Growing up in a Victorian house in Cheltenham, DAVID CHRISTOPHER always felt watched. Then his father was frightened, his mother saw an old woman beside her bed, and years later came one final strange message
When I was about six years old, my family moved into a large Victorian house on Hales Road in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
From the beginning, we had the feeling that we were not entirely alone there.
This was in the early 1960s. My parents had finally saved enough money to leave rented accommodation and put down a deposit on their first home.
I do not remember the house number now, but it was towards the Harp Hill end of Hales Road, near the roundabout. The house is still there and looks in considerably better shape today than when we lived there.
It had large rooms and high ceilings which, because we had little furniture, echoed at the slightest sound. The old plumbing clanked and rattled as though pipes in distant rooms were communicating with one another.
There was no central heating. We huddled around ageing gas fires with broken ceramic tubes. I remember the hiss of the gas and the roar of the flames as they leapt upwards into the chimney as if, to my young mind, they were fleeing the house.
My room was at the top of the stairs. My sister’s was at the end of a dark corridor.
Just before you reached her room was an open doorway. Beyond it, wooden stairs led up to an attic room which remained empty and unused throughout the time we lived there.
My sister would run along the corridor each night to reach her bedroom. She would not stop and certainly would not look towards the dark doorway and the stairs leading to the attic.
When we moved in, a number of objects had been left behind. I remember old etchings, military memorabilia and, most strikingly, an African spear with a shield covered in zebra hide.
But it was not really the objects that made the house unusual.
It was the atmosphere.
We always felt we were sharing the house with someone, or something, else.
It did not feel threatening. There was no sense of malice or evil. If anything, it was a feeling of gentle sadness.
My father was away with work a great deal and my mother was often occupied with domestic chores elsewhere in the house. I therefore spent quite a lot of time by myself.
I say by myself, but in truth I never entirely felt alone.
There was always the sense that somebody was watching me.
Or perhaps watching is not quite the right word.
Observing me.
Something happened to my father
Even before we moved into the house, something strange had happened.
My father would go there after work and spend a couple of hours decorating.
One evening he returned home early.
My mother later told me that he was as white as a sheet and clearly on edge. She asked him what was wrong, but he would not tell her.
They had been married for some years and she knew him well. Something had disturbed him.
But my father never explained what it was.
Indeed, he would never even admit that he had been frightened. He was not the sort of man who would confess to believing in ghosts or anything supernatural.
Whatever happened to him in that house, he kept it to himself.
The old woman beside the bed
Several months later, after we had moved in, my father was away with work.
During the night my mother woke with the feeling that somebody was standing beside her bed.
She opened her eyes.
There was an elderly woman standing there.
My mother’s first reaction was disbelief.
“This is silly,” she thought. “It can’t be happening.”
She decided that if she closed her eyes and opened them again, the figure would disappear.
She closed them.
Then she looked again.
The woman was still there.
My mother closed her eyes once more and waited. After what seemed like several minutes, she opened them again.
This time the figure had gone.
The following day, a neighbour came to the house with some news.
The elderly woman who had previously owned our house had died during the night.
The neighbour had known her well.
My mother had also met the previous owner before we bought the property. During one of their conversations, the woman had told her how much she loved the house.
“I love this house,” she said. “I’m sure I will come back to haunt it when I am dead.”
My mother did not claim that the figure she saw beside her bed was definitely this woman.
She had been so startled by the experience that she did not register the face as anyone she recognised.
She could only say that it was an elderly woman.
But the timing has always stayed with us.
The man who followed me
Many years later, something happened which made me think about the house again.
I went to a friend’s home for tea and met her parents.
That night, back at my own home, I woke in the early hours to find books had fallen from my shelves and were scattered across the floor.
The following day, my friend handed me a piece of paper. Her mother had asked her to give it to me.
Written on it was a question.
Had I, when I was younger, lived in a house with large rooms and high ceilings?
I had.
The message went on to say that the spirit of a man from such a house was following me.
He had been waiting for his son to return and had somehow mistaken me for him.
He was watching over me.
There was one final detail.
He liked books.
I have often wondered whether this might explain the feeling I experienced so often as a child in that house in Cheltenham.
The feeling that somebody was there.
Not threatening me.
Not frightening me.
Simply watching.
Or, perhaps more accurately, observing.
I cannot tell you what my father experienced because he never told anyone.
I cannot say with certainty who my mother saw beside her bed.
And I cannot explain what happened to the books many years later.
But I do know that, as a child, I never felt entirely alone in that house.
More than 60 years later, I still wonder who was there with me.
DAVID CHRISTOPHER is a much-travelled behavioural researcher and linguist whose work has brought him into contact with a wide range of cultures and beliefs. He has a particular interest in the esoteric, especially ideas that challenge the assumptions of mainstream thought and accepted ideologies. He is the author of The Diaries of M. R. Templeton, available from Troubador.
