Haunting Theories

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5 Responses

  1. judylugg says:

    Re: Haunting Theories
    On the subject of ‘ghosts’, because of what I have personally witnessed on two occasions, I believe that the spirit or some part therof, attaches itself to things and places, particularly if there is some sort of strong emotion attached, ie. great sadness, great love or sudden death

    The first occasion this happened was when I was approximately 5 years old in about 1949; I then lived on my grandfather’s farm, obviously not long after the end of World War 2 – I say this as what occurred was to do with a heavy large navy great-coat and in those times of austerity, anything of value or with much usage still in it was kept and utilised. I had always shied away from this coat and when asked why, as I was only a small child, I could only say that it was ‘sad’.

    I was at the back door of the farm, which was just inside a large verandah with my grandmother who had answered the door to what we called a ‘gypsy’ in those days – I later learned that he was a Romany – he was selling clothes pegs.

    As he was talking to us he suddenly leaned forward to touch the aforementioned coat, hanging on the coat rack in the verandah and said that there was an unquiet spirit in it; what had happened to the person it had belonged to? I was then told to go back into the house and my grandmother continued talking to the gypsy.

    At the time, no-one would tell me what had been said and it was not until some years later when, I suppose, it was deemed that I was old enough to understand that I learned the history of the coat:

    It had belonged to an old family friend who often visited the farm and in about 1939, unknown to our family, he had been heavily in debt. He had come to the farm one afternoon in summertime, said he was going for a walk across the fields and when he had not returned by early evening my granddad went to look for him and found him dead on top of one of the hayricks. He had cut his throat. My grandparents had asked the local vicar to come to the house and bless the coat, after the gypsy’s visit. However, until the farm was sold when I was 12 years old, that coat always felt ‘sad’ to me.

    The second thing that happened which reinforces my thoughts was well documented in our family and with friends and tradesmen and began to happen in September, 1984 when we bought and moved into a 200 year old farmhouse in Staffordshire.

    This house had two staircases, one at the far end off the kitchen and the central main one off the middle hall, from which led two doors – one into the main sitting room and one into the dining room. Both of these rooms had the old fashioned sneck type door handles – during the first week, the door into the sitting room was repeatedly found open when there was no-one about and it was impossible for this to happen without it actually being physically opened and I started to have an ‘impression’ of there being someone in the middle hall.

    During the second week, as I was coming down the stairs and saw a small man, aged about 75, needing a shave and dressed in a collarless shirt, with black trousers and a black waist-coat standing half in the sitting room – he was grinning happily at me. I had the distinct impression that his name began with a ‘C’ and thought it was Cecil. He just faded away as I came down the stairs

    The next day my then 16 year old daughter told me that she has just seen ‘a little old man smiling at her’ at the bottom of the middle stairs. Neither of us were afraid or felt intimidated in any way – on the contrary, our ‘ghost’ gave off a feeling of great friendliness.

    Over the next year my daughter and I saw him intermittently and the sitting room door was opened quite often, usually in the evening but we then began to have to make major repairs to this house. In July 1985 a plumber came to refit piping a long the upstairs landing and told me that he had done work there before when ‘Old Charlie lived here’.

    I asked him to describe ‘Old Charlie’ to my husband, me and my daughter – sure enough it was our ghost. He apparently was a well liked old fellow who had been a great practical joker all his life and had died some 15 years previously.

    Sadly, as we did more major work to the house, Charlie’s visits became less frequent and gradually ceased altogether by the end of that year.

    I believe that Charlie or his spirit was attached to the house as it had been in his lifetime and when it was altered so radically he either did not like it or was unable to appear because of something that we had done to disable this ability.

    Incidentally, we have a ghost cat in our current house, quite clearly visible to all members of the family, in fact, as I was writing this my 16 year old granddaughter saw it sitting by me at the computer, thinking it was our current ‘live’ cat, Nelson – he had just gone out through the cat-flap. Nelson the LIVE cat does NOT react to the ghost cat at all – don’t know why, you would think he would, wouldn’t you?

    I have heard of several well authenticated cases like these – well as the Bard said, “there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio….” and I wonder if we will one day be able to understand the mechanism of so-called hauntings? There is such a huge mass out there of unexplained, fascinating things, isn’t there?

  2. Ian Topham says:

    Re: Haunting Theories
    Thanks for sharing your experiences Judy.  I wonder if any photographs of Charlie are available for you both to independently confirm he was the person you saw.

  3. judylugg says:

    Re: Haunting Theories
    Hi Ian,

    Haven’t visited the site for a while and have just seen your comment.

    In answer to your query about photos of ‘old Charlie’ – I never saw any;  everyone  whom I asked described him exactly as I had seen him.

    They all also said what a lovely friendly old chap he had been (which was exactly the impression my daughter and I had of him).  Apparently, up until  a few weeks before he died he had visited several local pubs as usual where he quite often played practical jokes on people.   The plumber who described him to us when he was working at the house also said that he was a great practical joker – never malicious though.   He was greatly loved, I  think.

  4. OldTimeRadio says:

    Re: Haunting Theories
     
         But if ghosts CAN walk through walls, why in the world would they want to bother with doors?

  5. indiagold says:

    Re: Haunting Theories

    I don’t know but if you haven’t read (it can be dipped into) Evan-Wentz’s famous and informative book The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries 1911. you should as it impinges on theories of hauntings. Chapter 11  http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/ffcc/ffcc411.htm#page_488 is excellent once you have got to grips with the somewhat old-fashioned language. I would start at the heading Problems of consciousness.

     Sacred Texts is a Fabulous online resource by the way

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