Wednesday 24 February
The other day, Adora and I were talking about ghost stories. She explained to me about the time she came home from primary school and saw the reflection of a dark figure in the glass doors of the cupboard. She turned to see what it was and swore she was looking at a tall and thin man in a long dark coat. He wore a top hat and a cane.
She screamed and started crying hysterically. Her brother ran downstairs to see her in this frenzied state and to this day swears her gaze was fixed on where she says the figure stood.
I remember when she was slightly younger still, she would have night terrors. In the middle of the night Lisa and I would wake to her screams in the room next to ours. When I went into her room she was sitting up in bed, in the pitch blackness, staring at the end of her bed. She would be rigid with fear, her fists clenched and arms locked in right angles by her side. Tears in rods down her cheeks. She could see Henry VIII standing at the foot of her bed, looking at her.
On this night in 1943, Flight Sergeant Charles Henry Bray, aged 27, and his crew would spend their last night alive. Tomorrow night their Halifax bomber would take off for a bombing raid to Nuremberg and would crash in the orchard just across the cinder track from our house. The seven man crew would all perish.
Only 35 year old Flight Engineer Edward Widgery was older than Bray. The others were in their early twenties except Bomb Aimer Tom Barfoot. He was only nineteen.
I was downstairs, in the house, on my own on Sunday morning. From the corner of my eye, my attention was seized, I turned instinctively. I was so sure there was someone behind me, over my shoulder that I actually started to say something to/at them. Of course, there’s was no one there, nothing there.
The Bald Birder 