Revenants

I slept with the light on most of the time last night again; this current surge of interest in things unknown has done nothing for my peace of mind at nights.

Dad retold me his experience with the mysterious cat during our first visit to Calverdale when we stayed in the cottage at Gilsey in August 1980. He was the only one up and he’d just come out from the kitchen after switching on the kettle when he saw a cat saunter with tail in the air across the middle of the floor. It disappeared behind a sofa in the corner of the room. He said he hadn’t noticed the cat on his way to the kitchen and was sure he would’ve had it been there. He pulled out the sofa but the cat was gone – no trace of it. He looked all around the room and even checked to see if there were any holes in the sofa through which the cat could climb into the upholstery.

Nothing.

Mum also told me how she hated sleeping in the upstairs bedroom and was often “scared stiff’ by tapping at the windows and rattling casements, as though someone was walking about in the room. There was also an unpleasant atmosphere and a cold, damp sensation up there.

I remember that second night Lee, Jeremy, Michael and I spent in the porch of the church at Borley; we’d just heard the whispering on the tape and we were suddenly assailed by a powerful smell like rotten and decaying vegetation. It was a musty unpleasant smell and reminded me of the odour of the stinkhorn mushrooms that grow sometimes in the garden. We all four noticed it more or less simultaneously. Lee even went outside the porch and said the smell lingered there too. As I remember there wasn’t very much wind. It seemed odd that the smell should just suddenly occur.

Jeremy rang tonight, and he’s coming over tomorrow night about eight. The rain has been falling steadily all day, although Mum and Dad went to Snaythrop Abbey to pick blackberries during the afternoon. They left me here to “work,” although needless to say I did little of that, listening instead to Athletic’s match at Holmeshaw on the radio, which they lost 3-2, and reading Underwood’s Borley book.

Planning on a hike near Raikel Stones and Whitehill Cave tomorrow if the weather is good. It’s 12.30 and the rain is still pouring . . .