WARNING: Long.

My family bought our family house in 1974, a year after I was born. Towerhill, Blairmore is nestled on the side of Loch Long, Scotland. Originally, about one hundred odd years ago, it was a coach house for an adjacent property. Its foundations lay close to a very old drover's road. In fact, our garage is built right on top of the old road, some people have stopped by the house during the past twenty years surprised they can't follow the old road they were familiar with in earlier years.

In 1978-84, when my father was rebuilding parts of the house, he dug down to the original flagstones of the coachhouse. We found some horseshoes and the lid of an old large pot.

There are a total of three levels of the house. The first comprises currently of an open plan living room, dining room, kitchen. There's a closed laundry room/bathroom, hallway, back porch, front porch, with one step up to a small bedroom(1), a larger bedroom(2) and the bathroom. Stairs between bedroom 2 and the bathroom lead up to my parents large bedroom that runs from one side of the house to the other, and an attic(1), a drop down ladder into my parents bedroom goes to the third level; attic(2) I think its amusing that in all the 18 years I lived there, I never stepped into this attic. The front windows of the house offer an excellent view of the loch, the front of my parents room offers a good view of the loch and the property to the right of us. The windows in the kitchen face left towards the top of the loch and in some winters its through this window we can see the Aurora Borealis. All other windows either face the path that runs behind our house and the huge slate embankment there or the path that leads to our driveway.

When my parents originally bought the house, a hallway connected the living room, dining room and kitchen. My parents current room was split into one tiny room at the front of the house and their larger bedroom. The only way to access attic(1) was through a trapdoor in the ceiling of the downstairs (next to laundry room) hallway.

The small room on the second level at the front of the house was my room for the first 4yrs I lived there, and when my father started reworking the house, he opened up one wall of this room to the attic(1).

Enough about the house design.

The house is situated a number of steps down from our driveway, that's long and sided by only 4 other houses. To the front of our house is a long set of steps and a long path leading to the main road. The path acts as a walled boundary to the properties to the direct front and to the front side of us. Both these houses are closer to the level of the loch. To the right of our house, by about 100 yards dense with bushes and a wall with one tiny gate set high in it, is another house. Very old also and deliciously built.

Our property is short in front of our house due to the sharp incline of the bank that runs down to the house in front. A very narrow path runs around our house to the right, passes the small above mentioned gate and passes the window of bedroom(2) with a space of 3 feet across. It then passes along behind the back porch and meets our back door to open out into the high kitchen window and then to our moderately sized front garden (left of the house). Steps run from here up to the driveway, which was built over the old drovers road now interrupted by our garage and a pile of rubble my father created.

We own roughly 2acres of sweet Scottish woodland, sparse behind the driveway and garage. Behind our property runs a small road that services a golf coarse and some property on the 'high road'. A burn runs alongside our driveway and cuts through the property that we own that runs in a sharp angle up to the 'high road'.

The view from our house is broad, comprising of a full view of the Clyde to Glasgow and a good portion of Loch Long to Coal Port and the opening of the Clyde into the sea.

Now. I'm not sure where to begin with the things I've seen/felt around my house and in it.

I could start with my pre-knowledge. My older sister (15yrs older than me) and one of my brothers (11yrs older) were in the original dining room, this was probably 1974 or 75. My mother was sitting in an armchair there. She suddenly saw my sister and brother dash to the front window and gasp. She looked and saw nothing. Apparently they had seen a greenish object flash down the loch from the narrow end to the clyde. It scared them both.

When I was apparently 4, I looked out of my window (front of the house, second floor) and pointed into part of the neighbors garden, which at that time was a neatly kept raspberry place. I talked about how I could see the lady next door. The lady who'd I'd been referring to loved to tend her raspberrys, however, she'd died a few days before this instance.

I got frustrated a lot in my preschool years because things would keep disappearing of mine, then show up in the oddest places, such as jammed behind radiators, in obscure holes in the wall. I 'knew' who it was. I never had a name for them, but it was those people that lived in our house with us. I don't remember ever seeing these people, but knew they were the root of a lot of little mischief I often got into trouble for. My parents say I never had imaginary friends. I don't know the validity of something I've never seen, but I've 'felt' too much about somethings in and around our house to totally disregard this.

The first actual memory I have was from when I was seven. I'd got into trouble for removing something from attic(1) and not putting it back. I came through my parents room and opened the door to the attic. There was only one skylight in the attic at this time. The light was faint through it. My father's work area was just inside the door to the right and there was a luminous green display clock there. However, when I opened the door; at the far end of the attic, a shady white image moved quickly from one side of the attic to the other (behind some storage area). I was scared shitless, ran in the shortest distance I could into the attic, threw down the thing I needed to put back, and ran down the stairs to the living room as fast as I could. Terrified, I reported the image to my parents, they first tried to explain that it was the skylight, "It's never done that before." and then they tried to blame the flashing display from the clock, "The clock doesn't move side to side." They were skeptics and put it down to fanciful imagination.

When we moved into the house, we found a few things in the attic that might have been left by the previous owners. Things such as WWII casings for ammunition.

My parents never left me alone at home until I was about 11. A few times, when I'd been in the house alone, odd things would happen. Keys placed in the middle of the huge breakfast bar in the kitchen, would smack into the middle of the kitchen floor. When I was in my parents room, I would get so terrified of the attic I couldn't stand to be there. (Later when I was 16, this was where my bedroom was, and where at 17 I tried to kill myself). Shadows would move in the corners of my eyes. (Strangely enough, my mother's noted this happening in one area of the house. She doesn't spook easily and she knows the house better than I do.)

Even other people would notice things. One evening, my mother was playing on her organ, this had been my paternal grandmothers and she left it to my mum. I'd disappeared up into the attic to give something to my father. I came down to find her talking as if she was talking to someone. When I appeared to her side, she looked shocked. "I felt you behind me." She picked up playing the organ really well and she sometimes feel that my grandmother is somehow helping her. Very odd for my mother to say stuff like this.

There's been times when we've been sitting in the living room and very suddenly the most fragrant rush of air will drive by us. Yes, there's been flowers in the room some of these times, however, there are no draughts that hit the living room in that way.

One night while bedroom(2) was mine, I was up late reading. I heard a tapping at the window that faced the embankment. I was terrified. Mum tried to explain it as a deer in the walkway. The walkway however is far too narrow for deer.

The property around the house terrifies me at night. For a reason I'm unsure of, that's lead to me being scared of dark woods, I feel watched when outside the house at night. So much so that my skin crawls. I could explain this as a typical fear of darkness.

My sister, now 37, refuses to be in the house alone. She feels incredibly uncomfortable there. My mother feels the exact opposite.

My mother related to me recently about how my father had taken a sudden interest in the paranormal (he does every few years, though seemingly a skeptic) and was at the time contemplating, in the garden, the energy of the land and ley lines.

Perhaps most of these things could be put off to being the results of an imagination. Maybe so, but they've affected my life.

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 -'I like her, she's crude, I like her.'	     	     
             -Aquaintance upon first meeting Kerry          
 -'Nary an animal alive can outrun a greased Scotsman.'     
             -Simpsons 100th episode                          
							     
 Kerry S. Brodt; Weirdus Scottishus Voluptuous              
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