Gifted?

Gifted? Episode 1 - by Caroline Siddall

I have often wondered whether I have ‘The Gift’.

As far back as I can remember I have had moments of knowing. Knowing things that I have never been told. Knowing that there is more to life than the eye can see. Knowing that there is something else, not just my overactive imagination. I am not saying that I have the abilities of a medium, but I definitely think I am in tune with, and 100% believe in the spirit world. 

78 Riverside Drive

I’ll take you back to when I was aged just 2 or 3.

My mum, dad and I moved into a little house on a quiet estate in Greater Manchester. It was exciting moving into our new home after living with my grandparents for a quick spell. But soon I developed a fear of something that came at night, when I was tucked up in bed, the darkness had drawn in, and long after the buzz of the tv and my parents’ voices downstairs had died down.

I wasn’t scared of the dark as such, it was more a fear of what might happen when I was alone, what I might hear, feel or see. A weight shifting at the foot of my bed, a temperature change, a touch or a sound. Now at this age, and being an only child up until the age of 5, I had no one to inform me of stories of ghosts and ghouls. So how at 3 did I know of a female presence that I needed my mum to rescue me from? I wanted this ‘lady’ to think I was much more grown up than I was so she wouldn’t come and get me. So, I decided to start calling for my mum by her name if I was feeling spooked or needed to get up to go to the loo in the night. One night I remember hearing a lady laughing right in my room. I shouted for my mum ‘Chris’ at the top of my voice, she came running in and I told her about the laughing lady. Flicking the lights on, she showed me there was nothing there, even opening my wardrobe doors to prove to me that I had nothing to be scared of. But I knew what I had heard, I can still remember it to this day, not sinister per se, but certainly disturbing... I also remember the slightly alarmed look on my mum’s face that said maybe she wasn’t so convinced that there absolutely nothing there... she knew!

I learned to block out sounds by sleeping on my side folding one ear over on itself and holding it there with my hand, whilst stuffing the other ear with the big nose of my knitted Postman Pat doll. And of course I learned to rationalise the weight sitting on my feet to being the family cat Cleo, who not only was I allergic to, hated me and who never, not ever, would have wanted to sleep on my bed or even been able to get into my room unless she had learned to open handles with her non-opposable paws.

I relaxed a little when my grandparents came to live with us for a couple of months. Being a 2 up 2 down home, that meant they both had to sleep in my room. Granny Ed on the top bunk and my grandad Bill on the put-me-up bed. Then it was only the sound of granny Ed’s snoring that kept me awake at night, one of the qualities I unfortunately inherited from her!

Soon my baby sis came along and the house wasn’t big enough so we moved on. It wasn’t until years later, maybe 10 years or so, that my mum finally told me of the ‘White Lady’ of Prestolee. The White Lady was said to haunt the estate, and the canal that our house backed on to. It was told that she had died a tragic death after being jilted at the alter and was seen on occasion leaving the church, & hovering outside the entrance of the primary school next to it. From my research I believe her name was Elsie Lord who was found dead in 1921 in the canal aged just 19.

She also appeared to other residents in a number of houses on Riverside Drive. On further investigation I found that a fair few houses have been blessed or exercised by the church and residents were told to keep crosses in their homes in certain positions for protection. I also know of a boy that I went to primary school with who, at a very young age, had a few close encounters with her in his bedroom. Again the local church helped the family to rid them of the spirit manifestation. Spooky eh?

So, having moved house aged 6 things went quiet on the ghost front, that was until my teenage years when things started to spark up again.... More on that next time.