Eleven New Ghost Stories

ELEVEN NEW GHOST STORIES

David Paul Nixon

Published by DPN Books at
Smashwords

Copyright David Paul Nixon
2014

All rights reserved. No part of
this publication man be reproduced for any purpose – excluding
brief excerpts for review purposes – without the prior written
permission of the author.

Cover design by Marie
Bussiere

For my father

With thanks to the Velkys and
Mrs Goddard

for their time, encouragement
and patience;

to Mr Donaghy for his web
skills;

and to Ms Bussiere for the
cover.

For exclusive content and audio
stories, visit

www.newghoststories.com

Contents

INTRODUCTION

A RHYTHM OF
SIX

KNOCK DOWN
GINGER

THE BLACK
CLOCK

WHEN IT
RAINS…

THE STORM
WALKER

CAT
LADY

IN A
BOX

THE CALL OF
THE SEA

ON THE
SHOULDER

BENJAMIN
WENT TO THE WELL

WRONG
NUMBER

INTRODUCTION

Do I believe in ghosts?

A few years ago that wouldn’t
have been a difficult question: A resounding “no” would have sprung
from my lips with barely a moment’s thought. I love a good ghost
story; I even watch some of those ropey documentaries on the
less-respectable TV channels. But a believer – I most certainly was
not.

Now things are more
complicated…

My strange journey started
almost three years ago. I was on the London South Bank, having just
seen a Hitchcock classic at the cinema, and was killing time before
returning to see a screening of The Innocents –
the
classic
cinematic ghost story. By luck and coincidence as I walked out in
front of Charing Cross station I crossed paths with an old school
friend, someone I had not seen in years.

We took the chance to catch up
and settled down in a nearby pub. I explained that I had a few
hours before the film started and I ended up telling him the plot,
as he had not seen it, though he was apparently a fan of
horror.

At some point, as we started to
trade our favourite scary tales, he said to me that he knew someone
who had experienced the real thing. A relative who had actually
seen a real ghost and had a real story to tell. Naturally, I was
sceptical; I knew people who had seen ghosts, but these were always
stories that had taken place during their childhood and lacked
credibility, transformed as they were into fascinating anecdotes,
ripened for ear-catching conversation. Yet he was insistent, and if
I wanted I could hear the story straight from the horse’s
mouth.

After a few pints, this became
something of a gauntlet thrown down and I felt obliged to pick it
up. A few weeks later I found myself in an unfamiliar part of
suburban London going to visit a man who, as it turned out, was
firstly, not expecting to see us, and secondly, didn’t want to tell
us the story.

If this seems like a humorous
situation, I can state quite categorically that it wasn’t. He
really
didn’t want to tell it. He was afraid we might laugh,
that we might scoff. This was something quite serious to him;
something he didn’t like to talk about. Unfortunately, this made it
all the more fascinating to hear. I’d only really accepted the
invitation out of kindness, now I really couldn’t wait to hear what
the man had to say.

We managed to persuade him after
a while; swore that we weren’t about to laugh at him or mock him,
that we really just wanted to hear what he had to say. He didn’t
want just to tell us the story though; he wanted to prove it! Prove
that he wasn’t making it up. There was this contradiction within
him; a wanting to be believed but also a fear of being laughed
at.

So we listened intently. What
struck me about his story, and what caused me to really embark on
the journey that led to me starting this book, is just how affected
he seemed to be by what he had experienced. It seems like an
obvious thing to point out doesn’t it? But when you hear a ghost
story, you always take it as a roller-coaster ride. Some frights
and some chills, a bit of fun and a bit of a scare. You don’t
really take it seriously.

Yet, when I heard this story, I
was taken aback by how serious it really was. It wasn’t a bit of
fluff told in low-light with a sense of relish. This was a defining
moment in this man’s life, and not a good one; a painful one.

I found the urge to tell his
story almost irresistible. He was uncomfortable with the idea at
first, but slowly I was able to talk him around. This was his
chance to put his side of the story across, to present what had
been a great tragedy in his life, without judgement, for others to
discover. For him to just tell it like it is – people could either
then take it or leave it.

And that’s how I decided to
approach the idea; I sat down with him and a microphone and just
let him tell it, recording every word. This was useful for several
reasons, not just for capturing his words but also it allowed me to
scrutinise them. Though I found nothing suspicious about him or his
story, I nevertheless wished to be certain that he was telling the
truth, at least as far as he knew it.

I could detect no great
diversions from the story he had told me before, no signs of great
exaggerations or flexible facts. And as for his evidence… Let’s be
clear that this did not amount to categorical proof of supernatural
occurrences, but it did establish a certain number of facts, dates,
locations; proof that certain events had happened, even if their
cause could not be concluded.

Having heard his story again, I
felt even more strongly that he was sincere, that he was no great
fantasist or exhibitionist. And for his part, it seemed that we had
in some way helped him to get these matters off his chest, given
him some small sense of catharsis.

And this is where my journey
started. As I sat at home transcribing his words, I wondered who
else out there had a real ghost story; a story that preyed on their
mind that they had perhaps kept hidden, reluctant to tell their
friends or family for fear of ridicule or worse.

I took small steps at first,
just a mere few blog posts and forum entries. The early response
was overwhelming – a mixed blessing to say the least. I had given
out an open invitation for any joker, loon and nutcase to vie for
attention. I was bombarded with the ridiculous, the stupid and the
mundane; everything from tales of creaking doors and gates to the
attacks of full-grown bogeymen.

But I stuck with it. My first
storyteller confessed to have spoken to a few others online about
his experiences and said he knew of a few he felt were serious,
sensible people like him who had experienced something out of the
ordinary, but also feared ridicule or the attentions of the
over-enthusiastic amateur ghost-hunter.

Some of these became my first
subjects and gave me confidence that the whole project was worth
undertaking and worth the work.

It has not been easy picking
through the heavy correspondence, trying to separate the honest
voices from the dishonest ones. I have come dangerously close to
being fooled and wasted a great deal of time chasing people who it
turned out could not be relied upon; who if not lying outright,
were being obviously very liberal with the truth.

I have applied some technique to
my recording of the stories that follow in this collection. I can’t
say that I have been very scientific; I have tried simply to
approach each case with my best judgement. I have asked for every
story to be told twice, sometimes on paper, ideally at least once
on tape, so that I could compare and examine their words, searching
for any reason to doubt them.

I have required some kind of
evidence as the minimum criteria for any sustained contact with
anyone claiming to have a story to tell. This evidence could be
anything from receipts to train tickets, emails, photographs; just
small things to ascertain dates, locations, anything to tie down
certain facts and to deter tellers of fiction. In some cases I may
have refused to speak to people with honest stories because they
lacked any items of proof. I sincerely apologise if I have offended
anyone, but this has been a difficult process with many a trap to
fall into. I have simply had to be ruthless.

What I present here are 11
stories from amongst the many hundreds I have heard and attempted
to investigate. These 11 stories represent what, as far as I can
tell, are the most truthful accounts amongst those I have
heard.

Truth is a slippery thing and
upon reading these stories you will undoubtedly feel this also.
There are extraordinary things written within these pages; things I
could not believe. Things that go beyond what goes bump in the
night…

You may be sceptical; you would
be foolish not to be. Yet in each case I have done my best to probe
each subject, question them and challenge them. They have remained
firm in their convictions, backed up much of what they have said
and proved themselves within a certain reasonable doubt to be
rational, sane people.

You will probably come to doubt
this. And this in turn will be revealing; what these stories may
say about the tellers, if they are not true, is almost as
fascinating as the possibility of them being entirely factual.

What follows then are the edited
transcripts of interviews or the written accounts of 11 subjects,
printed here with as much fidelity as possible. I have avoided
editing them unless absolutely necessary. I have removed any
interruptions or any great diversions from the story, but only with
great reluctance. I have striven to offer the complete testimony of
each subject as authentically as possible.

Ensuring the confidentiality of
each subject has been paramount to me throughout this whole
project. Certain names or locations may have been changed or simply
omitted to help protect their confidentiality. The people who tell
these stories did so at great personal risk and I am extremely
grateful that they have put their trust in me.

It is possible with the tool of
the internet to investigate, to form hypotheses and to put great
effort into tracking down these individuals. In one case the teller
of the story will be so easy to ascertain that masking it was
virtually pointless. Yet I saw no reason to offer them any
different assurances than any other subject. Nevertheless, I must
ask and implore you to leave these people alone and not to attempt
to uncover their identities. Frankly, they have been through
enough.

What these stories tell us about
the supernatural, about life and death, the universe… I cannot say.
This project has made me simultaneously both more sceptical and
more of a believer. Sceptical because of all the countless hours
wasted listening to lies and dross and delusional behaviour. But in
these stories there are 11 people who speak with a genuine pain.
Their stories cannot so easily be explained away.

Does that mean I believe in
ghosts? I think until I see one face-to-face, I will always be a
sceptic. But do I believe there are things that exist in this world
that defy explanation and our understanding?

You bet I do…

A RHYTHM OF SIX

He was excited at first. After
all, he’d just made his name – and a fairly substantial amount of
money – selling a script about ghost stories to a producer. Now the
flat he’d used the money to buy apparently had a ghostly apparition
of its own.

Well, not so much an apparition;
more a noise. I felt certain he was talking crap. He told me it
made a tapping noise. As someone who lives in an old Victorian
tenement with piping more than a hundred years old, I wasn’t buying
it; just turning on the central heating was like unleashing a
symphony of slow spoon players. The incessant clicks and clacks
could go on all night.