My dad still lives in the house my siblings & I were raised in, with his latest wife.
I've described the happenings before, but for some reason, I remember having got confused over the age of the house. It has a plaque on the front proclaiming it's construction in 1749.
My paternal grandparents owned it before my dad, but they owned land at the back also, which was since sold. My gran told me they had the biggest pig & poultry farm in Lancashire there (though when I've mentioned it to locals in recent years, who've been farmers for generations, nobody remembers them - I saw old photos though of the beasts there).
We (my brothers & sister & myself) refer to the place as Hell House. There were so many odd happenings there over the years, that it's difficult to know where to start.
You'd just be settling down to watch a film in the evening, and there'd be a blood-curdling scream from (seemingly) the hall - but everyone would dash to the hall and find it empty.
You'd just be settling down to sleep, when a distinct sound, like someone drumming their fingers loudly on the lid of the record player right next to your head, would have you rigid & sleepless for the entire night.
You'd hear a bang from above, so violent that you'd see the cieling above you shake, but there'd be no evidence of what caused it.
My older brother & I used to meet each other often on the landing in the early hours of the morning, when we'd both be creeping about, trying to summon up courage to go downstairs to look at the grandfather clock because it was chiming repeatedly - but would invariably just stop when you opened the living room door.
There was an occasion when I was in my early teens, and I was sitting on the edge of my bed reading the lyrics off an album cover while the record played (Hotel California), and my sister was perched on the floor in the middle of the room, when suddenly, the stylus seemed to be pushed down hard and scrawbed backwards and forwards across the album making a horrible row, and the same time that started to happen, a single carnation that had been sitting in an earthenware pot on a bookshelf at the edge of the room, several feet away, just dropped from above, onto the album sleeve in my hands.
I think the scariest time was when I awoke to hear my sister crying. We shared a bedroom. I was always a very light sleeper. Also, she rarely cried. I asked what was wrong, and she said the furniture had been banging around the room, and she couldn't understand how it hadn't woken everybody in the house up, it was so loud - but she'd been particularly scared & confused that I'd slept through it, knowing how a tissue falling would usually be enough to disturb me. I put the light on with the overhead switch, and could see that an old cast-iron type-writer which had been on a table next to her bed was now lying on the floor. The table had a cupboard in it, and she said the banging had been coming out of the cupboard, really loud.
It did occur to me that she may have been thrashing about in her sleep and knocked the type-writer off herself, though it seemed odd to me that I'd not heard it. I tried to reassure her, telling her I'd stay awake till I knew she was asleep, and to get her head down.
The instant I switched the light off, there was an almighty thump that sounded like it came out of the wardrobe.
I put the light on & leapt out of bed, and she jumped right up into my arms. We just stood there in the middle of the room, while these loud, violent bangs seemed to emanate from one piece of furniture after another, round and round the room.
If I'd made a tiny fraction of that noise coming home late the entire household would have been up investigating, but my parents in the next room, apparently heard nothing. Same for my little brother in the room on the other side.
As each piece of furniture banged, it's door or drawer handles would rattle, and it would actually shake, just as if someone was inside, and trying earnestly to break their way out. To say I was scared shitless would be a masterpiece of understatement.
Then everything went still & quiet for a few moments, while we just there stock still holding our breath (well, Sue was actually in my arms with her feet off the ground). Next there came a soft thud at the window. I went & lifted a curtain, while Sue clung to me like a leach, and saw my big brother in the drive. I just said to Sue that I was going to let him in, and she clung onto me with both hands every step of the way.
I let Pete in - he'd been locked out. He made us a brew while we told him what happened. I asked if he'd been chucking stuff at the walls, prior to the gentle knock at the window - I was clutching at straws really, because the sounds were definitely from inside each piece of furniture in turn, and they were mainly stood against internal walls, but still, I needed to ask the question. Our cups of tea were spilled all over because we were literally shaking uncontrollably. Pete said he'd only chucked one bit of mud up on realising he was locked out, and he'd known we were already up & about because of our light being on.
When we tried to speak to the parents about it the next day, I was told by my dad to shut up and stop frightening my little sister with such pigging nonsense. He said he'd check if we had rats. I told him he'd better look for 7 foot ones that carried hammers and could leap, invisibly around the room then, to which, he reacted badly.
There was one other point - when going downstairs to open the door, there was a bleeping noise we heard on the landing. When I was speaking to my mum about it, I said that I just couldn't understand how she'd not heard anything when it was shockingly loud.
She said the only thing she'd heard was my little brother's radio making a funny noise because he'd left it switched on - she said she'd got up to switch it off in the early hours of the morning, and our bedroom door was open & the light was on, so she knew we were up.
She was trying to tell me that that was what the bleeping noise was we heard on the landing (which in fact was very quiet anyway in relation to the banging noises that had been going on). What I didn't understand about that scenario, was that the day before, I'd tried to replace the batteries in his radio for him, but after removing the old ones, found there were no new ones to put in, and the radio didn't run off the mains, so how it was supposedly making a bleeping noise after being left on after the channel was broadcasting, with no bloody batteries in it is just a minor mystery to me.
We used to have all the neighbours round every Saturday night for drinks & snacks. It was a riot, as they all made their own wines and brought bottles with them.
One Saturday night, while the neighbours were there, we were all sitting in the front room, chatting, when the squeaky door handle between that room & the kitchen started noisily moving up & down. At first there was just talk of needing to get some WD40 on it, but then my dad started shouting for my little brother to leave it alone, because the noise was irritating.
Instead of stopping, it started writhing up & down more insistently, making an unpleasant screeching noise. My dad started shouting more ferociously at Paul to knock it off. But in reality, Paul wasn't doing it. He wasn't in the kitchen, and neither was anybody else. He'd been upstairs, and appeared through another door as my dad was bellowing at him. The back door, leading from the kitchen was closed and there was nobody around - besides which, nobody could have reached the kitchen without being seen coming up the drive from the front room where we were sitting.
It did that on a number of occasions, but that one was satisfying, because there were so many witnesses.
Another time, Sue was sitting at the kitchen table with several of her mates (in their early teens), when a milk jug which had been left on the draining board at the other side of the room, just rose up by its own volition, floated across the room, and dropped, smashing on the table right in front of their eyes. They all ran screaming, and some of them refused to ever set foot into our house again.
There's more, but have to go out to collect Sarah from her mate's now, so will resume later.
