I can never forget that house. My parents loved country life and I hated it and the house on the top of the hill was just somewhere I didn't want to be. I was 17 and found it so old fashioned with it's dark wooden stairway and I remember the huge fireplace, big enough for someone to walk into, which had been filled in and you could still the outline of it. My parents loved in however, it had a big garden and there was lots of room outside for the chickens.
Like all teenagers 30 years ago I had to be home fairly early. 9pm was my deadline and one night I got the bus back from the nearest village, Walkerburn in the Scottish Borders, and made my way up the hill. I was used to the dark, walking up there didn't bother me. I walked as usual past the gamekeeper's house and turned the corner. I noticed the light on the landing in our house was on and I saw someone dressed in red go into my bedroom. I went to the door and found it locked. I banged and banged on the door and nobody came so I looked around and saw that the car was gone. Realising that my parents were out and that we could be being burgled I ran to the gamekeepers' house. He returned with me and a 12 bore rifle and we took the key from under the mat and entered the house. All of the lights were off, we checked all of the rooms and found nobody there and feeling such a fool I told him that I would be ok and he went home. I spent the next half an hour locked in the bathroom with the poker from the fireplace until Mum and Dad got back. They laughed at me, told me I had an overactive imagination and sent me off to bed.
A few nights later I was sleeping when I was woken by something pulling at my nightdress. Something was trying to pull me out of bed and I knew it wanted to pull me downstairs. This went on night after night and I was becoming so nervous that my mother took me to the Doctor. I was even frightened to be in the house during the day and when I was told that I could go to stay with my grandparents in Germany I was ecstatic. I had been there many, many times and had always wanted to live there permanently.
A couple of years later my mother called from Scotland to say that they were selling the house. She also told me that there had been more strange happenings. They had tried to conceal a stain on the ceiling of their downstairs bedroom but all attempts were useless. They tried paint, wallpaper and even plaster but the stain kept coming through. They had also been visited by an elderly lady who lived in the village who had heard they were leaving. She told them that the house had belonged to a gamekeeper 50 years before then and he had a son who was around 14 years old. The boy had been playing with his father's rifle or trying to clean it and had blown his head off. This happened in my parents' downstairs bedroom, it had in those days been the drawing room. It was then that my mother realised what the stain on the ceiling was.
This is an absolutely true story and an experience I will never forget.
Irene Tirtoprodjo
