Pandora's Box
Margaret, Western Australia
April 2006
My experience took place when My Mum, younger Sister & I moved into this house in Churlands, Perth Western Australia. I am now in my forties, I was nineteen when this occured.
We moved into this three bedroom house during the week after I had finished at work and therefore it was quite late and I had not been able to get my bearings with the lay of the land etc and I had not seen the house prior to that night.
The house had exposed beams in the high ceiling of the sunken lounge/family room with a few steps up to the kitchen/meals area, with a long passage that had the rooms on the left while the laundry and bathroom were on the right. The master bedroom was straight at the end of the hallway, this had amber glass panels on either side of the door frame.
We loved the house and my Mum was amazed at how everything was in the right place, right down to the tea towel rack and everything had been well thought out for the kitchen.
The next morning Mum took me to the bus stop so I could get to work. That night on the bus home I found I was the last person on the bus and I was becoming very stressed for I did not recognise any of the street's nor where I was. The driver could see my sheer panic and asked me what stop did I get off at because he was now heading back to the Depot!! I explained how we had only moved in last night and for the life of me I could not remember the name of the Street nor the house number!! By this stage I was howling away as I was confused & frightened. Thank heavens I had a truely lovely bus driver who took me under his wing...he turned the bus around and drove slowly up and down each Street, untill at last I saw Mums car in the carport which was the only thing I did recognise!! The front of the house was in darkness, no front light on. I could not Thank the driver enough and I raced inside to my frantic Mum wondering where on earth had I been & what was wrong, as I was crying again. It turned out the same thing had happened to her as well, when she was trying to find the place after taking my Sister to school. The reason why I mention this to you is, that to this day, none of us can remember the name of the Street nor the house number!!
After being in this home for a few weeks,my mum found out that the home was built by the landlords son, who had designed & built the house,it was his wife's "Dream Home" hence why everything had it's place in the right place. You could feel it was a labour of Love. Then Mum told us that on the day he & his wife were moving in she was killed and never got to her Dream House. We sat talking about how sad this was as the poor man was so grief stricken he could not live in the house and moved back to Holland.
Then my sister said,"Mum wouldn't it be funny if you and the man got to meet and fell in-love?!" A simple thing said by my sister for she knew how much Mum loved the house and thought that the man would have to be a special person for the love he had shown. It was like Pandora's box had been opened because of these words....
The light globes would keep blowing including the front.Out the front one night I was replacing the blown globe,talking to the coach lamp holder,"How it should want to light up the house and make people feel welcomed!??" No,I do NOT normally talk to items and to be honest I have no idea what came over me to even say such a crazy thing. I had no sooner put in the new globe, went back inside and then POW came this loud exploding noise out front, Mum & I rushed outside to find the whole globe smashed to bits!! This time I could not get the remains of the base out, for it was melted to the socket holder, even pliers would not help to get it out!
From the moment we arrived in this house our cat would climb up and stay on the wooden beams in the lounge room and would crawl along on her belly on the floor to get to her food dish and would hiss and give deep throat growls like we had never heard before and she was a nervous wreck. My Mum said it was because the house space was all new to her because we had been in a flat before hand.
All the light globes kept on blowing out, even trying different brands made no difference.. The oven would turn off half way through cooking and we had to keep re lighting it. Mum would not be able to sleep and every time she would try to unpack her clothes etc she kept feeling like she should not put them away. In fact none of us had been able to unpack our things away, normally unpacking was done straight away...you felt like your things did not belong in the rooms??
While Mum was in the bedroom she would see this mist move around the room and hear this awful voice telling her "To get out"!! Then this banging started on the wall at the top of the bed. The banging got worse and Mum yelled out for me to come into the room. Mum then explained how this banging on the wall would wake her up. I explained,"That it was just a tree branch hitting the outside wall and I would have a look in the morning," thinking this was the cause and put Mum at ease. I went to see if maybe I could remove the branch that was causing the trouble. Well between the fence and the house you were lucky if two loaves of bread would fit, let alone a tree and there were no tree's or plants at all nor anything from the neighbours place.
I can tell you this put the wind up us both...because that night the banging started up yet again but when I went in when Mum called out it would stop but the room was like ice and Mum had all the extra blankets on the bed. Looking at my Mum in the bed was scary as the amber panels made my Mum look awful and the room look so creepy in the strange light, I could never go just beyond the door frame. The room seem to glow in this strange light and I explained to Mum that it must be the amber glass that made the room look funny.
About three in the morning I suddenly woke up to this figure in white standing at the doorway, it looked like a old lady..instead it was my Mum so frightened that she climbed into bed with me! I had began to get very concerned for my Mum as she looked like an old lady, in fact she was only thirty nine at this time.
The next day she went and saw one of her Uncle & Aunty's and the Uncle came over to reassure Mum nothing was in the house and it was just us being "nervy of the house noises etc." Well he took a few steps into the master bedroom, turned white and the hair on his arms all raised up he staggered out of the room backwards,as the banging started and the mist came out of the wall!! He stammered to Mum,"Pack your things and get out, you and the girls are not staying here!!" He went with Mum to the landlords place to give notice.
It turned out we were the longest tenants she had ever had and the other longest ones were some guy's from the SAS who stayed four weeks. They had everything electrical blow up from the fridge to the washing machine etc and they said they have never felt so frighten in their lives!! The poor landlord was so upset as she said, "No body wants to stay!!", to which my Uncle said,"That's because the Female Ghost does not want anybody in her house!!"
At the weekend we packed up and managed to get everything into a small trailer and jammed into the car in one hit, no way did we want to go back in there. As Mum pulled out of the drive and was on the road, I was looking at the house and said,"Mum Stop, we have left the sprinkler on," Mum said,"What?,we don't have a sprinkler!?" We looked as this heavy mist came out from the Master bedroom,my poor Mum said,"Oh my God, lets get the heck out of here"!! and she planted her foot and we took off. Like I said,to this day, we do not remember the name of the street or the house number and yet we have no problem with any recall of other places...only this one?!
It took awhile before my Mum looked like her self again and the cat was back to it's normal self. (Pets always know when spirits are around as do children.) The energy that hit you was one of sheer anger and you felt it hit the pit of your stomach and you could plainly hear the words through gritted teeth,"Get out, get out of my house!!" I shall never forget this and even now it makes my stomach do backflips!
Thank you for taking the time to read.