RALPH SMITH
Victoria BC, Canada

In the late 1960s, on returning from the daily school delivery I chanced to go through Shotesham St Mary and came upon a 'For Sale' notice on a very run down property which had often sworn to buy if I got the chance. It appealed to me by its pleasantly isolated position for it had all the advantages of a real country house yet was less than six miles from Norwich. Upon enquiry I was more than delighted to find that I could buy it for £800!

Obviously at that price it had problems - firstly it had been condemned and required major renovation before one could live in it. Secondly, there was no main water supply or electricity and rising damp was evident everywhere! However, it stood on a very nicely situated piece of land for which I felt sure I would find a use even if I had to demolish the house!

Almost as soon as I started to remove the ages of wallpaper and newspaper, including numerous First World War casualty lists, from the inside walls I realized that I'd bought a real gem. Although the exterior of the house had been rendered in lime plaster the paper on the inside was concealing a half-timbered structure of considerable antiquity - the ground floor framed in oak and the upper storey walls in elm. Chimney extensions, dates on the timbers and the old roof on top of the additional floor as well as coins left by the ‘T’ proclaimed 'modernisation' in 1771.

Having taken a year away from my usual occupation and with professional help from Tom, Dick and Harry a team of remarkable Norfolk craftsmen we were able to restore and improve our new home and move in. That is with three children, two Labradors and two cats.

Within days of our arrival my wife commented that when lying in bed in the early morning she thought she heard what sounded like the happy expression of surprise by a young child. This didn't just happen once but quite frequently and usually about the same time and was also experienced occasionally by our daughter Rosemary if she was alone during the day.

However, it was not until an early Spring morning that we began to suspect that we were not alone. During the reconstruction there were signs that an old tramp was treating the end bedroom as his own and, although he was never seen, we were told that someone was about at night! However only when our younger son came into our bedroom, through a connecting door from his adjoining room at first light one day asking, "where did he go - he must have come through the wall just here?" indicating a spot just over our bed, did we realize that we seemed to have more than five in the family!

The apparition that Jasper saw leaning over his bed and looking at him closely was dressed in the uniform of a soldier of the Napoleonic period, he made no sound, had no visible legs and floated apparently effortlessly through a wattle and daub wall by the side of the chimney! Sadly, this monochrome apparition was never seen again. Then our son Toby, who shared a bedroom with his brother, reported that someone or something had touched his knee when he was doing his homework – not in an unfriendly or frightening way but almost to say – "Well, I’m here!"

A few months later on a quiet and windless evening when son Jasper and I were alone in the house and I was trying to make him clean his shoes properly for school next day and our two labs were sleeping soundly on the floor close by, a ghostly wailing started, apparently on the landing above our heads. It continued for several seconds and faded away.

The dogs slept on, Jasper continued to polish so I asked his what it was? "That was the ghost," he replied as though such events were commonplace in old country houses and absolutely nothing to be concerned about! To me there was no mistaking what it was – certainly nothing from this world and once heard never to be forgotten. Later I thought it a very interesting experience and something that not many of us have the good fortune to hear even once in a lifetime!

Plenty of haunting, nothing nasty but it seems that ghosts do have a liking for young children!

A more recent occupant of this property also told us that they had heard the happy childlike expression of early morning surprise from a young child some years later.

If any future owners are blessed with a young family I suspect that ‘our’ ghosts will be pleased to put in an appearance for they do seem to approve of young people! In connection with the idea that ghosts seem to like kids I recall being told of the appearance of a friendly ghost to a party of young children at the Gatehouse of Hales Court.

LOCATION