After years of following my Dad around the world ( he was in the army ) . We finally settled in Gosport to be closer to my mums mum and dad .
My Dad brought a little house in a little street just of Forton road . The year was 1973 .
On the day we moved in , my sisters and I were very excited . A new house , a new life , a permanent base .
It all started a few weeks after moving in . Lights would turn off and on by them selves , doors would open and curtains would blow in wards when no windows were open . Then nightmares , something I was not accustomed to .
One night I felt someone run their hand up the side of my body , starting from my foot to my head . At first I thought it was my little sister , so I shouted for her to get back into bed . I looked up and saw that she was in bed sleeping , but over by the window was a man wearing a black fur coat …..
Over the next few months other things started to happen . Clothes on the airer would have burn marks in them , things would fly out of the cupboards and things would go missing .
One night my sister and I were woken up in the night by soft thumping sounds . We looked up to see my sister’s tennis balls being thrown up against the side wall of our bedroom ( my mum had already started leaving the stair light on and our room doors ajar ) .
After about a year in the house things started to worsen . My sister woke up screaming in pain one night , my mum and dad came running into our room . My sister was screaming ” get it off , get it off ” , she was holding her side , ” its the crocodile ” she screamed . ” its biting me ” . Mum thought she was just having yet another nightmare , she lifted my sisters nightdress and saw what looked like bit marks around her middle , they were bleeding …..
Always the man in the fur coat was by the window smiling …..
My mums health had started to suffer and she had to go into hospital for kidney surgery , my dad was in Germany , so my sisters and I went to live with my nan and grandad just down the road .
All the nightmares stopped and nothing bad happened at my Nans , my sisters and I became the happy care free children we once were .
A few short weeks later , my mum had recovered and we went back to that house . That night the man in the fur coat was there telling us how he missed us ….
He got nasty again and would throw things at us , bite us and growl at us …
One morning , we were all getting ready for school , my mum told us she was going down stairs to start breakfast . My sisters and I were all in our room . Mum screamed and the we heard her falling down the stairs . We ran to the banisters and looked down at mum sitting on the bottom stair . She looked so angry, and asked which one of us pushed her . We told her we were altogether in the room and that we didn’t push her . It was then that mum saw for the first time the man in the fur coat , he was standing behind us on the top of the stairs .
We moved not long after that and never had any problems again .
This all happened 43 years ago . It is one of the most traumatic times of my life . Some bits I have left out as I find it to difficult to write it down . As an adult , looking back at the man in the fur coat , I realise he wasn’t a man at all , but a boy in his teenage years .
The strange thing is , on the day we moved into that house , the kids next-door told us that we wouldn’t live there for very long , because nobody ever does !
anon.