NOVEMBER used to fill me with dread at my old house because it was the month that our spook would come out to play.
Our first encounter with him petrified me so much, that I refused to sleep there and fled to our next-door neighbour’s.
My
dad was working away and I was woken by my mum in the early hours because
she thought we had a burglar - I was only 14 at the time and the next
day I remember thinking I wish it had been!
Shaking like a leaf, I got out of bed and had a listen at the top of the
stars. Mum hadn’t told me what she had heard, but when I said it
sounded like someone was opening and closing the heavy wooden drawers
of the wall unit, I confirmed her fears - someone was downstairs.
But someone turned out to be some thing, because when - for some STUPID reason - we ran down the stairs and opened the living room door to confront the supposed burglar - there was no one there but one of the drawers was slightly open.
The
ghost kept the drawer thing up on and off for the rest of the month, and
to make matters worse my sister (then three) had suddenly developed an
imaginary friend, which freaked us all out just a tad.
After that, we heard nothing until mid November the following year when
he took to trying to scare us with an strange smell.
We realised he was back while my mum was reading my baby sister a story in the room we shared one night. She suddenly stopped and started sniffing the air - bizarrely she could smell whiskey, but there was none in the house and certainly none in our bedroom.
About a week later I was watching Home and Away on my own in the front room when I smelled alcohol too, it lingered for about 20 seconds and then (just like when mum smelled it) there was no trace of it - aaarrrrgggghh.
The following year it was my dad and my brother’s turn to be spooked. One night my dad was sat up late watching TV when he suddenly heard what sounded like furniture being dragged across the floor upstairs - but we were all in bed fast asleep. He didn’t say anything until my little brother (12 at the time) came running down the stairs one day saying he had heard the same noise coming from my bedroom, but he had been up there alone and no one downstairs had heard a thing.
We moved before November came around again, but not because of the ghost who we were told was likely to be that of an old man named Albert who used to live there - the rest of my family were disappointed that he never actually showed his face - but I can safely say I am glad he didn’t.
Posted by Emma