Real Life Ghost Stories: Don't Try Telling Me They're Not Real
Periodically throughout my life, my nan has asked me the same bizarre question - “When I die, do you want me to come back and visit you?” It was always horrifying and throughout my childhood, teen years and so-called adult life my response has always remained the same, “No! When you’re dead, please stay dead!” This might come across as a terrible thing to say to your grandmother, especially one as brilliant as mine! However, I have been plagued by an ongoing fear that, I am ashamed to say, still haunts me to this day (no pun intended). I am a 33 year old woman who is genuinely petrified of ghosts.
I am the kind of person who hears a thud in the night and automatically goes to poltergeist instead of burglar. If I need to use the loo in the wee hours of the morn (pun intended), then I try to wait until after 4am. This is because I once heard that ghosts are most likely to appear between midnight and 4 o’clock in the morning. When me and my partner watched the epic ‘Haunting of Hill House’ a few years back, I begged him to stay with me and not go home…. I may have cried a little and turned all the lights on as soon as he left! Some of you will be in my camp, and others will think I am just a big baby. Whether you are brave or whether you are scared, we all have something in common - belief. The people I just can’t relate to are the ones who roll their eyes at you as they gently explain that ghosts aren’t real.
Hey, I don’t want them to be real; I don’t lay awake at night hoping that I will feel the weight of an uninvited visitor on the end of my bed. However you get to a certain point in your life where you will have encountered a presence, or heard countless tales of unexplainable paranormal activity. I’m also of the opinion that you are either tapped or you’re not, meaning that you are either Hayley Joel Osmond in ‘The Sixth Sense’, or you’re Bruce Willis’s wife in the ‘Sixth Sense’ - you either see these otherworldly experiences, or you don’t. Luckily, I don’t seem to be alluring enough to attract ghosts.
As children, we are usually told that ghosts don’t exist and that we should just go to sleep - like, right now! We are shielded from scary TV shows and films, and aren’t allowed to wear any of the decent halloween costumes. In retrospect this is just to make day to day life easier for the parents, so that their children stay asleep, all night, in their own beds . My poor mum tried everything from the classic, “ghosts don’t exist”, to the inventive “they can’t touch you when you’re asleep”, to the worrying, “ I can sense these things, and there are no ghosts in this house”. I called my mum out on this last comment when I was older and she told me, surprisingly, that when she was in her late teens my grandparents (who were publicans), bought a new pub. When Grandad showed her around, she felt uneasy immediately and didn’t want to move in. My mum’s bedroom was at the top of the building and she said that there would often be a knock at her door, with nobody waiting on the other side. She also told me that she sometimes felt a cat walking on her bed at night time, but when she turned the light on, Macavity wasn’t there.
Keeping it in the family, I found out only a few years ago that my dad went upstairs in our first home and found a little boy on his own. My dad was baffled because, logistically, it would have been impossible for the boy to get upstairs on his own. My dad, tactfully as ever, yelled out and spooked the boy who then ran into the kitchen. Dad chased after him, but once he rounded the corner he saw that there was nobody there - the little boy had vanished into thin air. Clearly this ‘gift’ isn’t genetic, as neither me or my sister have had any direct experiences… so far.
A friend of mine told me that in her previous house, she was having some building work done. One night, as she lay wide awake and unable to sleep, she saw a woman in a bonnet and, as she put it, ‘Little House on the Prairie get-up’, appear through the wall. The women walked slowly across the room and, understandably, my friend was in complete shock. She rolled over to try and wake her sleeping husband as the woman returned in the direction she had come from. My friend started shouting at her husband in sheer terror, and at this point the ghostly figure turned to her, put her finger on her lips and shushed her! After this she promptly disappeared back through the wall and my friend hid under the covers for the rest of the night. The next day one of the builders called her to the old airing cupboard where they were working. There to her horror was the builder, holding up a ladies bonnet that he had found underneath the floorboards of the airing cupboard. The figure had actually appeared through the wall of the bedroom where that cupboard was situated! When she told me this story, I couldn’t stop shuddering and the hairs on my arms stood to attention. Thankfully she never saw the woman again, because clearly her unfinished business had finally been completed - she had found her missing hat, and could now R.I.P in a fully completed outfit.
Another friend of mine who I lived with at University, also had an unusual weekend whilst staying at her boyfriend’s house. When she returned I asked her how it went and she replied, “It was good…. But really weird”. As I pressed her for more information over milky tea and stale biscuits, she informed me that this guy’s house was haunted. I suggested that he was probably just showing off, trying to make himself seem more interesting than he actually was, but my friend shook her head in defiance. She told me that there were two ghosts, one that had only been spotted outside and one that caused mischief inside the house. Her boyfriend thought the inside ghost was a little girl, because lots of odd things happened around the house and it was as if she was trying to get him to play with her. For example, the shower would turn on downstairs when they were upstairs, the bin would tip over for no reason and there were always small handprints on the dusty attic door, which he could access from his bedroom.
My poor friend felt thrown by this, but decided to act brave and carry on with their date. They kissed and cuddled, watched movies and took lots of selfies together, which was fun until she went back and looked at the photos. All the photos of him were normal, but any photos of her were covered in these little bright lights. As she showed me the photos, I felt uncomfortable because it really was completely unexplainable. He told her that it was a good thing, this little girl must like her and want to be around her… I don’t know why he thought this would be comforting for her to hear, but it wasn’t! Up until that point my friend was not a believer, but after this experience she definitely changed her tune. Needless to say that was her only visit to the haunted house, and the relationship didn’t survive much longer - I’m sure the creepy ghost girl was thrilled to have him all to herself again.
I know scientifically it doesn’t make sense, and we live in a science and technology based world. There are advances in medicine, more knowledge about the effects of Global Warming and even special filters that make your face look like a cartoon deer, but we still cannot explain these occurrences. Today we only believe what we see on TV and social media, but some things require us to take a leap of faith which has become increasingly difficult to do. If you are a sceptical eye-roller, someone who is the first to rationalise these strange stories then that’s fine. However, just because you can’t see something it doesn’t mean it’s not there. If someone ghosts you on Tinder, that person is still somewhere out in the digital universe; ghost writers offer their services and then retreat to the shadowy corners of bookshops where they belong. To me, ghosts are the essence of a person that’s been accidentally left behind, like when you see a random item of clothing by the side of the road or in a tree and wonder how on earth it got there. When I set my fears aside, and think about my Nan’s offer of visiting me from the afterlife, the answer is…. still no way! Then again, if she would like to send me a little sign that she’s watching over me from time to time, something absolutely not creepy, then I suppose I could make an exception.
Written by Katie McFaul
After travelling from place to place (much like Madonna in ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’), Katie finally settled in Bristol and spends her time helping animals in need, eating biscuits and constantly being late for everything. Her likes include vegan cuisine, movies of any description and writing god awful poetry. Her dislikes include slow walkers, narrowmindedness and talking about herself in the third person.
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