Summer of 1972

Monday dawned wet and grey. I’d intended going to Watermouth in the evening but couldn’t be bothered. Jeremy and Lee caught the last bus.

 I couldn’t shake off that day-before-new-term feeling which has dogged me since Sunday evening. Mum and Dad thought me “morose” and Dad asked me if I was sad about going back. I don’t know. I just keep my eyes fixed firmly on that light ahead. The next eight months are going to be SHIT but must be endured, then I’ll have done all that’s expected of me. . . .

More family ghost stories.

In the summer of 1972 Robert was going out with Susan Lloyd and they were at her Gran’s house on Greenhead Lane. The house was of the ‘cellar-head’ variety, with the kitchen in an alcove at the top of the cellar stairs. Susan was alone at the time and screamed when she saw a figure—both she and Robert saw it as a dark, shadowy shape bending over the sink as though doing the washing up.

Susan’s Gran was in the hospital and when they told the old woman she didn’t sound surprised and said it was probably Susan’s (dead) Grandad getting the house ready for her return.

Mum told me that when Rob and Susan arrived at our house they looked very shaken.

Mum has frequently told me about her friend Nora Bennett who painted a picture of Mayfield Abbey while they were at college in the early ‘70s. One day the face of a nun appeared at one of the windows and although she repeatedly painted it out, it would simply reappear the next morning. This so unnerved her that she sold it to a junk shop and it remained there for months.

Mum says her friend was a very practical, down-to-earth type of woman, not given to imagination or playing tricks . . .