Google “haunted piano” and within seconds you’re buried under 12,000,000 creepy keyboard tales.  Piano World user LoghouseTeacher’s “terrifyingly loud sound of something strumming the strings” is backed up by equally eerie stories on Reddit and Quora.  But back in the late ‘80s there were no discussion boards or Facebook ghost-victim groups to consult.

 

A family friend who fancied himself a mystic of sorts volunteered to investigate, grilling Nan for a full half hour, his unfeasibly black eyes fixed on hers in a hypnotic stare.  Post-interrogation and an hours’ wander around the house, he declared there to be a mischievous spirit present which the grey lady upstairs was trying to hold back.  Unfortunately – unsurprisingly – his consultation with the spirits yielded little.  My mother suggested the church could be of some help as Nan was a committed parishioner, though Protestant rather than ghostbusting Catholic.  The local vicar, Rev. Adrian, visited Nan (possibly in deference to her excellent attendance record), but assumed his standard attitude of condescension bordering on arrogance.  He confirmed that exorcising haunted pianos did not fall within his remit, but kindly offered to pray for her deliverance.

 

Perhaps the vicar’s presence did chasten the supernatural element however, as in the ensuing weeks things seemed to calm down.  Although the perfume aroma was occasionally present, there were no more looming shadows or temperature changes for almost a year.  By 1989 the two youngest grandchildren – not born when all this started – began visiting our grandparents regularly, happily staying for sleepovers.  But the presence of young children once again triggered something paranormal, a presence we thought was gone. 

 

The grey lady returned.

 

My cousin Suzanne saw her first: “I remember walking up the stairs one day and seeing a lady sat on the bed.  As I turned the corner onto the landing, she was waving and smiling at me.  She had a grey bun and was wearing an apron.”  My brother Joseph, a few months younger, reported an “’normous lady” and the sound of heavy breathing after dark.  Neither child knew of the previous encounters.

 

And as before, the grey lady brought something else with her, something menacing.  Almost immediately the perfume fug grew heavier, the shadows loomed more frequently, shortly followed by Nan’s most frightening episode thus far:

 

“One evening while I was playing the piano alone in the house, I felt someone or something take over my hands.  I was playing so fast, I felt terrified.”

 

So terrified that, as soon as the ‘something’ released her hands, Nan fled, practically running the quarter mile to her son’s house, and begging him to investigate.  His inspection found nothing untoward – no perfume smell, shadows or stuffy room.  But as soon as Nan was alone in the house it all began again, only this time the dining room’s temperature plummeted as if a blizzard had crashed through the door.

 

The mystic arts and church had come up short, but there might be one other person who could help.  Nan still had the phone number for Pat Cook, the woman from whom she had bought the piano back in 1986.  On calling it was Susan, Pat’s daughter-in-law, who answered the phone and to whom Nan shared her ordeal.  Susan did not offer an opinion but passed on her mother-in-law’s new number – she had retired to Wales.

 

Although sympathetic, disappointingly Pat could shed no light nor offer any explanation.  In a lengthy letter dated 20th September 1989, she confirmed:

 

“We could not have had a haunted piano for 20 years, five people playing it at different times…  Apart from any other consideration, I am very sensitive to atmosphere or anything unusual, and had there been any manifestations about during the time any of us played it, I would certainly have known.”

 

A former languages teacher, there was something of Miss Jean Brodie in Pat’s no-nonsense tone, and Nan was convinced.  Aside from the firm instruction to never consult a Ouija board (“…they are a menace”) and another promise of prayers, Pat was unable to offer any solution.

 

Nan was still convinced, however, that the piano was the cause of the increasingly disturbing events, so with no obvious recourse it had to go. Swiftly part-exchanged with a local dealer for a more modern instrument, the change was immediate.  No more perfume scent, no shadows, no stuffy or freezing dining room.  Nan felt free; free to play without fear, free to have the grandchildren to stay with no ghostly visitations.  And as the years passed, so too the events passed into family lore.  The piano was gone, the story was over. 

 

Or so we thought.

 

In September 1999, a letter arrived from Wales.  Dated 20th September, exactly ten years after her first correspondence: Pat Cook had written again.  She began:

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“You may be surprised to hear from me after all this time, but an investigation is being done on the Internet by my godson, concerning ‘that piano’.”

 

Ten years earlier, Pat had been adamant there was nothing untoward, but now:

 

“When you first rang, and my daughter-in-law Susan answered the phone, she knew at once that what you were saying was the truth, but she had been too terrified to speak to anyone about it.”

 

What followed was a chilling tale that made our family’s experiences seem cosy.  Latterly, the piano had been stored in the Cook family’s garage, gathering cobwebs.  Knowing it was to be sold, Susan swept a duster across its lid.

 

“Immediately, she felt ‘turned to stone’, freezing cold, she felt someone standing behind her, there was a peculiar smell, and the whole place was like a deep freeze; a blue mist was rising up all over the garage to waist level, hiding my son’s car.  She all but died of fright.”

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Just as Nan had felt a force take over her hands, so too Susan was unable to move.  After what must have felt like hours, though was probably only a few minutes, she broke free and locked herself in the bathroom until her husband returned from work.  Susan refused to enter the garage again until the piano was sold but did not explain why until over ten years later.  However, Pat’s story did not end there.

 

We knew that the piano had belonged to her daughter Sian, who took it with her on moving out in her early twenties.  Almost immediately, she “started having problems of a psychological nature”, but like Susan did not share this with the family.  Why not I don’t know – perhaps she felt it was all imagined just as Nan did. 

 

What happened next is both terrifying and tragic. 

 

“Alone in the house, [Sian] had played on her piano and that evil spirit had appeared. Terrified, she had rushed upstairs like Susan, to lock herself in the bathroom, but had not reached it – she blacked-out at the top of the stairs, fell down them, cracked her head at the bottom, and lay unconscious & bleeding.”

 

Sian was rushed to Southampton General Hospital with severe bleeding on the brain.  She could neither walk nor talk when she emerged from a coma eight days later, and the family were informed she would not recover.  The doctor’s advice to Pat was blunt: “Go home, Mrs Cook, and forget you have a daughter, she will be a vegetable all her life”.  Sian’s husband initiated divorce proceedings two days later.

 

The day after Sian’s fall, her brother Andrew visited, accompanied by his wife, Jean, to whom he had been married for eight months.  Within seconds of arriving, Jean bolted from Sian’s hospital room.  She walked out on the marriage that afternoon with no explanation, and they too divorced soon after.  Pat’s husband, already suffering from lung cancer, succumbed to his illness the following week. 

 

Re-reading this September 1999 letter reawakens my memories of Nan’s reaction to the incidents Pat described.  A mixture of deep sympathy for what the Cook family endured and shock at the level of trauma, but also a vindication that eluded her ten years prior.  I vividly remember our conversation shortly after she received the letter, reading key passages down the phone, mixed emotions hustling to be heard.

 

Mercifully, the Cooks’ lives improved.  Andrew met and married Susan and they settled into the old family home in Hampshire.  Pat, now in her early 80s, was enjoying retirement in Wales.  Although Sian spent ten years in Park Pruitt psychiatric hospital, she eventually made a full recovery, and remarried.  After Susan’s revelations, Sian finally opened up about her own experience, describing the phenomena leading up to her fall, including strange smells, changes in temperature, and shadows in doorways. 

 

Nan and Pat continued to correspond until the latter’s death in 2005, Nan following in 2018.  Both women died absolutely convinced that the piano was haunted or possessed by an evil spirit.  Forty years on, the rest of my family is divided.  Half firmly believe something otherworldly was present within or around the piano; the other half operate on a sliding scale from ‘maybe’ to ‘don’t be ridiculous there’s no such thing as ghosts’. 

 

As for me, I’m leaning towards the supernatural. After all, as Hamlet says, there are more things in heaven and earth than we can dream of.  Aren’t there?