In 1977 when I was 9 years old, I lived in Northolt Middlesex.  My parents were managers of a newsagents, and we lived above the shop.  There were my parents, myself and some of my siblings, Tracy 14, Paul 10 and my youngest sister Kelly 3 years old who lived in this house.
We all experienced ghostly goings on whilst living there, some of which were very scary and eventually this led us having to leave the house.
 
   One day Tracy was doing some ironing in the lounge, each item that she ironed she neatly piled onto a radiogram.  Once she had finished the ironing she got the shock of her life, the neatly piled ironing fell to the floor.....What's so shocking about that I hear you ask...Well as the ironed clothes fell, they remained in their neat pile as they fell to the floor, and once they landed on the floor they still remained in a neat pile.
 
Another time Kelly was feeling unwell and was lying down on the settee in the lounge.   My mum and Tracy were both pottering about in the kitchen, when all of a sudden Kelly started screaming.  Mum and Tracy went running to the lounge to see what was wrong.  Kelly told my mum that the pictures had SLOWLY come off the wall and landed on the fireplace.  We had a long electric fire against the wall and above the fire there were some pictures, these pictures were.... I'd say about 10cm squared and they were lined up long the wall.  They were on hooks and to take them off you, would have to lift them up and over the hook.  The hooks remained in the wall firm and secure.
 
   My mum had a timer on her cooker and she would use this regularly.  She would prepare the dinner in the morning and set the timer to start cooking at a certain time. She did this because she would go and do her shift in the shop in the afternoon.  Then once the shop was closed all she had to do was go upstairs to the house and dish up Everyones dinner.  But on a few occasions she would come up from the shop to find the cooker had been turned off and no dinner cooked.
 
  Dad on many occasions would feel uncomfortable down in the shop.  Of an evening he would be in the office at the back of the shop doing the cashing up.  Right near the door that led to the shop floor there was a security alarm system.  On this system there was a sensor light, if you walked past this sensor light it would do a clicking sound.
One night while cashing up, the sensor light was constantly clicking on and off, on and off.  It really made dad feel on edge so he used the internal phone line and called mum in the house asking her if someone would go down to the shop with him until he'd finished in the office.
 
  One night my mum was relaxing in the bath when she heard, what she thought was heavy breathing at the bathroom door that was ajar.  'Is that you John? (my dad), stop p***ing about John'.  To which she got no reply.  She was out of that bath as quick as her legs could carry her.  Towel wrapped around her she ran to the bedroom.
'Why are you in here soaking wet?  Why aren't you getting ready in the bathroom like normal?' my dad asked.  ‘Oh I’m just cold and wanted to get into bed quick' said mum.
A couple of days later my dad was standing having a pee! He felt heavy breathing over his neck. He hurried to tell mum, he just thought he had imagined it.  Well my mum then had to come clean about her scary heavy breathing experience in the bathroom 2 days previous.
 
   In the lounge one wall had glass panels, and from the lounge you could see the front door, the small square hallway and the stairs that led off the hallway.  We were all sitting in the lounge, me, my parents and siblings.  Then mum went upstairs but as she did so we all shouted at once 'mum something is following you!'  We had all seen some sort of white figure following mum upstairs.  It had made us all wary and so from then on whenever we went upstairs we went in pairs.
 
   My dad had a nightly routine before going up to bed.  He would let the cat out, lock the door; turn off the fire and the lights.  Well one morning he got up early to open the shop, and to his amazement he found the door unlocked and the lounge light on.  He went into the lounge to find the cat curled up fast asleep in front of the lit fire.  People didn’t have a cat flap then; cat weren't trained to turn on the fire, LOL.
 
  Paul 10 years old had made a cup of tea for my parents; he carried them in on a tray. As he was walking out of the kitchen, the tray came out of his hands and he got scalded all down his chest and stomach.  My parents came to his screams and Paul told them, when he was carrying the tray it was like someone had put their hand under the tray and pushed it up into the air out of his hands.
 
  We had a family black Labrador dog called Shep, who we’d had from a puppy.  We had got him from Devon on a family holiday one year.  He was very friendly and used to people, especially children.  My mum had 9 children.  One day Kelly bent down to stroke Shep and he growled at her, I bent down in front of her to push her away to protect her and as I did so the dog went for me and bit right through my lip.  I ran screaming to the lounge bleeding everywhere, complete panic for everyone.  I was rushed to the hospital to have my mouth stitched up.  Shep was put to sleep.  They say that animals can sense spirits, maybe this is true and it had turned him vicious.
 
  By now my parents had had enough.  Mum said her marriage was being affected, and now her children were being hurt.  She couldn't put the family through anymore and so the decision was made to leave.  Once my parents told their staff in the shop that we were leaving, they informed us that other managers had not been able to stay either. Managers in the past had stayed no longer than 5 months, because of their experiences and the threat of marriage breakdown etc.  We had been in the shop and house for 9 months.
 
   We were all packed up and ready to go, we had one more night to sleep in the house. There were boxes everywhere in all the rooms, so my siblings and I were sleeping in one room on just mattresses.  As we all tried to settle, we could hear noise of what sounded like a party coming from the lounge....music, people chatting and the clinking of glasses.  Tracy and I decided to go downstairs and investigate, we slowly crept down the stairs we got half way down, and listened.  The noise stopped so we returned to our beds but as soon as we did this did this the party noise started again.  It was just like there was a celebration of us ....moving out.
 

© 2009 Kent Paranormal Seekers

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