At South Ferriby, on the Humber, in the nineteenth century, ‘there used to be something at a house’. This something came every night until the old man and his daughter who lived there hardly dared to stay there alone. The father’s bed had rods and curtains, and at night-time the curtains would draw themselves backwards and forwards, and twist round the old man’s neck, trying to strangle him.
One night when the daughter’s young man called to see her, and they were talking by the fireside, a frightful racket started in the room above their heads. The young man, who had heard of the ghost, asked what was the matter. The girl tried to pass the event off, but almost at once a dish began jerking about, and the old man told her that the ghost had ordered him to meet it alone on the hill behind the church that very night.
When evening came, he was too afraid to go, but instead sat up late, shivering by the fire. When he finally went to bed, something grabbed him on the stairs and nearly strangled him.
This was enough warning: the next night he went to the hill, and on his return seemed much shaken. When asked what he had seen, all he would say then, or ever afterwards, was, ‘Ask me no questions – the thing will never trouble us no more.’ And it never did.
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SOURCE:
Haunted England : The Penguin Book of Ghosts – Written by Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson –
Copyright © Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson 2005, 2008