For seven-years a mysterious unseen force taunted a woman by stealing her money, calling her name and moving objects around the home.

Now, for the first time, Joan Coates describes the frightening events that threatened to rob her sanity.

In 1982, June quit her job and moved to the coast to nurse her mother who had become blind and bedridden with illness. Shortly after her arrival strange events began to take place – events that would continue for seven-years.

‘The first experience began when I was getting some meat from the refrigerator – someone called my name. The voice was not at all familiar and it seemed to emanate from nowhere. That voice would call me often over the years,’ June said.

‘Then when my mother died, the room she had occupied became extremely cold. Normally her room was the hottest place in the house, but for nearly a year it was like a freezer. It was then that my four small dogs began to act strangely.

‘They would look at a certain point of the room and bark wildly as if something was there. All the hair on their backs would stand up and they would continue to stare and growl until I pulled them out of the room.

‘I decided then to move into the cabin at the back of the house, and only entered the main residence for a few hours every night to watch television. When I closed the back door on my way out I could always hear strange banging and shuffling sounds inside the house.’

Chapter two was about to begin for June as the mysterious force gained confidence. This time it would taunt June with her very livelihood.

‘One day I was leaving the cabin to go and do some shopping and I remember taking twenty-dollars out of my purse and placing it on my phone-table,’ she said.

‘When I returned home the twenty-dollars was gone. It turned up two-weeks later in another room inside a cut-glass bowl.

‘On another occasion twenty-dollars was taken out of my purse. I became very distraught because it was all the money I had. I couldn’t find it anywhere and in sheer exhaustion I fell asleep. When I awoke my purse and the twenty-dollars were beside me.’

As the presence gained strength June began to witness objects moving around her home. Paintings moved on the walls and cutlery rose into the air.

In 1989, the mischievous presence that had plagued June for seven-years suddenly turned nasty. Her kitten was bludgeoned to death and her dog was strangled.

‘Things were happening all the time but mostly they were just annoying, then everything changed when I bought myself a beautiful white kitten,’ she said.

‘I placed it in the garage one day and went shopping. When I returned home I found it dead. There was a heavy pulley on the floor beside it. The pulley was the type with a large hook at the end. I always kept it on the top shelf in the garage. The kitten’s head had been bashed in with the pulley.

‘A few day’s later one of my dogs was strangled. I’d tied him up in the backyard. Someone or something had thrown him over the fence while he was still tied up. He strangled to death on the chain.’

Things are quiet now for the softly spoken elderly lady. Her life has returned to normal, her dogs keep her company and her friends visit for a chat.

June still remains in the small cabin behind her family home – a home that holds many memories of good times overshadowed by bad.