“Ghosts are all around us. Look for them, and you will find them.”

— Ruskin Bond

Not long after my (now former) husband and I moved into our quirky, 500-year-old stone cottage in rural England, I met our resident ghost. I’d been communicating with the dead since I was a child — it had been their idea, not mine — but had never experienced anything quite like that meeting.

Nor, for that matter, anything like the events that would unfold during my years in that cottage.

A few of the villagers told us she was thought to be the spirit of Lydia Atley. A tragic figure, Lydia was a young woman who was born around 1820 and had lived in our small village.

We discovered quickly that our playful ghost enjoyed a good game of Hide-and-Seek. Okay, the obvious laugh is that she was invisible and therefore, always hiding. But I meant she had a penchant for hiding items that we would later find in the oddest places.

Everyone has those “Where did I put my glasses/pen/whatever?” moments but after moving into that cottage, they seemed to happen more often than usual. Every time something disappeared, we couldn’t help but joke, “Oh, it’s Lydia playing tricks again,” although to be honest, we thought we were just being forgetful.

We would also discover that Lydia loved attention. In fact, it seemed she didn’t appreciate our repeated comments about the disappearing items being our own fault. It wasn’t long before there was no denying the difference between “Oops, I’ve mislaid my glasses again,” and “Holy cannoli, we have an actual ghost who moves our stuff.”

Just after moving in, we had begun renovating the old cottage to restore it to how it might have looked in days gone by. We smashed out the plaster and restored the stone walls. We tore out carpeting to find original quarry tiles downstairs and hundreds-of-years-old oak planks upstairs.

My husband and our friend, Jim, had plenty of tools laid out on their mini work benches as the three of us toiled away. As a Canadian, I would call one of these tools an X-Acto knife. Here in the UK, it is known as a Stanley knife. Over the course of a few days, my husband was using a red one regularly for a particular project.

One day, the knife was missing. Being bright red, it stood out; you couldn’t miss it. He had been using it that morning and laid it back on the workbench. When he went to use it again, it was gone.

He and Jim searched everywhere in the areas where they had been working. They took every item off both workbenches. They removed all tools from their toolboxes.

No red Stanley knife.

The old silver one was there, tucked away in the toolbox where it had been for heaven-knew-how-long, but the red one had gone AWOL.

Eventually, I joined in the search, too, checking surfaces all over the rest of the cottage on the chance that my husband had carried it with him and absentmindedly laid it down somewhere.

Nope. No Stanley knife.

The old silver one got to spring into action after its forced retirement. For the next few days, it was busy helping with the renovations.

My husband had finished one project. Being an organised and efficient person, he had cleared off the workbench completely and tidied up his tools before beginning the next project. He laid out a handful of essential tools and got to work, moving back and forth between the project and the workbench as required.

On one trip back to the workbench, there it was. The red Stanley knife, lying proudly in the middle of the bench, probably bragging to the other tools about the cool holiday it had just had.

During my first few years living in England, I used to travel back and forth to Canada regularly. I still owned a home in Calgary where I stayed on my visits, and out of which I was still running my homeopathy practice. My family were all there, except my daughter, Willow, who had moved to England with me. It was a busy time, to say the least.

During one such trip to Calgary, I was speaking to my husband in England. He had been using a feather duster to get the cobwebs from the old ceiling beams and generally having a little clean-up that morning. He laid the feather duster down in the parlour and was tidying up, taking a few items to other rooms and so on.

He returned to the parlour, intending to continue with his dusting. The feather duster was nowhere to be seen. Certain that he hadn’t taken it with him in his travels to a couple of other rooms, he retraced his steps.

No feather duster.

Later that day, he was stunned to find it on top of a wall shelf in the kitchen. It was an awkward place; one would have to be deliberate about putting it up there. And my husband hadn’t even been using the feather duster in that room, much less anywhere near the shelf.

Lydia enjoyed playing with my daughter, Willow, who had just turned 13 at the time. She had also been having fun with our friend, Jim, during his stay to help us with renovations.

One evening, the four of us — five, if you include Lydia (heaven knows she did)— were sitting in the parlour. There was a small table between the two chairs where Willow and Jim were sitting. They were goofing around with Willow’s tube of Chapstick, rolling it back and forth to each other.

At one point, it rolled off the table and under a chair. But when they went to retrieve it, it had vanished.

There weren’t a lot of places it could have gone. None, to be exact.

After a thorough search of the floor in that small room, we decided Lydia must be playing again and gave up.

Several days later, my husband was working his way through a pile of “stuff” upstairs in his office that had been unpacked but had yet to be put away. On finally reaching the bottom of the pile, there was Willow’s Chapstick.

When some difficult family issues arose, I had to return to Canada for several weeks. As bizarre as it sounds, since moving into Ravenswood I had come to rely on Lydia for comfort and…well..companionship, in a manner of speaking. I’ll share more about that in another story but for the purposes of this one, I’ll simply say that I asked her if she could accompany me to Calgary. Please.

I mean, she’s a ghost. In theory, they can go anywhere — unless they’re trapped for some reason. I knew she had been seen roaming in our village, Ringstead, but I didn’t know if she would — or could — go anywhere else.

Fast forward…I was in Calgary dealing with the aforementioned family issues. I had a lot on my plate and was feeling a bit lost. One night as I lay in bed, I was talking to Lydia. I asked if she was there; I thought I could sense her presence but was so emotional, it was difficult to know if it was just wishful thinking. This “mediumship” thing isn’t an exact science; it’s fickle and sometimes emotion can get in the way.

The following morning, I went down to the kitchen. I had left a huge stockpot and lid drying in the rack after dinner the night before. I put both the pot and its lid in the back of the bottom corner cupboard, where they had been kept since I’d bought the house several years earlier.

Later that afternoon, I was going to make a large pot of pasta for dinner. I reached into the back of the cupboard. The pot was there. The lid was not.

Puzzled, I wondered if it had somehow got knocked off while I’d been putting the pot away that morning. I pulled out all the other pots and pans on that shelf.

No lid.

Wondering if I’d absentmindedly put the lid on the bottom shelf (when I knew perfectly well I hadn’t), I emptied that part of the cupboard, too.

Nope. No lid.

Lydia’s calling card. Her way of answering my question. Yes, Liberty, I’m here with you. And for you.

And I have to add…a few years later, I sold that house. It was completely emptied before the new owner took possession. The lid was nowhere to be found.

One afternoon, I was sitting on my bed at Ravenswood with my sketchpad, drawing. My husband was sitting beside me watching telly before leaving for an appointment. When it was time for him to go, I took off my glasses and laid them on the duvet between us and stood up.

I heard a quiet “pop” as my husband stood up from the bed but didn’t think anything of it. I went downstairs with him and saw him out, and returned upstairs to the bed and my sketchpad.

I picked up my glasses and something was wrong. Everything looked strange. Hmm, must need to give them a good wipe.

I fished out the soft cloth from the case and on attempting to clean my glasses, discovered that one of the lenses had popped out. My husband must have leaned on my glasses as he rose from the bed; hence, the sound I’d heard.

I checked the area on the duvet where my glasses had been.

No lens.

I felt all over the bed. Nothing. I flipped the cover gently a few times to see if I could make the lens bounce. Nope.

I checked — carefully — the floor all around the bed. And under. Swept the floor. No lens.

It had vanished into thin air.

As with the Chapstick, there wasn’t anywhere for the lens to go. Even if it had got under the bed (how??), I could see the entire floor down there, all the way to the other side of the room.

Months later, my marriage ended rather suddenly. I was devastated; I had never been so happy until two big secrets blew my world apart. And to make matters worse, I had to leave my beloved Ravenswood.

The night before I moved out, my husband was dismantling my snakes’ tanks and helping me prepare for the removal company arriving in the morning. On the ground floor of the house, there was a door that led from the parlour to a back hall. In that hallway, there was a bathroom, the utility room, and a fuse box up on the wall with the cutest little door on it (I do get excited about the weirdest things).

My husband kept a tiny screwdriver inside the fuse box so it wouldn’t get lost. That evening, he fished out the screwdriver to use for the snakes’ tanks and was aware of knocking something onto the floor. He reached down and found the lens.

I wrapped it carefully in a tissue and placed it in a Tupperware-style box with a snap-on lid. I was only moving about ten miles away but kept various important bits in that box, such as my passport and other items that I would want to keep with me.

Immediately upon reaching my new home the next day, I put the box on the top shelf of a kitchen cupboard for safe keeping. That evening, as I was sorting out the kitchen I pulled down the box and opened it.

The tissue was there but the lens was gone.

Read about my childhood discovery that spirits were communicating with me.