I've lived for 13 years in a house built about 1913 in Inner West Sydney.

I consider myself a `sensitive' and have experienced many paranormal events since I was a child - basically if something's in a house it'll find me.

I've lived for 13 years in a house built about 1913 in Inner West Sydney.

I consider myself a `sensitive' and have experienced many paranormal events since I was a child - basically if something's in a house it'll find me.

There was one presence, an elderly man, in the house when we first moved in, but he was just attached to his home, and must have been a keen gardener, as he disappeared when I smashed up all the concrete and reestablished the garden. All sorts of flowers came up, so it must have been a very lovely well tended garden.

I also `felt' the presence of a soldier, which was confirmed some years later when I received an anonymous letter containing the AIF Roll of Honour register for a young soldier killed in France in WWI. He, as it turned out, was the first tenant of the house, and had left a young widow and small child.

So for 11 years nothing apart from this had occurred, until my teenage son returned home one night white faced and clearly terrified. He claimed that there was a ghost lurking outside my next door neighbour's house, and he'd seen it a couple of times. As he was going through a phase of lying about anything to test how gullible people were I just dismissed it - as far as I was concerned I would have been the one to have the experience not him.

He began to ring me from the phonebox on the corner of the road prior to coming home and requesting I turn on the porchlight and open the door, and he'd race in. My partner and I started ribbing him about the ghost, but in truth I was becoming a bit nervous & uncomfortable, especially when I was outside watering the front garden at night.

I also had a chat with him about hanging around St Stephen's Cemetery at night, which his peer group was doing at the time, and explained to him it wasn't a good place to be, what with the victims of the Dunbar shipping accident being buried there etc.

I also tried to make rational explanations about what he had been seeing - I suggested that it was a friend of my neighbour who might be staying for a few weeks.

One night after another encounter, exasperated, he dragged me out the front & the back of the house and showed me that there were no lights on in our neighbours house. There was banging within the house, around the kitchen area as if someone was cooking dinner. I noticed on a number of occasions that there were noises coming via the other side of the party wall, when I knew that no one was there.

Finally after about 3 months of this I was returning home from work about 6pm - it was twilight, the sun just going down. As I was fumbling around in my handbag for my keys I noticed a dark clad figure glide past on the other side of the partition wall - one thing that I vividly recall was how pale it's skin was in contrast to the dark overcoat. I thought at first it was my neighbour, who was Scottish and quite fair, but he was a very friendly man who always said hello, so very unlike him not to greet me. So I stood and waited and listened to hear him open the doors, but of course not a sound. I summoned up the courage to peer over the fence and there was no-one there. I didn't say anything to my son, as he was very frightened and I didn't want to increase his fear by letting him know I'd seen it too.

 A few weeks later we came home after a night at the movies and there it was, standing inside the gate of my neighbours house - we must have seen it at the same time as my son gripped my arm and said excitedly (& freaking out of course) `Do you see it? Do you believe me now?'It looked like the Grim Reaper - this really pale white glowing face in a dark cloak just standing and staring at us. I just took his hand and continued on and just ignored it.

The overt haunting ceased after this, but sometimes I'm aware of it standing outside our front gate looking into the house, but I feel it more than see it. A medium I know said it was a young man who died suddenly /violently, possibly drug related, who had followed my son home, but couldn't cross the threshold of our home due to the psychic barrier I have placed around the house. He was getting great enjoyment from scaring the hell out of my son. I don't know if it's related or not, but my neighbour and the people next door to him had problems with pebbles being thrown on their roofs between 12-4 am. Police were never able to work out where the pebbles came from or who was throwing them - I think they thought my neighbours were a bit crazy.

Submitted by Lesley March 2006