A learning curve vs imagination

I grew up through my teens only five minutes walk from the bakery which had scared me as a child. I could actually see it from my next bedroom window more or less through a break in the village mill's wall. Some of my fears moved with me. For example the idea that If I knocked on the wall next to my bed for example, this would make the faceless characters float in from my mothers bedroom to kill me if it turned out I was alive. My parents had divorce by now and I was adrift alone in myself. Too much time to think and no way to understand what was being discussed around me. I was 'too young' to understand, or that was the go to excuse for not telling me things. This house did not have a bad feeling at all and my bedroom became more than a room for my bed like it is to an 8year old. This was my fortress. A stinky dirty one, but a fortress nonetheless. 

My diaries will have any odd happenings documented but I'm not about to scan for them, instead I'll write about any which spring to mind as my more recent exploration unearths them. 

One incident does come to mind straight away though. 

At this point my eldest brother was away at uni and only my other older brother lived at home with mum and I. I was in alone at my bedroom writing desk scribbling away at something or another ...maybe a cassette tape insert to a mix tape I was creating for my latest infatuation of the week or similar. My bedroom door was wide open when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Ah my brother was home again only ten minutes after he'd left. I saw his shadow pass by the slit of the door where the hinges hung the cheap hollow wood from. I was maybe three steps behind him into his bedroom because the landing to our semi was so small. I entered his room talking out loud as I crossed the threshold. "Did you forget your keys or summat?"

No one there. I went silent quickly and my stomach felt fear. Never has an empty room been so menacing. 

All I could do was walk calmly back to my room and practice telling my brother and mum about this in my head for when they came home. I could hear how it sounded and I knew there reaction. "It was just your imagination" they would say. Once again my words would hold no weight. 

I knew the power of witnessing something alone by this age and I had worked out that it meant nothing to anyone but that one person. It took two or more witnesses to have even a chance of being listened to. 

Everyone has at least one story of the 'odd' but tell it as well as they might....the listeners can ultimately overrule you with their disbelief. 

A second incident I had was when I say at that very same desk one daytime when I had the sudden feeling that someone had been stood behind me. But not just anyone, my auntie Winnie. My auntie Winnie was actually my fathers aunt, but in the 80's it was the done thing to give the wrong family names to people around you just to mess with your head as you tried to piece together who was who. There was also something else about Winnie, she was dead. 

Winnie was different from other relatives because she was what in these days I guess you'd call a midget. I'm sure there's a more confusing pc word for it now but I'm not up to date I'm afraid. 

Now I didn't turn to see Winnie but I could sense her, smell her and picture her stood there. 

Where did this notion come from? Why her? 

When I turned and saw no one there, why was I still convinced that I had still had an experience? 

I still can't say what happened. I have no evidence to give. This feeling was entirely a product of my body. Had she been there? I had no reason to think of her. I ignored the moment as soon as I had logged it in my diary. I didn't even mention it to anyone. 

I kept having these types of fleeting moments occur over the years of being at home alone. 

All these years later, I ask myself, were they all down to my imagination or were spirits coming close to me, somehow sensing that I was interested. 

I knew I had a fascination with the mysteries of the world but it wasn't until I found three books in a cupboard at home that I made my first physical moves. The first book was about the study of handwriting. It spoke very specifically about how each flick of the writers writing told so much about their characteristics. It had plenty of pictures of handwriting samples to compare. Large writing was bold, adventurous, out going people and small writing was shy, quiet people. 

It struck me after one scan of the book, that I had disregarded this book as nonsense. 

The next book was about Astrology. I read each breakdown of every star sign and longed to know them off by early. But I just couldn't commit to learning them if deep down I thought this was probably all invented by the human mind. 

The third book came with a deck of Tarot cards. This caught my attention. Here was something practical which I could learn and use. I'd say it took me a couple of weeks to write out in some sort of short hand, what each card meant in basic form. I drew card layout diagrams and then started to practice readings on myself. Two a night for nearly a month. My next step was to take the pack around to my fiends house and give a reading for my almost teen friends and their mothers. I can't truthfully tell you how accurate the readings were because I always got pleasantries from my subjects rather than shocked admiration. "Hmm intriguing" was an example.

This in turn led to a turning point at about 14 years old. I had my own cards read by a fortune teller who my mother was seeing with her friendship group on a semi regular basis. This was to propel me further into the magical. 

Red haired figure / copper experiment 1.

My workplace has become somewhere I can try experiments with team mates and just keep the ghosthunting going when we don't have call outs. We've come to know resident energies who flit in once in awhile. But last week (March 2015) a work college saw an apparition in his peripheral and then more clearly a second time. He followed the sighting down works stairs and into the kitchen to see if it was actually a real person where he was met with an icy cold. This is a guy who knows the natural temperature of all the areas and so I have no trouble believing his experience. 

A few days later I came with PPS and we set about trying to communicate. On this occasion we set up in reception and set up videos of the staircase and kitchen area. While we did get a spirit or two coming to the board, none of them seemed to be the one sighted. Communication seemed mostly around the number 4. What the hell does that mean. All those letters and no sense being expressed. I got frustrated fast. We threw questions at the board and I had to step in and get the spirit to spell a word of its own making. Firstly it said TEA. I asked for a second word. POT it said. While this was of its own volition, it still meant nothing to us. Why is it so damn hard sometimes. Grrrrr. 

We also tried an experiment suggested to me by tv's Yvette Fielding. We had a glass on the ouija board which had copper wire looped around its stem by four twisted threads which were held by us lot. If copper wire is conductive this should allow the glass to still take the energy to move from us and serve as a valuable piece of evidence. But nothing happened. It's very difficult not to become cynical. Added to this the failure of the blindfolded ouija experiments and the ideomotor effect starts to loom large. 

I won't give up just yet though. We must keep trying since reports are out there that it sometimes works. 

Fingers crossed. 

My first experience which keeps coming back to haunt me.

The house we lived in was a shop on the bottom floor. A bakery in the main part but with freezers in a back room too. I was left alone mostly due to my brothers being 6 and 7 years older and my parents had to run the shop. I was insecure as it was and the upstairs hallway was windowless apart from the doorways which projected some light into the corridor if a bedroom door was ajar and it was daytime. My bedroom was opposite the bathroom I remember. As I write this the memories which I normally bury come back. I feel a fear creeping up on me now. I can remember my short walk to the toilet being done with my hands over my ears and humming to myself so that I wouldn't hear anything if it was to make a noise. The corridor to my parents room seemed like an eternity and the middle section never had light because of my brothers' shared bedroom always having the door shut. There was one of those pictures on the wall which were popular in the early 80's where the boy had bluish skin. He would almost guard my parents bedroom and keep me away. 

I had reccuring nightmares all the time I lived there and there was one night I'll never forget. 

I remember having my eyes shut and having my mum kiss my head goodnight and then as she left, I took comfort from the slowly fading feeling of where she'd kissed my head. 

I slept. Next, the feeling of my covers being lifted and replaced so fast that it caused a wave of cold air to pass from neck to ankles like my duvet had been wafted. Instinctively I thought it was a parent In the middle of the night and I struggled to open my sticky eyes. 

It was dark obviously but I found myself staring at a a figure on the end of my bed. Before I pick my own story apart, I'll just tell it as it was through my 8 year old brain. 

The figure was a silhouette of black darker than the room. It was the shape of the main snowman from The Snowman movie with 'I'm walking in the air' in. It's arms were open horizontally and it had its legs spread as if on either end of my bed end. I pulled my bed covers totally up to my chin and turned to the wall towards my parents room which had my brothers in the next room first. I screamed a hoarse air starved scream and nothing but a wisp came out...I was that scared. I screamed again and nothing. 

Next I dove under he covers and held the top down firmly so they hopefully couldn't be lifted up again. 

I fell asleep eventually. 

The  next morning I told at least my mum and one brother at breakfast who said they hadn't heard me scream and it was probably just a dream. I had no way to convince other than saying that It REALLY happened. 

32 years on I now pick on the details of the memory such as the shape, a tv character with such fat limbs.  Would a ghost be shared like that or is it more likely that it's a dream? Gotta be a dream I'd say. Why would it stand legs apart and arms out? If my son saw a 'ghost' which was the shape of a film character, I'd KNOW for sure it was a dream. 

But, this is where the plot thickens. Maybe. My reccuring nightmare also featured a tv character, Evil Edna from Willo The Wisp who was like a witch in a TV set. I would have to race this TV set down the stairs and if I lost I was dead. I generally used to jump the last few steps and then play dead at the bottom until the dream stopped as Edna started at me making sure I was dead. I would lay still just like I had under the covers since The snowman experience. 

There was another thing I did as I fell asleep on a night. If I turned over to get comfy and my elbow banged the wall of my brothers room it would, make a hollow bang. In my mind two faceless humans would float down the corridor from my parents end of the hall and stare at me but again I would play dead until I felt they had floated back satisfied. 

So asleep or awake, I was haunted, even if it was in my head. To this day, even as I sleep tonight, my sleeping position involves having one hand hold the covers up to my chin tightly. That night has influenced my every night since. 

Years later after moving to another home in the same village and I was fifteen maybe, my mum and I were talking about the paranormal because of my obsession with it. She told me that there had ben a night at the shop,when my father and her had been awoken with a start by a loud crash in the attic above their room. She described it as the sound of a grave stone falling over. My dad climbed up to see what had fallen and there was no sign of anything. 

Further to this, when I was about 18, a rep at work happened to mention that he had lived in a place in Cullingworth which used to be a bakery. This was our old house, he had bought it off us. I was shocked, small world I thought. I commented that I used to have nightmares because I was 'just a kid'. This guy who was in his mid fifties now looked spooked and told me that he thought the house had been a scary place even as an adult. He said something didn't feel right. I was not expecting him to say anything I've that. Had I been imagining it? 

Lastly, when I was 19, a girl mate a coupe of houses up got her first job cleaning at a nursery in the village which was what our old house currently was used as. My friend said that she hated walking the long corridor to where the cleaning things were on the top floor. She said she felt like she was being watched. She described where this room was and it was my parents old bedroom. 

Make of that what you will but it's troubled em ever since. 

First ghost team. Mid 1980's.

My paranormal journey started when I was at my primary school. The previous night I had borrowed my cousins book called Usborne Guide To The Supernatural World. It was three books which were sold separately but all together as one. I remember the pages on 'how to search for a ghost' and the pictures which filled my mind with wonder. 

The next day, age 7 of 8 I guess, I created a ghost team with two other boys. We were in a ghost gang which had us sit together at playtime and throw all that we'd heard about the paranormal into a conversation and intrigue each other. I'd heard that the school toilets were haunted .......had i though.....I honestly can't remember .....maybe I totally made that up just to entertain myself and my team. We stood in the toilets together for about a minute and then when no ghost appeared, we used the facilities and left. 

I fooled myself a lot back then. As my ghost team ran home, down the hill from school one afternoon, we imagined that had the bikes from The Hair Bear Bunch under us. This was a cartoon, popular at the time in which the Bears would ride on unseen bikes as their legs spun in a blur beneath them. I remember commenting that I could actually feel the bike under my body as we leaped down the grass slope atop our imaginary bikes.....from a cartoon. 

Reality and illusions were closely packed for me on those days. 

Then something happened. I can't pin down what happened in what order for sure but over the years I've asked my mum questions here and there and have been worried to discover that some things I'd wished were an illusion, had reality attached. 

I've decided to log my paranormal journey after four and a half years of actually taking part in investigating. Now seems the time to put down my experiences and opinions.