Im writing this because I wonder if she’s back. She usually announces her presence by playing with a certain light switch. Thats happening, but I’m also seeing moving shadows out of the corner of my eye. Despite spring warming the land around us, I can never get warm in the house

For context, where we live is very rural, with small hamlets of three or four stone houses or lone farmsteads sitting in isolation, on a hill or buried amongst trees. Ours is one of those. When we first saw it, we had to walk down an disused farm track to see our future home

This is an area of witchcraft. Our neighbour can lift out fever or burns & is reputedly so good at it the local doctor goes to visit her when he’s a need. Dense forests housed the French resistance during WW2.The oldest people still remember Nazi patrols & the threat of execution

The house had been abandoned since 1954. the last resident, an 80 yr old spinster left on the day she told our neighbor (he was a teenager but still remembers) “I can no longer fight the spirits. They’re coming for me” He described her as free of dementia. But eerily spiritual

Maria had been born in the house, she was taken away by family that day in 1954 and the neighbours never saw her again. Our now 70 something neighbour,the 5th generation to be born in his house, talked of a cantankerous woman, massively religious, crossing herself in holy water

From a recepticle every time she came in & out of the house. She took in sewing to make a living. She was eccentric & difficult, endlessly walking the drive and the lane in a long black dress and an oil lamp at night. Over time we renovated the house & began to settle in.Strange

Things would happen like finding a sponge from a faraway cupboard in the kitchen sink with a rusty old sewing needle woven thru it. On more than one occasion (and again recently) I’d feel someone sit on the bed next to me. The mattress wd actually sink far enough that my body wd

Move towards it. The light next to my bed would come on in the night. Ping! Just as I’d almost get back to sleep again. Ping! 3-5 times per night All wiring & switches brand new. 2 electricians changed the switches 3 times & had neither had an explanation about why it continued.

At a community event, I happened to mention jokingly that I felt Maria was still there. Seemingly my observation hadn’t fallen on deaf ears because three days later a farmer turned up with his collie dog and announced he’d been sent to exocrcise the house. seemingly communing

with spirits was a side job. He banished me from the kitchen (I spied) muttered some indistinguishable prayers (?) waved a pendule around & then called me back in to the room and looked longingly at the whisky bottle. A dram would be his payment. That night was when it kicked off

It was around 3am, David was asleep and suddenly I was awake. I glanced to the door. Standing in the doorway staring at me was a cloaked figure. Imagine a faceless Meryl Streep in the French Lieutenants Wife. It came towards me & I didn’t have time to process whether this

Was actually happening.The figure bent down to my face level & pulled back the hood. David will tell you how I screamed & threw myself across the bed to escape. The face was skeletal, dry crumbling skin drawn tight over pronounced cheekbones, a mop of wildly assembled hair on top

Was I really awake? Was I visited in a dream? I think it was somewhere in between. It absolutely marked me however. Three days later, I took my torch & walked up the pitch black driveway & along the lane like Maria had done all those years before me, so I could have a drink with

My elderly neighbour. “Look!” He said, “I was in the attic and found my parents wedding photo from 1931. Everyone is on it. Including Maria. Do you want to see what she looked like?” People often say “I was speechless!” Or “it took my breath away” well for the first time in my

Life, I couldn’t speak. I was haunted again. The figure from a few nights before was in a sepia photo in front of me. Not “similar” or “somewhat like” the exact same figure. In comparison to the rest of the assembled party on the photo she looked wild & spirited

Not long after, my godson and I were sitting on separate sofas one afternoon working on our laptops. We heard a woman’s voice in the kitchen twice call out. He and I looked at each other as to get to the kitchen you needed to walk past the windows of the room we were sitting in

We went to look but we already knew there was no one there and we checked we both heard what we heard. Then followed a period lights going on in the night, the electricity bill of €1000 for 3 months for no reason, keys missing, a stream of new/nearly new appliances not working.

The final renovation was to dig out the cellar after the previous owner had thrown all of Maria’s remaining possessions into the cellar & back filled with soil. Ripping walls out we found long hidden cupboards housing her shoes, bottles of preserves she’d made and her sewing kit

When we started digging amongst the soil I found her cane, her chamber pot & the small recepticle she filled with holy water to endlessly cross herself with. Made of porcelain it miraculously missed the pick axe & emerged from underneath tonnes of soil intact.

After liberating so much of her disrespectfully discarded life, the activity largely stopped. I say largely because occasionally someone sits on my bed, my lamp has stopped working unless it chooses to, but that’s about it. Weirdly not once have the dogs ever reacted. But she

Apparently loved dogs and they were largely her only companionship in life. I do wonder what the recent shadows are? Why do they make me turn around? Why am I feeling so cold? Occasionally I get a heavy sense here. I think we ripped her home to hell, having still had it to

Herself all those years and she was confused by our presence and actions. Maybe I should consult a more qualified ghost whisperer? I don’t want to see her again. This photo is enough