The following encounter with a poltergeist was my first paranormal experience. I knew nothing of this until my brother Andy told me the story about three years ago. The incident in question happened back in 1963, when I was a baby. The reason we had never had the conversation before was that until lockdown, we had lost contact since the sixties and it was only by chance that we managed to find each other again.
At the time of the incident, our family had been living in a house in Blackburn, Lancashire, long enough for my mum to get to know the woman next door. At the time, Andrew was 12 years old. Our family also consisted of our brother Ian, who was six at the time, and Roy, our new stepdad.
My mum, Winnie, was a Christian and a very reserved, shy person. Roy, who had recently been released from prison, was her polar opposite. He was an atheist with a hatred for religion and a no nonsense attitude about life. He had been an infamous jail breaker just a few years before. Andy, being the eldest brother, was old for his years, a big lad and thought himself something of the man of the family, until Roy had moved in.
The neighbour decided that it might be fun to come around to the house one evening and bring a Ouija board. So, the two friends, along with other local women from the neighbourhood began having fun with the game. A few days later, the fun was to stop abruptly.
During what was to be the last time they used the board, an innocent question had been asked by my mother.
When will I be happy?
The answer that followed brought a chill to everyone in the room, including the only male present, my brother Andy. He states that:
The glass began moving very fast and spelled out the following sentence over and over again and that by this point, none of the women were touching the glass.
Andy took no part in the session and stood watching just behind the board and so, could see everything clearly.
When you are dead
The glass was moving at great speed when someone snatched it from the table and threw it at the wall opposite.
They were all shaken and put the game away.
During the days that followed, things would get a lot worse, culminating in my brush with death.
A dark mist appeared
A mist appeared at the top of the stairs in one corner and would not clear. Andy says that you could put your hand through this dark mist and touch the wall, but, that no matter what was tried, it could not be cleared.
Nothing untoward was encountered downstairs, where the Ouija session had happened, all the activity was concentrated on the landing area and the room beyond.
The layout was open plan and so as you came to the top of the stairs the banisters carried on across an open view of the room beyond, with the mist covered corner on the left-hand side.
Mum would sit in a rocking chair just inside to the left of a large, old wooden fireplace. On the mantelpiece stood a very large and heavy oval wooden mirror, which was difficult to lift and move. My cot was to the right of the fireplace.
Pulled from behind
One evening Andy and Ian were sitting downstairs with Roy, when they heard mum shout to Roy to stop messing around and then she came running downstairs shocked, because she had been alone in the rocking chair and had been violently pulled backwards. She told the rest of the family that she had spun around, fully expecting to see Roy with a smile on his face, but instead she was alone with the baby asleep in the cot.
This was not an isolated incident and as the days went by, the family felt more and more uneasy until one evening, while sitting downstairs and with the baby (me) happily asleep upstairs, they heard a very loud bang. Andy states that it was the sound that wood on wood makes. Roy, Mum and Andy ran quickly upstairs and stopped in shock at the sight that greeted them.
The large heavy oval wooden mirror was in my cot and on my pillow a mere inch or two from my head. The cot was one of the old solid wooden ones. This then had been the loud bang they had heard from downstairs.
What made the experience all the more frightening was that at the time of the incident, a family birthday had been celebrated and the mirror had been surrounded by cards, effectively hemming it in completely. None of the cards had been disturbed.
Lifting the mirror took effort on Roy’s part and he had to move the cards in order to put the mirror back, which only lasted a few minutes before it was decided to take the thing downstairs.
Within a matter of days, Andy tells me that he remembers possessions being thrown into suitcases and the family moving quickly to Rishton, a town which is just four miles east of Blackburn.
Andy has forgotten so many thing over the years, he is now in his 70s, however this is something that has stayed with him and still gives him a chill to this day.
