Real Ghost Story: Knocker-upper – Before I start this strange story, I will explain what a knocker-upper is. A knocker-upper was a profession in Britain and Ireland that started during and lasted well into the Industrial Revolution and at least as late as the 1920s before alarm clocks were affordable or reliable. A knocker-up’s job was to rouse sleeping people so they could get to work on time.
Summer had come and my friends are planning to go for a short trip to visit one of their friends in England. I went with them for this trip since one of them said that they will be visiting a haunting spot as well.
We went to a small town in England called Chagford, located up north of Dartmoor, Devon nearby the River Teign.
We went to a famous church where it is said that a young girl of 1600’s will haunt the area. The girl was known to had been shot died during her wedding the moment she came out the church.
My friends asked permission from the local police to go in to the church after midnight; of course we did not get an OK for that. We browsed around the church during the afternoon and took lots of photos hoping to capture something spooky or just extraordinary, but everything was just as normal as the peaceful day.
We stayed at a local friend’s house during our trip, that night we had a wine party, we ate fried cheddars and grilled some smoke salmon, and of course we drank a lot.
The next morning I woke up and was having a headache due to the jet lag. My friends were in a deep sleep, the owner of the house was in his own room at the living floor; to explain, the house has a basement, 3 rooms with an attic. The owner’s room was down at the first floor where the entrance and the living room are located. We stayed at the attic, where there is a room with an old creaky window.
Our neighbors next to us live in the same type of house, when the old window opens we can hear the sharp squeak of the rusty friction.
I tried to sleep some more since it was quite early in the morning; suddenly I heard something tapping the window of our neighbor. I thought it was our neighbor saying hello to us, I peeked out the window through the old glass I saw the street, foggy as seems as we are at a harbor. It was quiet and I think it was not time for anyone to be awake. I thought to myself that it might be some wind, few moments later I hear the tapping again.
“Knock it off! It’s Sunday!” I hear the old man next door shouted.
The next moment I hear the same tapping this time outside our window, I looked outside but there is nobody. I went back to my bed then heard the tapping again, this time getting louder. I thought to myself that I could be dreaming.
I tried to go back to my sleep then one of my friend woke up and asked “Who’s F**king tapping the window?”
I sat up and very clearly remember that we both looked out the window and opened the window slowly so that the squeaking would not be too loud.
Another friend whom was further away from the window woke up too and asked what was going on. We both told him that someone was tapping on our window. He looked out the window and said that he saw a blur; maybe it was a man holding a long stick. He was the one whom told me that we are visiting a haunted spot and tried to ask for a permission to stay at the church late at night the day before. Talking about him, my friends all said that he and his family are “gifted”. They can see ghosts and communicate with them. At this time he did not try to communicate with the “blur” that he described.
During breakfast, we told the house owner what happened earlier that early morning, he told us stories about professional wake-up callers, called knocker-up before the alarm clock was invented. The town used to be busy with lots of industries. People needed to wake up on time and so the town hired a knocker-upper to wake everyone up.
I am not sure if the tapping was the spirit of the knocker-upper. It was too foggy to look out to see who is playing a trick on us, but I knew that our neighbor was also bothered by the tapping.
Sorry that this is a very unclear experience. None of us thought of recording the tapping and capturing it in our recorder since we all thought that it was someone or something playing tricks on us. When I remembered that one of my friends is a “gifted person”, I decided to share this, hoping that it would be considered my second encounter during this year.
