When I was in college, I spent a year abroad in Brighton, England. A roommate suggested I come back the next summer to stay with him in London, for free. I jumped at the chance; at the time, Mattie was a nursing student. When I went back to London in Summer 2002, he'd switched careers to being a Vicar - of the oldest Church in London. St. Bartholomew the Great, built in 1123 (give or take).
When I arrived, I discovered I would be sleeping not in a guest room, but in the walk-in closet of his bedroom in the small cottage built into the side of the church. Not exactly thrilled by that revelation, but I figured it would only be for sleeping and I'd be working and traveling anyway. I got a job at a pub down the street (Butcher's Hook and Cleaver, shout-out to Barbican tube stop!) and spent my off days exploring the city. I hadn't really thought about ghosts and haunted places too much, but always liked Halloween. Also, I am the opposite of religious, so this made it especially unique to live in for a summer.
Mattie failed to mention how ridiculously haunted the church is. The side house is essentially built onto the church, and you can access the main floor (rectory?) from a side door of the house. A spiral staircase leads to each floor: church access, then outside door, then living room, bathroom, kitchen, and the bedroom (with closet) is on top. Very vertical. From the kitchen there is a door that opens to an upper side ledge of the church where you can look down on services, which is cool; especially when they would film movies and shows there (I saw the BBC filming something there.) They also stored a lot of coffins there, which wasn't cool. There was a baby coffin in there for a week before the funeral and I refused to step foot out on the ledge at that time.
Anyway, from the first night I realized how haunted it was. Turns out there's a graveyard and a lot of bodies buried there over the years. Every night (seriously every single night) I would hear laughing, talking, things being dragged back and forth in the church, yelling - it was extremely difficult to sleep through. I tried to tape the noises with my camcorder, but it was a shiatty camcorder so it didn't pick up very well.
One time, I was asleep and was woken by the feeling like I was being choked; I instinctively did the sign of the cross and fell the invisible hands disappear. Not sure why I did that, being all non-religious, must have been the church-iness wearing off on me. After that episode I slept in the pub for about a week, as I didn't really want to be choked again, but it only happened that one time (thankfully). Mattie gave me a rosary to keep in the room closet (and I still have it to this day!) and it seemed to keep them away from me after that.
Otherwise I'd try to sleep through all the night-noise, and in the morning I'd go down and help Mattie drag these giant-ass lead candlesticks back to their original place, as the ghosts would rearrange everything in the middle of the night and it was our job to put everything back in their place. And these giant candlesticks were extremely heavy; it takes 2 people to even move them.
They'd also take paintings off the walls and set them on chairs, on a weekly basis. I also had this ghost constantly throw our shoes down the stairs, and he even stole a pair of my favorite sandals *sigh*. He was some old priest ghost or monk ghost who was known to go barefoot and had a thing against shoes. So besides the laughing and the dragging stuff in the church you'd hear shoes flying down the stairwell. Mattie would perform exorcisms every once in a while to try and calm things down, but it never really worked. He was also a bit of a drama queen, so I'm not even sure how much of it was legit exorcism stuff anyway. I would ask him how he could sleep through the night with all the noises, and he just shrugged and said he was used to it. I was never so relieved to board a plane home for the USA to go back to school.
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