Audley Street - London

I am sitting here: that would be in my house that has no heat and freezing, yet have an understanding that I really ought to do a post. I should take a picture of the temperature gage which reads 38 degrees.

I said that I was going to do one about the subject of ghouls that should never be said. As it is so cold in my house, it reminds me of the events that transpired. – I shall make a freezy-cold attempt at the story.

When I was 5 years old we moved to London. I can attest that the scarcest thing I had thus encountered was “The Wizard of OZ”, and there in the monkeys and the Wicked Witch were terrifying. When my family moved into a temporary flat in Audley Street it backed up to a Church and a graveyard. If you have never been to London it would be hard to understand that this was not like an American burial ground, but more like a nice quite park. At 5 years old, I had never heard the word ghost; therefore had no idea what one was.

My sister and I shared a room upstairs in the flat, with my brother in the room next door to us. My brother, who even at the age of 9 is the most stoic person I know, would have these terrible dreams where he would hit his hand against the wall until they would bleed. I on the converse of physical kept seeing these 2 Victorian clad people coming into my room each night and clinically observing me. My sister who is 8 years older said that she never felt anything and that I was crazy. These visitations upstairs started to become more frequent and more frightening. I started to have dreams? Or a reality based thought about fire coming out of the stove in the kitchen and then walking down stairs to turn the stove off and then looking into the stove and having a demon trying to pull me in.

I finally refused to go upstairs to bed before my sister was ready to go. So my parents would put me in their bed down stairs then carry me up. One night I was sleeping in my parent’s bed and the 2 Victorian Ghosts came into their bedroom. I saw them by the door first then they approached the bed. The man ghost said it was time to take me. The Woman ghost started to argue with him. I screamed by head off and told my parents that I wanted to sleep upstairs with my sister.

My sister did not really want me in the room with her as she felt that I was somehow drawing these things into the room. She denies any recollection of the story, but she does remember the night when it was very cold outside and she was the baby sitter in charge. My brother with bandaged hands, me with an unnatural ability to feel a presence in the room and her who did not believe was all sitting in front of the television set watching Dr. Who when it happened. All the lights in the flat went out first. She was bummed because Dr. Who was a favorite, and then became alarmed because the room turned from warm to freezing in about 30 seconds. My brother was crying and I was screaming that they were in the room, because I could see these two ghosts as clear as if the lights were on.

My sister who is a devote non – believer in the supernatural even at the age of 14, became like a mother lion and spouted any clever thing, none of it Christian based I might add, to make it go away. The lights flickered more. I know she saw them. I am positive my brother did, but to this day they deny any memory of the incident. When I talked to my parents about the “Audley Street experience they are appalled that I never told them what the problem was: though they too think it was an over active imagination of a 5 year old. My brother and sister still cut me off short if I bring the subject up, because the subject in my family is off limits.

I am not going to write any more tonight, but one night in a cold apartment that I used to live in here in New Orleans, my sister finally saw something that disturbed her non- belief enough to question me about the incident that happened so many years ago. What she saw will be my next post.


PS – when my parent’s showed us St. Stephens Close the permanent apartment that we were moving to, I breathed a sigh of relief, because I thought what ever it was could not follow me there…