The Haunted Family Home
Witness: Shaun
Location: Exeter, United Kingdom
Date of Encounter: Various Dates in the 1980s
As the youngest of five children, all boys, and the son of the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter (supernatural followers will know that means a white witch), I have seen many strange things.
I and my brothers grew up in what would be described as a haunted house. At a very young age, I loved to play in my parent's bedroom which overlooked the landing, first two steps, and small landing at the top of the stairs. On an almost daily basis I saw shadows walking along the landing. They were not ordinary shadows, these were free floating. They were not cast on the wall, but were in mid air but I could see through them. As I got older they seemed to happen less frequently. I still see these shadows occasionally out of the corner of my eye.
In the early eighties, my brothers discovered the Ouija board method of entertainment which heralded some very interesting results.
On one such session on the Ouija board, the spirit known to us as Paraka put us in touch with a chap called Ray with a message for my father. I can't remember the surname that we were given but we passed the message on to my father who accused us of conspiring with my mother to try to persuade him that the Ouija board works. Of course, this was simply not the case. It turned out that his friend Ray had committed suicide while my eldest brother was very young. Therefore, it would be impossible for us to know anything about it unless we were told by someone, we simply had no knowledge prior to the session of the events that had taken place so many years before.
On another occasion when I was eleven or twelve we had a very strange encounter. My mother and father were out for the evening and my brothers were left to look after me. The session took place in the dining room which had one exit into the kitchen. From the kitchen you could exit to the hall towards the front door or a door latched with one bolt lock to the back garden and side entrance to the property. There was a window looking into the garden that the strange phenomena took place in. It was a strange session that seemed to pick up an angry persona. All of a sudden there was a bluish glowing light out the back of the house and the window started to shake violently. As we all made a mad dash for the kitchen, the door to the back garden also started to shake violently, we all ran for our lives out the front door and scattered in all directions up and down the road. There was snow on the ground and I was dressed in PJ's and no shoes. It was almost half an hour and much deliberation before we returned to the house and went in. There were no signs of any strange happenings.
We used playing cards with letters drawn on the back and "yes" and "no" written on separate cards and numbers in the middle of the table in a row and some excellent shaped wine glasses that were virtually impossible to push. In an early experiment, the glass zoomed round and round with great speed, all of a sudden it left the table lifting up to the top corner of the room and smashing into small pieces. Even the stem and base broke into pieces, the biggest the size of your little finger nail. Anyone who has ever broken a wine glass will know it takes a tremendous force to break the stem and base to that extent.
In 1985 at the age of fifteen, I was walking home to the family home around 10 PM from a friend's house. It was a wet and windy night and I walked with the collar up on my coat with my chin tucked in to the top of my zip, only looking up every now and then to see where I was going. There is a small village on the outskirts of the city just down the road from the family home. I was walking towards the village where I would have to turn right to go in the right direction to get home. Approximately 1000 yards before the road I was walking along came to an end, there is a 10-story block of flats and next to that a retirement home, as you get nearer to the end of the road approximately 500 yards from the end, there is a row of attended bungalow/flats going along the road I was approaching, and intending to turn right towards home. To the left, was a large grass area between them and the main road. I passed the end bungalow/flat heading to the T-junction with the grass area to my left and approximately 100 yards of space all around me to the nearest object, some small bushes. All of a sudden I saw a pair of brown shoes come into view a couple of steps in front of me. Startled, I looked up to see an elderly gentleman in front of me. I took as step sideways and went round him, something struck me as strange and after a few more steps, I turned round to see nobody behind me. There was absolutely no way that the elderly man walking slowly with a walking stick could possible have moved quick enough to get behind something to obscure him from my view in such a short time. In fact the distance between me and the nearest object was too great for Ben Johnson at his prime to reach before I turned round. It wasn't until I thought about it while walking home that it struck me what it was that was so strange about the gentlemen when I first laid eyes on him. Despite being quite persistent rain and strong wind driving the rain, the man was dry and there were no drops hitting him. He was dressed all in brown. Brown shoes, suit and flatcap. I can't remember the color of his shirt or if he was wearing a tie, but I will never forget his face as he smiled a gentle smile of thanks as I moved out of his way. His features were very clear, I have never seen him since. The village was quite a friendly community where most people knew everyone else but I did not recognize this gentlemen.
There were many strange thing that happened in the family home, from power cuts that were localized to just our house in the whole street. We had electricity meters that took coins to pay for the electricity supply, if the electricity went out, it should need to be topped up by popping a coin in the slot. Even after putting money in the meter the electricity would not work. It would be found to have been switched off and in those days there were no suck thing as circuit breakers that trip the switch.
When my father knocked out the dining room window to put in a patio door, we found three photo negatives of an old gipsy man. The first of him out the front of his caravan, another of him stood on the caravan steps and the last of him laid out dead. We intended to have them developed they were missing from the place we put them. We assumed they fell down behind the kitchen cabinet where they were left, when the kitchen was remodeled, there was no sign of them and other things we assumed had fallen down behind the cabinets.
On many occasion I have told certain people to answer the phone cause it was for them and it was. The problem was the phone had not actually rung until after I had told them but within a few seconds. I can't explain it but it still happens.
I would love to take part in a ghost hunt and see if anything strange happens.
