30 May 2005
HAUNTED BY MY GRANNY
FAMILY'S GHOSTLY TERROR
By David Edwards

THE cough is loud, persistent and coming from the next room. Springing
from my sleeping bag, I'm struck by the intense cold - it may be a balmy
May night but it feels like winter.
I hit the lights. It's just after 3am and in the four hours I've been
asleep the furniture in the room has been rearranged.

It sounds like a cheap horror film. But strange forces really seem to be
at work in a normal family home. And Sue Eckersley and her two kids are
understandably terrified.
The 29-year-old mum says: "I never believed in ghosts before I lived
here but there's no other explanation."

The strange events plaguing the unremarkable redbrick house in Standish,
near Wigan, began in late 1996.
The three-bedroom end-of-terrace had been home to Sue's grandparents Joe
and Joan Hunter for 50 years. After Joan died in 1995, her daughter,
Sandra Eckersley, moved.

The 58-year-old - Sue's mum - says: "The first thing was the sheets
moving as I lay in bed. I sensed my mum and felt the blankets moving
around me. It was like she was tucking me in just like she used to."
When Joe, 75, died in 1997, the problems got worse.

"After the funeral, the boxes of his old stuff would move about," says
Sandra. "I'd make a point of putting, say, a pension book on the table
and walking out of the room. Each time it moved."

Next she heard footsteps at night. Then the coughing started. "It scared
me so much that I wouldn't go to bed," she recalls.
Her daughter Sue, who then lived down the road with her children Liam,
11, and Shannon, nine, says: "When she told me these stories I was
worried about her state of mind. I told her she should see the doctor."

By mid-1997, the strain had become too much and Sandra gave the house to
Sue, whose family was outgrowing their small flat. At first the young
mum was thrilled at having her own home. But within days, her joy turned
to unease.

"Before we moved in, I was painting the lounge when I heard the coughing
in the dining room," says Sue.
"At first I thought mum had let herself in but there was nobody else in
the house. That was when I got my first chill."

The chill Sue speaks of is a sudden drop in body temperature, usually
affecting one side of her body. "It's like a cold breath and when I feel
it I can sense someone in the room."
Things soon got worse. The first time the furniture moved was in early
1998, soon after the family had settled in.

"I heard Liam scream in the lounge. One of the very heavy armchairs had
rolled across the room."
Shannon, then three, spent hours talking to people who weren't there.

"She said it was an old lady who lived in the radiator. One day I was
looking through pictures of my nan and she pointed to one and cried.
That was the old lady."

Things came to a head when the three fled in their nightgowns after a
loud croaking noise wouldn't stop. "It was awful," she says. Terrified,
Sue asked James Byrne, a Cheshire psychic with nearly 30 years
experience, to pay a visit.

James, 50, says: "As we talked a lamp on the table flew across the room
and smashed on the wall. My doubts vanished."

He believes Sue's grandparents have been trying to make contact. But now
they've made their presence felt, he thinks the phenomena will subside.

Sue prays he's right. And anyone who had experienced first-hand that
awful chill would pray too.