a Hallowe'en blip

My working life started in a cable manufacturing company in Greenock. I was a Quality Assurance guy who checked that the work was up to scratch. I was a teenage boy among 300 gallus Greenock and Portonian factory women. It was quite the life education.

There were all sorts of personalities in the factory girls. Some were a laugh, some bawdy, some quiet. The girl I want to talk about was quiet and shy and lived in the old sandstone houses in the West End of Greenock.

It was a quiet Sunday shift and there weren't many of us in. A smaller Unit in the Industrial Estate had been opened for us to work. I was sitting at a table checking the work of two girls: Ellen (the one I want to talk about) and Lynne who was a riot of a lass.

We were all working away this Sunday and Ellen asked, "Do you believe in Poltergeists?"
Lynne and I looked at one another. This was a very un-Ellen thing to say.
I said that I don't know, but I've never seen one. Neither had Lynne.
"Why?" we asked her.
"Ohh nothing, it's alright,"and she went pack to prepping her cable.
We told her that there was NO WAY she was going to ask us a question like that and then say no more about it.

"Okay," she said, "I've got one in my house."
Just like that. Matter of fact. It is difficult to convey the power of these words coming from such a shy girl like Ellen. There was no side to her. She was, if anything, a bit too straight laced for a lot of the other factory girls. Here is what she told us....

It started as a knocking sound in the twin's room. Every time James went up to his bedroom this sound started. It was like a bowling ball rolling across a wooden floor. My Dad, thinking it was water in the pipes or rats, pulled up the floorboard and dismantled the walk-in wardrobe but couldn't find anything.
One night we were all in the room listening to the noise repeating itself. My Dad was drumming his fingers on the chest of drawers and the noise changed to what sounded like an imitation of my Dad's drumming fingers.
After he did a few patterns and heard it more or less repeated back to him he clicked his fingers. There was the noise like someone trying to click their fingers who couldn't. A sort of muffled click. My Dad then asked the noise if it could hear him, telling it to click once for yes. It clicked its muffled click once.
From this my Dad managed to get it to answer 'yes' or 'no' (2 clicks) to his questions and the noise was a little boy who used to live in the house and had died there. The boy loved being with James, the younger of the two twins.
So from this the poltergeist became a normal part of our life. Every time James went into his room the noise would start. My Mum was getting stressed out. My Dad wanted to call a priest in to exorcise it but my Mum said that she didn't want our house and our family turned into a circus.
One night James went up to bed and the noise started as soon as he entered the bedroom. My Mum was tired and it had taken its toll on her emotionally.
"It's a blooming shame, it won't leave that wean alone." she said and then got up and went upstairs. She lifted James out his bed.
"Come on son, you can sleep with us tonight and get some peace."
She carried him across the hallway to their room. The rolling ball followed them out of the twins' room across the hall and into my parent's room. It had never left the boys' room before.
My Mum cuddled James on top of the bed when the noise got louder and louder then it started to make a banging noise. Suddenly my Mum's bed got lifted and banged onto the floor violently again and again. She screamed for it to stop and eventually took James back to his own bed where things quietened down.
Last weekend I was out for a drink and came back. I was pretty drunk. The poltergeist was upsetting the whole family. When I got in everyone was up in the boys' room.
"Come on up Hen," my Mum shouted," It's doing that thing with the covers."
It had started to lift the top sheet of James' bedcovers into a kind of pyramid, Like a cone pyramid. Then drop it and do it again.
I suddenly became so angry and ran and leapt at the bed to flatten the cover it was lifting.
"Leave our family alone !!!" I screamed .
It knocked me on the forehead and I was knocked off the bed onto the floor.

Lynne and I looked at one another. I had goosebumps. Ellen was no wind-up merchant or drama queen or fantasist. And that is all I know. I never found out anything more about Ellen's poltergeist.