As a child, I had many vivid dreams and nightmares, one, in particular, was a recurring nightmare of being chased through a row of trees that resided at the back of our house, they stood towering over our wooden fence on the opposite side, sandwiched between our fence, pathway and a long winding road. I always entered this nightmare mid-chase, but the faster I ran, the closer the anonymous entity got to me from behind.
I didn’t know who it was or what they were, but I wasn’t waiting around to find out, I had a sense of fear, I knew it was malevolent, I instinctively knew it wanted to grab me and take me away somewhere, I would awaken from this nightmare before capture, but my eyes would remain closed, arms by my side, my body felt pinned down, I would attempt to scream as loud as possible but no sound would escape, eventually I would breakthrough with the loudest of screams echoing off my bedroom walls, only then was I able to move and open my eyes.
Coincidentally, this nightmare would unfold into my reality, resonating with three men driving a Red Nissan car who pulled up beside the same trees, these men tried to lure me, my brother and our friend into their car with the offering of sweets and little puppies which they would take us to go see, our friend thought it was funny to haggle with them!! “show me to the sweets first” he said, but my brother and I ran home, contacted the police and gave a statement. Nothing else came of it.
On the next occasion, my brother and I were being chased around the back of our home by the local and violent madwoman, I found refuge in our house, but my brother wasn’t so lucky, the lady caught him and picked him up by his throat, I told my mum, who was now banging on the window and shouting “Oi Let him go!” the lady soon released him, after these events – my nightmare’s stopped, but something else changed.
Every evening I had the responsibility of letting the family dog named Tizer outside the front of the house for her nightly routine, from the living room to the front door was a long and dark hallway, I was between the age of 7-9 years old, so this hallway appeared much more daunting to me, at the end of the hallway was the front door with a central glass panel, outside, directly to the left of the door was our front garden which had no gated area, it was just a basic square patch of grass, separated by a concrete pathway was a community play area with a larger grass area, trees, bushes, two swings and a slide, along the stone pathway were street lamps which illuminated a warm orange glow with just enough light that would peep through the thick net curtain covering the glass panel of the door.
I would have to navigate to the door and leave the hallway light off to save on the electricity bill, as I walked down the hallway towards the door I would be sharply prompted in my minds eye with a vivid image, at the time I wasn’t sure how this was possible, the image was of a being who wore white fabric gloves, who was hiding their face behind their hands, their head was tilted down with their face towards the floor, he or she would then look up towards me whilst simultaneously parting their hands and revealing their face in a dramatic manner, the face was painted solid white like a street entertainer, but with various bright colours around it’s facial features, male or female, I couldn’t be certain, but there were similarities to the child catcher from the film chitty-chitty bang-bang, a film I hadn’t seen as of yet, but something I would later acknowledge as a subliminal message and method of psychological torment, the only difference were the vibrant colours, they didn’t start and finish with the flowers and sweets like the child catcher, this being had a continuance of colours for eyeshadows and facial strokes.
I was too young to understand an insidious presence, nor could I understand why I would see such an image, but the same incident recurred each evening until eventually that also stopped. I grew weary of it, and with consistency, the impact wore off. I knew there was something different happening to me, but I had a practical approach to understanding this could be explained due to fear, I was self-aware, I knew I was a child who had watched too many horror movies and had abusive parents, the darkness in the hallway didn’t help much either, but spiritually, consciously, somethings never went away, no matter how practical I thought I was, you could say I was in denial. I never told my parents of these things, they were not approachable.
It was a summer’s day as I helped carry the shopping home with my mum when she decided to tell me a short story about an incident she had experienced concerning a lady dressed in white, this was a surprise, my mum is the most spiritually disconnected person I know of and not someone to share many of her stories.
We had been shopping at Tesco, a supermarket which was located close to where we had previously lived when I was a baby, the flat I vaguely remembered, but only due to a photo of me and my brother playing with my toys on the carpet floor, laying beside me was our first dog, Tammy, I remember it being the evening my brother was teaching me to clap. I was a blonde hair, blue-eyed boy, dressed in a teal and white baby growth that included an elephant across my chest.
Pointing towards a block of flats, my mother continued telling me we had moved from the flats located in Kennington, Ashford when I was a baby, I asked why? she responded “because it was haunted” she continued to explain, “probably due to the fact it was built opposite the cemetery” at the time of her telling it began to sound like a film, the poltergeist, she continued to explain, one evening she had come to check on me in my cot for being too quiet, she opened the door and there stood the lady in white, dressed in a white lace dress and overlooking me in the cot, my mum abruptly stopped herself and took a moment to reflect.
She then became the person I knew best, snapping back into action, “it was bloody haunted!!, I wasn’t going to stay there anymore!!” My mother’s word isn’t the most reliable of sources, however, since then, three other people who I was later to meet in my adult life had witnessed her too, for similar reasons, which I will explain in future posts.
My mother denies what she knows to be true by switching into defence mode and to be honest, the truth doesn’t serve my mum well due to some of her life choices, and so we never spoke of this again.
I was intrigued by her story, but as I grew older, I forgot the importance of it, on other occasions, unexplainable incidents would occur in my youth, for example, I would taste porridge on my morning walks into school, as if I had been given it directly to eat, as if I were being cared for, this was unusual to say at the least, so I blamed this on my imagination, how else could I explain it away, and so I never told anyone.
On another occasion I woke early in the morning and saw the most beautiful sunrise from my bedroom window, I was laying on the bottom bunk, my elder brother slept above, the window curtains were drawn wide open, I was facing towards the window whilst laying on my back, my brother was standing on top of an old coffee table which had been temporarily placed beneath our window, his back was facing towards me, he too was looking out of the window towards the sunrise, to date, I’ve never seen one as beautiful, I felt at peace laying in my bed but my eyes were tiered, so I called out to him, “Go back to bed, it’s early” he didn’t respond or acknowledge me, I noticed he had a glow from the sun surrounding him, appearing like an aura, he looked calm standing at the window, I then saw his indentation in the mattress above me, it dawned on me, I probably wasn’t talking to my brother, peacefully my eyes closed and I went back to sleep, when I awoke I questioned my brother about him standing at the window, he said he had no knowledge of this.
On other occasions, I would gently awake with an arm raised out and above me, hovering in the air with the feeling of being gently stroked. Eventually, all of these unexplainable incidents stopped, home life continued to be abusive and neglectful, and increasingly more so as we got older, so by the age of 18 I moved into my first one-bedroom flat, previously I had been unofficially living away with my best friend from school and his family the Harpers, I would stay over with them as often and for as long a possible until I met my first girlfriend who was living in a bedroom above a pub called The spotted cow in Lewisham, she was also their barmaid, but due to the poor conditions of her bedroom I moved us both into a bedsit in Greenwich London, an old converted fire brigade building, but for the long-term this proved too small for the purpose.
Our flat was a rental located on Devonshire Road in Forest Hill London, my life had been progressive, I was the head of a water cooler refurbishment department for Eden Springs, formerly known as Nature Springs, and during this time I had incorporated my first entertainment business named Enterprize Entertainments Limited which provided Karaoke and Disco services, this business proved quite successful for a side hustle, I even hired my brother to help, unfortunately, he soon began to poach my clients, I knew then I required a more permanent and stable career, and so I began preparing myself for a new career within information technology.
One evening after work I decided to have a cold beer in front of the TV, I took a sip and placed the can of Stella on top of the glass table, after a few minutes the beer can started to move towards me, I was astonished but decided it was probably due to the moisture on the base of the can and the glass surface, and possibly the angle of the table due to the subsidence at the property, I then attempted to push the can with my figures, but the can wouldn’t budge, if I had pushed it any harder it would have fallen over, shortly afterwards it continued to move towards me again, this spooked me.
My girlfriend was in the kitchen preparing dinner, so I called out to her and asked her to come and witness the can moving, which she did before returning to the kitchen, but I couldn’t shake off the weird and awkward feeling I had surrounding me, and so I decided to ask in mind “if someone is trying to contact me, do it again”, the can began to move, then to my right appeared a feminine arm from shoulder to wrist wearing a white lace pattern with a frilly cuff, the arm appeared to stand up and move towards the hallway and kitchen in a walking motion, until it dispersed out of sight. This was my first encounter during my adult life.
On another occasion, at this same property, I found myself sleepwalking, I was opening the front door into the communal hallway when my girlfriend awoke me by calling out to me, “Where are you going?” this had never happened to me before and the flat never felt the same thereafter.
At the same property, within our bedroom, my girlfriend was visited by my grandad upon request, George had passed away when I was 15, that same year I had purchased him an ashtray to celebrate the year 2000, he saw the year through to the very end and passed on 31st December 2000. He was 75.
We were very close, but I never felt his presence after his passing, not until the day I was driving home from Hartlepool, I was running extremely late, neither I nor my friend had any phone battery to call home, my friend was sleeping in the passenger seat when I felt my grandad’s presence in the back seat of the car, and so I requested in mind if he could give my girlfriend some reassurance, if possible?
I never shared my incident with her or my friend, she revealed his visitation many years later after I had mentioned how I would have liked for her to have met him, considering she gelled so well with my nan.
We eventually moved out of our flat, but incidents continued at our new home, I accepted such things couldn’t be explained away, but this time, incidents became more physical, it was a Sunday afternoon, my girlfriend and I were spooning on the sofa whilst watching a movie, when suddenly the steel ornament of the Eiffel tower we had recently bought back from our visit to Paris was hit with such a force it pinged and flew upwards into the air, and as high as the tall ceilings before landing onto the floor opposite us, it was as if negativity was returning to my way of life – was this an act of jealousy?
Who is the lady dressed in white? Would I meet her again, if so, what is her purpose? Is she evil, is she loving, or is she both – insidious? Based on her appearance is she a Ghost, Djinn, Malak, Messenger, Angel or Demon as others throughout history have claimed?