Pp.252

21st C

Because I have written a book about ghostly events (TRUE GHOST STORIES OF OUR OWN TIME published by Faber and Faber) I am often told of strange happenings not easily explained away.

A friend told me last week of an odd event which occurred in her old cottage set in the country near Bath. She and her family are great ones for handcrafting unusual presents for each other and she decided to make her sister a special gift. She bought some pretty pieces of china from a charity shop for a few pence, took them home and broke them up. Using them she designed a heart-shaped "picture," framed it, and her sister, delighted with the result, hung it in her bedroom.

My friend was so pleased with the result that she used the rest of the broken china to make a similar heart-shaped picture for herself, hanging it above a chest of drawers in her bedroom. Below it, on the chest, she arranged a few small and delicate objects.

One night a little later, she and her husband were startled to hear a loud crash on the first floor. Running up the stairs they discovered the heart picture lying on the floor beside the chest. The odd thing was that there was no apparent reason for it having fallen and, even more strange, the delicate objects arranged in front of it were undisturbed.

A day or two later she went to see her mother and sister who live in the family home not far away. She told them about the heart picture incident. Her sister jumped up in alarm. "No!" she cried. "I can't believe it!" And then she told my friend that, at what transpired to be about the same time, her heart picture too had crashed down from the wall. But in her case, the picture had been found on the floor, on the opposite side of the room. And, as in my friend's case, greeting cards lined up beneath the picture had not been disturbed. No-one could offer an explanation for either of these spooky events.