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ARCHIVIST'S NOTE: This file has been reformatted and spellchecked. In some cases, content may have been edited slightly to improve readability. However, the original author [listed in the From: line of the header] retains copyright over this story. Please be advised that you must obtain permission from the ORIGINAL author if you wish to reproduce this file in any form, electronically or otherwise. ----------------------------------------------------------------------From: D.R.Byrne@ncl.ac.uk
Hi, this is Debs. I posted this story a few days ago in response to another posting but it got me thinking about a couple of things. So, I thought I would post it again in a little more detail and see what y'all thought? Apologies if you read the potted version.
My grandfather was a steward at a working mens social club. In most of these places the steward is expected to live on the premises so is provided with a flat/apartment. As a young child I remember feeling very disturbed when in the living room. I had an intense feeling that someone was, not just watching me, but glaring at me. This was a continuous feeling not just the odd occasion. In fact one Christmas Eve we were staying over at my grandparents and my parents discovered me awake huddled in the corner of the bed because I had needed to visit the bathroom and had been too scared to leave the bedroom, cross the living room to get to the bathroom. Now this feeling of being watched didn't emanate from the living room. It came from the kitchen. You felt watched from the kitchen, even when the door linking the kitchen to the living room was closed.
Well anyway, eventually the club had the apartment remodelled and everything was completely switched around. I was much more comfortable in the new living room and kitchen, but now the feeling of oppression was felt in the corridor leading to the new bathroom and the bedrooms. I avoided going down the corridor as often as possible and on a couple of occasions had to turn back and run back along the corridor to the living room. I find it difficult to describe the feelings you got. I can only really describe it as oppression, darkness and even, maybe, hate.
Shortly after my grandparents died (within 18 months of each other) my parents and I were having a nostalgic discussion and I mentioned these feelings of oppression and being watched. My mother gaped at me. and then fessed up that she had also had these feelings. It was at this point that my father reminded us of something that really stopped us in our tracks. The corridor down to the bedrooms and the bathroom had, before the remodelling, been the kitchen. Not very startling maybe, but the steward my grandfather had taken over from had been imprisoned for stabbing his wife to death in the kitchen...
Now I really don't know whether these feelings of opression and darkness and hate were simply an imprint on the atmosphere of a terrible and violent crime, or whether it was the spirit of the wife of the previous steward. If the latter, I can only speculate from these feelings of watching and hatred that she was terribly bitter about the violent way in which her life was taken from her and envious of those who still had the life she had lost.
I would be interested to hear any views you might have, not only on this particular case but also on the nature of 'ghosts' in general. Email or newsgroup responses would be fine
Sorry this has been so long.
Debs