The Wrexham Files

13. Christmas.

2011-12-30T09:17:00.000-08:00

Christmas Eve we were in bed after putting all the kid's gifts under the tree. Well, the tree in the hall outside our bedroom (which used to be the dining room, but we moved down to make it easier for me since the MS.) and about 2.15 - 2.30am, we were woken by a noise upstairs and footsteps on the landing. Thinking it was one of the kids, I told them to go back to bed, but the footsteps continued down the stairs. There was the sound of something being put down on the floor, then the footsteps went back up the stairs again. There was the sound of a door scraping on carpet and closing, then silence.
The following day I asked the kids if any of them had been downstairs in the night. No one owned up and we put it down to Regan (15) sleepwalking - which he has done in the past.
The odd thing was that the only room in the house which is carpeted is the smallest bedroom which we use as an office - everywhere else has laminate flooring. Not that odd, you may think, but the office door isn't on it's hinges at the moment - in fact it hasn't been on it's hinges for the past year, so how did the door scrape over the carpet and shut?
On Christmas Day, after all the presents had been given out, we found one tucked under the tree without a name on it. It was wrapped in the same paper we used so we assumed that it was one that had been left by one of the children. None of them knew anything about it. And the tape used to seal it was wider than the stuff we used.
Anyway, a couple of days later, we had to go into the attic to get something and when we opened the door in the ceiling, lying on the loft insulation, was a roll of tape the same width as that used to seal up the mystery present.

The next thing that happened was that we noticed that one of the ornaments in a display cabinet on the landing - in the corner where I saw the little boy and where the dog used to stand barking - kept moving no matter how many times we set it straight. So we made sure it was facing forwards and then locked the door. We put the key in the bottom drawer of Julie's bedside cabinet and forgot about it.
A couple of days later, Julie shouted me upstairs. The ornament - a small dragon in an egg with a sapphire birth stone - had turned about 90 degrees. The door was still locked, and the key was still in the bottom drawer where we had put it.
We've not unlocked the door since and the dragon has now moved 180 degrees around.

And finally, today, Julie went to the bathroom and found Ashley's (19) badge from when he was in the Air Cadets in the middle of the floor. She had literally gone in there straight after me yet when I was in there, yet I didn't see the badge. In fact I would swear on my oath that it wasn't in there when I was. The last time anyone had seen the badge was downstairs by the 'phone, which was where it had been kept since Ashley was awarded it.

It's been a great Christmas. I wonder what we have to look forward to in the New Year?

Happy New Year everyone.

12. Bedtime

2010-05-06T12:30:00.000-07:00

So it's that time of year again.

Last night my wife heard a boy's voice calling out to her. As our 14 year old was in bed at the time and I was upstairs, she asked me to check up on him in case he wanted her. So I go into his room and ask him if he's okay. No answer. So I go over to check on him and he's fast asleep. I shook him gently awake and asked if he was okay. "Yes" he said with a yawn. I asked him if he called his mum. "No" he said, and went back to sleep. I went downstairs and she tells me that she's heard it again while I was in our boy's room.

Later, in bed, I was dozing gently but not yet asleep when I heard a boy's voice singing. Thinking it was our eldest watching telly, I got up to check. He was fast asleep too.
We have only two neighbours and live in the middle of the country and there were no other sounds except for the owl that lives in the tree in the front garden and I couldn't hear the singing outside.
It went on for about 8-10 minutes then faded away - as though someone had turned down the volume.

11. Coming home.

2009-08-18T13:20:00.000-07:00

Last week (Monday 10th August) we were sorting out a few things in the house and paying several visits to the council dump to get rid of the rubbish. Anyway, I had hitched the trailer to the car and was on my way back home with my three kids in the car. We pulled up and I backed the car into the driveway to find my wife waiting for us. This is where it gets weird.

She was kinda spooked and told me a story.

She was sitting on a stool in our bedroom sorting through some stuff, when she heard a tapping on the front door - as a child would knock: the same knock as our 6 year old daughter makes.
Her first thought was "why is she knocking when the door was unlocked?" She then got up to answer it and found nobody there; but us backing into the drive with the car.

Was it the little boy telling her that we were back? We don't know.
It's just another odd thing that happens in our house.

10. Seeing the light.

2009-06-29T14:20:00.000-07:00

Last Friday (June 26th), my wife was in the kitchen making a cup of tea. She was facing the wall with the cooker behind and to the right. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed something and turning slightly, she saw what she described as a bright white light level with the grill (which would be about 3ft from the ground) about the size and shape of a small child.

She turned to get a closer look and the light faded away.

Could this be a manifestation of the little boy?

My own theory is that it is the boy and not his mother who is our regular visitor. As I mentioned before, there is often the smell of fresias in the house - the old lady's favourite flower. Could it be that the boy is 'bringing' them in for his mother as a gift?

9. Flying glasses.

2009-05-01T09:08:00.000-07:00

Last week I was in the kitchen with my wife making the dinner. We both had a glass of cola and she put her glass down on top of the fridge.
Now in order to picture the scene properly, I need to give you the layout of our kitchen. Its about 12 feet long and six wide - a typical galley kitchen. The fridge is near the door leading to the hall at one end which is in turn directly opposite the back door at the other end.
So, she put her glass down on top of the fridge and we went into the living room.
Minutes later we hear a smash and we go to investigate. Her glass is lying shattered on the floor by the back door twelve feet from where she put it.
Our first thought was that it was the work of one of our two cats, but it turns out that they were asleep upstairs on our eldest's bed. The kids were in the living room with the dog and the kitchen was empty. So what had caused the glass to jump from the centre of the counter top and to smash on the floor at the other end of the room?
It appears to be that time of year again.

8. More odd things...

2008-03-08T13:08:00.000-08:00

Tonight has been the strangest so far.

Half an hour ago the lights went all funny.

I was in the kitchen cooking poached eggs for tea, my wife was helping, the boys were watching telly in the living room and my wee girl was upstairs in her bedroom. She shouted down that her light kept going off, so my wife went to see if she was okay. She turned on the switch for the landing light at the top of the stairs - and the downstairs hall light came on. She called me to check, so I came into the hall and turned on the hall light - and Katy (my daughter) shouted that her bedroom light came on.
We checked the switches and it seems that the downstairs hall switch now controls all the bedrooms and the bathroom lights upstairs. The upstairs landing switch controls the downstairs hall light and god know what turns on the landing light.
What's odd is that an hour earlier they were all working perfectly.

Now I know what you're thinking - it's probably a short circuit. That's exactly what I thought too except for two small points.

Firstly, if it was a short then surely it would throw the trip to prevent a shock? The trips are still set and there isn't the sort of fizzing sound that you usually associate with a short at the switch (my Dad's an electrician so I'm used to the workings of a ring main).

Secondly - and here's wher it gets rather odder - the upstairs lights and the downstairs light are on separate circuits. The system is designed that way so that if there is a problem with the upstairs lights, it doesn't affect the downstairs ones (well at least they didn't).

So if anyone has any ideas how to sort this (short of getting an electrician in - which I'm going to have to do on Monday anyway) or what could have caused it, please let me know.

7. It's started again.

2008-03-07T05:27:00.000-08:00

Hi all, it's been a while since I've posted but things have been pretty quiet at home. It's picking up a bit now though. It seems to happen at around a certain time of year and so we've been experiencing some more odd happenings.

A couple of nights ago, I got up for a drink and went through to the kitchen (my wife and I have moved downstairs into what was the dining room because it was too weird in the bedroom we were in).I got a drink and heard the living room door open. I thought it was one of the kids so I went in expecting to see my daughter, but the room was empty. I came out of the room and shut the door - it was probably a draught banging the door. I turned to go back into my bedroom and
I heard the door go again. I turned aroung in time to see the door open and slam shut. Just the wind I thought again. Then I saw the door handle turn and the door open. It stayed open for a moment then closed quietly again, the handle turning as though someone was closing it from the inside. I checked the living room again but it was empty.

So, it seems that our regular visitor is back. It's odd, but I feel strangely comforted to know that he/she's still around.

It's been quiet since, but I'll keep you posted if anything else happens.

6. More eerie weirdness.

2007-05-15T05:16:00.000-07:00

Taking a break from the house for now. I'd like to tell a story my Mum told me recently about myself when I was a wee lad in Liverpool.

When I was about four or five, my Mum and Dad took me on a trip to Delamere Forest. We were driving along, when I suddenly pointed to a road that came off the road we were travelling on. I announced to my parents that I used to live up there.

Now, when I was a kid, I had an imaginary friend called Paul Kerr. I used to pretend to be him and my parents assumed that when I pointed, I was being 'him' again. Humouring me, they asked me what it was like.

I described a small village around a central green. There was a playing area with swings, a slide and a roundabout. There was a church and a village pub.

Surprised by the amount of detail I had described, my Dad turned the car around and we turned up the road I had pointed to. We drove for about ten minutes or so before we entered a small village. There was a green, a playing area with swings, a slide and a roundabout. There was a church and a pub, exactly as I had described it.

We stopped and got out to explore and my parents noticed that I was behaving as though I genuinely lived there. I knew what was down the little lanes and other places around the village.

Eventually we carried on with our journey, but my parents had never forgotten what had happened that day, even though I had.

When they told me, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. Especially when they said that we had never been there before. Thnking about it now, it makes me wonder if Paul Kerr actually existed once. I intend to find out and will post any findings here, so stay tuned!

5. Footsteps in the hall.

2007-05-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

Now, I'm sure that people are probably wondering if I'm making all this up. The answer - whilst I am still king of the skeptics about the paranormal, I am open minded enough to acknowledge the fact that there are some things that are unexplained - is no.

Everything I have written is true. It actually happened. Whether or not they were hallucinations or because of tiredness or whatever, I don't know. I have just written them down as they happened. The fact that other members of my family have had strange experiences in the house, tend to indicate that I haven't just imagined the whole thing.

Given the circumstances, we believe the house to be haunted by the spirits of both the old lady and her son.

About a year or so after we moved in, I was in the living room watching the telly. My wife was upstairs putting the baby to bed - the boys were already asleep - and the house was pretty quiet. Our neighbours had gone out for the evening and even our recently rescued dog Barney, had settled down for the evening.

Now, Barney was a Yorkie cross, and would bark if anyone walked up the path. In fact, he tended to bark at the shadows - he was a noisy wee thing.
But that night he was sleeping soundly in his bed.

My wife had been upstairs for about half an hour when I heard a noise from outside the living room door. Barney was still asleep, so I assumed it was my wife. The noise came again, so I got up and opened the door to see what it was.
There was no one there.

I shut the door and sat down again, looking at Barney who looked quizzically back at me. Then he began to growl at the door. The low throaty sort of growl that dogs do when they're alarmed.
I then heard footsteps from the hall. Walking up and down on the tiled floor.
I got up again to check but again, there was no one there.

This happened perhaps three or four times. Each time I got up to check and each time there was no one there.
Barney eventually settled and went back to sleep and the noises stopped.
I told my wife what had happened and she said that she too had heard footsteps from the hall when she had been in the kitchen a couple of nights previously. She had also seen a figure walk past the window - something, when you consider we live in the middle of the countryside with only two neighbours, that doesn't usually happen.

The following evening we were both in the living room when we heard the footsteps. Thinking it was one of the boys out of bed, my wife shouted at him to go back upstairs. When the footsteps persisted, she got up to see what was wrong. There was no one there. She then went into the kitchen and, coming out, asked me if I had been outside recently. I said that I had been out to my shed earlier and that I had locked the kitchen door when I had come in. She replied that it was odd then, that the door was wide open.

This has happened a few times since then. Each time it begins with footsteps, then the back - and on one occasion, the front - door was left wide open.

4. Little Boy follow up.

2007-05-11T14:31:00.000-07:00

So, the other week I decided to tackle the holly tree in the back garden. It was really overgrown and was pushing on my shed so I thought "that's it - it has to come down".

My next door neighbour came round and offered to help, so we put together my new electric chainsaw and he lopped off great hunks of tree, until it no longer pushed on my shed.

Then he offered to chop down the plum tree at the bottom of the garden - something I had been meaning to do for a loooonnnngggg time!

In return, I decided to have a barbecue to thank him for his help, so My wife and I went out and got in the supplies and we had a very nice afternoon eating and drinking.

The afternoon turned into evening and I decided to ask about the old couple again and got a very surprising piece of news. Again, I didn't mention what I had seen, but I asked if the old couple had had any children.

Yes, my neighbours replied, they recalled that the old lady had told them she had a son.

But he had died in childhood.

Still, I've got a lovely pile of logs for the fire, come winter.

3. The Little Boy.

2007-05-11T10:28:00.000-07:00

In the September before we moved in, my wife had a baby. It was a little girl and she is beautiful. She's now nearly five, and is extremely 'old headed'. In fact people have commented that she's "been here before".
Not long after we moved - she would have been around three/four months old by then - we noticed that she liked to lie back on the sofa and 'watch' the ceiling.
I studied this odd behavior as she wasn't the kind of baby that liked to just sit there doing nothing. She liked to be involved with things and was very vocal in letting us know. But on these occasions she would stare quietly at the ceiling with a smile and 'watch' something - her eyes would dart around as though there was something flitting about between the lights .

The house has three bedrooms and, as she was the only girl, she had her own room - the boys shared.
We put her in the small room. We decorated it in bright colours with a mural and had shelves around the picture rail with all her soft toys on it. My parents bought her a big pine bed and it was lovely.
When she was old enough, we put her in it. She never slept through the night.

She had always been a great sleeper whilst she was in the cot in our room. She slept right through 'till about 8am every morning.
But when we put her in the small room, she would wake every night at around 3am without fail.
One night she was sitting up in bed staring through the open door of her room, at the corner outside our room. She was terrified.

So, it ended up that she remained in our room, in our bed until she was three. Then we tried again. I built her a cabin type bed on raised stilts and she loved it. But there were still occasions when she would wake staring at the corner outside our room.

Now on one occasion, while she was in the small room the first time around, I woke at around 3am with the oddest feeling that I was being watched.
I got up and went to check on my daughter, but she was sleeping soundly. I went to the bathroom and then back to bed. I fidgetted a bit, trying to get comfortable and ending up lying on my side facing the bedroom door.

Now, I'm not sure how to describe this properly, but I saw the figure of a little boy. At first I thought it was my youngest lad until I twigged what he was wearing. He was dressed in an old fashioned school uniform, with shorts, blazer and cap. A bit like the pictures of kids you might see in a film about the evacuations during the War. The strangest thing was, it was as if he was part way through the door - half in, half out on the landing. He was non - corporeal, almost solid but not quite, just standing in the door. Then he vanished.

Last year, we swapped bedrooms with our little girl because she has so much stuff, the small room was almost full.
It was an odd experience being in there. Sometimes it was lovely and warm. Other times ice would form on the windows - and that was when the radiator under the window was on full and red hot.

I saw the boy a couple more times after we had swapped. He was standing in the corner outside our old bedroom. He would stand there for a short while, then fade away.

This evening, I tried out my new dowsing rods in that spot and they went crazy, crossing over each other and spinning around. Then I tried them in the small room. The same thing happened. I then used my pendulum in the small room and asked it if this was the little boy's room. The answer was yes.

We have now turned the small room into an office and have moved our bedroom into what used to be the dining room.

2. The Smell of Freesias

2007-05-11T09:07:00.000-07:00

So, we moved in.

One night not long after I was sitting in the living room at around 11pm.
My wife was in the kitchen and the kids were in bed. I had my arm along the back of the sofa and suddenly I felt a sharp scratch on my forearm. I rolled up my sleeve and in front of my eyes, three scratches appeared on my arm from nowhere. At the same moment I got a waft of a sweet smelling perfume from the doorway. It lingered in the air for several minutes, then dissipated.
I told my wife and showed her the scratches and we have both smelt the same perfume since on many occasions. It was the smell of Freesias, something I recognised immediately as they are my Mum's favourite flowers and she often has them around the house at home in Liverpool.

So, we did a little research into previous tenants of the house. Apparently the house had lain empty for almost a year before we moved in and quite a few people had looked at the place, but none had taken it.
Some had told our next door neighbours that they had considered taking it, but were put off by an uneasy feeling they had when they entered.
We hadn't at this point mentioned to our neighbours what had happened, but we were interested to hear that the previous tenant had often mentioned to them that odd things had happened to her.
We found out that the original tenant had been an elderly couple that had lived here since the house was built back in the fifties. They had kept a very tidy garden and had grown lots of flowers.
We corroborated this with my wife's uncle who actually knew the old couple and had visited the house many times when he was younger. He confirmed that there was a well kept garden with lots of flowers and that the old lady's favourite - and the ones she kept bunches of in the house - were Freesias!

1. My spooky house.

2007-05-11T08:22:00.000-07:00

As a non believer in the paranormal, I've always tried to rationalise ghost stories and sightings and try to explain them away as the product of an over active imagination.

As far as the so called "Celebrity Mediums" are concerned, I have doubts about the veracity of their claims to be able to channel the spirits of the dead and am firmly of the opinion that most of them are just out for a quick buck and have no real psychic powers. I used to work for several TV companies and have worked on a programme where the 'psychic' gave messages to the audience. The fact that the microphones over the audience were switched on well in advance of the recording of the show and that you could clearly hear people discussing loved ones who had passed over and their hopes of contacting him/her and the researcher sitting in a corner making notes made me think that it wasn't as real as they like to make out.

That's not to say that I don't believe that there are some people out there who really do have psychic gifts and the stories I am about to relate have made me reconsider my skepticism, but I thought I should make my feelings on the whole subject known before I go on.

So, you're probably wondering when I'm going to get to the point.

It's now.

We moved into our house about four and a half years ago. We got the keys from the council and were overjoyed when we saw the house for the first time. It is a semi, set back from the road with a huge back garden. The best thing though is the location.
We are about five miles from the centre of Wrexham, at the far end of Cefn Road. In the middle of the countryside with only two neighbours.
So, having decided to decorate the place before we moved in, my wife and I spent most days there.

One evening, having returned alone to get on with painting the hall, I was busy. It was December and by eight o'clock it was pitch dark outside. I was upstairs painting the walls and about to pack in and go home when I heard a woman's voice calling my name. Thinking it was my wife, I shouted that I would be down in a minute. The voice came again and I got up and went to the top of the stairs to see who was shouting me. There was no one there. I went downstairs and looked around. The house was empty. Thinking it a bit weird, I phoned my wife who was still at our old house! She hadn't been out that night. The following day, we were both at our new house painting the kitchen, when I mentioned what had happened the night before. She went pale and said with relief that she was glad I said that. I asked why and she told me how the day before my experience, while she was upstairs painting the bedroom, she had heard a woman's voice calling her name and she had thought it was her mum come to visit and that I had let her in. When she had gone to check she found no one there. This was the beginning of a very odd four and a half years!