Питер Джеймс - Short Shockers - Collection Two

I listened to a large number of views and stories of strange experiences, and I talked to leading sceptics as well. For eighteen months, between 1990 and 1991, I hosted a regular Friday night radio phone-in show, taking calls from members of the public who had experienced something uncanny, or inexplicable, ranging from sightings of apparitions or bizarre coincidences to past-life memories or a sense of déjà-vu. In 1993 I was commissioned by the BBC to present a show in Scotland, in which I was given carte blanche to travel around interviewing people who claimed to have had paranormal encounters.

Many of the stories I was told were chilling, some were distressing, but the majority, when I examined them further, turned out to have credible rational explanations. I learned that both the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church employ diocesan exorcists — although they are given the less dramatic titles of Ministers of Deliverance.

The role of a Minister of Deliverance is to investigate any apparent paranormal occurrence brought to the attention of the local vicar or priest, and for which they had had no explanation. But of major importance in this role is to rule out the paranormal wherever possible and produce rational explanations. As an example, there was a papal edict in the Catholic Church, issued over two centuries ago, warning priests not to confuse demonic possession with the tricks played on people’s minds as a result of grief, and stating that no exorcisms should be carried out on anyone within two years of them suffering a bereavement.

I became good friends with one Minister, a senior clergyman with considerable experience of people who claimed to have had paranormal encounters, and who is himself an extremely caring and rational man. I will call him Francis Wells. He is a modern-thinking clergyman, with a distinguished university background in psychology, who has deep faith but once confided in me that he had problems with the conventional biblical image of God. His primary objective in all cases brought to him was to try to find a rational explanation. For instance, he was regularly called in to investigate people deeply disturbed by occurrences following Ouija board sessions. His view of such sessions, after over thirty years of investigations, is that the Ouija does not open up channels to the spirit world, but rather opens up the Pandora’s box of demons that each and every one of us carries in our psyche.

I asked him if he had ever, in his career to date, experienced something that could not be explained in a rational way. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Twice.’

This is the first story. At his request, to respect their privacy, I have changed the names of the people involved.

In 1987 a young married couple, Geoff and Kerry Wilson, had recently had a baby son, Darren. Geoff worked as plumber and Kerry was on maternity leave from her local council job in Croydon. They had been living in a rented basement flat in Croydon and had saved enough money to put down the deposit on a small house on a brand new housing development in the area, built by a national brand-name company.

They moved in when Darren was three months old, and were blissfully happy to finally be in a home of their own. Kerry was a keen gardener, and was happy to be home alone with Darren, who was a delightful, happy and calm baby, while Geoff was away much of the day, and often late into the evenings, working his butt off now that he was the sole breadwinner of the family.

Four weeks after they had moved in, early on a late November morning, Kerry woke suddenly, feeling concerned that something was wrong. She looked at the clock and saw it was 7 a.m. The baby monitor was silent and she realized she had missed Darren’s normal 3 a.m. feed. She went through into his room and was confronted with every mother’s worst nightmare.

Darren lay face down against the mattress. She felt total panic as she gently turned his motionless body over. He was cold, and solid as wood, and his face was a deep mottled blue. The paramedics, who arrived twelve minutes later, were, tragically, unable to resuscitate him.

To add to the hell of the following hours, they then had to deal with the police interrogations. Whilst they were allocated a Family Liaison Officer, a kindly, sympathetic woman PC, they were also subjected to the house being treated as a crime scene, and grilled by two CID officers. They faced the further agony of knowing little Darren was to be subjected to a post-mortem in the mortuary. Police interviews, as well as interviews with a forensic psychologist and a forensic psychiatrist, continued for several days, making them feel — through their intense grief — like criminals and distracting them from the funeral arrangements.

Kerry, who had stopped drinking from the moment she had learned she was pregnant, took to the bottle; Geoff was arrested for drink-driving and faced losing his licence — and his livelihood. He was dependent on his van for his work.

Eventually, they were left alone. Darren’s body was released by the Coroner, and he was buried in a tiny white coffin. In the days following the funeral, Kerry and Geoff, occasionally joined by their parents, sat in desolation in the front room of the new house that had, just a short while ago, seemed so full of promise. The little garden at the rear, where Kerry had dug up beds on both sides of the lawn with an ambitious planting plan, looked increasingly sad, with the grass growing unkempt and weeds sprouting.

To make them feel even more isolated from normal life, most of the units on the estate were still, as yet, unsold, so they had few neighbours to talk to and share their grief with. Kerry’s best friend, Roz, put on a brave face but was totally freaked out, and kept giving excuses why she could not come over. There was just one other young couple, directly across the close — Rob and Mandy King. Mandy was seven months pregnant, and she and her husband felt a kinship with Geoff and Kerry. Kerry’s parents were as supportive as they could be; but they were almost equally grief-stricken and, after a while, they began to avoid contact as much as they could because they just distressed Geoff and Kerry more. Their neighbours, Rob and Mandy, became almost their sole lifeline.

Geoff ignored the brown envelopes of bills that fell daily onto the doormat. He really didn’t care about anything. He could function just sufficiently to make the occasional three-mile round trip to the supermarket, with his wife driving, to buy basic food and cheap wine. They were each drinking a bottle a day.

The doctor prescribed tranquilizers for Kerry, and also sleeping pills after her seventh consecutive night of lying awake crying. Geoff tried to cope without either. He spent his days sitting in front of the television, watching anything that was on, absorbing nothing. He used to like reading, but the pages on any book he picked up contained a meaningless jumble of words.

At 2 a.m. on a Wednesday night, three weeks on, Geoff woke, badly needing to pee and his head throbbing from the booze. He climbed out of bed without turning the light on — not wanting to wake Kerry — pulled on his dressing gown, found his slippers, and shuffled out onto the dark landing, heading to the toilet.

And he stopped in his tracks.

In his own words, this is what happened next:

I saw an endless stream of people, all in white robes, each carrying a small parcel wrapped in white cloth. They were coming out of the wall in front of me, to the right, crossing the landing, and disappearing into the wall on the left.

They were oblivious to me. One after another. Then another, then another. Silent, serious, men and women, some young, some not so young. All in these strange robes. All carrying a white parcel.

For some moments, I thought I must be dreaming. But I was awake. I did that cliché thing of pinching myself, and realized that I was very definitely awake. I stood there, quaking with fear, unsure what to do. I don’t remember for how long I stood there. Some of them seemed to half turn towards me, as if there was something they wanted to communicate, but then they carried on, fading into the wall on the left hand side.