Footsteps

This original artwork, Footsteps, was inspired by a childhood memory.

Let me start this by saying I do not believe in ghosts...

I have a clear memory of being a little boy, maybe 10 years old, and laying in bed with the covers pulled up around my head absolutely terrified knowing there was a man stood just beyond the threshold of the bedroom doorway.

The pattern was always the same, it started with the doorbell chimes (they were like hanging tubes that made a noise if you tapped them together), the noise was quiet which means they were being manipulated from inside the house as the doorbell activation was loud. Next were the footsteps, they came up the stairs slow and regular, neither stamping or lightly. Finally the footsteps walked down the long corridor to my bedroom and stopped just outside the doorway.

This happened regularly. I don't know the time, but I know everyone else in the house was asleep - my mum and dad were always in bed early as they were both up early to get dad ready for work. I don't know how many times or for how long, but it was frequent and it went on for years. What I do know is the fear I felt as a child, tightly clutching the bedsheets around my head and desperately trying to not make a noise.

Obviously, I question myself over the unreliability of memory, especially in childhood and the vivid imagination that comes with it, however both my sisters and mum have both had troubling experiences in that house. I also wonder if the figure ever touched the chimes, came up the stairs, walked down the hall and stood in the doorway whilst I was asleep. For this reason I chose to give the child in the artwork the small comfort of being asleep rather than horribly awake.

My mum still lives in the house and to this day, at 50yrs old, I will not go upstairs on my own.