It all started when I was about six years old.
I certainly don't remember thinking about death and what happens next in life, but my earliest memory of being a little strange came when I was sat on the stairs at our house in Southbourne, Bournemouth.
I asked my mother who was pottering around in the kitchen
''Can't you even pick up a biscuit when you die?''
This made me realize, much later in life, that I questioned the afterlife and wanted answers to all these strange thoughts; mum and dad never really willing to discuss such subjects.
There was some some respite of these thoughts until the family, large and growing bigger moved to Spain as my dad had gone into a joint business there. Whilst we were there my sister and I found our way to a small park that was simply blank, we thought it was like a ghost town. I was eight at this point, my sister a year younger. My sister saw a man lying flat on a bench with his entire body covered in moisture; we think it was probably sweat as it was just another day of intense heat.I didn't feel comfortable so after a couple of rides on the swing we carried on walking into further adventures. After wondering around further we decided to return to our local park that played the chart music daily, yet on the way there a feeling of dread sped through my entire being causing me to almost lose my balance. I can't remember much else of the physical sensations but I just didn't feel the way I normally do.
While we were enjoying ourselves in the park singing to the music we noticed two black men just staring at us. There were no other children there but many adults and families were on the outside of the park drinking and eating, having a joyous time. When an English lady in her fifties came up to us and told us that the men were dangerous and we shouldn't approach them.
When we returned home to our flat our older brother who had been out walking came back in a distressed state. He had become withdrawn after an hour or two.
My day out was becoming strange to me, my thoughts and feelings were twisted, changed, and I was feeling sad but with no real logic attached to these emotions. It was years later when my brother told my mother that he had been assaulted, an event that changed his life and mine.
Paranormal and The Watchers
We stayed in Spain for a year but we came back to England as the business fell through. We had no choice but to move to an area just outside Bournemouth. Further events surfaced in our new house, a mixture of the paranormal and ill health afflicting not just my brother but myself also.
The unknown had visited me again when I was about thirteen. I was asleep at some point but vividly recall the feel of violent hands tightening across my throat, and I can go back to the point of remembering myself coughing and waking trying to reach my neck with my own hands.
Nightmares
Was I having a nightmare? I don't know, even now, but when I think back to further paranormal occurrences in the house it's possible to believe it to be an evil spirit. My very sensible sister who would of been ten at the time told me a man in a hood, not fully visible was wavering at the end of her bed making her wake suddenly in the night. Another brother of mine mentioned the same figure some years later. I had not seen this figure as we all got older and moved out nothing more was said.
I moved here in Wimborne, Dorset, England in 1997 with my twin daughters. I picked out many books in our local library about the history of Dorset, and books about the supernatural. I came across a book about haunted Dorset. To my surprise there was a paragraph featuring an article on a care home which was a ''stone throw'' away from my bedroom window, our back garden led to this home. I found out that the grounds to which the care home was built was once a monastery; we had attended a fete there a few years after the events in our home. You can see the uneven ground as you enter the garden even now. The name of the care home has changed now, yet at the time none of us realized there was a monastery right behind our garden fence.
It just could be possible that the monks seen by my siblings were actually really there, and the evil that approached me that night may of also come from the remaining energies that may still reside there.
This story is a genuine account of just a handful of some of the paranormal incidents that I have encountered throughout my life, with more to share. I have decided that the paranormal follows me, and I am drawn to its energy.
