Stourport Rd

The year was 1987 when I moved into Stourport Rd above a clutch and brake car shop. The landlord who was the shop owner only wanted a tenner a week to stay there which was unbelievable cheap. I was 8 months or so into a 12 month government scheme with the council keeping public rights of way open. We were payed just over £80 a week which from getting the rate of 'supplementary benefit' for 1987 of £28 a week was an immense difference and we had a great laugh. A fair weeks pay for a fair weeks work unlike today where people have to work just for their benefits but I will leave our slavery for another post.

It was a big building with a downstairs kitchen and bathroom then walking through the shop which was the only hassle it was then up the stairs to the first floor where you had a storeroom on your right as you came up the stairs and a bedroom with two single beds on your left. The best bit now was if you carried on round past the bedroom there was a steep set of stairs leading a big attic room which was our living room. I got the place through a guy I know called Russell but he was hardly ever there as he was in the midst of a crazy relationship which suited me fine.

Now most people have experienced this, 99% of the time when they were kids. Just before you drop off to sleep you feel a sudden jolting sensation which snaps you back into the waking world. I remember reading somewhere that as you are dropping off to sleep your spirit body is starting to leave your physical body but if you are going to go into some bad astral energy your spirit body which is attached to physical body by a silver cord is reeled in almost instantaneously back to your waking physical body hence the jolting feeling as you snap back to wakefulness. Well, I have read more about this since and aswell as a guardian angel we have what is known as 'Gatekeepers'. Gatekeepers guard the gates of the astral plane, the place where we experience dreams and these Gatekeepers are very protective of us and if they sense any danger we are reeled back into the safety of our physical bodies in an instant.

Maybe we need more protection as kids but we generally as the years role past experience it becomes less and less and when it happens as an adult we generally remember it because most of the time we are having somekind of nightmare. Well, as I settled down into my new bedroom I noticed this weird sensation happening to me most nights. But as it would only happen once and soon I was back into the world of dreams so I tried to put it to the back of my mind. Russel eventually left for good and my mate Spike needed a place to stay so he moved into the other bed. We both did drugs when we had the money my friend who had got himself a flat a few doors up could get his hands onto dope, speed and what would become our drug of choice heroin. Don't get me wrong we were not doing drugs all the time at that stage in our lives and as there was a pub across the road we spent many a night drinking larger. But most of the time especially when my job ran out with the council we were broke which we did not mind as we would listen to music in the attic room or go over our friends and watch the telly.

Life was good at Stourport Rd except for a few strange things that would happen to us in the bedroom. Now purposely I had not told Spike about this weird experience of being snapped back into the body but I knew like myself he was a sensitive and into anything to do with the paranormal and wondered whether he would have the same experience. It did not take long after he moved in when we were lay in our beds when he commented on this experience had been happening to him and it had just happened that very second. This was wild because it had just happened to me! Night after night it would either happen to us both a seconds or two apart but sometimes it happened to us both at the same time! He voiced what I had been thinking that there was something not quite right with that room and we began to feel ill at ease in there even when we were awake. It was like there was a presence in there but whatever it was we both sensed for sure that it malevolent. I even took to sleeping upstairs in the attic room which had a wonderful vibe to it but poor Spike begged me to come back down to the bedroom as he could not handle facing this thing on his own.

One afternoon in the pub a friend who we had not seen for a while came in looking for us. He had been to our pad but as we were not there or at our friends flat so he guessed we would be in the pub. As he sat down with his pint and told us he had just had the 'strangest' of experiences over our place. He told us the shop owner had told him how to get to our attic room and as he was walking past the bedroom out of the corner of his eye he thought he caught site of one of us but as he turned to speak there was no one there. He quickly shouted up to the attic room but in his own words he said there is something wrong with your bedroom and he could not get out of the place fast enough. Spike and myself told him about what had been happening to us and as he knew the guy Russel who lived there when I moved in and his friend Tony who had been living in there with Russel but had left before I moved in he said he would ask them if anything weird had happened to them.

One night when I was there on my own in bed settling down to go to sleep would be a night I would remember forever. I had been sleeping there on my own for a few days so Spike must have being staying somewhere else for a while. I can remember getting into bed this one night and to be honest I can't remember thinking of any paranormal in particular. What I do remember I was in the bed nearest the door and the light switch was at the foot of my bed. I switched off the light and made my way in the dark back to the pillow end of my bed. I got inside and before too long my eyes had got used to the dark and I could see the outline of the wardrobe. Everything felt fine. Then the first thing I began to notice was that I could not see the outline of the wardrobe anymore it was if an enveloping darkness was blinding my night vision. At the exact time this happened the temperature of the room dropped so rapidly that if it was not pitch black I knew I would be able to see my own breath. But above all of this was a feeling of something in the room with me. Now in the past I have said I was sensitive but no way was I psychic but this presence was so tangible I think it would of brought a drunk round to his senses. As my sight was totally blind my hearing became so sensitive that if a pin had been dropped I would of heard it hit the floor of that I have no doubt. I felt the presence was in front of me towards the door end of the bedroom as the tension began to mount I knew something was about to happen but I did not what. Suddenly it happened, two disembodied hands clapped together at the end of my bed shattering the silence causing a shock-wave of sound to crash through my very soul. Fear gripped me as if being alone in the freezing pitch black was not my only concern, I had to walk directly towards the hand clapping demon to switch on the light. My heart was pounding so loud and fast I could feel it in my throat as I slowly rose to my feet. I did not call out as maybe I would get an answer, I just wanted the light on so I could see. Even though I knew it was not a real person there as I would of heard them coming up the stairs I lifted up my duvet I guess to throw over someone if they were real. In a way I wished there was a chance they could be of this world but as I said I would of heard them move in the silence. However balancing on a wobbly mattress holding up a duvet while making your way to where the ghost would be standing as far as the hand clap went ain't easy. I was terrified and the closer I got to the light switch the more I thought something was going to grab my leg. Some icy cold evil hand. Now most of us have been freaked out in the dark and there is that horrible moment when panic sets in as you can't find the light switch. Well when I knew I was in reaching distance of the light I through the duvet in a upward, forward motion as if there was something real there it would go over them and at the same time had those milliseconds that seem forever groping for the light switch to witch I found it and the room was lit. There was no sign of anything of which I expected but I soon moved upstairs to the attic room.

Later we found out through a friend that this Tony and Russel, the guys who had lived in there before us had some somekind of Ouija board session in that very room which served as out bedroom. What they did not realise as most people don't is after a Ouija board session is that the spirits must be ordered to leave and the spirit door closed behind them. Otherwise it is just leaving an open door to the spirit-world and just like people there are good spirits and bad ones. So we had an open portal to the world of spirits and one bad mother did turn up and decided not to leave. If memory serves me right Spike and I did somekind of cleansing ritual and closed the door on the world of spirits. I hooked up with this girl and unbeknownst to me was going to be the next 4 years of my life as love decided to pay me a visit, and the first six months it started out in Stourport Rd.