Child's ghost story... (Author Unknown) 


A few years ago, I was involved in the conversion of some 17th Century 
buildings in Durham City, England, from houses into
shops and a cafe. 

For those who've never been, Durham is an old Cathedral town, with 
many old buildings crammed into quite a small space. 

These particular buildings were based around an old courtyard of 
Saddler Street, and consisted of a large building of about
three stories and a narrower one of similar height. These were 
seriously old and atmospheric buildings; the smaller of the two
had beams which were reckoned to have been old ship's timbers from 
about the time of the Spanish Armada, and the larger
one had lots of narrow passageways upstairs, and a big oak panelled 
room. 

While I helped prepare the smaller building for use, the larger 
building was being converted into a Cafe. 

Taran, the daughter of the owners of the Cafe, used to play alone on 
one of the upper floors of the building while her parents
worked downstairs. 

(At this time she was about three years old, I think, and her parents 
swore later that they hadn't mentioned death to her in any
particular way - all her grandparents were still alive and she'd never 
had any pets which might have expired.) 

On this occasion her parents could hear her thumping about upstairs, 
and called her down. 

"Don't make so much noise, dear!" they said. 

"It's not me, it's Davvy making the noise" she answered promptly. 

Like many children of that age, Taran had pretty regular games with 
imaginary friends, so her parents weren't too impressed by
this attempt to duck the blame. 

"Well, ask her not to be so noisy" they asked. 

"I will", said Taran, "but she likes making noise because she doesn't 
get to play much. She says she's been dead for such a long
time that she can only come out to play with me"... 

In an interesting development, a few days after this happened, Taran 
(who had never been spoken to about death, remember)
started holding funeral services for her Barbie dolls; putting them in 
boxes and surrounding them with flowers, saying prayers
"for the dead Barbie" and generally being quite alarming. She stopped 
short of burying them, though! 

Over a few months, the cafe was finished and opened, and in time 
Taran's fascination with death wore off, and - as far as I
know - nothing more was heard of "Davvy". 

- - although it's worth mentioning that the staff at the cafe often 
receive warnings from people who visit the upstairs toilets that
they can hear a child playing in the stockroom...