Do you believe in ghosts? Being British, my heritage almost forces me to accept their existence as we have so many haunted houses, castles and other edifices. I personally know at least two former neighbours of my mother’s who swear their houses are haunted: in one case there’s an unpleasant, chilly presence that can move right through you if you get in its path, and the other takes the form of a little girl who comes out of the fireplace and crosses the room then vanishes. Both of these houses were built in the nineteen-seventies on the site of former buildings, so the spooks have probably been around a long time. Here’s a little story I wrote about someone who bought an older house that seemed to contain more than the house agent had promised.
Matilda’s Exorcist
Matilda knew as soon as she moved into her Victorian semi that Gussie would lose no time in finding a pretext to visit. That’s HER, she thought, as the doorbell rang and a bright halo shone through the knobbly glass of the front door. Gussie – given name Audrey, but nicknamed Gussie as a small girl because of her predilection for gooseberries – was crowned with a mane of crinkly red-gold hair that twisted itself into flame-like tufts all over her head. Unkind people likened them to carrots, but Matilda preferred to see Gussie’s head as permanently on fire.
She opened the door and Gussie exploded into the hallway. Gussie was a lover of rainbows, an enthusiastic knitter who never wasted a scrap of yarn and everything she knitted had to be worn, so she was clad in layers of polychrome stripes and fair isle sweaters, cardigans, legwarmers and scarves.
“Here,” she said, thrusting a shapeless parcel into Matilda’s hands, “Literally a housewarming present for you. These old houses can be pretty draughty, so I’ve made you something for cold winter evenings.”
Matilda opened the parcel to find an enormous soft woollen shawl that rivalled Joseph’s coat of many colours.
“Perfect,” she laughed, “You are a genius!”
Gussie stood in the tall narrow hallway and looked around. The floor still had its original diamond patterned tiles and there was wooden wainscoting on the lower half of the walls. The stairs rose straight ahead, with the old oak banisters and newel post polished over the years to a rich patina by many hands.
“Keeping it like this or what?” she asked.
Matilda shrugged her shoulders. “I’d like to keep it, but it’s pretty tatty. Can’t really call it shabby chic, can I?”
“It just needs a bit of TLC, that’s all. I’ll come over and help you if you like. There are some fantastic wallpapers around nowadays, we can soon brighten it all up.”
Matilda managed not to shudder at the thought of what her friend meant by “brighten it up” and muttered something about taking time to decide. They moved on into the living room – Matilda disliked the word ‘lounge’ especially in the context of a Victorian house – which was already looking neat and tidy in spite of her only having moved in a fortnight earlier, and then on to the kitchen at the rear. Gussie was impressed and enthusiastic.
“You’ll have to find yourself a husband and start raising a family here,” she cried, gazing through the kitchen window onto the long mature garden beyond. “This isn’t a house for a single person!”
“I may not stay here very long,” said Matilda quietly, as she put the kettle on.
Gussie turned and gave her a long inquiring look.
“Okay, spill the beans. What’s the problem? Already found a potential hubby and he wants Bauhaus?”
“No, nothing like that!” Matilda smiled wanly. “I don’t really know how to explain, but I think the house is haunted.”
Gussie’s ears pricked up and the carroty flames on her head stood to attention.
“Get away! What makes you think that?”
Matilda paused and went back to making tea and putting out biscuits. They sat down and Gussie waited as patiently as she could. Matilda poured the tea, picked up her cup and heaved a sigh.
“Noises,” she said. “Maybe it’s a poltergeist?”
“Or an ancient Victorian plumbing system?” suggested Gussie.
“No, not the plumbing. It’s footsteps, mostly. In the evening sometimes I hear footsteps going up the stairs, but there’s nobody there. And it feels chilly. It’s eerie, weird – makes my hair stand on end.”
“Mmh, intriguing. Have you tried talking to the Presence?”
“The Presence?”
“Your invisible lodger. Have you asked its name or anything?”
Matilda laughed. “That would never occur to me in a thousand years!”
“Oh, you should always try to make contact with the Unseen,” said Gussie earnestly. “If it’s trying to manifest itself, you need to know who or what you’re dealing with.”
“And the spirit or ghost or whatever it is, it’s going to tell me the truth? You believe all that crap?”
“No harm in trying. It might be a former occupant with a message for you. Do you know anything about the history of the house? Have you got a Ouija board?”
“No, and I have no intention of getting one either. Nor am I going to find an exorcist with bell, book and candle or whatever they use in this high tech world. But it creeps me out, and I don’t know whether I can put up with it much longer.”
Gussie thought about this, her mind leaping about in all directions as she considered possible rational and not so rational causes of the mysterious sounds. She put down her cup, and went back into the hallway, looked up the stairs, walked to the front door, then called out, “Mind if I poke about upstairs?”
Matilda smiled to herself. Trust Gussie to find an excuse for looking over the entire house. “Go ahead,” she called back, “But be careful, I haven’t finished unpacking and it’s all a jumble up there. And if you want to look in the attic, wear a mask, it’s dusty!”
Matilda had drunk nearly all the tea and eaten most of the biscuits by the time Gussie returned to the kitchen but Gussie wasn’t interested in tea and biscuits.
“I have an idea,” she said, putting her cardigan back on and wrapping a scarf around her neck. “I’ll be back soon.” And she left.
Matilda shrugged, shook her head and went back to her unpacking upstairs. Gussie! she thought, never changes! Just have to wait and see what she comes up with next.
As it happened, she didn’t have to wait very long. Just as she was putting her clothes into the wardrobe she heard that familiar softly creaking thump that had been giving her gooseflesh since the first evening she moved in. She froze, her blood ran cold, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Then the sound stopped. She listened intently a while longer, but all was quiet again. She shivered and realised her hands were shaking.
“No,” she murmured, “No way! This is a lovely house but I can’t live with this, not knowing what THAT is. It’s no good.”
At that moment the doorbell rang. Matilda opened the door and Gussie stepped inside.
“Gosh, are you okay?” she asked in a concerned tone. “You’re white as a sheet.”
Matilda told her what had happened, and Gussie nodded vigorously.
“Is there any tea left?” she inquired, “Or a drop of something stronger for you? You look as if you could do with a dram or two. Let’s go and sit down again and I’ll tell you what I found out.”
Making tea calmed Matilda down, and the two women sat down with their cups in the comfortable living room.
“Right,” declared Gussie. “I’ve solved the mystery. Your ghost. The spooky footsteps.”
She paused for effect and Matilda waited on tenterhooks.
“Know where I’ve been? Next door! Your neighbours are lovely, by the way. Not exactly young and dainty, and far from featherweight, but they didn’t mind me bursting in and let me try out my experiment without a murmur. They seemed to think I was in some TV show or something, where they play crazy tricks on people. They kept asking about the cameras.”
Matilda rolled her eyes. How would she ever be able to face her neighbours that she hadn’t even met yet? But Gussie was in full spate.
“Anyway, I could tell from your face as soon as you opened the door that it worked. You heard the footsteps, didn’t you?”
Matilda nodded weakly.
“That’s it, then! It was me you heard!”
“What?”
“Yep, me! These old houses – semi-detached. Your neighbours’ house is a mirror image of this one. So their stairs are against that same wall as your stairs are. They let me go up and down, and oh boy! Do those stairs creak! The wall between the two houses isn’t as thick and solid as the exterior walls. And that couple are built like battleships, they’re elderly, so the stairs are an effort. They only use them to go up to bed in the evening and come down in the morning, and you are probably already out at work in the morning so you only hear them in the evening. That’s your heavy-footed poltergeist! Mr and Mrs Peabody! A very substantial spook, I must say!”
Matilda’s face, that had been ashen, was now as red as a beetroot.
“Did you tell them I thought my house was haunted?”
“Of course not! I wouldn’t do that to you! No, they thought I was doing some kind of spoof, and asked me if I was Ronald Macdonald’s sister.”
“What did you say?”
“I said it was a secret, and only they and I knew the truth!”
“Do they know you’re my friend?”
“Don’t worry, that’s all part of the secret! You can go ahead and get acquainted without them suspecting anything. They are really very nice people. I’d soundproof that wall if I were you. Oh, and get your front door insulated too, there’s an awful draught!”
From that day on, Matilda lived happily in her cosily refurbished Victorian semi-detached house, wrapped in her multicoloured granny blanket when the winter storms raged, safe in the knowledge that a little extra insulation on the shared wall was as good an exorcist as any.
catterel 