Staying at Aunt Lucy's

From: Sharon (tigerlilly99_1999@yahoo.co.uk)
Story type: Ghost
Location: Croyden, England
Source: Form Submission

When I was about eight years old, my parents were going through a bit of a rough patch and I was sent to stay with my Great Aunt Lucy in Croyden for the summer.

She lived in a huge old house that had three floors, and was very grand. I remember thinking it was great because my family and I lived in a tiny council house in a small village. My Aunt was a kind women who lived alone as her husband had been killed in the war, she had no children of her own but loved having me to stay that summer.

I spent most of the time exploring the house which had a giant kitchen with high ceilings, and rooms with old-fashioned names like 'parlour', 'scullery' and 'drawing room'. The only place I didn't like exploring was a set of rooms on the third floor which my Aunt called 'the nursery'. This had been where she spent her early childhood as the house had belonged to her parents before they died and was passed on to her in their will.

I found the rooms spooky, as there were old-fashioned toys and games everywhere. I always got the feeling that someone had just left the room a few seconds before I arrived.

Every afternoon at 3pm we had tea in the drawing room (which was only used for this purpose, we ate our meals in the dining room and spent mornings and evenings in the parlour). The drawing room was on the second floor and I remember hearing children's voices laughing and talking and footsteps' running around in the nursery which was above us. My Aunt would always call out "Be quite children, we are having tea!" and the noise would lessen.

I'd forgotten all about it until about a year ago when I was talking to my mother; (we didn't really mention that period of our lives much because of my parent's 'difficulties'). My mother told me that her Aunt had had quite a sad life as her husband had died young and she had lost her parents in tragic circumstances too. She said that Aunt Lucy always maintained that her happiest memory was of playing in the nursery as a child with her younger twin brother and sister, Emily and Rupert, before they died of polio aged seven.

I think the 'children' I heard that summer was them.