This is my first post here, and I am trying to make sense of something that happened in the summer of 1975. I was 14 at the time and I was on holiday with my parents. For three weeks they rented a holiday apartment (flat) somewhere in the ancient town of Rye, Sussex, England. It is a town with a very long history, and although the flat had been modernised (by 1970's standards) the building was, I think, very old.
This was really my parents experience, but it became my story too when they told me about it because it had such a profound effect on me. Shortly after we arrived, first my mother and then later my father too started to hear footsteps as if somebody was walking along the hallway at night. There was a long hallway there running along the length of the building. If they got up to investigate, there was never anybody there. This only ever happened at night and only in darkness. If they turned the light on it would stop, and nothing strange ever happened during the daytime. I was a heavy sleeper at the time and was unaware of what was happening. I have other theories too as to the possible reason why I remained unawares and was not disturbed by this.
The activity did seem to escalate the longer we stayed in the flat. Things used to occasionally disappear from where they had been left and then they would turn up in some unexpected place; often in a particular cupboard in the kitchen. My parents thought that much of the activity seemed to centre around that cupboard, at night before they went to bed they used to close the cupboard and put a large pile of newspapers up against the door to hold it closed and when they got up in the morning the papers used to be pushed away and the cupboard door would be open. They suspected that there had once been a staircase where that cupboard was, they even thought they could see where the stairs had originally been. My father was out walking one evening and he happened to come across a small crucifix lying in the street. He picked it up and took it back to the flat and without telling my mother or myself about it, he placed it above their bedroom doorframe in the hope of keeping this presence away. In the morning my mother found the crucifix lying on the kitchen floor. It was a large apartment with a long hallway, down a couple of steps and around a corner from my parents bedroom to the kitchen, so it is unlikely that one of us could have unknowingly kicked it all that way. There was a vacuum cleaner supplied in the flat and my father was constantly vacuuming up glass from the area behind the living room door. However much glass he vacuumed up, more kept appearing. Whatever was there also seemed to interfere with the electrical appliances. It used to stop the clock on the electric cooker in the small hours of the morning, and the tv never worked when there was something on that we wanted to watch. The night before we left it worked perfectly.
But the scariest sounding thing to happen was when my mother was lying down in bed and she felt a hand stroking her face. She knew that it wasn't my father; he was lying down on the other side of her. My father on the other hand, first spoke to this presence, asking it to leave him alone. It didn't and he lost patience and cursed at it. Next thing he felt a sensation like an electric shock going up his arm. He always claimed that it had given him an electric shock. The last night that we spent in the flat my parents had their luggage cases packed and ready to go in the morning. They had tissue paper in their cases and they heard rustling inside their cases as if somebody was going through their luggage.
Just as we were about to leave to come home my parents told me what had been happening. They had both been sceptical up until that time, especially my father. He was a man who did not change his mind easily about things. But something happened during the course of our stay to completely change his belief system. I know that they were both scared there and relieved when our three week stay came to an end. When my parents told me, I was terrified. They had known better than to tell me while we were still staying in the flat as I would not have been able to cope. I still feel uneasy thinking about this, but I am also intrigued and would love to better understand what happened. Was it a ghost? Was it poltergeist activity as my previously very sceptical father thought? I have done an exhaustive search online but nothing has come up regrding this particular place being haunted. I have made some enquiries via the internet andhave heard from somebody who lived there for quite a few years. She said she only had one experience of hearing footsteps in the loft when nobody from her household was up there. This apparently only happened once and she didn't experience anything else there.
Thanks for reading and apologies that this is quite a long post.
This was really my parents experience, but it became my story too when they told me about it because it had such a profound effect on me. Shortly after we arrived, first my mother and then later my father too started to hear footsteps as if somebody was walking along the hallway at night. There was a long hallway there running along the length of the building. If they got up to investigate, there was never anybody there. This only ever happened at night and only in darkness. If they turned the light on it would stop, and nothing strange ever happened during the daytime. I was a heavy sleeper at the time and was unaware of what was happening. I have other theories too as to the possible reason why I remained unawares and was not disturbed by this.
The activity did seem to escalate the longer we stayed in the flat. Things used to occasionally disappear from where they had been left and then they would turn up in some unexpected place; often in a particular cupboard in the kitchen. My parents thought that much of the activity seemed to centre around that cupboard, at night before they went to bed they used to close the cupboard and put a large pile of newspapers up against the door to hold it closed and when they got up in the morning the papers used to be pushed away and the cupboard door would be open. They suspected that there had once been a staircase where that cupboard was, they even thought they could see where the stairs had originally been. My father was out walking one evening and he happened to come across a small crucifix lying in the street. He picked it up and took it back to the flat and without telling my mother or myself about it, he placed it above their bedroom doorframe in the hope of keeping this presence away. In the morning my mother found the crucifix lying on the kitchen floor. It was a large apartment with a long hallway, down a couple of steps and around a corner from my parents bedroom to the kitchen, so it is unlikely that one of us could have unknowingly kicked it all that way. There was a vacuum cleaner supplied in the flat and my father was constantly vacuuming up glass from the area behind the living room door. However much glass he vacuumed up, more kept appearing. Whatever was there also seemed to interfere with the electrical appliances. It used to stop the clock on the electric cooker in the small hours of the morning, and the tv never worked when there was something on that we wanted to watch. The night before we left it worked perfectly.
But the scariest sounding thing to happen was when my mother was lying down in bed and she felt a hand stroking her face. She knew that it wasn't my father; he was lying down on the other side of her. My father on the other hand, first spoke to this presence, asking it to leave him alone. It didn't and he lost patience and cursed at it. Next thing he felt a sensation like an electric shock going up his arm. He always claimed that it had given him an electric shock. The last night that we spent in the flat my parents had their luggage cases packed and ready to go in the morning. They had tissue paper in their cases and they heard rustling inside their cases as if somebody was going through their luggage.
Just as we were about to leave to come home my parents told me what had been happening. They had both been sceptical up until that time, especially my father. He was a man who did not change his mind easily about things. But something happened during the course of our stay to completely change his belief system. I know that they were both scared there and relieved when our three week stay came to an end. When my parents told me, I was terrified. They had known better than to tell me while we were still staying in the flat as I would not have been able to cope. I still feel uneasy thinking about this, but I am also intrigued and would love to better understand what happened. Was it a ghost? Was it poltergeist activity as my previously very sceptical father thought? I have done an exhaustive search online but nothing has come up regrding this particular place being haunted. I have made some enquiries via the internet andhave heard from somebody who lived there for quite a few years. She said she only had one experience of hearing footsteps in the loft when nobody from her household was up there. This apparently only happened once and she didn't experience anything else there.
Thanks for reading and apologies that this is quite a long post.
