From: "Robyn O'Farrell" (Robyn25@hotmail.com)
To: obiwan@ghosts.org
Subject: True Ghost Story
Date: Monday, December 02, 2002 12:16 AM
Location: Indeterminate
I'm not really sure when this started, but it happened every night for about a month and now it happens only ever so often. I live in a house that's only about fifteen to twenty years old but the kind of street I live on means that anything could have happened in that time. Suicide, overdose, rape, child and wife bashings and paedophilia have all happened on this street althought I'm almost certain there's never been a murder here.
Anyway, I'll tell you the small stuff before talking about that big nightly occurance. First of all, I can have clear memories of doing something. Like putting an important maths book in the bottom drawer of my study desk or remembering that I left the video case in the loungeroom when I took out the video cassette to play in my bedroom. The maths book vanished a month ago and still hasn't turned up. The video case was found in my bedroom behind dozens of my little sister's videos. Firstly, the video case had pretty graphic images on it so my sister wouldn't touch it and this was behind two rows of Nicci's videos so she would have had to drag all the videos out to put it behind there.
My little sister also has an inexplicable fear of having her bed pushed up against the wall of the bedroom. She got this fear about a month ago and ever since has pushed the bed into the middle of the room, whenever we push it back she moves it back into the center. Once I spent three hours trying to get her to leave the bed by the wall and go to sleep but she just wouldn't. Finally she went to sleep in mum's room. She says she has nightmares when the bed's by the wall and it is true that she doesn't wake up crying and half-dazed anymore. As she has a speech impediment and despite being six has the verbal skills of a three-year-old, it's near impossible to find out why she's so afraid.
This is the big one. At night time, first in mum's room and the hallway, then later in mine which is directly beside hers, there'd be the sound of footsteps on the ceiling. Not the roof, the ceiling. It's hard to explain, but it sounded like the feet were large - human-sized - although the weight sounded like it was a possum or a small dog and the distance between the steps was like a small child's. The footsteps would also continue down inside the walls which should be impossible due to the amount of insulation in them. When we thumped where the sound was, it'd stop and then start up again somewhere else. It never happened in the living areas although once it occured in the study. None of the animals were ever disturbed by these sounds and once we opened the manhole thingy in the ceilings and raised our cat up there, we didn't let him go, just tried to see if he could sense something. He was uninterested.
The sound has been a nuisance but we've never been afraid of them. Apart from my little sister's fear of having her bed up against the wall and her night terrors (now stopped since she's sleeping in the middle of the room) there's been nothing to suggest that the ghost is dangerous or even angry.
Oh, and for some reason glasses seem to shatter more easily here. You could tap a glass with your toenail, or prod it so it'll tap against a metal pole and they'll shatter. Not all glasses do that but we've had a high incidence of breaking glasses and bowls.
I haven't heard the thumping on the ceiling or in the walls for quite some time now, come to think of it.
Oh, one more thing. My mum has an air conditioner in her bedroom and if we close all the doors apart from hers and the study door, her bedroom will drop to almost freezing point and the hallway will get really cold. For some reason, despite my study being across the hall, and three feet to the left of mum's door, the study will stay really hot in summer. If any of the other doors are left open - me and my sister's bedroom, the bathroom, etc. they'll get cold and yet the cold air refuses to enter the study. If you stand in the doorway, you can actually feel the cold air enter the room but it just stops before infiltrating more than two feet.
Has anyone else had an experience like this? And how can it be remedied? It's almost summer and I'd hate to have to abandon my study in the hot days.
Laraqua_sandgate@hotmail.com