AFTER an absence of eight or nine years our ghost is back. He's returned to our home of almost a quarter of a century at the poor end of Merewether, and he's welcome.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
I use the pronoun he because we don't know whether the presence is male or female, and I don't want to use the objectifying pronoun it.
We do know that he or she is a child, about 10 years old, that there is nothing threatening or unfriendly about his or her presence, and I know all this because my wife told me.
It is she who has told me of the child ghost's return. She became aware of that a week ago when, while helping our 15-month-old grandson with his lunch in the back of the house, she heard the footsteps of someone moving through the front of the house towards her.
The footsteps were accompanied by the jingling of the various dust collectors and the contents of the china cabinet that accompany everyone walking on the floorboards of the front of the house, and she assumed it was me.
She didn't look up but our grandson did, and immediately he starting waving and calling out his delighted welcome. Then when my wife looked, no one to be seen. She went to the front door, no one there, then into the rooms in the front half of the house, no one there. I arrived home half an hour later.
It was about three in the morning and I heard footsteps approaching our bedroom ... I heard the child enter the room, turn right and go to my wife's side of the bed, then I heard my wife ask “Yes, what's wrong?”. Later she told me she felt a hand on her arm. But there was no child. She checked the children, all were asleep, and for her there had been so many manifestations that there was no mystery.
The ghost was an active member of our household for the first 15 or so years, and there were a great many happenings that would be described as mysterious by people who were not aware of the resident ghost. One in particular I remember well.
It was about three in the morning, 17 years ago, and I heard footsteps approaching our bedroom and assumed we were about to be visited by one of our two youngest children, then aged five and 11, to tell us they felt sick or needed a drink or some such, and I heard my wife wake as she detected the sounds of an approaching child.
I heard the child enter the room, turn right and go to my wife's side of the bed, then I heard my wife ask “Yes, what's wrong?”. Later she told me she felt a hand on her arm. But there was no child.
She checked the children, all were asleep, and for her there had been so many manifestations that there was no mystery. My attempt to explain it away as our young child tiptoeing back to bed and feigning sleep before she could get there was not successful.
A particularly interesting indication of the presence involved our dog at the time, a small poodle that would invite our children to play by holding a ball in its mouth while it jumped on them.
Occasionally we would see her jumping at nothing in a room, turning and jumping again just as she would do to the children. She appeared to sense the presence of a child.
Was this presence the result of a tragedy? That's the usual explanation for a ghost, and I should point out that I have never believed a word of a ghost story.
Our elderly neighbours 20 years ago told us that in their 60 years living next door our house had not been the scene of tragedy or trauma. And there was, and is, nothing sinister or threatening about our guest.
When I first wrote about the unseen child 15 years ago I was told by readers who know more about ghosts than I do that our ghost may have nothing at all to do with the house and its history, and one reader who described himself as the world's most sceptical ghost hunter told me it may well be that the child ghost is attracted to our home by the presence of our five children.
Each of our children had their own experiences with the visitor, by the way, and some found that traumatic.
The sceptical ghost hunter's theory makes sense. A member of a previous family living in our house has said there were no ghostly goings-on in their time, and when our youngest child reached his mid-teens the child ghost moved out. Now that we have grandchildren the child ghost is back.
There is something quite sad about the story of a child ghost reaching out to children and, even more sadly, destined forever to be spurned.
