A ghost in Bentilee...

It was an ordinary afternoon in a council estate on the outskirts of Stoke. Dodge City, they called it, because you couldn’t stand still, you had to keep dodging. And that was the place my girlfriend Connie lived in.

It was a council bungalow. Connie lived with her housebound mothr, her partner who spent half his time away serving at Her Majesty’s pleasure, and her sister Anne. It wasn’t often you would find all the family together. But on this day, everyone was at home and sitting in the living room.

The old-fashioned door catches on the internal doors featured a slide bolt, much as my own 1930s house does today. Age and paint had made these stiff, so although they could be closed, they would not move accidentaly, nor under a light touch. For some reason, the catch was on the outside of the living room door. With the whole family in the room, the only outside door was closed on a Yale lock.

We chatted and watched tv for some time, before Anne got up to make tea. She turned the handle and pulled… but the door would not open! The bolt had closed on the outside! “It’s the gost again,” someone said. They were used to this. “It will probably do it again soon.” Anne, being something of a tomboy, climbed out of the front window with a door key and opened the door from outside. Now I was pretty skeptical, I can tell you, and I had to inspect the door bolt. It definitely couldn’t shift by itself, that much I determined. Just to be sure, I pushed it back as far as it could go. And I made sure the Yale lock was secure too.

We sat down again to drink our teas. The conversation inevitably turned to how the house was haunted. Connie told how an old lady sometimes appeared in the armchair late at night. How doors would shut, and there would be cold draughts even on a warm day. I wasn’t swallowing it. There’s no such thing as ghosts.

It was only 20 minutes later when we heard a noise. I went to the door. It was locked on the outside again! Yet there was nobody else in the house, and the front door was still on the Yale latch! How spooky was that? I was beginning to think perhaps there was something in their stories.

Anne went out the window again and opened the door. Nothing more happened that afternoon, but my nerves remained on edge. I’d never believed in ghosts, but there wasn’t any other explanation for this!