Fear Files

Abandoned Cottage

This happened a few years ago and it's always made me rethink my thoughts on the afterlife and the paranormal in general.

It all started when I was in school and I was sitting at a table with some friends in a lesson. One of my friends started talking about when she went to this abandoned house (no one owned it, it was falling apart on a plot of land near fields and a farmhouse) and she referred to it as "The haunted House" but I suppose if you saw any old abandoned run down house you would probably assume it as haunted. Being only 15 at the time. She didn't mention that anything paranormal actually happened, they just walked into the rubble and nosed around for a bit until they got bored and decided to go home. I asked her where the house was because I decided that I wanted to check it out with some of my friends just for something to do that night. She told me where it was and that night me and a few friends went there.

It was pretty spooky just being there because you never know if a homeless person or another kid is already in there but this time. Nothing happened apart from us all getting freaked out by a wasp nest... Was pretty scary actually! Well, something did happen but I brushed it off as nothing I suppose. I was about to take a picture of one of my friends who was standing next to the fireplace and this yellow/green circle thing came into focus then shot upwards. It could have been anything like a fly or just a camera malfunction but it was a bit weird.

A few days later I was at school again and I was talking to another one of my friends that knew nothing about this house until I told her. She was interested by it and we decided to go there that night. I felt like she was more excited about the fact that some people were saying it was haunted by a man called "Red John," as that was what was spray painted in a plank of wood near the house. In my opinion, I didn't believe it was haunted after already being at the house and just thought it was the fact that it was abandoned, decorated in an old fashioned way, I would say 50's/60's/70's (there were remains of wallpaper but it was, again, pretty run down. However, we took our phones so that we could take pictures and record videos to try and see if we could catch something. I didn't tell her about the yellow/green thing I saw last time. Partly because I had forgotten about it, as I thought there were too many natural explanations for it.

We got to the house and I would say it was around 6pm or 7pm. We walked around the house for a bit and my friend decided to go upstairs but I stayed down because the stairs didn't look very stable to me! I went into the room with the fireplace and she came back downstairs to join me. We decided to just sit on the windowsill and talk for a bit while we recorded on our phones. Then my friend said maybe we should try talking to "the ghost" while we're recording just to see if anything happens? So we started recording and asked questions like "Is there anyone here? If you want us to stay can you knock? If you want us to go can you knock? Can you scream for us? Can you make any noise or show yourself?" But we were getting restless because we couldn't see or hear anything! I then mouthed to her that I was going to hit the wall so that we could show our friends that something had actually happened. I hit it and then we stopped filming.

That decision is probably the worst decision of my life so far. We sat on the windowsill to listen back to the recording on the phone and heard frantic but faint knocking sounds. We also heard a noise almost like something was scraping on indented wood if that makes sense? Well as soon as I heard that I said, we need to get out. And we both ran all the way to the park nearby. We sat on the bench and shakily decided to listen to the recording properly and what we heard was pretty terrifying for a 15 year old to hear. We had asked the "ghost" to knock for us if it wanted us to stay and it knocked about 10 times really quickly. We asked it to knock if it wanted us to go and it COMPLETELY stopped the knocking and the weird scraping sound. We asked it to scream and there was a faint noise but it also sounds like the noise a car makes when it accelerates so that could definitely have a natural explanation. We couldn't see or hear ANYTHING when we were filming this, we were asking questions and nothing was happening. When we kept saying to each other, "Aw nothing's happening" it got louder and louder, doing it's weird scraping noise but we definitely heard none of this at the time.

We got home and decided it was best not to show or tell anybody what had happened because at the end of the film we obviously faked a banging noise, so no one would believe it was a genuine video. You could also not see me or my friend when the film was being made. We were just pointing it in any direction to see if we could see anything.

However, I did end up telling my sister and I showed her the film and she said that it must have been some kids playing a trick on us and I would have agreed with her but at the time we heard absolutely NOTHING. It just had never made any sense to me. Is it paranormal? I would love to know. The land the house was has now been bought and a new house has been built in the garden. The "haunted house" is still there but I'm pretty sure the new owners will be knocking it down pretty soon so I'm afraid I'll never be able to revisit the house.