Paranormal Update

Happy Halloween, everyone! It's said that now is the time of year when the veil between the worlds is thinnest, and spirits return to walk amongst the living.

Many of you have had your own ghostly experiences, and I want to thank all of you who entered our Ghost Stories contest. As promised, Jeff Danelek, author of The Case for Ghosts, has read your entries and picked the winners. So, in the "spirit" of the season, I'd like to share his favorite submission with you. I hope you enjoy this true spine-tingling tale as much as we did.

The Lady's House

This house has always held a fascination for me ever since as a little girl I used to hide in the gateway. The house had been empty for some time and the neighborhood was wondering what had happened to the lady who owned it and what was going to happen to her property. I would have to pass the property at least a couple of times during the course of the day and every time I passed it with my young son he would ask when were we going to live in the "lady house" as he called it. He seemed assured that we were going to live in the house and would smile up at the grimy windows as I pushed him up the hill in his pram.

We were living in a cramped cottage with my mother and grandparents at the time and we thought that having a home of our own was beyond our reach, but still it wouldn't hurt for us to inquire about the house and if the owner would consider selling.

After some weeks of asking about, we learned that the old lady was living in a nursing home and that her nephew, who was paying for her stay was urging her to sell. It was decided that all interested parties should enter a sealed bid and that she would choose who would buy the house. Nobody was allowed to go around the house beforehand so we were all bidding "blind." We were surprised when we received the letter telling us our offer had been successful.

The house was in a state of disrepair and we had refurbish it before we could move in. We dismissed the stories and complaints from the workmen about the odd goings on in the house, how they would hear their names called from downstairs when there was nobody there and how they had the creepy feelings of being watched. One of the men refused to go back in the house after he was pushed out of an attic window by an unseen force. Another young man became depressed while working in the house and ended up painting weird pictures and obscenities on the walls before leaving.

All this time we were still living in the cottage and considered these tales as excuses for the slow progress of the work.

My son would continue in his excitement of being able to wander around the old house and he would tell us "this is the lady's bed room, this is where the lady had her chair, the lady had her bed this way," and most chillingly, "this is where the lady lay when she fell down," pointing to the base of the stairs.

Eventually we moved in and our lives began to slowly and insidiously go wrong. Our first encounter was when my son came running down the stairs to inform me that "one of nana's friends is in my room and I think she's dead." I hurried up the stairs to his room with him behind me only to find it normal, but terribly cold. I asked him to explain and he told me how he was reading on the bed when on looking up he saw an old lady looking at him.

"She was cross and I knew she was dead because my pool cue went right through her." His pool cue was leaning up against the wall opposite his bed and he swore that she was standing so that the cue appeared to go through her.

We began to see shadows slipping around the rooms, phantom cats would jump onto our beds, things would be moved around and marks appear in dust on the furniture. One time I was sitting up reading in bed with my two sons on either side of me, the youngest asleep, when I saw what I can only describe as a dense cloud with a highly defined edge move around the bottom of my bed and stand in front of the mirror in the corner of the room.

"Can you see that?" I asked my eldest son.

"Yes" he replied, "that's the lady, she's looking at herself in your mirror." We both agreed to jump out of bed and run downstairs where we waited for my husband to return from work.

There was continuing activity affecting all of us, and even our friends who came to visit. A friend's son pointed to a figure at the bottom of the garden and asked who it was. His finger began to pour with blood and I rushed him to the kitchen sink where I put his hand under the flow of the cold tap. When I looked for where the blood had come from, there was not a scratch or even a sign of a pin prick to show where the blood had come from.

Pictures taken of the house show odd shadows in the windows as if there is someone there looking out. Our pets will stare and hiss at empty space, and bedsheets are pulled off. Electrical appliances break down for no reason and even our digital radio and television hiss and crackle. We find dead wild animals on the grounds and once found a dead fox inside our conservatory, with no explanation as to how it got in or died. Newts, frogs and toads can appear in our dogs drinking bowls, and unnaturally large insects appear out of season.

You might think that with all this going on that we would move, but every time we try, really bad things happen. We can experience a range of calamities from life-threatening illness to severe money problems, which all disappear when we abandon our attempts to "escape." An old friend of mine decided to buy the house, and arrangements were made. Suddenly, without warning, she fell ill and in a matter of days we heard from her husband that she had died and that he would not be proceeding with the purchase.

Our sons are now grown, but still the house has the ability to hold them here, even though we would prefer them to go and flourish on their own. Our eldest says that the house is cursed and that no one who lives here can escape, that even the cats are stuck here.

Me? I don't know what to think. If anyone comes around to investigate it all goes quiet. You have to not want things to happen for them to do so. So I suppose that for now, or until the house releases us, you will find me here, in the lady's house.

Each month for more than fifty years, FATE magazine has featured true stories from readers of ghosts and the afterlife in a section titled "My Proof of Survival." For the past seven years, I have been the FATE editor responsible for this department, and I have had the opportunity to review hundreds of ghost stories. I am more and more convinced that strange and unexplainable experiences are not so uncommon.

My wife Megan, for instance, has one of the most amazing ghost stories I have heard. When we first met three and a half years ago, Megan lived in an artists' co-op in St. Paul, Minnesota. The building, a former warehouse, dated to the early 20th century and was home to more than 100 painters, sculptors, filmmakers, and other creative people.