The Lady At The Window
Our host lit the last candle on the table. The power had been off for nearly twenty minutes – some dinner party. It was just as well that we had finished desert. True to form one of girls commented how spooky it was and wondered if anyone knew any good ghost stories.
I knew what was coming next, but before I even had chance to wince my best mate Jay dropped me right in it by telling the other guests, whom I’d hardly met that I knew some great ghost stories. Thanks a lot mate.
Unfortunately before I could protest everyone said how much they would like to hear them. Now don’t get me wrong I love telling this story but it is usually to my mates after they’ve had a few beers not to the type of cliental at this little gathering. A modest Secondary Modern education hardly makes a bard of you, but it was too late, I had to bite the bullet.
So I began …
I would have only been about four or five years old and we lived in an old pre-war terraced house not far from where I live now. Like most young children I used to wake in the middle of the night and creep into to bed with my mum and dad, but on this particular night it seemed to be icy cold, though I don’t remember it being winter. It didn’t strike me as odd at the time, but like I said I was only four or five.
I got out of bed and crept slowly towards my mum and dad’s bedroom. I passed the bathroom where the moonlight flooded in through the window and lit up the landing. I opened the bedroom door as quietly as I could because I knew that if I woke my mum or dad I would have to go back to my own bed.
I crept into the bedroom and I was surprised to see my mum standing at the window. The moonlight made her shimmer. I waited for a moment expecting her to tell me off and return me to my room but it was like she didn’t know I was there. I walked over to her and asked if she was coming to bed. She said soon.
As quietly and as delicately as I could I got into bed behind my dad and crawled over him so that I would be between him and mum when she came to bed – only she was already in bed!
Spooky, or what?
I felt my face redden as though I had been caught being naughty and I felt like I had pins and needles all over my body. I scrunched my eyes shut and wished for sleep, which thankfully came quickly.
Now the tale doesn’t end there. I never told my mum or dad about this for fear of being shouted at for making things up, but how freaky is this next bit.
Years later my mum and her second husband took my girlfriend and I out for a meal one Saturday night and there was a power cut at the restaurant. When the candles on our table had been lit my girlfriend asked if we knew any ghost stories.
My mum said that years ago when I was just a toddler and we lived in the old terraced house before we moved to the pub, that on more than one occasion she had seen the ghostly figure of a woman looking out of her bedroom window.
*gasps!*