When we lived in our old house, an early Edwardian merchant's house complete with coach house, my mother was initially thrilled to be living in such a grand, old home. She loved living under the same roof as me and my family and it was a very special time for her. However, not long after she moved in she was awoken in the very early hours of the morning by someone pushing her shoulder. She woke to see a very old woman, dressed in a maid's costume with a pocked face. Two nights later she was woken by an elderly coachman who stared at her until she reached for the cross she kept above the bed and spoke a verse from the Bible to him. She was desparately upset, terrified that we would all think her completely mad. I could see that my mother's fear was very real but I didn't know what I could do about it. After the third visit, this time another woman, we asked our church minister to visit and bless the house. He informed us that our house was built on the grounds of the old Abbey and that it probably had a lot of people buried around it.
My friend Susan moved in to the coach house and spent the night with us before she finally moved in. She had forgotten something from her car and quietly went downstairs to bring it in. On the way back up, on the first landing, she saw the vapourised figure of a woman wearing a smocked cap, young and with long, black curly hair. She was beckoning to Susan and then disappeared. Susan spent that night with our youngest son who described her fear 'as though she had just seen a ghost.' I have to confess that before this happened, and ever since, I hated coming upstairs at night past that landing. It was impossible to heat and always felt cold.
In the summer, while Susan was on holiday, my cousin and her son stayed in the coach house. She woke one night to see her dresses spinning round on the open clothes rail of the bedroom. There was no wind and no window or door open. She refused to stay another night. Several months later Susan woke in the same room to see a little boy in pyjamas playing on the floor. She spoke to him and he smiled. She often saw him after that but never felt any fear.
One night, as Bryan and I lay in bed, I heard Tina and her friends making their way back down from her bedroom. Tina's room was on the third floor and her friends would often go and sit up there, chatting and listening to music. It was about one in the morning and I listened as they whispered, trying not to make a noise. I smiled to myself and closed my eyes. I heard one of the cars going down the lane and opened my eyes again. I saw Bryan, pulling back the curtains and looking down over the garden. 'Leave them,' I said, 'they're only having a bit of fun.'
'What are you talking about?' a very sleepy Bryan asked. The thing was he was lying in bed beside me. The curtain dropped and I screamed like I have never before of ever since.
Meanwhile, my mother continued to have her 'visits' and one morning told me she was really frightened and was worried she would have a heart attack. Although her faith was so strong, she felt too nervous to lie there on her own. We arranged to leave a light on in the hallway and her door slightly ajar. My aunt, whose bedroom was just down the hall, never ever saw anything slightly ontoward.
By now we learnt that King John's army had landed in Holywood in the mid sixteen hundreds when they sailed across the lough from Carrickfergus. Historians told us that many of the soldiers would have died and would have been buried on the grounds plus the friars from the old Abbey.
After my mother and aunt moved to a residential home, we decided to move. A developer bought the house and land and we moved to our present house. Now for the interesting bit. They built houses in the front gardens but left the house when they ran out of money. The roof has been replaced but nothing else major has been done. The workmen told the foreman that they were extremely uncomfortable working there, especially in the afternoons when it got dark. Not one of the houses they built has sold and the old house sits dark and forlorn waiting for someone to buy it and restore it to its glory. It has lain empty since the year 2,000. Last weekend I heard of a young family who were anxious to buy it. I know of them and told the friend who told me to be aware that it needed the foundations replaced at a cost of approximately half a million pounds. I was honestly telling the truth, but I just didn't want such nice people to move into a house which might 'haunt' them. Was it haunted? I honestly don't know. What I do know is my mother died with every one of her senses in tact. Susan has never seen another ghost, nor have I nor my cousin. We heard that a family who lived there once left for Australia as they just couldn't settle. For us it holds many, many happy memories. We had such a lot of good times there, but for all that I would never move back, not for all the tea in China or the biggest win of the European lottery. Without my mother there to protect me I just couldn't do it. What do you think?
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