My father passed away in 1993 and not long after we took a family vacation in Scotland to mourn his passing and have a break. My brother in law had booked two timeshare lodges near a loch in the Highlands for us to share. In one was my sister, brother in law and her family and in the other my mother, wife, and myself.

The lodges were of a fairly modern design, built into the hillside. The only odd thing about them was the fact the lounge/dining room and kitchen were upstairs and the bedrooms and sauna downstairs. The lounge was open plan with a raised central area where there was a table and six chairs for dining.

We did all the usual things: sightseeing, walking, swimming etc. It was fairly uneventful for the first day or so. But then one night everything changed. We went to bed downstairs as usual myself with my wife in one room and my mother in the room next to ours. I tried to doze off but found myself slipping in and out of consciousness. At one point I clearly heard a child’s voice say “daddy”. I sat up in bed and woke my wife who was fast asleep and asked her if she had heard it to which she replied “no you must have been dreaming” and promptly went back to sleep.

I sat in bed with an ever increasing feeling of dread, the darkness of the room seemed to engulf me as I kept hearing noises from upstairs. Little thumps, footsteps, creaks and groans. Once again I closed my eyes only to immediately open them when I again I heard a child’s voice say quite clearly “daddy”. By now my heart was racing  As I looked around the room the hairs on my arms stood up but I could see nothing to account for the ghostly voice. In due course I went to sleep but had a very restless night of tossing and turning with disturbed dreams.

In the morning my mother woke us with a knock on the door asking why I had come into her room last night. I explained I hadn’t but she said the door opened, she heard footsteps and breathing and thought it was me messing about. I protested my innocence and she then said did I hear the noises upstairs? I said yes I did but I thought it was just the creaks and groans of the lodge. We went upstairs and to our absolute shock found the dining chairs had all been turned upside down! We really could not believe what we were seeing and all of us looked for a logical explanation but there was none.

By now we were all on edge and decided to go down to the main reception area to speak to someone about our experiences. A lady came out of reception and I opened the conversation by asking “Has anyone ever experienced anything in lodge xxx?” to which she gave a blank stare. I sensed there was something underlying her apparently blank expression so I pressed on “Has anything every happened there?”

This time she went back into the office and an older women in her 60s came out. We explained what had happened and then she told us a few years ago two young girls had stayed in the room but refused to sleep there another night as they kept seeing dark shadows. So, they ended up sleeping in the games room on the snooker table!

I asked if anyone had died in the room to which she replied not to her knowledge. As we were all so unnerved by the experience, especially my mother we asked to change lodges. As there were none available we had to tell my sister about the events that had transpired. They listened intently, saying nothing but could tell by our reactions we were all a bit shook up so agreed to make up beds in their lodge on the floor for their children and we could bunk there.

That night we went to my sisters’ lodge whilst my then wife went to our lodge to pick up a few of our clothes. She was gone quite some time so I went up to the lodge to see why she was taking so long. I arrived to find her sitting on the top of the stairs, white as a sheet, crying. I asked what was wrong and she said that when she was upstairs in the lounge she walked past the top of the stairs and had seen someone she thought was me pass by at the bottom. She then went downstairs but there was no one to be seen. She went back upstairs and heard footsteps, followed by our bedroom door close. As she approached the stairs she saw shadows moving out of the corner of her eye which frightened her as there was nothing to cause them.

That was it, we were out of there like a rocket. We never did discover if anything had happened there in the past, although we sensed the site owners knew more about the history of the place and our lodge in particular than they were letting on.

Strangely enough many years later I was to hear the child’s voice say “daddy” again. More on that in a later chapter.

So was it haunted? I think something was definitely there, I don’t think it was dark or evil in any way it may just be a manifesting of psychic energy that was triggered by the obvious grief of losing my father. I cannot explain the voice or what my wife saw or the moving of the furniture, perhaps some soul just wanted us to know they were there?