My haunted family home

Hannah Betts

Hannah Betts' new home outside Birmingham boasted three spectres: a woman who paced the ground floor, an aged doctor forever racing up the stairs searching for a dying grandson, and the victim of a confrontation that had spilled over into murder.

I consider myself a sceptical atheist, yet spooks inveigled their way into my life in a way that made their existence impossible to deny — much as I and my family wished  we could.

I was 16 in the summer of 1987 when the Betts clan — Mum, Dad, my two brothers and sisters — moved to an elegant, three-storey, six-bedroom Victorian villa with a large garden just outside Birmingham.

According to local folklore, our new home boasted three spectres: a woman who paced the ground floor, an aged doctor forever racing up the stairs searching for a dying grandson, and the victim of a confrontation that had spilled over into murder.

There was even the traditional bloodstain on the stairs that could not be removed (now covered with carpet).

Oh, how we scoffed. And, yet, doors would shut of their own volition, footsteps could be heard. Every night at 4am, someone — something — would tear up the stairs, rattling and then thrusting open the doors in its wake (all of which required proper turning and forcing), until it reached the master bedroom, entering in an all-mighty, door-slamming storm.

We would return home to find taps turned on full-force. An oven on the top floor would have its rings switched to red hot, making the house’s attics crackle perilously with heat. After the second time, we had it disconnected. Yet still it happened again.

One night, the boarded-up fireplace in my room ripped open. Behind it, stuffed up the chimney, were old Victorian newspapers describing the house’s murder.

My mother started behaving oddly. We eldest and Nanny Williams, our beloved summer-holiday addition, quizzed her. She confessed that, unable to sleep at night, she had seen a ‘dead child’ clad in Victorian garb.

The most terrifying room in the house belonged to my little brother. That summer, he became mute, sunken-eyed.

Asked why, he sighed: ‘Every night, it’s the same. The lady with the big bottom [a bustle?] and the two men fighting over my bed, then one man hurts the other and the lady screams.’

From then on, he slept in my mother’s bedroom.

My grandmother was next to occupy his room —  then refused to ever again.

My mother braved it. Come morning, its door was locked. She refused to confide what had taken place, saying only that it was ‘something to do with time’. Somehow this was, and remains, the most horrifying thing I’d ever heard.

That room is still locked. We haven’t used it to this day.

Over time, events gradually petered out. I am told that this is standard. Ghosts act up with newcomers; but then they — and you — adjust. 

I visited the house last weekend, almost 30 years on, to celebrate my 43rd birthday. All was quiet.
That said, our neighbour’s new cleaner recently told him that she would not be returning, having seen a woman walk through a wall straight into our living room. 

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