Violent ghosts drove us from our dream home

Here, Fiona-Joy, 51, tells the story in her own words.

We’ll never find a house,’ I sighed.

My husband, Adrian, and I wanted to buy a home for us and our kids, Bianca, 10, and Andre, nine, but were continually outbid. Then our agent told us about a place that hadn’t yet been put on the books.

‘Look at this!’ I said to Adrian, gazing at photos of the immaculate interior and manicured gardens. But upon visiting it, we were shocked. The yard was full of waist-high nettles. It was even worse inside. ‘It’s been totally trashed,’ I gasped to Adrian.‘The renters did this before they left,’ said the estate agent. ‘Look beyond that and you could snap up a bargain.’ So we made a low offer – and it was accepted.

Not long after we moved in the toilet became blocked. The stink was so bad, we couldn’t stop vomiting. Next, the oven poured a toxic smell through the house. Chalking it down to bad luck, we carried on with our renovations.

Then one night, Bianca woke up screaming. We rushed in to find hundreds of mosquitoes pouring out of her air-conditioning vent. ‘Oh my god,’ I cried. They’d bitten her all over her face! The more we sprayed them, the more they poured in. Finally, when we’d got rid of them, we flopped back into bed – only to be woken by Bianca’s screams again. ‘There’s an angry lady here telling me to wake up!’ she sobbed.

The next night, Andre heard the same thing. It feels like this house is cursed, I worried.

One day, Adrian was painting when he fell and smashed his knee. ‘Something pushed the ladder!’ he exclaimed.

Then, I was putting a dish in the oven when I felt something hard against my hand. Although I couldn’t see anyone, I could sense a strong force pushing it onto the red-hot element.‘Owww!’ I screamed. My hand was burnt!

‘There’s something strange going on in this house,’ I cried to Adrian.

By then our personalities had changed, too. Adrian and I took up smoking, even though neither of us smoked before, and we yelled at each other constantly. ‘I wished we’d never moved into this place, it’s toxic,’ I wept. Then, I found out something that made me want to leave our house forever. ‘Has anything strange happened since moving in?’ a neighbour enquired one day. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked her.

‘A previous tenant lost a baby and used a ouija board to try to contact the child,’ she said. ‘She thinks she let in an evil entity because bad things happened after that. That’s why she left.’ Stunned, I told Adrian.

‘Let’s sell up and get the hell out!’ he cried. We’d lasted just eight months.

Fortunately the house sold straight away. We’d fixed it up and we hope the spirits left when we did.

Now we’ve bought in a different area and peace reigns once more. I’m relieved the evil entity didn’t follow us and we’re a happy family again. I still have the burn scar on my hand, but that’s a small price to pay for getting out of that house of horrors.