Ghosts, Spirits & The Paranormal

I do get asked if I’ve ever seen a ghost or a spirit and the answer to that is yes, I have.  My ghostly encounters started in the family home and then after that I’ve seen some strange things and downright crazy stuff too.

Before I start, I just wanted to distinguish between a ghost and a spirit.  In my experience and also based on research and talking with other mediums, a ghost or any form of paranormal activity is not always a dark entity trying to scare the living daylights out of you.  I’ve been told that when things fly across the room or when there are doors slamming shut by themselves, this is usually caused by a massive build up of energy around a particular person, generally being a very sensitive teenager that is incredibly fearful of strange noises etc, which leads to more and more negative energy being expelled which results in the physical moving of objects etc.  This would tie in with my own experiences however who knows really what it is?

A spirit on the other hand is more likely to be a visitation from a deceased loved one who has managed to cross from their dimension, back into ours.  This takes an enormous amount of energy on both parts really, they have to try and materialise to us and we need to be open enough to receive, so as scary as it can be, it’s a pretty amazing experience if you do get to see one!

So here are some of my personal encounters, that started from around 12 years old:

Haunted House

I grew up in a quiet street in Old Harlow, the house was built around  the 1950’s and rumour had it that a little girl died in one of the bedrooms of our house, before we lived there.  This did use to play on my mind a bit.

My mum was the first person to notice that the stairs would creak at the same time every morning, around 2.30am.  My dad logically put this down to pipes (are there pipes in stairs??), however, I also heard footsteps in the loft room above where I slept.  Some nights I was rigid with fear and had to remind myself that my dad was probably right, that it was the central heating turning on in the house.

However, then some more “unexplainable” stuff started to happen and the more it happened, the more my fear grew and grew.  Here are the examples;

I was watching TV in my bedroom when my stapler, that was sitting on the middle of my desk (I was nowhere near it) flung itself across the room and hit the wall.

I was in the loft room playing on the computer when a cardboard box launched itself up and flew across the room (I have never run so fast out of a loft shaft in my life!).

My mum woke me up one morning to show me and my sister the carriage clock that was under my dad’s pillow.  My dad had been at work for a few hours and it had not been there when he left.  God only knows how but it was just sitting under his pillow, next to my mum as she slept!

One morning I was woken by screams from my mum in her bedroom, when I ran in I saw that every picture on the wall had been thrown off and was lying face down in the middle of the carpet.  Not only that, my grandparents also had strange stuff in their house, a similar thing, three picture frames were strategically placed, off the wall, lined up against the skirting board, when no one had touched them.

As this was going on, the fear in me increased.  I was terrified of the dark and I felt a presence around me all the time in that house.

The most terrifying thing though was when I felt like this “ghost” was really playing with me, in a mischievous way.

I was aged around fourteen.  I was home alone, getting ready to go out with a friend.  Her dad was coming to pick me up so I was rushing to get ready.  I went into the bathroom and got something out of the medicine cabinet.  It was an old fashioned type cabinet that had a safety latch that you could reach if you stuffed your finger into a little hole on the side.  It was very hard to get inside and took great effort to open.  My dad always made a point of saying it must be closed, locked and checked properly, so I took out want I needed then closed the door, listening for the “click” of the lock and then pulling on the door to ensure it was locked tight, which it was.

I left the room and went upstairs, then the doorbell rang, it was my friend’s dad.  I opened the door and realised that I had left something in the bathroom, so I told him I would be two minutes.  As I walked into the bathroom, to my complete shock the cabinet was fully, wide open, so all the contents were on show.  Even if I hadn’t of locked and closed it properly (which in my mind there was no doubt of this), there was no way physically it could have opened that wide on its own.  I ran back to the front door and my friends dad looked at me and said “Tanya, you look like you have seen a ghost”.

Once I moved out of the family home, my mum told me that the strange happenings just simply stopped.  It wasn’t until I joined my mediumship development circle in 2015 that I found out that there isn’t such a thing as haunted houses and that its actually the human fearful energy that manifests into physically making material objects move and the more stressed and scared the individual is, the more it will happen…so it was my fear that was haunting that house and that’s why as soon as I left home, it all stopped.  I moved into a flat at age twenty three and it was a new building, so I felt like there wasn’t any “ghosts” there, so I wasn’t scared and because I wasn’t scared, it was fine, there was no hauntings for me to deal with.

 

A Ghost In Greece

During my teenage years, in the middle of the strange going-on’s in the family home, the ghostly encounters didn’t stop at the house.  In 1995 I went to Rhodes in the Greek Islands with my family and sister’s then boyfriend.

My sister and her boyfriend, a 6 foot tall strapping lad, had their own apartment whilst I shared with my mum and dad.

After a couple of nights, both my sister and her boyfriend banged our door down in the middle of the night, her boyfriend being particularly traumatised.  He explained that coins had been flicked across the room off the table without anything touching them and he felt like something was in the room.  My dad laughed this off, however they were both adamant they would not sleep in that apartment, so scared they slept on an inflated lilo in the hallway for the duration of the holiday!

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it all (even if I had seen my own share of weird stuff at home), so her boyfriend told me to go in there with him the next day.

So we did exactly that, the next morning, me, Karley and her boyfriend sat in the little apartment and waited for something to happen.  I did feel like there was someone in there, the energy was weird.  We waited for a bit and then bingo, just as he described, the coins that were all stacked on the table, started to literally flick off the table top, like someone was doing it with an invisible finger!  I literally could not believe my eyes!  There was absolutely no logical explanation for what was happening.  Her boyfriend was so pleased that I had seen it “the weird thing is, its only English coins that are flicked” he said.  Sure enough, he was right, all the foreign currency had been left and only the English coins were moved.  So my conclusion was that it was an English spirit that was trying to get our attention.

Jack With The Cap

One of the most incredible experiences with me seeing an actual spirit was on the way home from a medium reading that I had been too.  The medium told me that I have a great grandfather called Jack who wore a flat cap that is always around me (I’ve been told this a few times by different mediums, after the session I checked with my parents and it turns out that both my great-granddads were called Jack, however only one of them wore the cap).

Anyway, driving home from the reading, I was thinking about it all and then as I drove up the hill towards home, there is a little entrance to the local park and wooded area.  This sounds as though I am making it up, however I promise you this is the truth: it was a dark and eerily foggy winter night, the sort of low fog from Dickensian times.

As I approached the opening to the park, there stood an old man, looking right at me, with a flat cap on.  As I drove past, our eyes met and he lifted his cap up in acknowledgement, then as I looked in my rear view mirror, he completely vanished.  As you can imagine, I almost crashed the car!!  I have no doubt it was Jack, just giving me a little wave to confirm that he is there, even if I can’t see him (most of the time!).

Nan & Major

On the same road as that little park, up the hill, I’ve also had another encounter.  I was walking along, going back home, when I heard footsteps behind me (this was daytime).

I looked around and couldn’t believe my eyes.  A little old lady, walking a Labrador was behind me.  But the lady was the absolute spitting image of my late nan, who had died when I was five years old.  She smiled at me and I turned back.  It was a split second that I turned around again, as I needed a double take.  But she and the dog had gone.  There was nowhere she could have gone!  She literally disappeared.  It wasn’t until I got home that I remembered my dad had a Labrador that he adored, called Major, that had died years before I was born.

The Man In My Flat

This is the most prolific ghostly experience for me!  I was in my flat, in was the middle of the night and me and my boyfriend had both fallen asleep in front of the TV, each on a different sofa.  The TV had actually been turned off, so the room was silent.

I felt like I had been woken up, I was a bit hazy from sleep, I looked in front of me then I saw lots of bright light raising up from the floor.  Suddenly a man, just materialised in front of my eyes.  He had reddish hair, shaven, and a red goatee beard.  He had on a blue chequered shirt and I couldn’t see his legs because they were just ablaze with light.  The remarkable thing was the look of pure concentration on his face, he wasn’t looking at me, he was almost straining to keep himself there, like it took an enormous amount of energy for him to do this.   Then he just disappeared.  I sat there in disbelief.  Did I just see that?  Am I dreaming?  No, I’m awake……who was he?  To this day, I still don’t know why he wanted to show himself to me.  However, I do feel like I know who he may be.  That very afternoon, before I fell asleep, I was reading in the paper about some fireman who had died at a fire in Stevenage.  This story really saddened me and I kept thinking about the men that lost their lives.  I can’t explain why, but I feel like one of them was this guy.  I have no idea what they all looked like, perhaps its something I should try and research!

Liverpool Street Station

I’ve saved the weirdest encounter until last!  It was the end of a working day, I was walking from my office to Liverpool Street station to catch the train home.  As I walked up the steps toward the entrance of the station, I heard a scream.  I looked up and saw a man, dressed in a suit, running for his life.  He was being chased by two men, dressed in white boiler suits, strategically putting rubber gloves on as they ran (the sort of motion one does before they are about to put a hand somewhere unwelcomed!…).  The guy being chased was literally yelling and shouting at the top of his voice, then they all three disappeared into the station.  I just stood still and watched, however, I noticed that I was the only one that appeared to be watching.  No one else looked up, everyone just carried on walking.  I looked around for a camera crew or something – but nothing.  Now, I don’t know if what I saw was paranormal or just some weird London stuff (I could write a book on the strange things I saw when I worked and commuted in London), however it just felt different, it didn’t seem real at all.  If it was some sort of energy memory, god only knows what those men did to the poor guy!

So that’s all I can think of for now (or one’s that really do stand out)…since developing  my mediumistic skills I have had a few things that have happened at home, but nothing on the scale of the above!  I can also feel a spirit when I link in, they touch my face normally, it’s a stroking sensation and just lets me know that they are there, I don’t find this scary at all.

Thanks again for reading and as normal, I would love to hear others stories, if you have some!

Until next time,

Tanya