AN UNWELCOME GUEST

Of the one in seven people in the UK who claim to have seen a ghost, the majority are women. This may be because women have far more association with the spirit world. Women trust their emotions and are generally better able than men to cope with the unexpected. Housewife Fiona Blair describes herself as very practical and down-to-earth, and never believed in the idea that a house could be haunted. That all changed when she and her family moved into a manor house in the Midlands. Although the surveyor reckoned that the house required a lot of attention and was somewhat damp, they thought it was stunning. They could just afford it and it would be a good investment, so they took the plunge and decided to buy it. Nonetheless, right from the start, Fiona had a strange sense that they were not alone in the house. One of her teenage daughters had left a towel over the back of a chair in the kitchen. Fiona was in the garden, and when she returned to the house, the towel was over the kitchen table like a tablecloth. On other occasions the family would find that objects such as glasses and vases had been turned upside-down. This was only the start of the peculiar happenings. A particularly strange incident happened on Fiona's birthday. Fiona's husband, Mark, came home from work and went into the living room. He immediately came rushing out to ask who had bought her the beautiful flowers - but nobody had given Fiona flowers and her daughters had not put the flowers there. It remained a mystery how they had miraculously appeared. Fiona was curious and decided to find out about the history of the house. What she discovered was rather alarming. Apparently a young girl, servant to a previous generation of owners, had been found dead in peculiar circumstances in the attic. Fiona and her family inevitably began to feel claustrophobic and trapped in the house, and eventually decided that they would have to move. Unfortunately, things were not as simple as that. Each time they attempted to show the house to potential buyers, Fiona would of course ensure beforehand that everything was neat and tidy in order to make a good impression. But by the time anyone arrived, the entire house would be in a complete mess, and visitors complained of an unpleasant atmosphere. Eventually, after many months, an American couple viewed the house, and decided it had a certain attraction. For some reason, the ghost did not play its usual tricks, and Fiona was able to sell what had been her dream home. Now living in a spacious modern apartment in London, Fiona wants to forget it all and move on with her life. At one point I thought I might be going out of my mind, it was all so frightening. We can almost laugh about it all now, but I hope we never experience anything like that again.