Last night I stayed a friend who
lives with a musical ghost. Part of her beautiful old house dates from the 13th
century and the walls move and the floors undulate when the wind blows. I
discovered during my last visit that the ghost comes through the wall of the
music room when someone plays the piano. That night, the weather was very wild
and windy and I felt I couldn’t play my friend’s beautiful old piano because of
the strange atmospheric conditions; it was basically too spooky. So I wandered
around the music room before going to bed.
During the night, the wind invaded all
the cracks in the old house; leaning on doors, whistling into spaces and
banging on windows. My bedroom door kept creaking loudly each time the wind
tore through the room, making it impossible to me to sleep. I got out of bed about
3.15 am desperately hoping to stop the noise. I took out my book of Beethoven’s piano
sonatas that I had brought with me as it was the only thing that would fit
exactly into the space between the door and the door frame and wedged it into
the creaking door and climbed back into bed, hoping that the room would be
quiet enough for sleep to overtake me. An hour later, just as I was just
dozing, the door shot open in the wind and Beethoven’s music dropped to the
floor. I was too exhausted to move, so I lay there and knew that a presence was
in the room. The musical ghost was standing there waiting for me to play the
piano. I was too disturbed to sleep all the night.
Will I ever have the courage to
return?
