would always say that he never remembered any of it, but it was with me always.
Again my mother would tell me off for moving things that I never had.
One night I was laying in bed staring at the ceiling afraid to close my eyes long enough to have that thing appear beside me again. I heard voices downstairs. This was unusual as it was too late for my father to be home from work and too early for my mother to be up to get us out to school.
I crept down the stairs trying not to be noticed and see if I could ear wig on what was going on. I peered around the open sitting room door and saw my mother sitting there on her own. She was cross legged on the floor at the coffee table with candles around her. On the coffee table was a board. I couldn’t see what was on it, apart from a small drinking glass.
Her eyes were closed and she was asking questions. I thought she was a bit mad because there wasn’t anyone in the room that could answer them. Then she asked:
“When will we be out of here?”
This confused me and forgetting that I should have been in bed and not spying on her I interrupted:
“Where are we going?”
She snapped her head around to face me with a look like a deer in the headlights and a look of fear that I have yet to see on her face since.
“What are you doing out of bed?”
“Where are we going?”
“Get back up to bed and forget everything you saw here”
“But Ma…”
“What did you see? How long were you there? Get to bed!”
I ran up the stairs to my room and dove under the covers, afraid again, only this time I didn’t know why.
What seemed like the longest time passed until I heard my mother come up the stairs. She stopped outside my room but never came in. Instead she went to her own room and I heard her cry until the sun came up.
This being the summer holidays from school I thought I’d go downstairs watch some morning cartoons and have some cereal. I’d sometimes do this and fall asleep on the couch to be woken by my mother doing the housework a few hours later.
I grabbed my blanket and tip toed so lightly down the landing and stairs I may as well have been floating.
I put my foot on the top stair and I got a rush of shivers down my spine. The same kind of shivers that would visit me just before the dark figure would appear. With my blanket bunched up against my chest I eased my way to the next step. It was at that exact moment that I heard the sound of someone inhaling deeply and deliberately and the feel of a hand on my back.
It’s hard to describe, but if you can imagine the temperature around you dropping immediately and so severely that you breath fog coupled with a fear that you can only understand if you’ve experienced it, that’s what happened.
Not that I had much time to process what was going on as instantly I felt a big cold hand on the back of my neck. It didn’t stay on my neck long as I was launched forward down the stairs head first.
The force of the push was enough to make me miss five steps before I made contact with carpet again. I sat in a lump of confused, scared and bruised shivering mess at the bottom of the stairs. I got my bearings just in time to see the dark figure on the landing above me, just standing there completely still.
It disappeared the second my father came bolting from his room and putting the light on to see what the commotion was.
After a quick inspection, he set me on the couch, turned the tv on and made me hot porridge.
An hour or so later I heard my folks talking in the kitchen they obviously thought I was asleep because they were arguing. Not fighting, but more like trying to make their own points more important than the other’s.
My mother raised her voice and asked:
“When are you going to get us out of here? It’s not safe!”
My father replied as he was stomping out the door:
“I’m doing my fucking best”
He did do his best, and got us out of that house a week later.
It’s a pity that hindsight isn’t like foresight, because it wasn’t the house we had to worry about.
Part 2 soon….
I’ve come from what the “average” person, if there is an “average” person would consider tough. I’ve been abused, sexually, emotionally, mentally & physically, suffered neglect as a child. I’ve come through it, I’ve healed.
