I arrived in Birmingham, England in Sept. ’89 to attend college there. For the first few months I stayed with a lady and her three kids in an older 3 floor house in one of the suburbs.
One afternoon, when classes were finished early, I got home before anybody else. I went to the kitchen to have a snack but felt increasingly restless. I was uncomfortable in the house after a short while and was feeling a little spooked. I thought I had just imagined noises in the hallway outside the kitchen door which led to the front door. The family dog too was looking towards the door to the hallway and whining continuously.
I eventually gave up and went out the back door to the garden, bringing my sandwich with me (the dog was happy to accompany me). The whole time I was outside I was compelled to look at the window of the small room facing the back. I did not see anything but kept looking towards it anyway. I finally plucked up the courage to go back inside and a couple minutes later the knocker rapped on the front door. Believing it to be the landlady’s two younger kids I made a beeline for the door. Heading towards the door I had to pass the stairs which came in perpendicular to the hallway. Right as I was about to get to the foot of the stairs I heard footsteps coming down the stairs and as I passed the stairs I saw a dark shadow descend. I got to the front door, let the kids in and naturally said nothing to them. With the kids in the house I then ventured upstairs thinking maybe that the other roommate was actually at home but no sign of him.
I never mentioned any of this to the family and not long out afterward found accommodation closer to the college. I still kept in touch with the family and one day while visiting with my former landlady I relayed my experience to her. She then told me that her ex-husband’s elderly parents had both lived in and passed away in that house. There was also an elderly terminally-ill lady they had been looking after in her final months who passed away there and she had stayed in the room facing the back of the house. My former landlady expressed regret that she had not had the house blessed in a while. She then went on to tell me some stories:
One night, while staying up reading in her bedroom on the second floor, she heard footsteps coming up the stairs, past her bedroom and proceed up to the second floor. She then heard her son’s bedroom door slam. Thinking at first it was her son, she went directly upstairs and saw her son, in bed, fast asleep. On top of that, it is physically impossible to slam that door, and I tried but could not!!
Another time, her son and a friend of his were sitting on the bed, with their backs against the wall, talking about ghosts. They could then feel something scraping the inside of the wall, like a claw.
To end on a positive and uplifting note, my landlady told me of a time when she worked as a nurse at a hospice. Whenever they knew a patient was at a very low point, they rotated people to keep vigil and keep holding the patient’s hand so they had some human contact at the very end. My landlady was assigned to this lady one night and was sitting in the chair next to the patient holding her hand. She had fallen asleep and had let go of the patient’s hand. She awoke suddenly and saw what appeared to be a cross in the air in front of it. Written on the cross were the words:
Do not forsake me in my hour of need.
She realized that she had let go of the patient’s hand so she held the patient’s hand once again. Shortly afterward the patient died.
Sent in by Paul Concannon, Copyright 2011