The Rocking Horse Room
It was in 2010 when I published my first book, and even now, fifteen years on, it’s still my favourite. Discovery at Rosehill was written after I’d spent the previous few years building up my blog known as Crystal Jigsaw and would quite often write about the spooky goings on in the farmhouse where I lived. The property was built in 1750, and extended at the back in 1830; an imposing Georgian manor that was most likely owned by gentry back in the day. Its position on top of a hill in North Northumberland meant it never, even in the hottest days of summer, felt warm. Large rooms with high ceilings and most rooms having at least two enormous, single-sash windows, kept a permanent draught blowing through. It had the luxury of central heating, but some of the rooms weren’t used, so they didn’t have a radiator, though every room, including the bathroom that was bigger than the lounge in my current house, did have an open fireplace - another reason for the constant draught. When I first moved into the house, a lot of the rooms were bare floorboards, including the original Georgian staircase from 1750, but I soon sorted that by having the rooms I knew would be used most, carpeted. It made a difference to the cold that seemed to penetrate through the bones of the house, but some areas still held that uncomfortable chill in the air.
One of the rooms in particular was a guest room on the first floor, in what I classed as the East Wing. It was part of the extension and had the most beautiful view from double-aspect sash windows - one looking north towards Berwick-upon-Tweed, and the other looking west towards the Cheviots. I would sit on the window seats in that room for hours and just admire the countryside, watching sheep graze and trains zoom past a few fields away. Then one day, whilst working on my debut novel, a paranormal romance, as part of my research I arranged to meet up with a psychic medium who I’d never met before (he was the third one I met with during the writing process of that book), and he told me something quite unusual: “There is a presence in the guest room where you like to sit, and it’s a man who wants you to know he’s there.” Naturally, this news came as a huge surprise to me, perhaps even a shock at first, but I’d always known there was a reason why I loved that room so much. It wasn’t just the amazing views or the tranquillity of its ambience, or the fact I’d spent a fortune having it renovated and just wanted to drown in admiration at how splendid it now looked. “He sits on the bed and watches you as you gaze out of the window,” the medium went on to say. “He’s one of many who occupied that room and I’m quite sure he passed away in that bed.” I admit that at this point in our conversation I was starting to feel a little on edge, imagining some invisible bloke sat on the bed behind me, staring at me as I admired the picturesque farmland. The first thing I did when I got back to the farmhouse was, of course, head straight to my favourite guest room and sit on the bed, a double mattress with an old-fashioned dark-wood headboard and footboard, and covered with one of my beloved patchwork quilts that I’d found in a huge, abandoned ottoman in another room.
I asked my unseeable friend who he was, but he didn’t reply. Not even a tap on the window or a knock on the antique dressing table. I was quite disappointed at the lack of communication, but the spirits will only make themselves known if they want to - not always at your request. And so, intrigued by what my medium friend had told me, and not one to give up, I spent more and more time in that room, sometimes sitting with a book on the bed, or resuming my seat at one of the windows, but always announcing my arrival when I entered the room in the hope that one day, my eagerness to meet a potential previous occupant of that grand old house would be rewarded.
And one day, it was.
There was an antique rocking horse in that room also, something I wasn’t altogether fond of but didn’t want to get rid of all the same. Perhaps it was meant to be there; perhaps it had always been there, bought for a child who once occupied the room. Maybe even my new friend.
It was a weekday afternoon and the house was cold as always. But when I slowly turned the wooden Victorian doorknob and listened to the familiar pitiful creak of the ancient hinges, the first thing I noticed when I looked inside the room was the rocking horse. Rocking. Even a draught wouldn’t have caused such a vigorous motion to occur, apart from which, one of the other reasons I loved this room so much was because it had two large radiators in it and was one of the few rooms that rarely felt cold. I ventured further inside and stood watching the rocking horse for a few seconds until it suddenly and abruptly stopped moving, as though the unseen hands that had pushed it to rock initially now held it tight to prevent any further movement. “Hello?” I said. “Are you in here?” I was met with a noise that seemed to come from the bed; the sound of springs emitting their old age within the mattress.
I have other tales to tell about that eighteenth century farmhouse, some that made me become fascinated by all things paranormal, and when my first book was finally published, I left a copy of it in what I then named “The Rocking Horse Room” for my friend from another realm to hopefully enjoy.
