In the early 90's, Ellie Addams, a young single mother , down on her luck, lost her home due to the recession and was living in various bed and breakfasts and caravans. She was eventually given a semi-permanent place to stay, by the government, The Tower Apartments, which was a big old house that had been sectioned into individual units for rent. These apartments were built over an old orphanage, which had been called the Darley Dene House, in a section of Surrey, England, called Addlestone. This is also where our ghost and the subject of our story, Amy, lost her own life and her family to a fire, which is why her spirit seemed to cling to that area. The Orphanage was also lost in a fire, so it is unclear as to whether Amy was lost in a fire in her home, or when the orphanage burnt down. This is all still a mystery.
Ellie was excited to finally have her own place, even if only semi-permanent after all of the trouble she'd seen with her financial difficulties. After quickly packing all of her belongings, she and her young daughter Jess happily moved in. They looked forward to the peace and quiet of their own place. Life was finally looking up for Ellie and her young daughter, Jessica.
The first night they stayed in their new place, Jess sleepily ambled into her mother's bedroom in the middle of the night, saying, "She didn't like it in there". The tired young mother chalked it up to sleeping in a strange new place; after all Jessica was only two and a half at the time. Each night she would come into her mother's room, until Ellie was losing far too much sleep and becoming a bit concerned by it. That is when the toddler piped up, "but the little girl doesn't want me there". Thinking the lonely little girl had made up and imaginary playmate, she let it go. Instead, Ellie suggested instead of her coming into her mother's bedroom at night that she would sleep in her daughter's room with her hoping this would calm and ease the child.
A good glass of hot milk was brought up to sooth Jessica, and the two settling down in the bed in hopes that this would calm the frightened little girl and regain some normalcy to her life. Ellie was startled out of a light sleep by the sensation of being psychically pushed whilst in her daughter's bed, yet no one was there. The sleeping Jess might have had a point, she did say that the "little girl didn't want them in there". Ellie sure didn't want to move after all of the trouble that she'd gone through to get the place. There had to be a reasonable explanation for all of this.
A few nights went by blissfully without incident. Ellie was lulled into a peaceful calmness in her new home. She walked the hallway, admiring the old trim that had be newly painted, and decided to check on her daughter, and found the room filled with smoke and unexplained heat, but nowhere else in the apartment was there a hint of this. Ellie searched and found no cause for the smoke, or source for the heat, but assumed there was a problem with the building and somehow smoke was being funneled into her daughter's roomwhat could it be? How strange this was to the young single mother. The building superintendant checked everything out the very next day and found no reason for the smoke or heat, all was normal.
Two and a half year old Jess would often say to her Mother, when being corrected for bad behavior, "but Amy wants me to", and Amy did it quite often, now Ellie had a name. Amy who is Amy? Was this an imaginary friend or were they dealing with much more than that?
Ellie, a single mother, had a date for the first time in what seemed to be years, and asked her parents to baby-sit one night, and upon her return she could see that her upset parents had encountered Amy. They said, "In future we'll baby-sit at our place. With all the smoke, you'd think we were sitting on top of a bon fire, but the funny thing is, we were still cold all evening. Jess's bedroom door kept opening by itself all night and it just freaked us out Ellie. Why don't you girls move home with us?" Her parents scrambled out of her apartment as fast as they could and rarely came by, and then only briefly. This made Ellie so uneasy she checked in on her sleeping child. As she walked toward the door, the door handle slowly moved on its own, opening the door for her. Amy loved to play with the front door as well. Ellie had gotten so used to it that she repeatedly shouted at Amy to close it, as it was letting the heat out.
Ellie seemed to get used to having Amy about. She showed herself to be quite a prankster. Out of nowhere 2pence coins would roll down the stairs. In a period of about a year, Ellie counted 23 hair brushes went missing never to be seen again. Others that went missing would turn up on a cabinet well out of reach for her two and half year old daughter. Amy loved to brush her hair it seemed.
Ellie's friend's Harriet's birthday was 23rd December. Ellie invited her to stay over so she could enjoy herself and have a few drinks, not having to worry about driving home. Harriet happily decided to stay over. Ellie put her in Jess's room, and Harriet woke up frightened out of her wits, feeling that she was being choked with ghostly hands; also the acrid smoke was back. From that day on she wouldn't even enter the house, forget coercing her to stay over.
Another brave girlfriend stayed over, and as she had to be up and out before the rest of the house got up, she undressed downstairs, and meticulously placed her socks in her boots with the jeans and top above so that she could come down early in the morning not disturbing anyone's sleep as she left. It turns out that she indeed had to disturb her hostess, for when she went to put her socks on there was only one there. She looked and looked, hoping upon hope not to disturb anyone in the sleeping household, but couldn't find anywhere. After waking a groggy Ellie, a spirited search around the apartment found the missing sock on the toilet roll holder in the bathroom. Everyone had a good giggle about it, but they were sure it was Amy playing a trick.
Another incident that Amy was involved in; Jessica, had a necklace that she didn't wear, but would fiddle with to get to sleep. We used to call it her twiddles'. Still sleeping in her mother's bed for fear of any more incidents, Jess, woke screaming because she didn't have her twiddles. Ellie pulled back the covers to find them, and they simply weren't anywhere. Ellie and her friend stripped the bed completely desperately trying to appease her daughter, knowing full well there was no way she would settle without them. They were nowhere to be found. The sobbing toddler wondered downstairs, then suddenly she went quite, not even silent sobs. and Ellie just knew what had happened. She went downstairs and there she was sat on the chair with her twiddles', "Amy found them for me," replied the satisfied little girl. Ellie thought to herself, Amy also managed to lose them for her too.
Odd things kept happening which there was no real logical explanation for, but Ellie got used to having Amy around and so did Jess. The next major incident she could recall; there were plenty of people to witness. Her daughter's 3rd birthday was in the April of the following year, and she had a few friends over for the fun. Some of the mothers stayed to help clean up.
There were two mothers in particular, Caroline and Sarah who sat either end of her sofa, chatting after clean up, when all of a sudden Jess said "Amy's here", and looked at the space in-between them, and even though I never saw Amy, I always sensed her. Sure enough there she was; a shimmering essence. The two mothers shot up out of their seats so fast that the seat covers almost went with them, and ran out the room. Although more than strange, Ellie thought it was funny, and so did a few others. You could see a slight indent where Jess was saying she was.
Other tenants in the block said the previous occupants had come in, and the rocking chair would be rocking, and other weird stuff happened. Always they asked to be moved, but it seemed that Amy had found herself a family, Ellie and Jessica. Ellie had known that her daughter and Amy had become friends. Amy was naughty, but didn't seem dangerous, other than the smoke incident; this was a still a mystery.
In the August of that year Ellie's grandmother died, and she was devastated. Ellie was so close to her, in fact she had raised her, as her mother had been ill was Ellie was young. Ellie had kept her fish tank at her house in hopes that her grandmother might recover and go home to enjoy her beloved fish again, but that wasn't in the cards. During this time, Sarah, Ellie's girlfriend's daughter Lucy, stayed over one night, and in the morning both girls were playing in the living room happily. Ellie went up to dress, but when she came down they were both looking at her as if to say we didn't mean too. Ellie inquired as to what the girls had been up to, and they said simply "fishing". Ellie looked towards the tank and it was empty. Frantically she searched questioning the girls all along. She found the fish zipped up in a Minnie Mouse pencil case still alive, which the frantic Ellie immediately put back into the tank. Other than an odd fin missing they were fine. The !
distraught mother got on the phone to her friend Sarah and said, "Please get over here now. You won't believe what the girls have done." Sarah came straight over as fast as she could, and tried to work through this with Ellie. "Think about this Ellie. Two three year olds and a large tank with a lid, an ironing board and laundry basket in front, still in their night-clothes DRY, not a drop of water anywhere. Explain that!"
She asked Jess's young guest, Lucy, what had happened. Lucy said that "Jessica's friend, Amy, came through there (pointing to the wall) and just grabbed them like this (and pantomimed her little hands going into the water) and took them and put them in the case." It made sense, as kids this age would have made more than a slight mess, and been very wet had it been them. Sarah said," Let's get them dressed, and you come down to my house for a while and calm down", as she knew it was because of her grandmother's precious fish. Though in hindsight it was amusing, at the time Ellie was incredibly upset. They got to Sarah's house and walked into the kitchen, immediately an ornament flew off of her kitchen cupboard hitting the kitchen table with some force, and Ellie said "It looks like Amy has followed us here now." Was there no haven from this ghostly child?
Ellie had a Tupperware party at her home. Ellie accompanied by one of her guests, went to the kitchen to make tea for everyone. All of the burners on the stove had been turned on. No one had been in the kitchen and Jess asleep upstairs; now it was getting dangerous. The smoke and the gases got her thinking that perhaps Amy was trying to tell her something. Evidently Amy had told her Jessica that her family was dead. From her daughters description of her she was about 6 years old with long dark hair, wearing what Jess described as Holly Hobbie' style clothing. Ellie tried to look up what had been there, and history and at the time in the local library, and was able to find that a large house had been there previously which had been an annex for an orphanage.
Ellie decided after much deliberation to get help for the ghostly child and send her to the light, hiring professionals in to do so. The gas incident was very dangerous, so she simply couldn't stay. Things were quite from then on. The house also felt warmer. Not long after wards, Ellie and her daughter were housed permanently in another area of the town. She hadn't thought about Amy for years. Her daughter doesn't like to speak about Amy at all, though she reluctantly admits missing not having her around in a way.
Ellie's daughter is now nearly 18, so this was a good few years ago but a couple of weeks ago Ellie walked into her bathroom in the morning and in sponge letters was the name Amy on the inside of the bathtub. It really threw Ellie as she knew she has gone, and she didn't even live in the same area anymore, but she checked all fire alarms and electrical appliances just in case Amy was warning her about something somehow. She's not had any other ghostly happenings in her new home.yet, but her four year old son decided he now has an invisible friend called Silver Cat. Oh nonot again.
Author's note: I'd like to thank my friend Ellie in the UK, whose last name was changed to protect her identity. She kindly told me this creepy little tale and I wanted to share it with my readers, with her permission of course. Thank you Ellie and Jess! Happy Halloween everyone!