Haunting In Liverpool Road

My friend Daphni lived in a beautiful three-storey Georgian row house in Liverpool Road in London. As I did not live in London, I stayed at her house on several occasions.

Daphni cautioned that she and her family had experienced a few encounters with the home's residence ghost. It liked to fiddle with the CD player that was in the basement kitchen and play it loudly late at night. To stop the ghost playing CDs in the middle of the night, Daphni always opened the lid of the player before she retired for the evening. It seems the ghost could easily press the On and Play buttons, but could not work out how to close the lid of the player.

Once, when Daphni was small, the spirit played a trick on Daphni's father.

Wade was on his hands and knees cleaning the cat box. The box was located far back in a small cupboard in the lower level of the house at the bottom of the stairs. While he was troweling out the cat's by- products, he felt a tug on the tail of his jacket. Assuming it was his small son, Wade told Alexander he would see what he wanted when he was finished with the cat box. Wade felt the tug again and said, "Not now, Alexander, I'm busy."

The tugging stopped. Seconds later Wade finished the job, stood up, dusted himself off, and looked around for his son, who was nowhere to be seen. He called the boy's name and heard a very faint "Yes, daddy?" in response as though it was coming from far away.

Wade made his way up the stairs of the house, calling Alexander's name. He was surprised when he found Alexander on the top floor, a full four flights away from the location of the cat box, playing with Daphni.

"How did you get up here so quickly?" Wade asked, "What did you want?" Alexander said nothing. Daphni told her father that Alexander had been playing with her in their bedroom for at least a full half hour and could not have been in the basement pulling on Wade's coat.

I had heard these stories before staying at Daphni's house for the first time. Her family was out of town for the weekend and she had given me the house keys so I could stay there after a party I was attending at a club that was nearby her house.

I was too tired to think about ghosts when I arrived at her house as the sun rose that Sunday morning. I crawled into her bed and tried to mentally slow my racing heartbeat so I could fall asleep. I was half asleep when I heard classical music blasting from what I thought was the next-door neighbors having a little dance party over their morning paper. It was soothing music, so I fell asleep.

I woke up about two hours later because the room was freezing cold. The music was still playing. I dragged myself down to the kitchen for a cup of tea and was shocked when I realized that music was coming from the CD player on the kitchen counter. I raced over and opened the lid, which instantly stopped the music.

I grabbed a box of museli and ran out of the kitchen. I stayed in Daphni's room until I caught the train back to Uni a few hours later.