Footsteps

From: Fiona Shearer (fshearer@fs3.ballarat.edu.au)
Story type: Ghost
Location: Ballarat, Australia
Source: Form Submission

Okay, well for starters, I have been lurking around here for awhile, and I finally decided to submit my story. It's not particularly spooky, or anything. But it did happen, and I can't rationally explain what happened.

Back in 1986, my friend and I (who were 13 at the time) used to sleep downstairs in the rumpus room of my parents house. As the house was built on a hill, the house was built into the hill, so this room is sort of half underground, and the windows in it are pretty high up, and small - so it's a fairly dim room, and before it was re-painted, the decor was sort of dark and oppressive.

Well, one night we were down there (I think it was in August, which is winter in this part of the world), I was woken up to the sound of footsteps on the gravel path outside. For some reason, this chilled me to the bone, and I couldn't move or speak, not even to wake up my friend who was lying beside me. The footsteps went up and down the path, over and over again. I could hear them coming closer and then getting further away, before returning. This went on for about 15 minutes, maybe longer. The whole time I was too scared to move. Finally, after it stopped, I woke my friend up.

The strange thing was, I know it was not caused by a living person. How do I know this? Well, I can't explain that. But I felt an unusual fear, that I don't think the presence of an intruder could create. I guess if someone broke in, I would be afraid, but not too afraid to wake up my friend, or run upstairs to mum and dad.

Well, anyhow, the next day I told my parents about this, and mum said I probably just heard leaves rustling, but this really isn't much of an explanation.

Nothing much happened after this for quite awhile, until one day in 1989. I was the first person home after school, and I'd gone downstairs to put some washing on. The laundry door to the outside was open, and this lead out onto the path where I'd heard the footsteps before. Everything was normal until I went downstairs to put fabric softener in the wash, I heard something walking outside. This time the footsteps didn't travel up and down the path, but it sounded like there was someone out there. Again, I had the same feeling of fear that I'd experienced the time before, but this time it was still daylight - so my fear seemed more unreasonable. Well, I stopped still for a moment, my heart beating faster, before I ran out of the laundry and back upstairs.

Up in my room, I was feeling kind of foolish, so I decided to go back down. But before I did, I called my dog - Emmy - to come with me. She happily wagged her tail and I gave her a pat, and walked halfway down the stairs to the landing, with Emmy following behind me. However, at this point she stopped wagging her tail and wouldn't walk down any further, I grabbed her collar and tried to coax her along, but she wouldn't have any of it, and whined before pulling away from me and running back upstairs, from where she looked at me rather sheepishly. Feeling even more spooked, I tried the cat - Pinkle. I picked her up, she purred happily, and I set off down the stairs. She was quite content, until I reached the landing again, as before, when she meowed and hissed, before clawing her way out of my arms and running as fast as she could, back upstairs.

At this point, I decided to give up. I went back into my bedroom and shut the door. And, that's the last time I ever noticed anything happening.

I know it doesn't sound all that scary, and I realise that most people who read this could rationalize it all away, and I probably could too, but I can't rationalise the strange paralysing fear I felt each time, or the behaviour of the two animals, both usually quite docile.

Now, I have another story (bit shorter this time), about something that occurred to me while I was visiting a friend in Melbourne (This happened about a year ago). This friend lived in a house that could only be reached by driving down a narrow alley (more like a large drain), and the place she lived was a two storey house, that was joined onto another shop at the bottom (but was rented separately). It was a kind of spooky place, and one day, when a few friends were around, we decided to try a seance. My friend (the one who rented the place) didn't join in, as she believed it was dangerous and evil. We didn't have a ouija board, so we just cut out pieces of paper with letters, and stuck them on a table, we used a glass as a planchette (sp?). At first I didn't join in, mainly because I was a bit skeptical, and it is said, that if a skeptic is present, it won't work. So I just sat down, while some of the others tried.

It was pretty late at night (about 2.00 am) so I was tired, and was sort of drifting off to sleep, when someone said "It's working" so I opened my eyes, and sure enough, it certainly appeared to be. None of the messages made sense so they were just asking Yes and No questions. After awhile there were only about two people still doing it, others had left and were just watching. Finally, I asked if I could join in, and at this point there was only me and this other guy with our fingers on the glass. Now, it happens that I am a scientist, so I feel the need to prove things. Even though it really did appear to be working I wanted first hand evidence. So I really observed the actions of the glass, instead of just accepting that some other "force" was moving it. Both of us only had one finger lightly resting on the top of the glass, and every time the glass moved forward, you could see that our fingers were being dragged - NEITHER ONE OF US WAS PUSHING THE GLASS. Nothing completely monumental happened, we just asked questions about God ie. Does God exist? The answer was "Yes", and a few other things like reincarnation. We contacted about three different spirits and they all seemed kind of distressed, as though bad things had happened to them. Finally, we stopped, and none of us ever really talked about it again.

This little episode was just used to illustrate the fact that things we can't explain, except by the use of the terms "ghosts" or "spirits" really can occur.