by Darcey Lane
I have had a few interesting experiences, but I'll tell you about the strangest one.
About 13 years ago I lived in an old terrace house in Highgate Perth, across from Hyde Park. I loved it and so did my son who was little at the time. Odd things used to happen, like lamps would go out, and I would say, "Can you turn it back on, please?" and you guessed it, it would come back on. This happened lots of times, and we were used to it. We actually thought it was quite sweet, like the house was alive. It never felt scary.
Then after about a year of being there, stranger things started to occur. At one stage, all the pictures in the house would fall off the walls for no reason at all. This lasted for about a week. I was telling a friend about it, who was over during that week, and he was looking at me very skeptically. I laughed, and was about to try to convince him, when the painting above us (behind the couch) fell off the wall on top of us. Luckily, it was an unframed canvas!
One night when I was home alone, I went to go down the hallway to bed and there was a wetness down the middle of the hall carpet that lead to my bedroom. No one else had been in the house all day, and no water had been anywhere near the hall. I called my parents, who told me to look under the carpet, as it might be rising damp. Even though it was summer, I checked. The floor below was totally dry. The next morning when I woke, the light pink couch in the lounge room had a huge round wet patch on it. I had been there by myself all night, and had not wee'd on the couch! The seat cushion was soaked through, with no visible explanation available at all.
The next night I asked a girlfriend to stay, as I was getting a bit nervous, and the novelty of it all was wearing off. She agreed, we had dinner, chatted, and then prepared for bed. I asked her to push the bolt up on the back door while I brushed my teeth. She called out to me that it was jammed and wouldn't move. When I came out, she was looking a bit odd. I pushed the bolt, and it went into place effortlessly. She then said she was really sorry, but she had to go home.
I thought she must be joking, but she wasn't. She mumbled excuses, as she made her way to the door. Virtually running to the car, she called back to me, '"You'll be fine. I promise." I was shocked. She was not normally that weird. I found out eventually that when she went to bolt the door, the bolt just would not budge no matter what force she used. Then she felt a painful ringing in her ears, and sensed someone telling her to get out! She claimed that the feeling was so terrifying, that she knew she had to leave; but she also claimed that she felt that the ghost/spirit/energy, or whatever it was, was protective of me, and that I would be fine.
The most dramatic thing that happened in that house, thankfully occurred during the day! My partner and I were unpacking the shopping one Saturday afternoon, and chatting while my son played (there was a nice mood in the house). Then I realized that I could hear the TV being turned on, and off; over, and over. I called out for my son to stop playing with it. He called back, "Mum, it's not me." The room was open plan, and so I looked over into the lounge. Sure enough, my son was playing with his Game Boy. My partner had just started to explain that it was most likely an electrical fault, when the toaster behind us started popping up repeatedly (as in the toaster spring). He was just about to restate his faulty-wiring theory, when we both noticed that the toaster wasn't plugged in! As we stared at each other in amazement, the fridge started to literally shake from side to side, banging very loudly as it hit the ground each time. Then immediately when that stopped, the flywire door leading outside opened and slammed shut before our eyes. We all just looked at each other in astonishment, until my son said, "Cool!" We all just laughed about it. I guess that sounds odd, but it wasn't scary, just amazing!
A friend who was worried about me living there, took me to see a psychic. I mentioned nothing to him about why I was there, and the first thing he said to me was, "You've got a spirit living in your house that's very active, and he has his eye on you." Naturally, it did not impress me at all, but it freaked me out (I'd thought of my ghost as being female - less scary). He also told me that the ghost was very jealous of anyone close to me, and said that he watched me getting undressed every night. At that point I stopped the reading. I thought that it was an of-thing to tell me, even if it had been true.
When I moved into a new house, two other friends came to tell me about experiences that they had felt in my old place, but hadn't wanted to scare me by telling me while I was living there. Both stories were told to me by two people who didn't know each other, and at separate times. So, there was no collusion. They told me that they had felt a painful ringing in their ears, and felt very frightened. They felt like something definitely wanted them out of the house. Both said the ringing didn't stop until they were quite some distance from my home. Another friend confided in me that she had clearly heard a voice saying, "Get out," and when she looked around, no one was there and I was still outside hanging out the washing.
I moved out of that house a long time ago, and I have had many more fascinating things happen, but none as visually dramatic as the TV-toaster-fridge thing. I just think of it all as being a natural occurrence. I believe in parallel levels of existence, and that people move on, not die; just sometimes, people choose not to move on completely...and some of them have a few issues!