OPUCK PARANORMAL UK

Phantasm Of The Living...

All Ghosts are Apparitions but not all Apparitions are Ghosts...

Some years ago I rented a plot of land for gardening purposes. The land was around 180 meters in length and 40 meters width. It ran at the side of a railway track with railings and a high wall with houses on the opposite side. The only entrance to the plot was from the lower end.
I had sub-let a portion of the garden to my son-in-law, Sam. The plot was our hobby and every moment we had spare would find us attending our growing produce.

One very fine August morning, about eleven o'clock, my 20 year old son Alfie and I were busily working the allotment together when suddenly there was a shout. We both looked up to see at the lower entrance end Jack, a close friend of Sam calling to us.
He asked if Sam was with us.
Our potatoes and beans were so high and profuse that a man could easily be hidden from the sight of anyone at the entrance.

Sam had not turned up that morning but in reponse to our invitation Jack jumped the railings and came up about a 120 meters to where we both were. We told Jack that we were expecting Sam to join us at any minute. There, the three of us stood talking forming a rough triangle near the garden edge. I remember I was facing the bottom end while Alfie and Jack had their backs to it. We were busy talking for about 7 or 8 minutes when suddenly I saw Sam come to and leapover the railings, precisely as Jack had done, then make his way up the garden path to where we all were.

At once I called out to my friends, 'Look there he is, at last!' Both immediately looked around and saw him jump just as I did. Then, they turned to me again and we continued with our interesting conversation. All the while I could see Sam getting closer and closer and I particularly noticed a swaying of his body as he made his way up the path. 
Then, about 10 meters from where we were he stopped and bent down as though to go in between the rows of potatoes. Momentarily I looked away as Sam was doing nothing unusual but when I looked again he was gone. My friends took it that he was playing a trick on us by hiding in the foliage. This was typical of Sam's sense of humour.
We searched and searched the whole plot, every nook and cranny but he was nowhere to be found. Completely mystified we decided to call on Sam's house.
His wife told us that Sam had in fact gone to his mother's house around 2 and a half miles away in the next village. At the very moment we saw Sam it was confirmed that he was indeed nowhere near our plot of land.  What is the possible explanation? None of us can even guess. Often we have all met together since then and the wonder of it never grows less as the years go by.

The Old Vicarage

One evening in July 1920 I was crossing the bridge outside my home, an old built vicarage.
I just so happened to look over to my dining-room window opposite to the bridge and to my surprise I saw an old gentleman sitting at my table in the room, as if he were writing. He looked up and catching sight of me, seemed to glide away towards the door until I could see him no more.

My housekeeper was out at the time. I hurried to the front door and took out my key.
The key in door, I had an uneasy feeling that my first impression of it being an intruder was wrong. Maybe this sighting was of a supernatural being?
Once inside, locking the door behind me, I searched the vicarage and found no-one. My suspicions of it being a ghost were confirmed. This was the first time I had ever seen anything unusual in my home since being appointed here as Vicar four months previous.

A fortnight or so after this I was making a first call as the new Vicar on a lady in the parish and while waiting for her to appear in the drawing-room I saw a photo on her wall of my ghost!
On inquiring whose photo it was, I was informed that it was that of the old Vicar who had lived at the Vicarage for forty-four years.
He had at this time been dead for twenty-six years.

Spooked By Mother!

My good friend Harriet and I had been invited to spend the weekend at a relative's farm in Lincolnshire. We arrived Saturday morning and spent the day walking the beautiful roaming countryside. After supper we were shown to our room which was the spare bedroom of the house. This was a long narrow room with one window looking into the garden. As you entered the room the bed was on the left hand-side, the window on the right and the foot of the bed towards the window, about 1.5 metres away from the door. The bed was an old fashioned four-poster with heavy curtains of which were not drawn. There was a space between the bed and the opposite wall of about one metre.

It was a clear still night in July between ten and eleven o'clock. Harriet and I had got into bed. We were both lying on our left side facing the wall. I was almost asleep when in an instant, without us saying a word, we both turned over on our right side. Harriet immediately asked if I had seen anything. Knowing she was nervous and rather inclined to be hysterical I replied, 'Seen anything? What nonsense! What is there to see?' This was as much to allay my fears as it was to reassure Harriet.
I knew well what I had seen... Standing back in the wall I had seen a little old woman with a white muslin handkerchief neatly lay on her shoulder, a white bordered cap fitting close to her sweet calm face, her arms folded and an apron as the same material as the handkerchief.
I kept persuading myself that my imagination had played me a trick. I knew well how nervous Harriet was and if I let her know of my fears I would have to offer an explanation to my relatives which I was reluctant to do.

Waking the next morning, after a disturbed night, I asked Harriet... 'Did you see anything last night?' 'Yes. Did you?' she replied. 'I did.' 'What did you see?' she asked. 'What did you see?' was my reply. I would not give my impression until I had hers.
Strange to relate, Harriet had seen exactly the same vision, spectre, ghost or whatever you would like to name it. On relating our story the next morning to my family it proved to be an exact likeness of a farmer's mother who had previously lived at the farm.
The lady had died in that bedroom.

The Canal Bank Apparition

It was a lovely evening... myself and my wife had decided to walk home along the bank of the canal with our children ages 12 and 10 and their cousin aged 6. We had just been to see relatives and an arrangement had been made that an Aunt would meet us along the canal side provided she had company. The children were thoroughly enjoying themselves and looking forward to meeting their Auntie.
As we were getting nearer home we had to pass under a rather gloomy archway. I had walked this bridge a hundred times or more as a boy and was aware that this place had a reputation for being haunted. I had certainly never seen anything and was in fact quite sceptical about the haunting rumour.

It was about 8.30 p.m as we were passing through the archway. The moon was fully up and illuminating the walkway. The canal had a wooded area to the right with sloping banks and an overgrown garden down to the waters edge on the left. We had walked about 40 yards from the bridge with the children some 15/20 yards in front of us when we all distinctly saw a figure resembling a female.

The children shouted that they could see their Auntie and asked if they could run on ahead to meet her. My wife and and I felt it couldn't be her as the 'figure' was alone. We observed the figure for sometime.

Suddenly an uneasy thought came to mind, it was an 'apparition'. The female looking figure appeared to be gliding from us. She was dressed in black with what appeared to be a shawl over her head.
The children were immediately called back and together we slowly walked on. The figure still appeared to be gliding away from us when suddenly it vanished from our sight!
A living person being mistaken for a ghost was instantly ruled out. I am positive the spectre did not glide out of sight into the woods, it dissolved into thin air. Out of confusion and curiosity I looked over the fence once we had passed the woods. The moon was shining bright but there was absolutely nothing to be seen. 
This is a true story of weird occurrence and one that has never been explained.

Image: Top-right by kind permission of Old UK Photos.

The Staircase Ghost

The first time we ever saw the ghost or old woman as we children always called it was on the day we moved into our new house. The carpet fitters were in and me, my brother and two sisters were sent to play upstairs to be out of the way. We chose the top staircase leading to the upper bedrooms. This staircase had a small dark storage room underneath it, the door which was exactly opposite our mother's bedroom.

We had been playing for nearly an hour when we saw what looked like a tall, thin woman dressed in red and white pattern. She came slowly down the stairs from the upper front bedroom, her dress rustled behind her.

We all stood back against the wall while she passed us and went down the stairs, turned a little to the right and disappeared into the storage room. We were all frightened and flew, and some fell down the stairs to tell what we had seen!

Our mother was very angry. She felt that we had been playing ghosts until we finally imagined that we had seen one, and we were all sent back upstairs to play. We sat huddled together until we were called for bedtime. All this had took place on a bright summers day.

The following Sunday, we were all having dinner in the breakfast room when we heard the latch lift of the half glass door that led to the garden. Several of us looked up and saw the door open, and a shadow of someone going quickly up the stairs. My father called two of the boys saying 'someone had got into our house'. With heavy sticks, one stood in the hallway, so no one could pass without being seen, and the others searched every corner of the house and saw nothing!

Noises continued in our house, often becoming unbearable, mainly on the staircase. My mother stated that she had never saw the 'old woman' though she had constantly followed the sound of footsteps up the stairs to see what it could be.

One afternoon I was sent upstairs to the children's bedroom. After finding what I wanted, I came down the top flight of stairs and right in front of me stood the old woman in the doorway of my mother's bedroom!
I stood too scared to move, especially as I had to pass her to reach the lower staircase. How long I stood, I dont know - it seemed like hours.
At last I made a desperate effort and passed it - running so fast that I fell to the bottom of the stairs. I was unable to move and much to the frustration of my mother, I was forbidden to speak about the old woman.

At last we all got quite used to the thing around the house, though for me, I lived in dread of it. I saw it constantly. It used to come into my room and stand by my bed, but never when it was dark.

In the end the noises became too dreadful to live with and my mother and father decided to hunt for another house.

My father was very unsure of the new house we had all wished to move too but the old woman made sure she answered his questions. One night after going to bed early with an attack of indigestion he heard someone coming into his room - in walked the old woman. It frightened him so much that he was up by 7 o'clock the next morning to take the new house.

I am told the new occupants of our old 'haunted' house left quite suddenly a few months later due to the awful noises heard...