I grew up in a house in Petersham, Sydney owned by my parents and occupied by them for sixty years. The house was built in the 1880's and was used as accommodation for travellers in the early days.The stables were still at the rear until the 1960's.

We had numerous strange events occur over the years, including the following:

Three members of the family (I was the first) reported waking to find a man in a purple plumed hat leaning over them, all in the same room.

I came home from school one afternoon in the middle 1950's and while sitting in the front lounge room felt an intense uneasiness. I looked down the hall where I saw a semi transparent form partly obscuring the bannister post on the stairway. I remember exiting the house quite frightened.

My mother saw a man and a dog walk past her bedroom door.

In the same bedroom my older sister was held down in her bed then watched as tiny balls of energy formed into the shape of an upper torso in the corner near the ceiling. She actually poked her hand into the apparition and reported a sensation like electricity.

My mother was sitting in the kitchen one evening when she heard someone run down the stairs into the dining room and open the sideboard draw. Hearing nothing more for a couple of minutes she called out to my sister to enquire what she was doing as she assumed it was her. My sister then came in through the back door, having been in the outside toilet. No one else was at home at the time. I recall my mother getting the old Monsignor to come up from St. Thomas' church to sprinkle holy water around the place, which to our amazement seemed to keep the place quiet for a while.

Boots on the stairs and strange noises became an accepted part of our lives. The house was sold and renovated and one day I'll knock on the door and ask if anything strange is still happening.

DULWICH HILL POLTERGEIST

In the 1980's my wife, young daughter and myself leased a house in Dulwich Hill, Sydney from a couple who had transferred to London for a year.

The house was beautifully renovated and on the day we moved in we suggested to our daughter she take the front room. She refused to stay in the room as it made her feel uneasy and took the back sunroom. No amount of cajoling could make her change her mind so I set up a small music studio facing the curtains. I soon noticed that the room was several degrees colder than anywhere else in the house. One morning I went in to do some work and sat down at the console. I looked up at the curtains to see a clearly defined face pushing through the material looking down at the equipment. I could not believe what I was seeing and called my wife who also could not believe it. I shut the door and returned the next morning to find the curtains open.

My daughter who wouldn't even go into the room and was not told of the face said she'd pulled the curtains and had no explanation why she'd done so. Not long after my daughter, who had reached the stage of modesty came screaming naked out of the bathroom as she'd seen a black hand come through the window.

A few weeks later I'd left home at 5am and my wife was woken by a painting by my nephew falling off the wall. She looked into the loungeroom to see what she described as a bear lying in the middle of the floor. Five minutes later my sister rang to say her husband had just died. I checked the new eight strand wire on the painting when I came home and found it had broken cleanly but nowhere near a pressure point. From then on the electricals in the house began to do strange things. Lights would flicker, the iron would be hot and steaming but switched off at the wall as was the coffee machine.The big finale came when I arrived home one afternoon to find my wife quite distraught as she'd had a particularly active day of electrical phenomena. We were standing in the kitchen discussing the strange goings on and I said "It's got to be poltergeist." As I said the word 'poltergeist' the broom closet door literally crashed open and the broom crashed to the floor between us with extreme force. We finally asked the next door neighbours if they knew if the house had a history of unusual events.They said they'd never heard any but told us the reason the owners had left the house was their two year old daughter had died in the front room just before we moved in.

We moved from the house a short time later.