I’ve no idea when the above photo was taken, but it shows the Lodge house, where I have now lived for some forty seven years, as it must have been a long time before I ever set foot here. Built in 1879 I moved here with my parents exactly one hundred years later, in 1979. They left in 1987 and I took over the lease, living here alone for roughly the following six years until Elaine moved in, in 1993. Though we later acquired a property of our own we decided to stay put, as it is a rather unique spot, and it well suited us to remain here.
It hadn’t crossed my mind to write about it along these lines, until a curious incident occurred as I was sat writing out the previous post a few weeks back; but more on that later.
There is no intention here, on my part, to challenge any ones beliefs or non-beliefs, what’s written is how it happened as best I can recall. I’ll leave you to make up your own minds, or not, as the case may be.
*****
It’s early summer 1988, a Saturday afternoon, and I’ve just run a hot bath and hope to relax for a while. I make a cup of tea, select a book, and dip into the welcoming water. Since I have lived here I have not experienced anything of an unusual nature. No sooner am I settled, when I hear clearly and distinctly, heavy footsteps coming up the stairs, the sound is unmistakeable.
Never have I exited a bath so fast in all my life. With water splashing everywhere I grab a towel, pull the door fully open and step onto the landing, (the bathroom is at the head of the stairs).
There’s no one there. I’ve a clear view of the staircase and its empty; but I know what I heard.
Wrapping the towel around me I search upstairs and then downstairs. All is as it should be, the windows are closed, doors all locked, I have no pets, I’m alone in the house; but I know what I heard.
Perching on the edge of the kitchen table I think it over. I heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs, a man’s tread on…Oh, Bare Boards! But the stairs are carpeted, and I didn’t hear them go back down again. Think as I might, I can’t explain it, and eventually I return to my cooling bath, cold tea and soggy book.
I wasn’t so much frightened as mystified, but nothing else occurred and I gradually forgot the incident. That is, until after my father died early ’89, and one afternoon I’m with my sister, and mother, at mums flat in town. For some reason the footsteps come to mind, and I’m recalling what happened to Sue when mum butts in- “I’ve heard that too”.
One night when I was out she’d just got into bed, dad already being asleep, when she heard heavy steps ascending the stairs.
“I knew it wasn’t you Mark as I hadn’t heard your car come back. I jumped up, switched on the light and went onto the landing, but there was nobody there, your father didn’t wake up, so I went back to bed; a while later I heard you come home”.
We’d both had the same experience, but how to explain it?
Here I’m just going to change course slightly, as mum had a strange story of her own, which was as clear in her mind all her life, as the night it happened. I think you’ll find it interesting.
It’s the early 1950’s, she and dad have just moved to Wimborne, and rent a flat which is the ground floor of a converted house. The upper rooms are a separate flat rented by another young couple. My mums’ mother was staying with them one weekend, and there being only one bedroom she and mum share the bed, dad sleeping across the hallway in the sitting room.
Mum is woken during the night by her mother shaking her awake. I’ll let her continue in her own words.
“She shook me awake saying there was someone tapping gently on the door. I listened, and sure enough there was a light knocking coming from the bedroom door, which was closed. Thinking it strange I switched on the bedside light and got out of bed. The couple upstairs were away so I knew there were only the two of us and Eddie (dad) in the house. The tapping continued as I approached the door and reached out for the doorknob. Then to my absolute horror it slowly began to turn as if being gripped from the other side.
“I froze to the spot, I couldn’t have moved to save my life. The knob turned fully round, then just as slowly, turned back again and stopped. The spell was broken and I just yelled for Eddie who came running. He searched everywhere, even upstairs, as we had a key for the other flat in case of an emergency, but everything was locked up, with nobody but the three of us there.
“He thought I’d been dreaming, but mum confirmed it all; we couldn’t explain it.
“When the couple upstairs returned I told the wife what had happened. She didn’t laugh, but told me that before the house became flats it had been owned by an elderly gentleman who lived alone. He became unable to manage the stairs, so his bed was moved down to the room which was now our bedroom. It was there where he later died”.
Mum was a strong person, but following this incident she hated being in the building alone. Shortly afterwards she and dad moved to the house where I was eventually born in 1958.
Reverting back to the Lodge. I never heard those footsteps again (in fact to this day I never have) but I soon began to notice something else rather strange. The kitchen here has a window to each end, both tall and rather narrow. I’m stood at the dresser one Saturday afternoon, the window nearest the outside door is to my left. Out of the side of my eye I notice someone pass the window as if coming round to the door.
I go to see who my visitor is, but there’s no one there. Funny, I could have sworn I’d seen someone, but obviously not.
Next morning I’m cooking breakfast, this time I’m facing the other way, so the same window is now to my right. Again someone passes as if coming to the door, I go to see who, but again nobody is there. This time I look around outside, but no ones’ about, leaving me somewhat baffled.
This becomes quite a frequent occurrence, I never do see clearly who passes the window and there never is anyone at the door.
When Elaine moves in she already knows about the footsteps, as both I and my mum have told her our stories, but I haven’t mentioned the kitchen window incidents to her. She soon finds out.
I’m in the lounge one Saturday afternoon, she’s in the kitchen. I hear her go to the back door and then mutter something I can’t make out, so I go through to the kitchen just as she comes back in.
“That’s strange Mark, I thought I saw somebody go past the window coming round to the door, but there’s nobody there”.
I don’t respond fast enough and she catches my hesitation. “What is it”?
So I explain what has happened before. She isn’t really bothered by it and soon enough experiences the same again. As far as we ever make out, if it happens, it always seems to happen on a weekend.
It becomes such a regular thing that we stop going to the door, assuming that there never will be anyone there.
In 1994 an article appeared in a local paper about a young guy, who driving past the Lodge at night, had witnessed the figure of a man dressed in a white smock of some type, walking along the driveway heading for the road. He was wearing a tall hat and carrying a stick. The guy’s sister, who was sat next to him, saw nothing.
This figure tallies pretty much with what a friend of mine saw one night when he was driving past roughly the same spot. The figure seemed to fall from the grass bank almost into the path of his car. He stopped and ran back, fearing that he may have injured what he took to be a tramp, but there was no sign of anyone there.
Although the driveway still exists leading to the main road, it has long been chained-off to block access, as it lies between two blind bends and is extremely dangerous to enter and exit in modern traffic. Access is now via the parkland, coded gates, and other security measures. It’s an extra mile to drive around, and though I’ve driven and walked through literally hundreds of times at all hours, I have never seen any ghostly figures or heard anything that I thought ‘unnatural’.
But I have had one strange experience outside here, and although I saw and heard nothing, I would never wish a repeat of it.
Saturday 30th December 1995, I remember the date perfectly as it was the day after Elaine and I were married. It’s around seven in the morning, and we’re getting ready to travel to Devon for a few days honeymoon. I’m packing bags into our truck, all the outside lights are on plus many indoors too, so there is a pool of light around the house, but outside of that it is very much still night time.
As Elaine is getting some last things sorted I take a short walk up the drive into the park. Part-way along I turn to come back, but stand still to look at the Lodge thinking how, with so many lights on, it appears as though floating in a ball of darkness.
Without warning I’m suddenly overcome with sensations of absolute raw fear. It’s not a warm morning, but in an instant I’m completely frozen through to my soul. Instinct screams that something is standing behind me, and slightly to my right, that it’s antagonistic and hostile and I need to get away from it, but for a few seconds, which actually felt like hours, I cannot move a muscle. Then with heart pounding and sweat trickling down my limbs, I manage to place one foot forwards, followed by the other, and so mechanically I make my way down to the Lodge, inwardly praying that whatever the hell is behind doesn’t follow me.
I get to the front gate, well into the light, before I dare look back. I can see nothing. The truck is facing up the driveway and with clammy hands I get in and turn on the headlights. The drive is illuminated instantly, but nothing is visible to account for what I have just felt.
I have known fear in situations before, and since, that morning, but never before or since have I felt so suddenly, utterly, terrified and afraid. I felt close to something that I was never meant to be close to; what it was I have no real idea, and it left me with no desire to find out. It was a long time before I ventured far into the driveway again after dark, and although I have walked it many times since at all hours, I never go there at night without a powerful torch to hand.
(Some years later I was told by Harry, who had lived and worked on the estate most of his life, that decades before, a young boy, then living at the Lodge, had discovered the body of a man, whilst walking home through the woods that border the driveway.
He is believed to have committed suicide by poison).
Elaine had been living here for several years, when one afternoon she heard the footsteps on the stairs that both I and my mother had experienced. She’d just got out of the shower, and was drying off when she heard, what at first, she took to be me coming up the stairs. Calling out, she stepped through to the landing but there was no one there; she soon realised that I was, in fact, outside chopping wood and then she remembered our stories of the footsteps on the stairs. There was no doubt in her mind that she had heard the same thing.
She heard them again, a couple of years later, once more when I was outside working. This time she was in the bedroom getting changed, when she heard that heavy tread on the staircase. She knew I was outside, and going onto the landing she again found nobody there; but as with mum and I, neither time did she hear any footsteps going back down the stairs.
Elaine and I always had a cat, or cats, living here with us. I still have the two, Sammy and Rita, that we acquired late 2016 following the death of our beloved Kitty. All of them have behaved, at some time or another, in a rather strange manner whilst in the lounge of an evening. Without warning they will suddenly jump up and stare out of the door towards the hall and staircase, often getting onto the sofa arm and craning their necks, eyes wide, as if following something that neither Elaine, nor myself, could ever see.
They would sometimes become quite agitated, and we would have to stroke them and talk gently to calm them down. On occasions I would go out and look around, but never was I able to discover the cause of their alarm.
I fitted a magnetic cat-flap into the outside (back) door when the first two cats arrived. They all have happily used it (though Sammy would rather I held it open for him!). It shuts securely and only an exceptionally strong wind might rattle it. But on many occasions both Elaine and I have heard it open or close when the cats have been indoors with us, and no wind is blowing.
We have had the odd stray cat around over the years (one was killed on the road, and I buried it in the garden) but only one has ever come into the house, that I know of. There have been several times when, on leaving the lounge at night and going into the darkened hallway and kitchen, I have caught sight, just for a fleeting second, of what appears to be a small dark-coated cat moving in the shadows; then just as quickly it has gone.
Rita is tortoise-shell, but she’s the size of a tank and it’s certainly not her, and Sammy’s bright ginger. We had two other torties, Elaine and I, but before Elaine lived here, my friend of many years ago, Nick, was between homes and stayed here for a few weeks. So too did Daisy, his adopted stray tortoise-shell. She was a delightful little puss whose favourite pastime was to race up and down the staircase like a mad thing.
Nick moved into a flat in town and Daisy went with him. I wish I had tried to persuade him to let her stay here, as this is such a great place for cats, but he loved her dearly and I cannot blame him for wanting to keep her close. Sadly she died on the road not long after they left. She too is buried here in the garden; perhaps she got to stay after all.
By far what I think is the strangest incident that I/we have ever known here (to date) occurred during the final few months of 2020; the last months of Elaine’s life.
I have already mentioned that the bathroom is at the head of the stairs. It has a low door which opens inwards, with a ball catch and 4inch chrome bolt. The door will not, and never has, stayed shut on just the catch, it must be bolted from the inside to keep it fully shut.
The bolt is quite stiff and when released it makes a harsh metallic ‘crack’ immediately followed by a sharp ‘ping’ from the ball catch, as the door comes open. It is a sound that both Elaine and I knew well. She would, almost without exception, bolt the door when using the bathroom, but I rarely bothered, just pushing it over but not actually bolting it shut.
Towards the end of 2020 Elaine was on several different treatments to try and stabilise her worsening condition. She wasn’t sleeping well, and to avoid disturbing me she often slept downstairs on the sofa. I offered to give up the bedroom, but she pointed out that downstairs she had access to her computer, if she couldn’t sleep, and could make tea and toast as she pleased. Also she fitted better on the sofa than I did.
She kept a torch with her, because if she needed the bathroom she didn’t want to put on the lights which may awaken me. There is a downstairs loo, but that meant going through the kitchen, unlocking the inner door to the utility, and disturbing the cats; who would imagine, that even if it was the early hours, it must be time for breakfast.
I awaken one night, as far as I remember it was some when in late October/early November. I’m alone, and the room is pitch black with night. I lie there for a while wondering how Elaine is downstairs, and if she is managing to sleep, when I am startled by the ‘crack’ of the bathroom door bolt followed by the ‘ping’ of the catch, and then silence.
It sounded very loud, but I hadn’t heard her come upstairs, nor did I hear her going down. I didn’t hear the toilet flush either or the cistern re-filling, there’s just silence.
Puzzled, and more than a little worried about her, I get out of bed, and switching on a torch of my own, go onto the landing. The bathroom door is wide open, I peer over the bannister but all is in darkness below. I look in the bathroom, but there’s no sign of Elaine nor of her having been there recently. I know I was awake and wasn’t dreaming, but I cannot understand how the hell I’ve just heard what I did.
I don’t want to go downstairs in case I disturb Elaine, so I go back to bed and eventually fall asleep.
She is already up and sat at the computer when I come down in the morning. She stands up to greet me, and we hug and kiss our ’good mornings’. The incident with the door is still very much in my mind and I ask her, “Did you come up to the bathroom a few hours back”?
“Yes I did”, she blurts out. But her reply is far too quick and unconsidered, and I can’t help frowning at her.
She stares silently at me for a few seconds, then admits, “No, no I didn’t Mark, but something really weird happened.”
“I’d been awake for quite some time, and was thinking about getting up and doing some things online, when I heard the bathroom door open. I heard the bolt and catch, it seemed quite loud. But I hadn’t heard you get up, or go into the bathroom or the door shut, and I know you don’t bolt the door anyway. I didn’t know what to think, and then I did hear you get up and go onto the landing, I saw the flash of torch-light through the door gap. I think you went into the bathroom then back into the bedroom. I knew you must have heard it too. What was it Mark?”
I couldn’t answer her then, and quite frankly I cannot find an answer now. We both heard exactly the same thing from different parts of the house. The bolt can only be physically actuated from inside the bathroom, there is no other way of doing it. Neither of us heard the door shut, and as there was only us in the house, how could we have heard it being opened from the inside? But we did!
Even today, writing about this incident makes me shiver inside. It may seem rather tame to you reading this now, but at the time it shook us both. What we heard should not have been possible, but it happened nonetheless.
There’s something else too. Elaine commented that it seemed loud, which confirmed what I thought as well. I know it happened in the still of night, but I was there, and believe me it was unnaturally loud, deliberate almost, like we were meant to hear it, but why and for what reason I cannot fathom.
We never talked of it again after that morning that I remember, and I don’t recall if either of us ever told anyone else, but it’s as clear to me now as the night it happened. As it occurred so close to her death I sometimes wonder if it was meant as some sort of warning of what was heading our way.
In truth, I haven’t got a bloody clue, but since she died, and to this day, I never have once bolted the bathroom door.
And what of the event that prompted me into writing this post?
Well, It’s a grey, wet afternoon and I’m sat right here at the computer re-reading the latest blog effort. Directly above me is the main bedroom, dominated by the bed at its centre. Suddenly I hear a loud thud, immediately followed by a softer thud, coming from directly above me. Now I know that sound alright, that’s a cat jumping off the bed onto the floor, it’s another sound I’ve heard many times before. The double thud is the front paws landing first, followed by the rear paws a split second later.
Now I’m a bit pissed to hear it, as the cats are not allowed in the bedroom. Years ago our cats had the run of the house, but later we kept them out of our room as cat fur, in quantity, can affect me. Sammy would sometimes be allowed to stay with Elaine when she had an afternoon nap, but since she died I have actively discouraged them from going in there. Now I can usually leave the door open and they will not sneak in, unless I happen to be around.
Turning in my seat, I see that Sammy is fast asleep in front of the woodstove-he could sleep through a thunderstorm in the same room as him- but there’s no sign of Rita, so it must be her upstairs. This doesn’t surprise me as it was quite a loud thud, and she’s the heaviest (and naughtiest!) of the two. So I stand up and turn for the door, to go see what she’s up to.
Only now I’ve stood and stepped towards the door, I can see over the solid arm of the sofa. Rita’s curled up tight against it, but she’s not asleep, she has her head slightly up and is staring at the ceiling. If it’s neither of these two up there, then what cat have I just heard?
In short, I searched all round upstairs and down. There was no sign of any animal having been in the bedroom, or anywhere else. Nothing had fallen down anywhere that would explain the noise I heard. The inner door across the kitchen was shut, so nothing could have come in, or gotten out.
Just another unexplained moment, like so many before, part and parcel of living here.
It’s my personal opinion that many people encounter events akin to these, but being unable to explain them, or perhaps fearing ridicule, they keep them to themselves. I cannot readily prove any of the above, you’ll just have to take my word for it; I have no reason to lie. I think also that one event of this nature, experienced by any individual, is worth a thousand words of someone else’s experiences.
Keeping an open mind doesn’t necessarily make you a believer in anything, but you just may become, a believer in something.
Thanks for your time, and for being there, back soon…Mark.
a horse, a husband, and cancer 