Embracing the Spirits: True Stories of My Encounters With the Other Side by Barbara Parks (best ereader for graphic novels txt) 📗

it. I just wanted to take it all in; the feel of him, his smell … it was such a gift!”

208Marnie

After a while Marnie found herself lying back in her bed

and a moment later her husband was gone.

“I was so excited there was no chance of getting back to

sleep, so I went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. I noticed that it was a little after 4.15am.”

It was the dawn of what was to be a very special day, as

Marnie was to discover a couple of hours later. Slipped

beneath her door was a piece of paper, delivered in the early hours of the morning. Not wishing to wake up his mother

(but desperate to share his news) her son had written a note

announcing the birth of Marnie’s first grandchild.

Lily Victoria Grace was delivered at 4.15am; her time of

birth coinciding precisely with her late grandfather’s visit.

“How’d you like that?” asked Marnie with a twinkle in her

eye. “My darling didn’t miss out on being a Grandad after all!”

I went on to tell Marnie about my spirit friends at the

Ellington School House; knowing that she would embrace my

experiences as much as I had embraced hers. She listened with

great interest; all the while smiling and nodding as I told her about the boys.

“I really hope you see them,” I told her. “And if you do,

please make sure you speak to them. They really are gor-

geous!”

“Don’t you worry,” she smiled. “I most certainly will! And

naturally I’ll tell them that Barbara said hello!”

As our appointment concluded I couldn’t help smiling.

What I had expected to be a routine consultation had evolved

into so much more; another reminder of the sheer wonder-

fulness of the spirit world. It seemed I was being blessed with these random insights more and more.

Marnie 209

And of course meeting Marnie had been just as wonderful.

Despite our fifty two year age gap I knew that I’d found a kindred spirit. I couldn’t wait to hear all about her stay at the old school house; I had no doubt that the boys would find her just as endearing as I did!

chapter twenty-four

C l i f f s i d e

Not long after our trip to the old schoolhouse in Dunkirk, I

was back at my clinic, toiling through what had shaped up to

be a mammoth twenty patient day. With only two patients to

go, I was on the downhill slide. I couldn’t get through my last two consultations quickly enough; I was exhausted and ready

to go home.

All that changed when Paul Webster walked through the

door; an abundance of energy and charisma in tow. His ebul-

lience was infectious and I found myself thinking it wasn’t

so bad being at work after all. As an added bonus, Paul came

armed with an arsenal of ghost stories, accrued over the years he and his family spent living in Dunkirk.

Despite being neighbours for almost ten years, our paths

rarely crossed. Paul is a well known authority on community

development, whose unmatched expertise is highly sought

after around the world. As such he seems to be perpetually

travelling, and opportunities for a neighbourly chat are few

211

212Cliffside

and far between. Fortuitously for me (but perhaps not so for-

tunately for Paul) a knee problem had brought him to my

clinic, and with it, the opportunity to chat.

During the course of the appointment I mentioned our

recent trip to Dunkirk, where I had encountered the spirits of two young boys. Paul recounted his own ghostly recollections

of the historic town, where he and his family had lived in a

gracious old homestead called Cliffside.

Cliffside is a breathtaking Dunkirk landmark, perched over-

looking the township for the last hundred years. Built in 1911, it was steeped in drama and intrigue; with a history so chequered that it was bound to be rife with ghosts. Built by the

original owner as an expression of love for his new wife, Cliffside was a glamorous turn-of the-century party house. It was

the scene of endless, high-end parties; its ballroom frequently bustling with the district’s well-to-do.

The Websters were well aware of their unseen housemates

before moving in, as the vendors made no secret of Cliffside’s restless ghosts. They told Paul that one of the presences (presumably the original lady of the house) had taken a particular dislike to their young daughter. The girl’s photographs were

repeatedly placed facedown, or thrown off the mantelpiece

in disdain. Despite the ghost’s obvious scorn for the girl in

question, Paul assures me that her presence was by no means

malevolent. “She was actually quite a lovely old lady,” he said.

“But for some reason she just didn’t like the young girl. If anything, she was just extremely sad.”

As well as being upfront about the ghosts, no secret was

made of Cliffside’s tragic past. The original owner’s son had shot himself in the dining room, as a reaction to being spurned by the woman he loved. His suicide was chillingly methodical;

Cliffside 213

he played Smoke Gets In Your Eyes on the gramophone, whilst proceeding to fire a bullet into his head.

Suicide was to revisit the homestead some years later,

when the owner himself chose to take his own life. Rather

than allowing his body to slowly succumb to terminal can-

cer, he chose to exit the world in the same way as his son.

Both tragedies left the lady of the house distraught; her grief-stricken energy remaining palpable within Cliffside’s walls.

Thus informed of Cliffside’s rich and varied history, it was

no surprise to the Websters when the ghosts came to call.

Paul’s wife, Amanda recalls a particularly disturbing epi-

sode which occurred not long after the family moved in. As

her car approached the homestead, Amanda and her friend

suddenly heard a shrill, high pitched scream. The hideous

screeching continued slicing through the air as they continued along the driveway, building in intensity as they drew closer to the house.

It seemed the unearthly noise was coming from the pad-

dock, so the women’s eyes scoured the long grass for a possi-

ble cause of the shrieking. Perhaps an