This month, we're featured in Take A Break's Fate & Fortune magazine...sharing the story of what I believe to be a spirit that was present in my parents house while I was growing up and has hung around...
I thought I'd take this chance to re-share with you the blog post I originally wrote 2 years ago, telling the full story of our visitor and the experiences I had...
The below is the original post.
Allow me to introduce Maggie....
Maggie is the name we give to our household ghost.
I don't really remember where this name came from or why we started using it - but one of us apparently decided this was the ghosts name and it has stuck ever since! Everybody that knows us knows all about Maggie, and refers to her by name - she's pretty much like an additional family member that nobody can see!!
How it all started....
We first discovered the existence of Maggie around 15 years ago....
One night, I got out of bed at around 3 am to go to the toilet - my bedroom is right next to the bathroom, and so I was only gone for a minute at the most.
I had been asleep in the bed for hours beforehand and I toss and turn a lot - so my bedclothes would certainly have looked "slept in".
I came back from the bathroom, walked into my bedroom - and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw my bed.
The bed I had just got out of was made perfectly - the bedclothes were smoothed down, all perfectly made up as if nobody had been sleeping in it - and creepier still, the corner of the duvet was folded back - this is not something I have ever done when making the bed, nor is it something my Mum or anybody else has done. I think its quite an old fashioned way of making up a bed isn't it?!
So...I was very freaked out by this as I KNEW there was no way I had left the bed looking like that. I woke everybody up to show them of course, and me and my sister slept huddled up downstairs that night - rather spooked!!
And so it carried on...
From that night onwards, the same thing would happen often - not every night, but at least once or twice a week.
Sometimes it would happen after I'd been to the bathroom in the night, sometimes it would happen during the day when the bed was made already but I would go into my room and find that the cover had been turned back.
And then other things started to happen too...
One time, I was in my bedroom looking for a specific pair of boots - I had been kneeling in front of my wardrobe, tearing through it - pulling out all of my shoes in a paddy and throwing them all over my room - I stood up and stormed into my sisters room to accuse her of stealing them - when I left the room I was in a right huff and I had left the wardrobe doors open with piles of discarded shoes all around it.
When I came back into the room seconds later, I was dumbfounded to see the wardrobe doors closed and sitting perfectly placed right in front of them - the pair of boots I had been looking for.
VERY spooky...
What the psychic said....
Now some of you may know this and some of you may not - but I have read tarot cards and dabbled in divination (the art of foretelling the future or gaining knowledge by supernatural means) since I was 12. Some people find that odd but its just something I've always been interested in....
About a year after Maggie had appeared and these things had happened, I went to see a psychic (not about the happenings - just for fun!) - the psychic said to me:
"Something weird happens in your house doesn't it? Something to do with your bed sheets?"
I was floored! I couldn't believe she would know that, and so I said yes and asked if she knew why it was happening...
She told me that the spirit was an old woman who followed me around, and that she wasn't trying to scare me - the things she was doing were to try and help me so I didn't need to be frightened of her - she said I should thank the spirit when these things were done for me.
She asked if I practised divination myself and when I said that I did, she told me that this was why the spirit was there - that me doing these things had simply encouraged the spirit along.
Things get TOO spooky...
I could have happily lived with a ghost following me around making my bed for me and finding my shoes - I don't think that would have bothered me too much! But the next things that happened became a bit too weird...
One evening, my boyfriend at the time came over to see me - I was expecting him but he was late, so I was sitting upstairs with my headphones on listening to music. I was the only person home.
I heard the door knock and I went down to answer it - my boyfriend was standing there looking really angry. He started shouting at me, asking why I'd been ignoring him knocking.
I told him that I hadn't heard him because I'd been upstairs listening to music...
He said "No you weren't! You were sitting right there in the armchair, I could see you!"
(Our front door is mottled glass, so you can see through it and make out figures but you can't see faces)
I laughed and said he was being ridiculous, I was upstairs and there was nobody else in....
He insisted that there was someone sitting in the armchair, he said they were wearing a long white dress (very much like a long white night dress I had at the time, which is why he thought it was me) - he said they sat there ignoring him knocking for five minutes or so, then they got up and walked into the kitchen.
Knowing that there was nobody else in the house, I found this REALLY scary! Invisible ghosts were one thing, but I did NOT want to actually SEE anything....
A few weeks later, I was upstairs in my bedroom - again, alone in the house - when I clearly heard a voice that sounded just like my Mum call my name from the bottom of the stairs. My mom often stood at the bottom of the stairs and called me down, so I assumed it was her and that she'd just got back home....I answered and got no response so I went downstairs to see what she wanted....only to find that neither she nor anybody else was there....
After these two things happened, I stopped using tarot cards for a long time as I didn't want to do anything that might encourage any kind of ghostly activity....
Years Later On....
I moved out of this house about 7 years ago - I have had one or two ghostly experiences since in other houses, which make me wonder if the ghost follows me! - but even while I wasn't living here, things carried on happening.
One night my Mum was babysitting a friends little baby boy, and she was on the phone in the room next door to where he was sleeping in his travel cot alone when she heard a voice talking softly to him, saying things like "Aren't you a lovely little boy..." - when she looked in the room, there was nobody there.
My nieces who are now 5 and 3 have often acted like they have seen things when staying here - my youngest niece often talks about "The Man" that she can see, and has acted very scared of what she's seeing on more than one occasion....even crying and trying to run away.
And even Tyne seems to be able to see something in one particular room - sometimes when I'm holding him in there, he'll look up at a specific spot on the plain white ceiling and suddenly start laughing and cooing away - you can tell that somebody is talking to him as he acts just like he does when I talk to him - he smiles and coos, then stops and seems to be listening, and then smiles and coos again.
What worries me is that sometimes, he'll suddenly stop smiling and appear to get a bit of a fright and start crying....as though whatever nice thing he was seeing has suddenly appeared to be not so nice...
And finally, a few weeks ago - I was sitting nursing Tyne on my bed (We're living here at the moment while we're looking for a new house!), when I happened to glance in the mirror which shows the reflection of the landing - and I clearly saw a face of a woman standing on the stairs. I don't really know how to describe it but it wasn't pleasant - and it's not something I would want to see again.
And I certainly will not be leaving Tyne alone upstairs alone while that thing is around!
And so, there you have it! That is the basic story of our household ghosts and our experiences with them over the years! I'm sure I sound like a right whack job, but I can only tell it how it happened!!!
Have any of you had any similar experiences?! As always, I'd love to hear from you!
If you'd like to read the Magazine version of this story, pick up this months Take A Break Fate & Fortune magazine.
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