SOME years ago I was living in a small mining village in South Wales.
Being a widow with a family, I was glad to let a married daughter and
her husband rent part of the house. When I first went to live in that
particular house the neighbours told me that a previous tenant, an
old man who lived alone, was one morning found dead, sitting in a
chair. I was, however, not at all superstitious, so thought no more
about it.
We had got quite settled in our house, when, one night, on retiring
to bed, we heard footsteps coming upstairs and stop at my bedroom
door.
My daughter, aged thirteen years, was sleeping with me at the time,
and, although we had been in bed some time, we were neither of us
asleep, and lay waiting to see our door open, thinking it was either
my married daughter or her husband, who were sleeping in the room
below us. After several minutes had passed, we heard the same
footsteps going downstairs, and, when they reached the bottom, we
heard the catch of the bedroom door below, as if someone had passed
in and closed the door. Judge of my surprise to find next morning
that no one had been upstairs. But my daughter told me that, twice
her bedroom door opened and her husband got out of bed and latched it
again. Then they heard footsteps coming downstairs and, for the third
time the door opened. This time my son-in-law got a light and went on
a voyage of discovery, but could see no one. We agreed not to say
anything about this in front of the younger children for fear of
frightening them.
A day or so after, I was talking to a neighbour about some needlework
she wished me to do for her. My little girl, aged eight years, was
sitting in the kitchen with me, when, all at once, she gave one
scream and rushed over to me, looking simply awful. When I could get
the child calm enough to question her, she said a great white thing
had sprung over the stairs banisters, and had nearly touched her. We
hunted all over the house, but could not find anything to account for
the apparition, which, she said, went into the coal place under the
stairs. I tried to console her by saying it was a white cat that had
got in, but she would not have this, as she said it was “heaps too big
for a cat.”
The strange part about it was neither my neighbour nor myself had
seen anything. We did not stay long in that house.
The two girls are women now, but they often talk about this, and
wonder what it meant.