HORROR Of The HOUSE On HAUNTED HILL...

Art by STEVE DITKO, copyright MARVEL COMICS

Seeing as how Hallowe'en has only just passed, I thought it'd be okay to share this true tale with all you Mellows to capture the mood.  Are you alone?  Are you sure you're alone?  Perhaps you'd better check first before we proceed.  Ready?  Good, then I'll begin.

******

Not long after my family had moved into our new house back in 1972, a curious thing happened.  My brother came downstairs into the living-room one night and claimed he'd just seen an elderly lady in white on the stairway outside his room.  My parents pooh-poohed the notion, but, shortly after, my bed was moved from my front room on the grounds it was damp (the room, not the bed) into my brother's room, which we then shared for a few months (again, the room, not the bed).  I suspect it was more to do with my brother being scared to be alone than it was with the risk of me catching pneumonia, but I grant it could've been a combination of both.

Some indeterminate time afterwards (a year or two perhaps), my brother again came into the living-room with a concerned look on his face and called us upstairs, saying that someone was walking around in the attic.  We all trooped up to my brother's room and, sure enough, there was a sound of creaking boards - as though someone was walking from one end of the attic and back again.  My father got out the stepladder and tentatively poked the top of his head a few inches into the hatch opening, but he was in no mad rush (nor were we) to more thoroughly explore the vast confines of its black interiors, so we put the noise down to some not entirely convincing 'rational' explanation and retired downstairs again.  

Some years later, we moved house, and four years after that, we moved back again - with the exception of my brother, who'd acquired his own flat in the meantime.  Now, I don't believe in ghosts, but the couple with whom we exchanged houses in order to return to our former abode, told me that one night while lying in bed, a ghostly apparition had drifted through the wall from my brother's old room into theirs, then floated right over their bed and melted through the window on the other side.  They were a young couple and a bit flaky, so I put their 'experience' down to having partaken of a combination of too much alcohol and weed.

But here's where it gets strange (as you doubtless anticipated).  A few years after having moved back, I was lying in my bed one night in the small hours when I suddenly became aware of a wizened old woman in white shuffling towards my bedside.  She stopped and stooped, lowering her crinkled face towards mine as if scrutinizing it intently.  For a moment I was paralysed, but then, with a growl, I sat bolt upright in bed to confront the ancient figure, who immediately retreated (still facing me) into the far corner of the room before fading into nothingness.

I sat stunned for a moment, not quite sure what had happened.  Had I seen a ghost, the very one my brother had claimed to have seen so many years before?  Or had I only been dreaming and suddenly awoken - with the figure in my dream somehow still visible before me, like some swiftly-diminishing after-image?

Who can say for sure?  I still don't believe in ghosts, but that was certainly a moment which gave me pause for thought.  Any of you fellow Mellows got any similar experiences?  Feel free to share.