A few years years ago, i spent a week's holiday in the former dower house of a grand estate in the Yorkshire Moors, close to where my grandparents had lived.
As darkness fell the storm i had anticipated all day broke, i knew how brutal the weather could be out here from my childhood, but this was something else. The rain lashed down and the branch of the trees periodically smashed against the windows of the house. Tiles crashed from the roof and shattered on the ground below.
Then the lights flickered and died completely . The house was cast into darkness like i had not experienced before, blindly i groped in my pocket for a lighter and i stumbled around searching for the fusebox.
Finally i got my bearings and after a few minutes my eyes became accustomed to the dark.
I made my way up the stairs, the creaked dreadfully and and one was so rotten it collapsed altogether as i put my foot on it, clearly no one had been up here for years, if not decades.
As i made it inro the attic bedroom, it was clear that I'd been wrong it, had been the best part of a century since this room had last been occupied. I held my lighter up into the gloom.
This had clearly once been a bedroom, untouched since the late nineteenth century. On the wall was an oil painting of a beautiful young woman. Through the dark and the dust i could male out a plaque. it bore the inscription 'Eliza Cowan, d. 30 October 1902.'
My mind started racing, I knew that name. But from where? Then it came flooding back, as a child, my grandfather had told me the story of the beautiful young daughter of the local squire, who had fallen for the estate's blacksmith. They had planned to run away together, but her family discovered their plans. She was cast out of the main house and sent to live with her widowed grandmother in the very dower house in which i was now stood. Her lover was sacked and joined the navy, never to be seen or heard of again. Rather than live without her one true love, she locked herself in her bedroom and starved herself to death. My grandfather told me that on cold stormy nights locals had reported hearing her voice crying out on the wind. Crying out for her one true lover.
Then my blood ran cold. I looked at the date on my watch, 30 October 2002. Exactly 100 years since this poor woman met her end. Surely a coincidence?
But suddenly things didn't feel right. I tried to gather my thoughts. I was a grown man, ghost stories were for little kids...weren't they? And yet and yet...
Then i was aware of another presence in the room. I couldn't make out their face but i could see the steam coming of their breath in the cold air. I froze in terror limbs shaking, sweat poring off me.
Then after what felt like eternity it spoke. It called my name in a voice oddly familiar.
'Johnny'
'I have returned'
(silence)
Then a blinding flash of bright light.
As i shielded my eyes, the figure spoke again. It sounded angry.
I' ve bought the fish and chips back and I've put another 50p in the meter. Call this a honeymoon? I told you we should have booked that all inclusive to Tenerife.