My Family's Haunted House

'Springfield' was one of a row of 3 cottages built by my great-great grandfather on Locks Road which was then a quiet country lane in a small village on the south coast of Hampshire. The initial white-painted detached house known as 'Dorcas Cottage' being my great-great-grandfather's family home with the two others pairs of Edwardian semis, built later for his sons, one of whom was my great-grandfather.

'Dorcas Cottage' was born from tragedy, being named after my Great-Grandfather's sister who was murdered by her boyfriend on a railway bridge in a nearby lane, soon after there were 2 more tragedies. In the early 1900's my grandmother's 4-year-old brother, Joe, fell into a copper boiler and died from scalding, followed a few years later by her mother dying a slow a painful death at the hands of 'the consumption'.

Some 50 years later my father, not being one for superstition or paranormal, was shocked to see what he strongly believed to be a semi-transparent apparition of a lady in white 'Edwardian' type dress drifting around the site of the tragedy. My grandmother also used to tell me that she did not like being in that vicinity when walking from back to her house after visiting her brother and sisters late in the evening.

I personally had a very similar experience some years later with the sense of being watched and some very strange noises / bangs / rattles from inside an adjacent outbuilding. That haunted spot has since been developed and now accommodates a rather cramped new-build house.

The house had a host of strange goings-on with several occurrences in the early 2000's before the last my family members moved out. My grandmother had sadly passed away but I felt her presence had not entirely left the house which, by this time, was now being lived in solely by my uncle and his wife.

On one particular occasion a visitor to the house was reversing and swore somebody had just walked behind the car into her reversing lights. When asked to describe who she'd seen she described my grandmother in such detail that she even described her hair, posture and the style and colour of her clothes. The witness had never met my grandmother who had passed away a year or so previously.

On another occasion my wife and I were visiting my uncle and his wife and were seated in his lounge, my uncle was standing in the doorway discussing something controversial, which my grandmother would not have appreciated, when tremendous banging and shaking started from the staircase behind him - this could not be explained but my uncle bizarrely ignored the unexplained noises. We later found out that his wife often used to hear my grandmother's voice calling her name in a scolding fashion and was frankly petrified. A few months later they sold up and moved out, we helped them move and as they left the house for the final time she closed her eyes, did not look back and said 'just get me out of here'...

We were recently discussing the strange experiences in the old house during a Christmas family party at which, after years of denial, my uncle admitted that strange things had happened to him whilst he lived there! We all hated going upstairs after dark as there would be a strange atmosphere... Almost evil. My sister spoke of a time when she had nightmare in which she went to our great-aunts room in the house only to be confronted by a boy in Edwardian clothes climbing through the window... She dismissed this as just a bad dream until she visited our confused old great-aunt who seemed very upset with her. When asked what was the matter she snapped at my sister "why did you come into my room with that boy the other night!" my sister replied that she had not only to be told "yes you did, you came through the window with that boy!". That was over 25 years ago and the experience still troubles my sister.