I believe in ghosts

I've lived in a haunted house

I fully believe in spooky stuff – ghosts, messages from the other side and all that – right up to, but not including dragons.

Angels I have mixed feelings about, but I’ve had a lot of very strange experiences with the other stuff, including living in a fully haunted house when I was at uni in Scotland – at St Andrews, which is a very ghost-filled town.

The phenomena in our house there were experienced separately by a lot of people and there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that it was haunted.

I’ll tell you that story another time, right now I want to tell you what happened yesterday.

We live in a bog-standard British Victorian terrace house, built in 1860 from the plans that speculative builders could buy very cheaply. When we moved in seven years ago a well-meaning neighbour sent me a photograph of the first owners, standing in the doorway in their Victorian clothes.

That creeped me right out, let me tell you.

I immediately deleted it, but I haven’t been unable to wipe the memory of it from my brain. A couple and two little girls. (Not the photo above, but similar.)

I try not to think about it, but it springs back to mind every time something inexplicably goes missing, which seems to happen a lot in this house. I’ll have something in my hand, put it down to do something else and then when I go to pick it up again, it’s gone. Drives me bananas.

It always puts me in mind of a story a friend tells about a flat she had in Hampstead, which was haunted by a little girl, who used to do playful things like put her earrings in her shoes.

So then, of course, when things disappear I picture those two little girls in that photograph in their Victorian pinafores… It really gives me the willies.

Yesterday it happened with my vest.

I was getting ready to go up to London for the evening and although it’s mid-May, it’s weirdly damp and chilly here at the moment, so I felt the need for that extra layer.

I’d just put my shirt on over the top, when I spotted my most comfortable bra on the bedroom chair and decided to change into it for greater train ease.

This was duly done, but when I reached down to the bed to grab the vest which I’d taken off with the shirt, it wasn’t there.

I looked everywhere. Under the bed, on the chair, somehow weirdly back in the drawer, even in the dirty clothes basket. No vest.

What the actual?

In then end, it was making me feel so insane I asked my husband to come upstairs to look. He couldn’t find it either and clearly thought I was losing the plot.

I did register that it possibly wasn’t a very erotic scenario.

With time ticking towards the train departure I realised I would have to wear a different (and not quite right) vest, which I duly got out.

When I put it on, as I pulled it down, I found the original vest. Still round my waist. I hadn’t taken it off for the bra-changing, just moved it out of the way.

What a batshit idiot.

Which just goes to show that while I do still entirely believe in ghosts, it can be a little too easy to ascribe inconvenient events to the supernatural. When actually it’s just your dingbat brain.

I still believe the St Andrews house was the real thing, though, and one day soon I will tell you that tale… If you have any ghost stories to tell, please share.