The cold on the stairs

Hi lovely, here’s my ghost story.

My grandma and grandad’s house was perfectly normal… until the day my grandma passed away.

Within hours of her dying, something changed. The house became cold, specifically from the bottom of the stairs all the way to the top, and through all three bedrooms. I was about 11 when she passed, and I used to stay there every weekend since I was little. But after she died, it became a completely different place—cold and eerie, like the air had thickened.

It got to the point where no one wanted to go to the toilet alone. If we could, we’d go in pairs. If not, we’d sprint upstairs, do what we needed to do, miss steps on the way back down, and wash our hands in the kitchen just to get away quicker.

My grandad would laugh at us and call us daft, but we weren’t imagining it.

At night, I had to sleep with the landing light on and my bedroom door ajar. Sometimes I’d share the bed with my auntie, and even then, we could still feel grandma’s presence. Not in a peaceful way, either, it felt heavy, like she was watching.

Years later, when I had kids of my own, they’d stay at my grandad’s too. My eldest daughter, Sammii, was around seven at the time, and she always said there was “something” on grandad’s stairs.

One night, grandad asked her to go into his bedroom and grab some toilet roll. She went up, and came straight back down, saying:
“Granddad, there’s a lady in your bed… and she said, ‘Hello, Samantha.’”

She’d never seen a photo of my grandma before. But when my mum and I showed her a picture, without saying anything. Sammii pointed straight at her and said,

“That’s the lady.”

She’d always said grandad talked to someone in his bedroom—about an hour each night—and ended with, “Goodnight, love you.”

After that, Sammii would sit and talk to grandma whenever she stayed. It became normal.

But the day my grandad died… everything stopped.

The house felt completely different, like it had been emptied. My uncle, who still lived there, said:
“There’s nothing here now.”

It’s strange. Grandma was a lovely woman, warm and kind. So I’ll never understand why upstairs always felt like it did.

But we all knew something was there. And Sammii… she saw her.