The sight of ghostly hands tearing paper off the walls of an empty house so terrified a little girl that even today, more than 30 years later, she feels uneasy driving past it. Now the wife of an Army officer, Mrs Maureen of Hillside, still dreams of that house in another location nearby.

She and a friend had gone to the home of her aunt, who had recently died, to fetch some books, but when the girls arrived, they realised they had forgotten the key. Rather than walk all the way home for it, they climbed in through an open bedroom window upstairs and tiptoed through the room. Crossing the tiny landing, the girls heard a voice calling to them from that empty room.

Then, as they watched in horror, long strips of wallpaper were torn off the wall in front of them by ghostly hands. "We just fled down the stairs and out of the front door. We were so scared that my friend was in hysterics. It was a horrible place. Even today I cannot pass it without feeling my flesh start to creep," shuddered Maureen.