I used to live in a 200 year old cottage. It didn't used to bother me, the age and all. My family said they'd expirienced weird things, but I can be quite sceptical and didn't believe them. Until I expirienced things for myself.


The first occurance happened when I was about nine. One night I was in bed. My bed faced the door onto the landing. If I was led one way I faced the landing. If I turned over I faced the wall. That particular night I was facing the wall.
We had eight steps leading to the top of the stairs. I sometimes counted them when I went up them.
I heard heavy footsteps walking up the stairs, quite slowly. They got to the seventh step and there was a pause, maybe of about 7 or 8 seconds.
Then, they would start again. I remember lying there facing the wall because I was too scared to look at the landing, listening them until I drifted off asleep.

That only happened once, but some other weird stuff happened too.
When my elder brother was about seven years old, when he was in bed one night, he saw something. My younger brother had gone to sleep on the lower bunkbed. My elder brother was on the top one so he could see more. The wardrobe was facing the bed. He saw a man, with his back to the bed, scrawling some unreadable writing on the wardrobe door. He was wearing a straw hat, a neckscarf and a tunic. My brother is a good drawer and artist so he drew a clear picture for my parents. They did some research and found out that the clothes he was wearing were classic 17th/18th centuary farm labourers clothes.

My brother dosen't like paranormal things so he had to go asleep listning to music from then on. He saw the farm man a few times, still writing unreadable scrawl on the wardrobe door. After a while, the man disappearred.

Other things happened in the 18 years my family lived there. (We left in 2005).
When they first moved in, before me and my younger brother were born, in one corner of the living room near the under-stairs closet, my mum could smell old pipe smoke.
In the garden about a year later, she found a broken old clay pipe.
One night when I was about ten, me and my elder brother were sat eating take-out in the living room. We had a lot of coat hangers hung up on a rail under the stairs, and they made a distinct noise if they ever fell down. We were just sat there talking and eating when we heard them all fall down. I opened the cupboard and not a one had fallen.

One night after washing up the dinner-dishes, my mum and brother came to leave the kitchen when in the notoriously "haunted" doorway, a shadow passed in front of them. They both saw it.
Also in that doorway, my mum had her shoulder briefley touched.

In the room I said about, where my brother saw the farm-man, about 10 of us, (family, friends and neighbours) all heard things moving around. Heavy footsteps, and quite often, things being dragged across the floor, which made a loud noise as the floor was stripped-wood.

My mum went to a meduim, and didnt tell her a thing. The medium went on to say that we had a man living in the house, who used to be a farm labourer, and wore heavy boots.
Since living in the house, although it dosent bother my younger brother or parents, it bothers me and my elder brother.


I was just wondering- the ghost appeared to my elder brother much more than it did to anyone else. Is it true children are more receptive of paranormal goings on?

thats the theory, that kids are more receptive. Is it possible for the medium to do recearch on the property and realize it was an old farmhouse and said that you had a male farm laborer with boots? I'm not saying you didn't experience anything its just any outside explanation other than paranormal is good to think about also.

Great experiences your family has had. Im glad you posted these stories...

I for one beleive very much in spirits, although mine come in dreams.
I cant see while concious... Maybe this is a good thing??? Im sure Id go thru alot of tidy whities if I did...

Were your brothers able to interact with the man? If he knew you were there it was a spirit....

Was there any recognition of the man knowing you guys were there, or was it more of a residual left over energy? as a ghost....

There are many nay sayers out there that dont beleive, but I guess until they experience it themselves, nothing will change....except maybe their tidy whities one day!

Blessings to your family

Your reports are very interesting. Your old house very well may have been haunted. It would have been an interesting place to investigate, that's for sure. Great stories!

I think so. The only apparition I ever saw was when I was nine years old. We'd just moved into a new house when I woke in the middle of the night and suddenly sat bolt upright ( sounds like a cliché I know, but that's exactly how it happened - what can I say ? ). Through the open bedroom door I could see the figure of a middle aged woman on the landing staring back at me. She had this ghostly white and ethereal quality about her so I was in no doubt she was a ghost. I opened my mouth to scream but I was so terrified nothing came out. The odd thing was she seemed just as startled to have been seen by me and quickly vanished.

When I told my parents about it they said I'd either dreamt it or just caught sight of my mother going to the bathroom in the night. At the time I was convinced about what I'd seen but, as the years went by, I did start to wonder if I could have been mistaken. There's an odd and bizarre postscript though. A few years ago, a nephew of mine went to a medium for a reading. He knew nothing of my childhood experience, so it came as a surprise when, as the medium began to wind up the reading, she related the incident that had occurred to his uncle (me). She said Alice had lived, and died, in the house before us and wanted to apologise for frightening me, she hadn't intended to. This was around thirty years later - how weird is that ?

Yes I believe they are for the simple reason that the mind of a child is completely open. It hasn't been trained what to see and what not to see.

i wonder if some ghosts perfer new houses or ones that specialize in renovated old / new eclectic mix

I wonder sometimes, a lot of people say they saw things when they were a kid, right? Now that most of us are adults we have a tremendous amount more knowledge stored than when we were kids. Most kids don't know what things in a house cause noises, air pressure and other things moving stuff and closing doors. Just woke up and maybe dreaming something that seems very real. As a kid we had limited skills to diferentiate situations. Maybee a lot of things thought paranormal as a kid, were actualy explainable, we just didn't know at that young age.... i'm not saying all of these situations are not real but i find it hard to trust stories as a kid as paranormal w/ limited debunking skills to work with. Not to mention as a kid we were much more scared of the dark, just overall more freightened back then compared to now... kinda psycosis with an active imagination, and limited debunkin skills to try and rationalize situations when we were young was probably not a good reliable source. Like i said not all are true to this but it does make me think that childhood memories or explinations cannot be trusted...my opinion

Very strange! She apologised? Nice ghost haha

Good expirience though!

Well, I don't know about good.... .... I still can't sleep in a bedroom with the door open, but on the other hand it did spark my interest in the paranormal. Also, I shouldn't imagine there are many people who have had their experience validated years later. I feel quite privileged.