The Real-Life Inspirations Behind the Haunting

People often ask if I believe in ghosts.
My answer: I’ve never seen one. But I’ve lived with one.

Years ago, back in England, we lived in a house that felt... off. Not in a horror movie kind of way—creaking floorboards and slamming doors—but something subtler, colder, more persistent, something that lived with us.

Our children were young then. The youngest, just a little girl, often spoke of a kind woman who came to see her at night. She wasn’t frightened—just matter-of-fact. “She sits at the end of the bed,” she’d say as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
What was strange was the cold. Their bedroom was always icy, even on the hottest summer afternoons. I put a heater in there once, but it didn’t make the slightest difference.

Then there were the lights.
I’d hear the pedal bin in the kitchen open and close in the middle of the night. When I went downstairs to check, the lounge lights were on. I’d turn them off and go back to bed. Minutes later—click. Click. The switches again. Back on.
Once or twice is odd. Night after night?

The most chilling moment came late one evening.
I was upstairs, in bed, waiting for my wife to join me. I heard her coming up the stairs and saw her shadow pass the hallway light as she entered the bathroom.
But after a while, I wondered what was taking her so long.
I got up to check.
She was still downstairs—and hadn’t come up yet.
So, who did I see? Who did I hear?
I never found an answer. But that feeling—the presence, the quiet wrongness, the sense that someone or something is sharing your space unseen—stayed with me.

Years later, it shaped the story into The Bell Tower Suite.
If you’ve read the novella, you’ll see the echoes: the icy rooms, the quiet footsteps, the ghost who doesn’t mean harm… until he does.

I didn’t need to invent the haunting. Just listen.
📘 The Bell Tower Suite is available now on Kindle for 99¢.
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