Mischievous Former Tenant
I moved into my present flat in Sept 1991, actually 19/9/91. I was not aware that the previous occupant had died of a heart attack in the bathroom, on the toilet.
The move took a week and once I had moved in, I started to paint the flat which was all in pink; pink rooms, pink doors, pink carpet! It is quite possible that painting the flat in white may or may not have upset the unseen occupant, who, again, I learned much later, loved her flat and simply loved the colour pink!
I would start painting the flat as soon as I returned home from work and continued painting for 3-4 hours each evening. One evening a colleague telephoned me. He was on the night shift and wanted to have a bit of a chat, so I told him to call back as I was in the process of washing the paintbrushes and then wanted to watch a favourite soap, could he call after the soap finished? He agreed.
Whilst I was washing the brushes in the bathroom, the bathroom door quietly closed, despite there being a door stop. Not only did the door close, but all the hinges etc. of the door lock – internal mechanism, simply came apart and fell into the door cavity, thus locking me inside the bathroom.
Now the bathroom does not have any windows, just a ventilation system. I used whatever instruments I had on hand to try to un-jam the door/lock but to no avail, I was locked in!
At about 8pm, I heard my phone ringing and ringing, this was my colleague phoning me back By this time, I had started to feel fairly dizzy, as the ventilation system was not just old but had not been serviced for years!
At about 9pm the phone started to ring again, and then again at 10pm. All this time, I did what I could to open the bathroom door, but it was shut so tight! I did have an old knife with me that I had used to stir the paint. Well that was no help either, apart from the fact that I managed to take the door handle out as well as some of the mechanism, thus making a small hole in the door, just big enough for an eye to peer out of! All this time, I kept shouting for help – to no avail!
Thankfully, one of the walls of the bathroom divides my flat from the next door flat, so I started hammering on the wall. Nothing happened! I remembered the elderly lady who lived next door was hard of hearing and she‘d had her T.V. on full blast, so I banged on the wall harder than ever.
At around 11:30ish, the old lady heard the banging, and managed to make out that I had been locked inside my bathroom. She said she would call our housekeeper, who lived a few doors down. Just my luck, the housekeeper was out! All this while the phone kept ringing and ringing It must have been around midnight that I heard the housekeeper with a locksmith trying to open my front door, and all I could hear was that the front door was jammed, the lock would not turn!
Anyway, the locksmith managed to partially break the front door down. Once in, the elderly lady asked if she should answer my phone which had been ringing incessantly. I could hear her say to my colleague ‗No you can‘t speak to her, she is locked in her bathroom‘. The poor locksmith had to break the bathroom door down as he was totally unable to open it from the outside.
When the door finally opened, he accused me of having turned the inside lock! But on closer inspection, he just could not understand why the main part of the lock mechanism had fallen inside the door cavity! ‗Oh‘ he said, ‗poor workmanship‘. Now the previous occupant had lived in this flat for years and years, and she never had a problem with the locks on the doors! How did the doorstop move away from the door? What made the door close? There was no breeze. I had had my back to the bathroom door, when it closed shut!
About 4 months down the line, I was told by my elderly neighbour, who had been childhood friends with the previous occupant of my flat that the lady had died in the bathroom.
After this incident, a number of other occurrences took place, i.e. the cooker would turn on by itself, just the gas! When having a really hot bath one night, I found myself looking up at the mirror to see an invisible hand writing the full name of the previous occupant!
This was the last straw. I asked this lady to go in peace and leave me alone. Though she did leave me in peace, I would see from time to time a shadow flitting past, going towards the very tall Victorian windows overlooking a garden.
I was then told by my next door neighbour that Ms. Barrow had her desk near the window, where she would sit and write – she had been one of the top committee members of the Royal Society for the Blind, an organisation she had committed her life to, and in return had been awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire).
Day‘s later, I called in a priest to come and bless the flat! But did Ms. Barrow leave?? She would return every now and again. She left me in peace 4 years later, when my elderly neighbour died in her sleep in the flat next door! For my new neighbour who moved in, that is another story!
Not wishing to take any more chances, I decided to keep a cat, and when he passed away, I have kept other cats – they are pretty sensitive things and no doubt would warn me of any unseen, eerie, not-of-this-world beings.
I moved into my present flat in Sept 1991, actually 19/9/91. I was not aware that the previous occupant had died of a heart attack in the bathroom, on the toilet.
The move took a week and once I had moved in, I started to paint the flat which was all in pink; pink rooms, pink doors, pink carpet! It is quite possible that painting the flat in white may or may not have upset the unseen occupant, who, again, I learned much later, loved her flat and simply loved the colour pink!
I would start painting the flat as soon as I returned home from work and continued painting for 3-4 hours each evening. One evening a colleague telephoned me. He was on the night shift and wanted to have a bit of a chat, so I told him to call back as I was in the process of washing the paintbrushes and then wanted to watch a favourite soap, could he call after the soap finished? He agreed.
Whilst I was washing the brushes in the bathroom, the bathroom door quietly closed, despite there being a door stop. Not only did the door close, but all the hinges etc. of the door lock – internal mechanism, simply came apart and fell into the door cavity, thus locking me inside the bathroom.
Now the bathroom does not have any windows, just a ventilation system. I used whatever instruments I had on hand to try to un-jam the door/lock but to no avail, I was locked in!
At about 8pm, I heard my phone ringing and ringing, this was my colleague phoning me back By this time, I had started to feel fairly dizzy, as the ventilation system was not just old but had not been serviced for years!
At about 9pm the phone started to ring again, and then again at 10pm. All this time, I did what I could to open the bathroom door, but it was shut so tight! I did have an old knife with me that I had used to stir the paint. Well that was no help either, apart from the fact that I managed to take the door handle out as well as some of the mechanism, thus making a small hole in the door, just big enough for an eye to peer out of! All this time, I kept shouting for help – to no avail!
Thankfully, one of the walls of the bathroom divides my flat from the next door flat, so I started hammering on the wall. Nothing happened! I remembered the elderly lady who lived next door was hard of hearing and she‘d had her T.V. on full blast, so I banged on the wall harder than ever.
At around 11:30ish, the old lady heard the banging, and managed to make out that I had been locked inside my bathroom. She said she would call our housekeeper, who lived a few doors down. Just my luck, the housekeeper was out! All this while the phone kept ringing and ringing It must have been around midnight that I heard the housekeeper with a locksmith trying to open my front door, and all I could hear was that the front door was jammed, the lock would not turn!
Anyway, the locksmith managed to partially break the front door down. Once in, the elderly lady asked if she should answer my phone which had been ringing incessantly. I could hear her say to my colleague ‗No you can‘t speak to her, she is locked in her bathroom‘. The poor locksmith had to break the bathroom door down as he was totally unable to open it from the outside.
When the door finally opened, he accused me of having turned the inside lock! But on closer inspection, he just could not understand why the main part of the lock mechanism had fallen inside the door cavity! ‗Oh‘ he said, ‗poor workmanship‘. Now the previous occupant had lived in this flat for years and years, and she never had a problem with the locks on the doors! How did the doorstop move away from the door? What made the door close? There was no breeze. I had had my back to the bathroom door, when it closed shut!
About 4 months down the line, I was told by my elderly neighbour, who had been childhood friends with the previous occupant of my flat that the lady had died in the bathroom.
After this incident, a number of other occurrences took place, i.e. the cooker would turn on by itself, just the gas! When having a really hot bath one night, I found myself looking up at the mirror to see an invisible hand writing the full name of the previous occupant!
This was the last straw. I asked this lady to go in peace and leave me alone. Though she did leave me in peace, I would see from time to time a shadow flitting past, going towards the very tall Victorian windows overlooking a garden.
I was then told by my next door neighbour that Ms. Barrow had her desk near the window, where she would sit and write – she had been one of the top committee members of the Royal Society for the Blind, an organisation she had committed her life to, and in return had been awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire).
Day‘s later, I called in a priest to come and bless the flat! But did Ms. Barrow leave?? She would return every now and again. She left me in peace 4 years later, when my elderly neighbour died in her sleep in the flat next door! For my new neighbour who moved in, that is another story!
Not wishing to take any more chances, I decided to keep a cat, and when he passed away, I have kept other cats – they are pretty sensitive things and no doubt would warn me of any unseen, eerie, not-of-this-world beings.
No comments:
Post a Comment