Ghosts

The logical side of me doesn't believe in ghosts, I keep telling myself that. However, I was 'haunted' as a kid growing up in London...



I grew up in a classic old London terrace in Kennington Road, Lambeth, SE 11, there it is today, above, courtesy Google Maps. It was an old place (typically) and I'd always been told it went up in the 1700's, so was creaky, drafty but solid as a rock. I confirmed the dates just this morning, on a whim, the net's become a wonderful place for this. Built in 1790, on the edge of an 8 acre field called White Hart Field, previously known as Coney Warren. The terrace was then named Chester Place, a name that fell out of use in the late 1800's. Research has shown me that our place,261, was at that time number 16 and the next door neighbors were folk like one 'Jonathan Duncan, the younger, a currency reformer, son of a governor of Bombay' and '(Sir) Thomas Edlyne Tomlins, legal writer. He was called to the bar in 1783, and was for some years editor of the St. James's Chronicle. He held the post of parliamentary counsel to the chancellor of the exchequer for Ireland. He was knighted in 1814. He published several legal works, including Statutes at Large, 41 to 49, George III'



An odd link I found was this one:and I wonder if it is in any way linked to one of my favourite authors, Micheal Moorcock in any way. Powyes (here a place, a vilage in Wales) is a character in the Jerry Cornelius chronicles, as is the 'Cure for Cancer'- the title of the first book in the series...Dr Powell, mentioned in the article, lived at (then) number 30...

I used to have nightmares that saw me paralysed on my bed, gaze riveted at a space on the wall over my bed. I'd wake up at night and a voice would be demanding me to roll over and look at the wall, at a face that appeared on the wall, it looked a lot like this picture...






Whether I had seen a picture of this apparition in a book or something I cannot remember, i was around 5 or 6, I used to devour books and had a grand old set of encyclopedias that engrossed me, so perhaps I saw it there. The wind used to moan down the chimney and perhaps that was the voice. My mother says that she would come in and find me pale, wide-eyed, stiff as a board and transfixed at the spot on the wall, taking no cognisance of her presence. This carried on until I was about 8 or so, until one night I refused to roll over, a couple of nights of that and it took the hint...

One day the old lady next door died, she was ancient and wheel-chair bound.I'd never met her as she was always inside and I was somehow scared of her as she peered through the lace curtains at us. For three nights after her death her silhouette appeared on my bedroom door, lit up by the street light over in Denny Way... oh yes it did, on her wheelchair at that!



My mother's sensitive to these things, its her 'witchy' side (mwahahahaha) and she swears she felt two 'presences' in the house, one evil and malevolent but this was kept in check by a stronger 'good' force. If we were alone in the house, at night, dad was out working or away, the sound of footsteps would be heard walking up from the ground floor, up the stairwell and past up to the attic, where our bedrooms were. Of course there was no-one there, but a sense of well-being and calm would envelop us - this was the good one, coming up the stairs to look after us...

I was terrified of the basement in that house, I had nightmares whereby I was going through the basement to the backyard and I'd get grabbed, my feet churning through tar to get away. The basement was used for, predictably junk and had the coal cellars. Our geyser was coal fired until I was about 8 I think, so coal was an all year round necessity. One door in the basement led down further, I have no idea what was down here as at some stage someone had filled this space with coal, so the stairs disappeared in solid sooty blackness.I remember sitting down there,on the pile of coal - I must've gotten over the fear then, or was challenging it, with a only a box of matches for light. What was down there, why was there a stairwell leading down, where did it go? What existed on Coney Warren before Chester Place was built? I'd love to find out now.