Ghosts

I am reading an ace book from the library about ghosts.

It is very interesting to come at from my point of view as somebody who has a fervent belief in an afterlife as a diet for worms. It is written by a chap who started off believing it was all junk and is slowly but inexorably coming to change his mind, despite the clear counter-indication that all paranormal investigators appear to be completely barking mad.

I really shouldn’t read this sort of stuff, because inevitably I have got to look behind me on the stairs at nights afterwards. The book stayed on my mind all day, and was the subject of a great deal of private philosophical contemplation

During the contemplative process I have had a busy day making laundry soap and pastry. I have enjoyed doing these things very much, but they are not the stuff of ripping yarns, so instead of filling these pages with such unexciting details I shall tell you about my own scary encounter with the paranormal, which was when Mark and I were living in Barrow-in-Furness.

We had bought a large and empty house to renovate and fill with tenants. During the renovation process we inadvertently sold the house in which we were living at the time, and after an uncomfortable night spent sleeping in a car park, decided that we would quite like to live in Barrow, and off we went.

Lucy was tiny at the time, about two, and so I stayed at home with her in Barrow whilst Mark went off back to Windermere to repair cars all day and drive taxis all night.

It was, as I have explained, a huge house, and it had been bombed in the war. The house opposite had been obliterated completely and our house now lacked the lovely curved bay windows which all the rest had, sporting just a flat window in its battle-scarred front wall. When we chipped the plaster off we found the beams blackened from an inferno that had clearly swept through a great deal of the house.

There was just me and Lucy in the house, and it was cavernous, with its kitchen and dining room and two drawing-rooms and five bedrooms, most of which were empty. We had a warm spot in the bright kitchen, where we spent the evenings, and another warm spot in the bedroom at the back of the house, which we shared. In between was a long gloomy hall, a couple of staircases, and an awful lot of empty rooms.

I went upstairs to put Lucy to bed and read stories one February night, which of course had winds howling around the house in a true scary-story manner.

I had been sewing downstairs in the kitchen, making a skirt for Lucy on an ancient sewing machine I had bought in a local junk shop. I had to stop to put her in bed, and on my way back down the dark stairs the most awful thing happened.

I could hear the sewing machine sewing in the kitchen.

I stood on the stairs paralysed with horror, every unsuitable film I had ever watched coming flooding back in unhelpful bursts of memories.

I screwed up my courage and carried on down the stairs, and it stopped.

I went into the kitchen, fully expecting to discover either a freshly-materialised ghostly entity or a serial murderer, or possibly both. There was nobody there.

Lucy shouted me from upstairs and I went back up. I did whatever tiresome maternal duty Lucy was requesting, and came back down, and as I came down the stairs the machine started sewing again.

I would like to say that I was very brave, actually I was absolutely petrified. All rationality completely deserted me and I knew that I was in the grip of a terrifying haunting.

I tiptoed into the kitchen to find the machine sewing merrily away all by itself. In an act of courage that I could hardly scrape from the pit of my terrified soul I dived over to the wall and wrenched the plug out.

Of course the machine stopped then.

I sat quivering on the arm of the sofa and rang Mark.

Mark laughed so much I thought he was going to have an accident, and said to read a book instead and that he would have a look at the sewing machine the next day when he came across.

I tiptoed up to bed and joined Lucy.

When Mark came home the next day he took it to bits and explained that there was an electrical fault in the pedal. He showed me quite carefully what it was, which of course I forgot instantly, so I can’t enlighten you now. He laughed again all the time he was putting it back together.

I determined from that point on to approach things with a more sceptical outlook.

All the same, I wish I hadn’t read the ghost book so close to the late night walk around the Library Gardens.