Well, it was a two floor Victorian affair, and in quite a poor state, although the second time we rented it we were able to upgrade it a bit, you know things like a proper functioning kitchen. Top floor had two good sized bedrooms and a bathroom big enough to be a bedroom.
First floor had two pretty large reception rooms and the kitchen was a reasonable size.
So we experienced:
My son, primary aged, seeing an old woman sitting in a rocking chair outside the bathroom door a few times. The first time it happened, we found him downstairs when we went to get him up for breakfast, under the dining table and he'd pulled in the chairs around him for protection.
What was really weird about that was that when we moved in, the bathroom door had a bolt on the outside. We thought maybe it was for security, as the bathroom and bedroom on that side looked out over the arcade roof with a gully running the length that one could, in the event of fire or maintenance, use to get along the front of the building. But given that my son described this woman as effectively guarding the door, we did start having some rather sinister thoughts.....
I twice saw a little boy - in broad daylight. The first time I was passing the sitting room door on my way into the kitchen carrying a basket of washing, and thought I saw my son dancing in front of the TV. I took one step back to make some encouraging comment, and the room was empty, the TV was off and he was upstairs engrossed in his Lego.
The second time I was sitting just inside the sitting room door, reading a paper - again, broad daylight. I saw a small boy crawl past me into the room, thought it was my son but when I raised my head to speak to him, the room was empty. Again, my son was elsewhere.
On another occasion, my Mum and I were having a cuppa and a catch up in the front room, mid-morning, bright sunny day, hustle and bustle going on in the arcade below. My sons cat, an anti-social specimen who only had time for my son really and rarely graced us with his presence, suddenly started stalking into the room. You know, the proper ears flat, belly on floor slow stalking when they're after something. We both clocked him, but said nothing, to see what would happen. Now by the fireplace we had a stand on vibrating plate exercise thing, a fad of my EXH that had become the spot where we kept a cat igloo on the base, because it fit well and was out of any draughts. Cat stalked almost all the way up to it, growling, and then me and my Mum both heard what we could only describe as an electronic demonic laugh com8ng from this cat igloo. Cat exited the room in the style of a Harrier jump jet and thundered up the stairs, and we also jumped as a result.
My Mum was the least woo person ever, and once we'd made sure that there was no rogue toy or other possible source of the weird noise, even she accepted it was bloody weird.
There's more, but what was really interesting was that two sets of tenants afterwards reported poltergeist activity completely independent of us, and each other, with no contact between them. I found this out from my landlady, a few years after we'd moved out.
Also, I never really felt scared or threatened, it was just as though we sort of shared with invisible lodgers. We told my son not to be scared, and to talk to anyone he saw, and he's 30 now, and pretty unscathed.
I could never find out any meaningful history unfortunately although I did try and research.
The flat's been completely renovated now.
Had some happy times there ðŸ«