You may remember the troublesome spirit who wrecked our house soon after we moved in. He (or she – lady spirits can be very unlady-like when they put their minds to it), so he or she had attacked our shower room with utmost violence, firstly by flooding the bathroom and the kitchen and, if that wasn’t enough, by smashing the glass walls of the shower cubicle to smithereens. All of those poltergeist hostilities occurred in the middle of the night when everyone was peacefully asleep. If you can’t remember, here is a link to that dreadful event https://annalegat.com/2017/02/25/ghost-in-the-shower/

I was sure I had successfully negotiated truce with the restless spirit, and indeed he (or she) has been living with us in relative harmony over the past six year, alas – he (or she) is back. With a vengeance! And he (or she) is thrusting about the house while we’re all separated, cowering in our rooms, swallowing our fear and hoping that it must be one of us who is doing the haunting. Let me explain why we’re separated: Daughter has COVID (and she has been hit by it hard, her young age and triple vaccinations no match for the pesky virus) and we are trying to mitigate transmission within our four walls. Our Resident Spirit has taken advantage of the situation.

Last night, he (or she) raged in the hallway downstairs. We inherited a tryptic of some ancestral etchings from late Aunt Sheila and after repainting the hallway (very recently) we hung them there in a neat row. Last night, our Resident Spirit decided to re-arrange them. Bad mood? That time of the month? Toothache? I don’t know, but he (or she) went for the pictures big time. We were jolted awake (in our respective rooms) by an almighty crash-bang-wallop. Mutual accusations flew across the landing: “Was it you?”, “Who did it?”, “I don’t know!”, “Wasn’t me!”, “Stop lying! I told you to stay in your room!” and so on…

Finally, I (the bravest of the lot) went to investigate, baseball bat in hand. And there it was: destruction of the pictures, torn backs, splinters of wooden frames on the floor, skirting board badly bruised. Two of the etchings survived fairly intact, but the third one (with the Veiled Lady) will need some reconstructive work. I wonder if the Veiled Lady has somehow managed to offend our Resident Spirit. Who knows? He (or she) ain’t talking.

And this may an opportune moment to mention my new domestic noir thriller, Broken, where Fate mysteriously intervenes to overcome evil. Some may call it “paranormal” but in my view there is nothing ‘para” about the spiritual world. For me, the spiritual world exists and, moreover, it is rather perfectly normal.

Broken can be pre-ordered here