In 2005, when I was 34 and recently divorced, I spent two years living alone in West London. I had a good job as a TV executive and owned a gorgeous four-bedroom, three-storey cottage in Kew Gardens, just minutes from the Thames. It was my haven.
One winter evening I’d just got home from work and was on the phone to my dad — even though I was perfectly capable of looking after myself, my parents liked to check in on me.
I was sitting at the kitchen table engrossed in one of our usual chats when suddenly I heard a massive bang upstairs, followed by intermittent thudding and thumping noises.
Immediately my senses were on high alert. What on earth was it? Usually I’d point the finger at my two enormous Old English sheepdogs, Barney and Ambrose, but on this occasion they were snoring, sprawled out next to me. The racket continued as I sat there, and now I began to discern banging and scratching noises, too. It wasn’t directly above me, but definitely higher up in the house — was someone there?
The noises were so loud, I asked my father if he could hear them down the phone line. He couldn’t, but he did hear the fear in my voice and urged me to go and check. Perhaps it was just an open window causing a door to slam, I suggested, willing myself to believe it.
Samantha Brick (pictured) – ‘I was sitting at the kitchen table engrossed in one of our usual chats when suddenly I heard a massive bang upstairs, followed by intermittent thudding and thumping noises’
It would be another four weeks before I discovered that something was in my house (stock image)
I put the phone on the table, while Dad remained on the line, and walked into the hallway. The noises stopped, but I headed upstairs to the first floor. Slowly, I looked through the house room by room, finding only silence and darkness.
I checked the attic bedroom last; the door was firmly shut. Aside from my dogs and my thudding heartbeat, I was alone. I took a deep breath and walked in. Again, there was nothing there.
It would be another four weeks before I discovered that something was in my house.
Earlier this week Andrew Lloyd Webber talked about the poltergeist — a spirit or supernatural force — he had in his Eaton Square home in London.
‘It would do things like take theatre scripts and put them in a neat pile in some obscure room,’ he confided. ‘In the end we had to get a priest to come and bless it [the house], and it left.’
Many will scoff, but I found his account reassuring, for my encounter with a similar spirit has without question left its mark on my life.
This episode isn’t something I’ve freely shared, not least because you run the risk of strangers writing you off as crackers. Yet Lord Lloyd-Webber is hardly known for his hysterics. He’s not a suggestible teenager. Nor is he typical of the sort of person usually linked to so-called poltergeist activity.
People have claimed knowledge of poltergeists for centuries — a 1681 book on witchcraft entitled Saducismus Triumphatus (Or Full And Plain Evidence Concerning Witches And Apparitions) reports a case of apparent poltergeist activity summoned by a living person using witchcraft.
Unlike a ghost — the appearance of a deceased person’s spirit — a poltergeist is something much more malevolent. From the German words ‘poltern’, meaning to make a sound or rumble, and ‘geist’, meaning spirit, the word translates as ‘noisy ghost’.
They are considered to be forms of energy which a living person controls, consciously or subconsciously. Today, a poltergeist is a universally used expression for a mischievous spirit associated with loud noises and moving objects.
In my case, the trouble started a couple of days after I asked a friend to move out of one of my guest bedrooms. She had needed a London base and, as I had the room and consider myself a fairly generous person, I hadn’t minded her staying over now and again. However, she had started to push the definition of ‘now and again’ and, as days extended into weeks, I began to notice she wasn’t taking her things with her each time she left.
Slowly but surely she took over the bedroom I’d assigned her at the top of the house. When the weeks extended into months, I ended up politely explaining that I was calling time on our arrangement.
I made it clear I wasn’t looking for a lodger and that it didn’t suit me to have her to stay as and when she liked. I wanted my own space back and so, somewhat huffily, she packed her bags and left for good.
It seems to me now that this mild altercation in some way triggered my poltergeist to appear and begin its terrifying mischief-making in my house.
After that first episode while my dad was on the phone, I didn’t get much, if any, sleep.
Earlier this week Andrew Lloyd Webber talked about the poltergeist — a spirit or supernatural force — he had in his Eaton Square home in London
Today, a poltergeist is a universally used expression for a mischievous spirit associated with loud noises and moving objects (stock image)
Unlike a ghost — the appearance of a deceased person’s spirit — a poltergeist is something much more malevolent (stock image)
My bedroom was on the first floor underneath the small, converted attic bedroom my friend had used. As I went to bed that evening, the noises began again and continued on and off throughout the night. Too scared to go up and have another look, I lay there and cuddled the dogs, willing it to stop until at last I drifted off.
The following morning, with the late winter sun pouring through my bedroom window, I tried to rationalise what I’d heard. I convinced myself I had some sort of rodent or small creature infestation in the roof or under the floorboards.
My Victorian cottage was an end-of-terrace property, and my next-door neighbour was a wildlife cameraman who was often away for months at a time. Whatever I heard definitely didn’t come from his home, but surely it was possible that an animal was getting into my house from his?
Mustering up my courage, I went up the stairs to inspect the attic bedroom a second time. I checked under the bed; all was normal. No tell-tale droppings. No nests in the cupboards. Nothing beneath the few floorboards I managed to pull up.
And yet I felt there was something different about the room. The air hung heavily, as if with a kind of static tension, rather like the moment before a thunderstorm breaks and the rain begins to pour.
During the week, I had a fairly strict routine. I left the house for the gym by 8am and was at my desk in the office an hour later. The dogs would be collected by their doggie day care handler in the morning and returned home around 5pm, and I’d put my key in the front door at 7pm.
As I type this, I realise how perfectly surreal this all sounds. But the noises continued most evenings for the next few weeks. They would start up shortly after my return from work and continue into the small hours.
Depending on how brave I felt, I would venture up the stairs to shout at whatever was causing them in a bid to frighten it away, but just as often I would sit downstairs and turn up the TV so I couldn’t hear anything.
While the sounds varied in intensity, they always emanated from the room where my friend had stayed. Some nights I was convinced someone was walking back and forth across the floorboards — at times the footsteps were heavy and slow; on other occasions they were fast and impatient. Occasionally, in the early hours of the morning, it was as though someone was rolling coins around the room.
Then there were the nights I’d hear scratching down the walls, and more than once I heard the door handle repeatedly jiggle and judder as though someone wanted to get out of the room.
Too scared to think straight as these episodes were happening, it never occurred to me to attempt to record the sounds. As for having a friend over as a witness, that was out of the question, too. At the time I was well known in the television industry; I did not want my contemporaries to know I was experiencing this and think I was unhinged.
The noises continued most evenings for the next few weeks. They would start up shortly after my return from work and continue into the small hours (stock image)
People have claimed knowledge of poltergeists for centuries — a 1681 book on witchcraft entitled Saducismus Triumphatus reports a case of apparent poltergeist activity summoned by a living person using witchcraft
After a couple of weeks, I got into a routine of going to bed with the dogs sleeping either side of me.
I knew I wasn’t losing the plot entirely because sometimes the dogs responded to the noises, too. One night, as I locked the front door in preparation to go to bed, one of them started growling and barking at the stairs which led to the attic bedroom. That same dog would also wake in the night and start a low, agitated growl as if something was in the room with us.
Everything in my home was starting to feel oppressive. There was a tangible pressure in the air making me feel jumpy and anxious. I couldn’t see anything, or put my finger on what it was, yet I knew I wasn’t alone.
Indeed, there were times I’d wake in the night unable to breathe. It sounds crazy, but I ended up with a tennis racket under my bed in case I needed to defend myself.
Arriving at work each day, I’d feel exhausted yet grateful for a break from the terrors at home. In the safety of the office, I’d convince myself I must be imagining it. And, bit by bit, I started to delay my arrival home from work.
One morning my path crossed with the guy who looked after my dogs during the day. I asked, as casually as I could, if he’d ever noticed anything odd when he delivered my dogs home. A down-to-earth n, he looked at me like I’d asked him if he’d spotted a UFO in my garden.
His reaction stopped me asking my cleaner, so you can imagine how my blood ran cold when, unprompted, she asked me who’d been staying in the third-floor bedroom. My heart was in my mouth when she told me that the previous week she had opened the door to find the duvet flung off the bed, the sheets ruffled and books from the bookcase on the floor.
By now my former houseguest had, after a month of us not speaking, messaged me suggesting we meet for a drink. I wanted to — she was a friend, despite our falling out — but on the night I felt ill and cried off.
Just after I called her to cancel (which hadn’t gone down well), the atmosphere in the house changed. It was the same claustrophobic feeling of a storm brewing, as though the ceiling and floor were closing in on me. The temperature dropped, the air was heavy, there was ringing in my ears and I felt like my legs were about to give way.
The banging and hissing started up again at the top of the house.
At this point, I was so frightened I slept downstairs. It didn’t occur to me for a moment that the events — my friend’s upset and the commotion upstairs — could be linked. Why would it?
Just after I called her to cancel (which hadn’t gone down well), the atmosphere in the house changed
The medium was very clear that this was what was causing the poltergeist energy to take over my home
Later that week, I met another friend who remarked on how tired I looked and I blurted out the whole saga: the nightly noises, the oppressive feeling, the dogs barking, the duvet flying off the bed. As she listened without saying a word, I realised how bonkers I sounded.
When I finished, she did indeed tell me I needed professional help. Not of the therapist kind, however, but of the paranormal activity kind. I’ll forever be grateful to that friend for taking me and my crackers-sounding story seriously.
A few days later, I opened the door to a slim, sophisticated-looking woman in her mid-50s. She definitely didn’t look as though she was used to communicating with spirits.
Yet she had been recommended by my local spiritualist church, whose congregation believe that we are indeed able to feel the presence of the dead, and immediately she was able to identify the ‘residual energy’ that my erstwhile lodger had apparently left behind.
Whether she had manifested this — in other words, had willed it into being — or had left potent bad feeling behind without intending harm, I didn’t want to know.
But the medium was very clear that this was what was causing the poltergeist energy to take over my home. The spirit (as if I needed telling) was making it very clear that my former houseguest was not happy about being ejected.
She told me to get rid of all of my friend’s possessions, then cleanse my home and reclaim my space.
I looked at the books, the wooden parasol and other small decorative items that my friend had left behind. I was told to burn them all in my fireplace, and I’m afraid I did so without hesitation. The medium opened all of the windows as I did this and then burned sage (said to cleanse the atmosphere) in each room in the house.
Then she whispered an incantation. To this day I have no idea what she said, but when she finished, the difference in my home was palpable. It felt calmer, lighter, as though both the house and I were able to breathe easily again. The entity or malevolent energy had gone.
The medium told me to get rid of all of my friend’s possessions, then cleanse my home and reclaim my space
I’ll never know if my friend deliberately created this poltergeist activity in my home, but I took what I saw were positive steps for my own sanity (and safety) in terminating our friendship.
And I have never again given open-ended invitations to people I don’t know well.
Even today I regularly cleanse the atmosphere in each room of my house and I have protective crystals next to my front door to ward off negative feelings.
Almost two decades on, I am still very picky about who I let cross the threshold of my home. As I know to my own cost, there is no telling what evil energy they may leave behind.