This is a story of strange happenings which my husband and I experienced in our previous home.
We moved into South Lodge in September 1983. It was an old cottage dating back to around 1650, with additions and extensions made at later dates. It was the gatehouse for a 13th-century fortified house, the second oldest continuously inhabited house in Scotland.
We loved the lodge, situated on a quiet backroad with no neighbours nearby and surrounded on three sides by mature woodland. It was a 'gingerbread cottage', with lattice windows, shutters and a rose garden - a perfect artists' retreat. We set up a design studio and ran our business from the house.
Our only heating at that time was open fires, so when winter came it was very cold. Round about the end of December that year I had the first strange encounter. Opening the front door to let the cat in one cold damp morning I was surprised when two reddish-brown 'blurrs' rushed in instead, moving to the end of the wall and disappearing. These 'blurrs' were small, about the size of dogs like spaniels, and gave the impression of being excited. The best way I can describe them is similar to the unfocussed image of something photographed while moving at speed, except that they were not moving so fast.
The 'dogs' became a regular occurrence in the house, running indoors and downstairs and getting under our feet in the kitchen. On a couple of occasions my husband walked into one, feeling it brush his leg and move away. Generally we saw these in cold damp weather and I formed a theory that they were images 'recorded' in the old stone walls and activated by certain damp weather conditions. I discovered subsequently from an elderly neighbour that previous tenants of the cottage had in fact had three King Charles spaniels.
At about the same time I was learning to dowse and discovered that there was an underground stream about 90 ft below the hallway and another dowsable anomaly going through the living room, the latter being a line about 4-5 ft wide which ran N-S. About 3 mls due S on this line is Kilwinning Abbey, which we could see from the living room window.
Next we began to notice breaks in the light through a partly glazed door between the living room and the kitchen, as if someone was walking by it. Sometimes we would catch a glimpse of a grey shadow, like a hooded figure passing the door as if a person was coming downstairs and walking through the kitchen. This also became a common occurrence. Once I saw a misty form in the living room, acknowledging its presence by my turning to talk to it, thinking someone had entered the room. We accepted these phenomena as normal and did not feel frightened by their presence, having convinced ourselves of the 'images taped in stone walls' theory.
Some time later another phase began. One night I awoke to hear soft voices like two people talking in another room. Convinced that I had left a radio on downstairs (I always listened to Radio 4), I went down to switch it off. No radios were on. I could only hear the sound in the stairwell and bedroom. My husband had also heard the voices that night and from then on they occurred intermittently and at no particular time or set of conditions (though we were most likely to hear them at night when it was quiet). Oddly, it was the voices which began to scare us, and if we had to get up in the night we always ran back upstairs as fast as we could.
In time we began to notice other things. One day as I was washing the wheels of our car, a pair of feet walked up noiselessly on the gravel; I saw brown boots, gaiters and plus-fours, but when I looked up there was nothing there. Sometimes at night in our studio, orange balls of light would zoom about. This phenomenon was also seen by friends who were sleeping in this room. Another friend who looked after the house for a couple of weeks recounted that he had had a couple of strange experiences.
In the kitchen there is an understairs cupboard which has a very large old cast iron sliding bolt. We never closed this bolt as it was difficult to move and the door stayed shut on its own. However, every time our friend went to open this cupboard the door was bolted, though he always left it open. On another occasion he felt obliged to stand back while entering the bathroom, as if making way for someone to pass him in the doorway.
By this time I was convinced that the phenomena were connected in some way with geopathic anomalies such as the underground watercourse and the line through the cottage. Perhaps these 'earth energies' attracted or concentrated ghosts or poltergeist activity into this particular spot? We tried to deflect the 'line', with some success, but things kept happening.
We put up with this for years, accepting it as a normal part of life in this strange cottage. Though we improved the heating it always remained cold and damp, particularly in the kitchen and hall area, which was chilly and almost impossible to heat, summer or winter. During this time my husband developed post-viral syndrome and was quite disabled by the symptoms. We had to give up our design studio and I got a job which involved being away each day from 7.30 am - 6.15 pm. Robert became rather depressed being on his own for such long periods and became more uncomfortable with the strange phenomena. We began to wonder if it was these that were draining his energy in some way; he felt particularly bad if he was in the kitchen for a length of time.
We decided at this point (1996) to move house, though for reasons other than the ghost activity. After we decided this, things got worse in the cottage. We began to notice things going missing, then turning up in strange places at a later date - for example, a missing pair of tweezers turned up in a wall vase. And my husband put his cheque book in a drawer, actually mentioning it to me at the time. A few days later we had to move a small table - covered in a cloth, so nothing was visible under it - and the cheque book was underneath. One morning while having a shower, the bath plug dropped from above my head into the bath, though I knew it was on the edge of the bath before. Things continued to go missing and the balls of light re-occurred.
One afternoon Robert was cooking, a daily chore which he disliked as being in the kitchen, especially in a particular spot, drained him of the little energy he had and made him feel ill. Suddenly he was 'pushed' from behind, so hard that he was put off balance. Turning round to complain to whoever was behind him, he was surprised to find no-one was there. This experience began to happen regularly.
We had by now found a new house, but were not moving for three months. We felt, however, that we could not put up with this activity any longer and finally made the decision to find someone to rid the house of its ghostly occupants. Undecided who to ask, I contacted a woman who was a minister in the local spiritualist church, and she agreed to come. Cleaning houses was something she was often asked to do and we were to leave it to her; she was wonderful, matter-of-fact and down to earth. After listening to our story she went round the house, then sat for a while on her own and 'tuned in'. Having written copious notes during this time, she told us lots about the history of the house and its previous occupants, some of which we could confirm while other past history we could not.
She told us about a woman called Margaret who had lived in the Lodge in the late 18th century with four children and her husband, a blacksmith. She thought the house was then a smithy. This woman died while getting ready for church, having just come downstairs into the kitchen - perhaps our grey hooded figure? More names were mentioned, some we could confirm. She also told us of a 'plague pit' nearby, subsequently confirmed by the owner of the estate. On the whole, her history of South Lodge was interesting and remarkably accurate.
Most interestingly, she identified who was pushing Robert about. She spoke of a woman, Isabella, who with her husband had lived there and were 'still around'. It was the husband who was pushing Robert. I knew that the previous tenants had been very attached to the house; the woman's name was Isa, short for Isabella, I presume. She had died while still living there, not long before we moved in; her husband had died suddenly in the house some years before. Our Spiritualist minister then 'cleared' the house. I didn't see her do it, but she went into each room and whatever she did, it involved holy water and salt. She promised to come back in a few days to check that it was truly cleared.
Within a day or so we noticed a difference in the temperature in the kitchen. It was less fridge-like; though still cold, it was not so bad. Thereafter we didn't see or hear any strange phenomena at South Lodge. We moved out about three months later; it has been, as I write this in December 1997, a year since we had the place cleared and I feel I have had to document the story while it is reasonably clear in my mind. It will be difficult, though, to forget the very strange experiences we had in that house.
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