Gabi originally floated into my inbox with a really interesting account of a night in Grovely Woods and some ethereal singing she experienced while ‘camping out’ with her friends.

It turns out Gabi has had quite a few strange experiences throughout her life. I’m wondering if she is a sensitive. I was very grateful, as I always am when people share their personal experiences with me, that Gabi agreed to recount these stories. As you know, I think all ghost stories need to be written down somewhere and it’s thrilling that Weird Wiltshire is a sharing zone!

I always like to try and keep personal accounts in the writer’s own words. So here (with a little sprinkle of editing from me) is Gabi’s personal account of her three ghost stories from a haunted Salisbury home.

Setting the scene…

I have three very vivid experiences from the house I grew up in and another that my two sisters swear happened to them. I lived in a house for fourteen years, in a central suburban Salisbury area. I won’t share details exactly where it is, if that’s okay!

I remember from a very young age we were told the former resident, an elderly man, died in his bed in the house shortly before we moved in. My mum always said he was friendly though, just a harmless old man who would not cause us any harm. An important thing to acknowledge about the house is it was a standard three-bed, prefab-style ex-council house. It was quite big, very well-built and my mum and dad modified a lot of it over the years. The bedrooms were swapped several times over the years but at the start my mum and dad had the master room, my sisters had the second double bedroom and I was in the box room. However, something in that box room absolutely terrified me.

I don’t recall what it was as I was probably only four or five years old at that time. The only incident I remember from that room is hearing a tapping noise throughout the night. To me it sounded like beads slowly hitting laminate flooring, one by one. My mum had to come in and sleep next to me otherwise I would’ve refused to stay there. I don’t remember if it was straight after this, or a culmination of things that stopped me from sleeping in there, but eventually I was moved into the master room with both my sisters. The box room was turned into a playroom as all three of us refused to sleep in there.

Eventually, as we all turned into teenagers, it was decided we couldn’t all continue to share one room, so one of my sisters took the box room and me and the other moved into the second double. My sister has had her own experiences in that box room – I’m not clear what and I’m not sure she will share, but I know the general feeling from all of us was that there were energies in the house we couldn’t explain.

Here are my specific experiences:

Ghost stories from a haunted Salisbury home – Experience number one

One weekend, when I was about five or six and my two sisters must’ve been nine or ten years old I remember this happening. I think we would’ve all been sharing the master bedroom by this point. Sister two (as we’ll call her) went out for the day with my dad, so me and sister one were playing with our baby dolls in the bedrooms upstairs. Mum was downstairs cleaning and pottering around. I had sister two’s baby doll which she was very protective of. When we heard my other sister and dad come back through the front door, I put the doll and we ran downstairs to greet them. When we went back upstairs, shortly after, the baby doll had moved onto the chest of drawers. Both sisters were with me at the time, so there is no explanation. That was my first direct personal experience of the unknown. I swear I put the baby doll on the bed and sister one saw me do it too.

Ghost stories from a haunted Salisbury home- Experience number two

I cannot exactly remember how old I was when this happened, but I believe I would’ve been around nine. It was around the time two very defining moments of my childhood occured. The first was that my maternal Grandpa died very suddenly, and the second was we got our first dog. So, one very traumatic family experience, and one very positive experience that define that era of my life for me.

Anyway, onto the experience. It was the evening. Very dark outside and I was in the living room alone which was open plan and ran into the dining room. The living room faced the garden and we had large full glass panel patio doors. The curtains were not pulled and the living room was lit, so all I could see when I looked to the patio doors were my own reflection and the reflection of the room around me. I was laid on the living room floor, either drawing or reading magazines, everything spread out around me. The way the room was laid out was the door to both rooms was via the dining room, on the left, and if you turned right after entering, you’d directly face the patio doors and living room area. There was a tub chair you’d walk around to get to where I was lying.

I remember looking up, at the patio doors, and in the reflection an old man walked through the door, walking round the tub chair towards me smiling. I turned in the direction towards the chair and there was, of course, no one there. It was a white figure with a beard. My gut feeling told me, and still tells me, was that it was not my grandpa. The reflection was a thin man with a beard and I swear he was wearing a hat and walked with a cane – all very unlike my grandpa when he died. However, I did get the feeling he was friendly, so it could have been the previous occupant of the house. 

Ghost stories from a haunted Salisbury home- Experience number three

I feel like this probably happened when I was around ten or eleven. We had our dog by now and this event happened in the middle of the day. I was in the living room again and I believe one of my sisters was in the room with me at the time. We were probably messing around with the TV and winding each other up. Our dog was in the garden and once he had finished whatever he was up to, he would come to the closed patio doors to be let back inside. He was well-trained and had a very friendly and sweet temperament. The main sofa and the TV were facing each other on opposite ends of the patio doors, with the sofa being closest to the handle of the patio doors. I distinctly remember the dog running to the patio doors and barking like crazy at the sofa, which you could clearly see on your left looking in from the patio.

There was a dent in the seat, where he was looking and barking at – as if someone was sitting down right there. It was the end seat of our fairly new leather sofa. No one had been sitting on it. And the dog was going mad! One of us let him back in, the dent disappeared and the dog completely relaxed. 

The end

This is the end of Gabi’s experiences. Personally, I feel that the previous resident of her childhood home was definitely still there. Perhaps he was enjoying having a lively girl gang to share his house?

But why did the box room give out those strange vibes? Who knows? Maybe there was one or more spirits in the house? This is something we will probably never find out! It’s intriguing nonetheless!

Thank you!

My biggest thank you to Gabi for taking time to share. If you are reading this and you have a ghost story you would be willing to share please consider contacting me.

Each story is treated with belief and the largest amount of respect. You can contact me through here or via Twitter.

Stay spooky everyone! 👻

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