The Ghost House ( Chapter 5)

The following day , I mentioned the light in the Ghost House to Mum and Dad at breakfast.

Mum laughed saying ‘You still like all that ghost nonsense, I thought you would have grown out of it by now’.

My reply , had I given it , would have been something about there being ghosts in the Bible, the Holy Ghost for one, so they must exist, but I said nothing, I kept shtumm, as Dad often said.

Mum was always right even when she was wrong, she was brought up North of our city, in a small fishing community which was very religious.Her parents were members of the Temperence Society, which meant that they didn't drink alcohol. My parents didn't drink alcohol except at New Year , when Dad had a can of Tennants lager, and Mum a sweet sherry, whatever that was,

My Mum's parents went to church three times each Sunday, the 'Fighties' would terrorise me if I attended church three times each Sunday, their family was not religious in any way, maybe that's why they were all bad.

I only went to church because I was told to, and I liked singing in the choir, though I hoped my voice might break soon, like my cousin’s did when he was eleven, as the choir was becoming boring.

After choir, and the church service, Dad counted the money from the offering plates, as he was the treasurer. I went to the Hall and mooched about , sitting on a wooden bench, with my Armada Ghost Book (edited by Christine Bernard) reading ‘The School of the Unspeakable’ by Manly Wade Wellman, a weird sounding name, maybe he was ‘manly’, that’s why he was given the name. It was like the mum from 'The Waltons', whose name in real life was 'Michael', a lady given a man's name?

What did I know, I was only ten.

Some Sundays, the youth club meeting was on, and I sat in on that under sufferance.

I was waiting for my Dad, so sat in the hall, the older kids didn’t have much time for me, as I was just ‘a kid’, with my ‘weird books’, but I ignored this, as Mum and Dad told me to, and listened to the music they played , strangely named bands, ‘Status Quo’, ’Mott the Hoople’, and David Bowie, who had spiky ginger hair, and looked a bit like a girl.

No choir music , no choral music was played here, this must be what ‘youths’ did, listen to loud music.  I liked the song ‘Roll Away the Stone’, by Mott the Hoople, not like Slade or anything Alan and me listened to, but the words, reminded me of the hymns we sang at Easter, when Jesus appeared to his disciples as a ghost, after the stone was rolled away from his grave.

Ghosts must exist, if the Bible referenced them.

Back at the breakfast table , Mum was still telling me that I should forget about the Ghost House, and stick into my school work. It was a year until I would start at secondary school , and our family friend Mr Cramond, who was a teacher, had preached on at me at how much harder school became once you were in ‘big school’. I was clever, I would manage , I was more eager to prove that there was such a thing as ghosts.There was a ghost in the Ghost House, I was almost certain of that , and I was going to become a ghost hunter, like the characters in the Fontana books.