Our Resident Ghost

I was inspired to write this hub based on a forum question...Do you have any experience of paranormal activity? Interestingly enough I share a flat with two other girls and my boyfriend; and All of us are convinced that one particular flatmate is haunted.

I have lived with the flatmate in question in two seperate residencies - and wierd things only happen when she is around. If you're interested to find out what sort of things then please enjoy the rest of the hub...if not that's fair enough. What I am about to tell you is not made up, meant to inspire fear or any other detrimental  thing - it is merely a relation of my experience.

Lets call my flatmate Jay. We shared a joint room in the halls of residence. I didn't notice much at first. It started with things going missing and turning up in strange places - by strange I mean in the most obvious place that you had already checked three times. So naturally I thought I was becoming a bit of a ditz and thought nothing more of it. As the months passed this occurred more and more frequently, and still happens three years later.

One particular day we had a guest; a friend of mine. The three of us were in my room talking. I went out and made tea in our shared kitchenette. I stuck my head around the door and asked my friend how many sugars he wanted. He said two. I continued to talk to him. I finished making the tea and took the cups into my room to find it was empty. The thing is they would have had to have passed me in order to move rooms. Again I thought; maybe it was just my imagination that saw the friend still in the other room. Again; I thought I was loosing it.

After about ten months we moved into our own place with another flatmate. It was then that things moved from coincidental to undeniable. The first time we noticed anything was when we had not long got here, we were watching tv and a black shadow flitted across the living room floor towards her. I thought I was going nuts - naturally. A few days later my flatmate complained of a similar experience in her room. We compared notes and finally admitted that something about her was a little wierd.

THEN it got strange.We are frequently sitting watching tv and it switches itself off...An electrical fault - we thought. Until one day it happened and I jokingly said "come on now ghostie, we were watching that." And it flickered back on. We were so scared we cleared the room.

A few days later my boyfriend was round with a hangover...He always says we feed him tea and toast and make him feel better. He was in the kitchen with my flatmate and she had her back to him making him tea whilst he laid his head down on the table. Out of the blue he says "awww that's brilliant, thanks man..." To which my flatmate replies 'What?' And he opens his eyes looks up and realises that there is no one behind him rubbing his shoulders - even though he swears that someone did.

It escalated in sightings from then on...Flashes of light, glimpses out of the corner of your eye - one scary episode where the light shining in my room through the window was blocked out from the inside inexplicably. My boyfriend eventually moved in and says he was an unbeliever until he moved here. More recently The two of us were awakened by someone rattling the front door and climbing the stairs to the extent that we armed ourselves with hairspray and lighters and went out to catch them in the act - to find there was nobody there.

One morning my flatmate lost her toothbrush; it was in the shower. Another time it was her mascara that had moved. In the living room we have wooden shutters that are occasionallly open without help. An angel ornament of mine was turned to face the wall. From the kitchen and the stairway we hear the most noise, but we get the most activity in the bathroom. Things will fall off shelves, Lights are constantly breaking, candles won't stay lit, taps come on alone but scariest of all is when the  door handle turns by itself when everyone else is asleep. You can be in there at five in the morning and someone tries to get in - it's terrifying. Second scariest is the other scenario I hate...when my boyfriend and I are trying to sleep and someone taps a tune out on our headboard like a drumbeat. The first time it happened we each thought it was the other; the second time I said 'I'm awake' and it stopped, then woke my boyfriend to tell him how scared I was. Since then it hasn't happened.

So there you have it; welcome to my life! I know it sounds a bit mental but that's just the way it is. Now we've gotten used to the ghost we nickname him ghostie and always try not to offend him with our conversations. Sometimes he makes a leap for attention but we find talking to him stops the weirdness. Our flat is over 150 years old and the family that used to live in it has been around in this town since the times of Wallace and Bruce. But we have no real interest in finding out exactly who our ghostie is - we like him and don't want to aggravate him. Besides -once you've gotten used to it you wouldn't have it any other way...We even invited him to come with us when we move!

As an additional to this hub, I got to the second paragraph and he turned the TV off. Ha! We only refer to him as a 'him' out of easiness. It doesn't seem to offend.

And I no longer live in that same apartment. I'm still in touch with the girls I shared with and each of us says the same thing; that house was haunted. The boyfriend started as a non-believer, but after witnessing the incident with the TV going off and on he re-evaluated. There were times when you woke in the night and were too scared to walk to the bathroom!

Since living there I have lived in three other houses (including the family home) and until I moved into my current flat I had no activity. People tell me 'I think my house is haunted' and I answer 'If your house was haunted you would know.'

In truth I am a little rattled after reviewing this article. The flat I'm in now was a house swap and I know the previous owner had trouble with an unseen resident. The reason I'm rattled is because of the ornament of the angel. It started turning on the spot again and one time was lying in the middle of the hallway floor. After a while of this I was getting the old 'movement in the corner of my eye' game again. This time I was having none of it.

So the very first thing I did was move the angel. I've got it where I can see it now and it seems to be staying still. Next I hit the books- yes I own various spiritual/magic books that speculate over how you might appease such circumstances (experience of a previous haunting does that to a girl.)

I put an onion in every room-yes, an onion. A regular small white from the supermarket. They soak up the negative energy as well as any noxious smells in the room. I left them there for a .number of weeks and when I retrieved them they were shrivelled up to empty skins.

After that I bought sage, genuine sage on a stick. I burned it in every room of the house; a process I repeat every time I catch something out of the corner of my eye. Someone woke me up a few weeks ago by speaking inside my ear even though I live alone...They urged me to come and find them in a female voice I did not recognise. After I was done searching the house for intruders I brought out the sage and did another turn. It seems like whatever is following me doesn't want to give up.

The final thing I did was to sit in the empty house and have a genuine heart to heart with this new ghost. I told it I didn't want any trouble, that I was still alive and was living in this house and that if it wanted to say or do anything then now was the time. There was no response and since then nothing too troubling has happened. Maybe I'll update you in another seven years with more to the story; but for now we have reached some sort of agreement not to trouble each other...I hope it continues for as long as it possibly can.