In The Attic – by D.F. Lewis

The attic in question was one where you would expect a ghost to reside – well, at the time I had no real experience of the attic to judge that was the case, as I had not yet visited the attic. It was simply in hindsight that the ghost appeared in it AFTER I had visited the attic. It wasn’t there at the time I visited the attic, but I sensed that a ghost would be visiting the attic after I had left it. Perhaps ghosts are like that, after-the-event visitors, and this is why nobody ever really sees a ghost or can prove that one can exist. There ARE ghosts, though; it’s just they are in places when I am not in them myself. Yet the places have a FEEL that a ghost is coming to visit it later.

In the attic – my spinster aunt’s attic – I found a case in point. She asked me to fetch something from it as she was now too old to climb up there.
“OK, Auntie, what’s it you want from it?”

I had never been to her attic before, so I could not visualise what she might want from it. For all I knew, it was completely empty. Or it was full of things that would be difficult to get out as they had been put up there before the attic’s hatch had been reduced in size during a period of rebuilding and redecoration. Or it was full of toys and old dolls and other personal things – which was a more likely possibility than the other two!

She stared at me for a few moments and said: “You will know what I want when you see it.”

I looked quizzically, and so did she. I shrugged to myself and got up to start my mission to the attic.

It WAS indeed a difficult climb – with a ladder of some missing steps. A rusty one that creaked louder than any ghost, I thought.

I did manage to clamber through the hatch – but there was no attic light. I felt cobwebs or all sorts of imaginary fingertips touching my face. Auntie had not told me to take a torch. Common sense now told me, however, that I should have made better plans. And I could not get her to hear me or me her, although I had left her at the foot of the rusty ladder. So, how could I possibly guess what she wanted me to bring down when I had nothing I could see to choose from. Then, I realised I was in the wrong attic. She’d forgotten to tell me, in hindsight, that the house had two separate attics with no easy connection between them. The ghost must have been in the other one.