Joanne Gallagher believes a child ghost named ‘Benny’ is hanging around her home and says she now has a ‘bad feeling’ about the property
A mum-of-three fears her home is haunted by a child ghost who leaves black handprints on the walls after learning a dark secret about her property.
Joanne Gallagher says she thinks a spirit named ‘Benny’ is behind the strange goings-on at her new house after she found creepy black handprints on her daughter’s bedroom wall.
She was cleaning eight-year-old daughter Aimee’s room while she was on holiday two weeks ago when Joanne spotted the ‘black dusty’ hand marks on the wall.
The 39-year-old claims it could not have been her daughter as she was on holiday at the time and instead believes it could be Benny, who tried to communicate with the family on numerous occasions.
The family have since learned that a young man hanged himself under the stairs before they moved in, leaving Joanne ‘freaked out’ and left with a ‘bad feeling’ about the property .
Joanne, from Coatbridge, Scotland, said: “It really freaked me out because they just appeared.
“On the Friday before Aimee was due home, I was cleaning her room when I noticed them.
“They were behind her door, but I would have noticed them if they had been there the day before because of their prominent position.
“Aimee was in Lanzarote with her father at the time and wasn’t due back until the next day.
“I have had past experiences with spirits. I suppose some people would say I’m sensitive to spirits – for example my grandma – and the house does have a general eeriness.
“I’ve looked into the house and things since then and my friend told me she knew the family living in the house before I moved in.
“Apparently their young son – he was in his late teens or early 20s – hanged himself under the stairs.
“I think it must have been quite difficult for her to tell me that,” Joanne. “I can just feel a ghostly presence.
“The handprints were made of a black dusty substance. They wiped away easily and there hasn’t been anything there since.
“There’s no way I could have missed them earlier in the week.”
Joanne, a trainee accountant, claims this isn’t her first experience with the supernatural, and in fact the whole house has been a hotbed of ghostly goings-on.
She said: “One night a few months ago, I was lying in my bed and my son was out at his girlfriend’s house.
“I was sleeping and I heard someone whispering ‘mummy, mummy’.
“Because I wasn’t fully awake, I thought it was my own child and the next minute I felt someone put pressure on my shoulder.
“I just shouted ‘please stop it, you’re scaring me’ and it stopped.
“It was a child’s voice speaking out to me and I automatically thought it was Aimee because I wasn’t properly awake. That’s how she wakes me up.
“I didn’t tell Aimee because I think it would have scared her to be honest. She’s only eight.
“She already sleeps in with my room at night and refuses to go in there apart from the daytime when she’s playing. I always try and keep the doors closed to keep the heat in, but Aimee won’t let me with her room.
“Once she was sleeping in my room when I heard her cry saying she had seen a lady standing in the corner.
“We actually have evidence of a woman with black hair as if peering around the top of our stairs.
“The house has quite a big open space at the top of the stairs and the kids claim they’ve seen a woman with dark hair peering from there.
“On another night, my daughter woke up crying saying she had seen a little boy in her dream and his name was Ben.
“On the same night I took the picture of the handprints, a lady gave me a private reading and said she felt there was a little boy in my home named Benny.
“It’s a bit too much of a coincidence for me now. There’s a general bad feeling and I think Aimee feels it too.”
Even as a teenager, Joanne was haunted by her recently deceased grandmother and now she wonders if the old lady might have returned to meet her daughter.
Joanne said: “I would say my connection with the afterlife goes right back to my childhood. I’ve always had a feeling of something being there.
“After my grandma died, she was the last spirit I’d seen. I was 15 at the time.
“My son has experiences with spirits as well. He had a few happenings in there.
“One time the lights went out and he heard a voice saying ‘Shaun I’m down here’.”