Since it is spooky season, I suppose it’s about time I told you about “Mr Oliver”.
In the house of my youth, for a period of about a decade, we experienced a range of events which we came to refer to as ‘The happenings’. They ranged from ghostly clocks and animals to moved or impossibly positioned objects, what you might call poltergeist activity. But today, I want to tell you about the events we attributed to a certain ‘Mr Oliver’.
The first encounter was in the mid nineties. I was about 16. The whole family; my parents, my sister, and I, were in the lounge watching TV. Both cats were with us too, curled up asleep, when suddenly we heard footsteps on our stairs. Slow, deliberate, and very heavy footsteps.
The stairs were right next to the lounge, separated from it by only a thin wall, and the sound was not only clear even over the sound of the TV, but completely unmistakable. The cats woke up in full alert. It chilled us to the bone, as it does to me even now as I write this, in recollection of that moment. My Dad remained obliviously slumped asleep on the sofa like always, but the rest of us stared at each other in wide-eyed horror. There was no one else in the house. At least, there shouldn’t have been.
Being the brave and confrontational boy I was, as well as nearest the door, I leapt from my seat, flung the door open, and stepped aggressively into the dimly moonlit hallway. There was no one there. I ran the few steps to the switch and slapped the lights on as I turned sharply to look up the stairs. Not a soul in sight. The girls stood in the doorway of the lounge, evaluating the situation from my reaction. I just looked back at them stony faced, and shook my head.
It would appear we’d all heard a phantom intruder. Still, I wanted to make sure no one corporeal was really there. I ran up the stairs and with my heart now pounding, checked each room, slamming the doors open with the intent of injuring anyone who might be hiding behind, checked under every bed, behind every curtain, and in every closet. There was no one here. I went back to the landing and looked down at my mum and sister now standing anxiously at the foot of the stairs. “Nothing.” I shrugged. “That’s really weird.”
But my sister was sniffing the air in confusion. “What’s that smell?” She said, at the exact moment I detected it too. “It’s like tobacco.”
“Yes, it’s pipe tobacco” Mum agreed.
Indeed, it did smell exactly like pipe tobacco. Distinctly sweet and earthy, the smell of it grew until it filled the room.
Now, no one in our household smoked, or ever had. Nor did our neighbours. In fact I wasn’t aware of anyone in this stretch of our street who smoked a pipe. We’d never encountered such a scent in the house before, and needless to say, we were quick to attribute it to our mysterious visitor.
Not only did no one in our household smoke, but the previous owners of the house, who had lived there from the mid 50s to 1970 when my parents bought it, didn’t either. But… the one before did: Mr Oliver. We were well aware of him because he had been a local character, a big, former military man, who had owned a war memorabilia shop in the village. He owned the house from new, circa 1936, until the 50s. Such was his military obsession, he’d painted most of the floorboards and stair treads, which were still in situ, olive drab… and he was never seen without a pipe.
Over the next few days, Mum told us everything she knew about him. It seemed he would likely have been in his 80s or 90s at this point, and though we knew nothing of his fate, it seemed quite possible that he had recently died. We were a family of logical minded skeptics however, so we shook off any idea that we were being haunted, or rather, laughed it off enough to put it to the very back of our minds.
But these experiences continued with regularity. Sometimes we’d hear the footsteps on the stairs, sometimes we’d smell the pipe tobacco. Often, they came together. This seemingly happened at any time of the day or night. You’d be about to go upstairs when the smell of pipe tobacco would suddenly hit you, followed immediately by the distinctive sound of each 60 year old stair tread creaking or knocking in turn in its own idiosyncratic way under the weight of someone ascending the stairs. You’d be going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, on the landing when you’d hear those steps, getting closer and closer, doubling your heart rate. And every time you looked, there was nothing to see. For some reason, at night it was more terrifying, and sent all of us at one point or another rushing back to our rooms, locking and perhaps even barricading the door closed.
This went on for a couple of years and I suppose we eventually got used to it. ‘It’s just Mr Oliver’ we told ourselves. It remained creepy, and unnerving, but never threatening. But then it escalated.
Aged around 18, I was in my bedroom one afternoon, and alone in the house, when I heard the footsteps on the stairs. I should make it clear at this point that I’d lived my whole life in this house and had impeccable knowledge of every single sound it made. I could especially identify every floorboard by its sound, and could tell instantly who was coming up the stairs by the weight and cadence of the steps. This was no one living. This was Mr Oliver.
As always, my heart quickened, my skin turned to goosebumps, but my mind sought to soothe me. “It’s just Mr Oliver” I said quietly, but out loud, expecting the footsteps to fade out at the top of the stairs like always. They didn’t.
Two more steps were taken, the last of which pressed heavily on the distinctly creaky floorboard right outside my bedroom door: The same floorboard that creaked every time someone was listening at my door, or about to knock. But this felt different. This person was far heavier, their footsteps slower. Besides, no one was home besides me. And then came the knock.
KNOCK… KNOCK… KNOCK.
Three heavy knocks on my bedroom door. One a second. As slow and deliberate as the footsteps, and unquestionably the sound of heavy human knuckles on thin wood. I stood up and stared uncomfortably on the door. Like always, it was bolted shut, but I was nervous none-the-less. There was a distinct feeling of menace about this now. I swallowed hard. My heart was racing. But somehow, I found the courage to answer the door.
With my foot firmly behind the door as a stop, I unbolted it and opened it just a few inches. There was no one there. I came out and just like the first encounter, checked every room, and even downstairs, but found nothing. This set a new precedent. It didn’t always happen, but often. Only ever on my bedroom door, no other. Whenever I heard the footsteps on the stairs I’d tighten up, waiting for the knock. It happened sometimes in the dead of night, with everyone asleep. It’d wake people up. Everyone heard it. No one could explain it. And of course, it was often accompanied by the smell of pipe smoke.
Our cats reacted to it too. They’d act erratically even before the knock, sometimes even before the footsteps on the stairs. Our female cat, who had not been prone to the zoomies, would suddenly go berserk, racing around the house in a panic as if looking for an exit, just before the smell of pipe smoke presented itself. Our male cat, a very relaxed boy who almost invariably spent the night stretched out on a blanket on my sister’s windowsill, would suddenly stare in fear at her door, his tail fluffed up, often foreshadowing the knock on my door.
This went on for a year or so. Unlike the footsteps and the pipe smell, we never got used to it, at least I didn’t. Conversely, a heavy and oppressive feeling of dread seemed to grow larger with each time it happened. At one point, there was an even a flush of the toilet. I came out of my room, this time sure it must be a family member unexpectedly home during the day, only to find nothing but an empty house, yet the toilet cistern refilling, and the sound of footsteps, this time, uniquely, descending the stairs. As amusing as that seems to some people, whatever this entity was, it was undoubtedly interacting with the physical world, and that was terrifying.
The last time the knocking happened, though three deliberate knocks as always, they had greater urgency to them. Slightly faster than normal, and a lot harder. It felt angry rather than assertive. So much so that I climbed halfway out of my bedroom window in a panic to escape.
After that, it never happened again. That’s when the poltergeist activity started, but that’s a story for another time.
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TL:DR
For a few years in the 90s, an entity which we attributed to the spirit of a former resident of our house, used to walk loudly up our stairs, smoke a pipe, and knock loudly on my bedroom door.