I grew up in a haunted house. It was listed as having a poltergeist, who would tear clothing and hide pins & needles in food that was being cooked. As an infant I was happily unaware of this and it was a loving and cheerful household. The house itself was very old, dating back to the sixteenth century and supposedly one of the stop off points for Mary Queen of Scots before she was imprisoned on Loch Leven.
I grew up there and life was very very normal. The house creaked, groaned and generally made weird noises, as all old buildings do. There were the usual infestations of mice and insects that come with old houses too, so we always had at least one cat in the household who's job it was to keep the numbers down.
However as I got a little older I was told, by my mother, of all the ghosts that lived in the house. The poltergeist, the cat, the baby on the stairs and a bunch of others that I fail to remember now; I think it was seven in total but I cannot recall. The first night after being told this I felt restless and struggled to get to sleep, however I reasoned that nothing had happened to me up until this point so it was unlikely to happen now. I fell soundly asleep after that and never had any issues.
My local primary school used to take the occasional class to my house and I remember the kids sitting in the front garden (which was walled off) and my mum would delight in telling vivid tales of the various ghosts in a very theatrical manner. When I reflect on that now I think she was having huge amounts of fun displaying her creative side. The kids would sit in awe as she told the tales. I don't recall my class ever going to my home, it would technically ever been the first time I Worked From Home I suppose. However, children in playgrounds are good at whispering secrets to each other and it did not take long before various stories of horrific acts of brutality came back to me - all based in my house. I remember nodding wisely when being told a particularly horrible tale and saying, "Yes, these are things I have to live with.". Of course it was utter nonsense, but I could not resist the small gain in kudos that came with each tale.
Some of my more curious school mates would befriend me in the hope I would take them to the house and they could see these horrible things for themselves. Now, this I really enjoyed because I had a routine that I would go through. The child in question would be invited for an evening meal, in fairness my mum was and still is an amazing cook, so it was always a pleasure.
I would spend the day in school gently winding the kid up, telling him about things I had seen (which I never really did obviously) and confirming every story he had heard, occasionally embellishing the stories or even worse downplaying a story to make it more authentic, "Not quite true,", I would say, "the headless axeman actually carries his head in a bag with holes to see out of, that way he can get two hands on his axe". It did help me become quite adapt and story telling and on reflection it was simply continuing what my mother had started.
By the time that we left school the kid in question was usually wide eyed and whilst trying to keep a cool and calm exterior, was actually terrified. I relished this because it gave me an edge and made me feel strong and rugged. We would walk back from my school to my house, the steps of my friend getting more and more leaden as we approached the house. I did little to help and by this stage if I did say reassuring things it only made it seem more real and scary. Damn I loved that!
The house was surrounded by a high wall, with a rugged door leading from the street into the front garden. I never really appreciated that as a kid but it afforded us complete privacy, something that I would really appreciate in this open plan world we live in. I would open the gate and usher my friend in - something the child would do, like he was leaping over the Threshold of Doom! Just to get into my front garden.
I was obviously really happy and relaxed to be home, but the kid was just beginning to become really afraid. We would play in the garden for a bit and then I would take them into the house. A normal person opens the front door, steps through and closes the door behind them. A terrified kid, opens the door, leaps back in case a ghost looms out from the darkness, cautiously peeks inside and then goes through. A properly terrified kid does this with every door in the house, expecting some horrible atrocity to fall on them at every turn. For me, this was hysterical but I tried to be solemn and restrained throughout.
The house is on three levels (it still stands but we no longer live there), with the kitchen, dining room and library downstairs, sitting room, bathroom, master bedroom and dressing room on the second floor, a strange mezzanine room on the floor between the second and third floor and finally two bedrooms on the top floor which my brother and I had. The ceilings in our rooms were coombed, with hatches leading into a passage that ran between them. My brother and I had explored every inch of these 'secret passages' and had created little nests in them, where we would read comics by torchlight, or hide in when playing games. One end of the passage passed over a buttress wall which a small child could squeeze down and end up in the mezzanine room, which was used to keep the vacuum cleaner and ironing board.
Eventually, after much nervous exploration I would lead the now terrified kid to the furthest room in the house, which happened to be my brothers. I would let him play with my brother's toys and then say "I need to go to the toilet". I would then sneak into my room, go along the passage to my brothers and start making scraping noises behind the hatch. Then I would build to a ghostly groan, before starting to thump the wall. Without fail the kid in question would make a run for it, but not before I would race along the passage and slide down into the mezzanine room, bursting out shouting "Boogah boogah boogah!" at the top of my voice. This usually resulted in a terrified scream, but it caused one kid to wet himself (which I felt really bad about), another to freak and fall down the stairs and two to run straight out the front door and go home.
I always got told off for this, but while I think about it my parents must have known in advance what I was going to do and they were effectively complicit in my horrible behaviour. As time moved on the kids became much less easily scared and very soon simply found the whole thing funny. We would go hunting for ghosts instead of running away, but I had little enthusiasm for it as I knew nothing was going to be found.
Still, it was funny at the time and I find it equally amusing that fully grown adults still get spooked by things. I relish there being a challenge to "Sleep in a haunted house for a million pounds!", because I would jump at the chance, sleeping soundly while dreaming of what I would spend it on!