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‘Hail to thee, blithe spirit’ were Shelley’s opening words in his Ode To A Skylark.
‘Blithe’ for the sake of precision breaks down into cheerful, carefree, unconcerned - all the things you are, and all the things I am not, since on a whim of your own you joined me somewhere between eighteen months and two years ago.
We got off to an uncertain beginning, you and I. One day I thought: Wait a minute, I could have sworn someone knocked on the door during the night; that’s odd, must be dreaming. Or someone has a wrong address. And thought no more. It didn’t occur to me to keep a note of the date. Why would I? Then it happened again, and again without any regular pattern.
Unconcerned I thought vaguely I must mention it to the neighbours to see what, if anything, is going on in the neighbourhood in the small hours. And though the knocking continued I never did mention it to anybody because it really did not bother me. It was not important. It seemed to be just something that had begun to happen now and again.
It has not been easy, has it, this house sharing thing. Would it be easier if I ever got to actually see you (which I never have, nor do I want to). No, I don’t think so. Hearing you is enough. Now is as good a time as any to point out in case you have not noticed, I am here all day, every day. But then you don’t seem to like daylight, do you. Of course, if you come round tonight I’ll know you have been reading this over my shoulder.
Communication, that’s our problem. The thing is, getting back to blithe, I do not know you. Maybe you are none of those things - cheerful, carefree, unconcerned.
Maybe you are a miserable, troubled spirit. Sometimes when you have woken me one more time in the middle of the night I think you deserve to be. If you could just let me know (I am not being unreasonable here), just let me know what it is you want, then we could sort it, you’d go your way and I could go back to being simple, uncomplicated, living in quiet retirement. I was good at that until you joined me. Memories, ah memories.
Thanks to you, blithe spirit, I now have a police record. In their computer local police have stuff on me like, name, age, where I’m from, how long I’ve lived here, where I lived before I came here; innocuous stuff, to be sure, but nevertheless a record. Something I could do without - just as I could happily do without you.
I don’t know if you remember Sunday morning early days of September 2012 but I do. Back then I believed I was dealing with mortals, mortals banging loudly on my hall door somewhere between 4.30 and 5am. That was the first time I felt threatened. Frightened me, you did, frightened me enough to make a formal report to the gardai days later. This has been going on six months possibly even a year, I told them. Too long, I’ve had enough.
Police investigation meant keeping a record and dialling 999 per incident. That brought uniformed police and a flashing blue light to the door in the middle of the night on three occasions last winter. Because I couldn’t help them with hard evidence like descriptions, they were unable to help me.
Everybody had a theory about your knocking. It varied from: ‘Ah, you were dreaming’; ‘Ah, that’s no harm, I’ve often thought that’ to: ‘It’s your central heating, happens in our house all the time’. And with what I feel is commendable restraint I have smiled and shaken my head. Ah no, that’s been checked but thanks all the same.
So I installed cameras. Cameras - 24 hour CCTV coverage - would, I was advised, end it all one way or another. And in a way it did. It convinced the investigating authorities that I was suffering from an overheated imagination. But how you must have smiled, knowing full well you were never going to be picked up by cameras.
Which, blithe spirit, was unfair to me. See, I owe you nothing, not the Mass, nor the prayers, nor my grudging hospitality now that you seem to have moved your activities inside the house.
The thing is the distance between us is closing. For most of a year now I’ve been on to you. Here’s how. Slowly I figured that things do not just happen. Somebody or something causes them to happen. That led me to you. Only a spirit could continue these disturbing activities and evade the cameras. You are the power behind the knocking.
Well-meaning friends have advised me have my house spiritually cleansed, room to room, by a spiritualist. They tell me that such a service is available for a fee of €250 and there is quite a market for it. My own take on that is: if this lady has power over spirits, where does she get it?
Does the knocking follow any particular pattern? Yes - and no. It doesn’t happen every night or even every week. There is never more than one episode per night, never less than three knocks, and never more than four or five. The strength varies from gentle to loud, even angry.
I am currently being counselled by a padre whose forte is exorcism. Satisfied that I possess a crucifix and a lot of holy water and that I have never seen, let alone meddled with a Ouija Board this good man believes I will come to no harm if I just carry out his advice - already we have clashed heatedly on a salient point.
But who knows. It’s early days.
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