In 2016, my Dad was diagnosed with cancer, and it was a time of great upheaval for our family. He lived alone in a country town three hours away from everyone. From that country town, he was two hours away from the significant Hospital he attended for his appointments. 

Due to him not being allowed to drive, it was down to me mainly to drive out to him, take him to his hospital appointments, stay for a few days, clean up, shop and feed him. It was almost every week or every two weeks; this went on for two years. 

In 2017, hubby received his visa, and we bought a lovely old cottage out in the country, but still three hours away from my Dad. So I would ask him if he would like to stay with us as much as possible, as his Hospital was now only an hour and a half away from where we lived. He loved the area we moved into and loved to visit, but he made it clear that he would not be moving from where he lived. So on I would drive.

On a visit with us at our home in the country, I saw something that took my breath away. Our old cottage has a veranda out the front, with two bedrooms on either side of the main entrance. You can walk out onto the verandah by two french doors with lovely green and maroon coloured glass, but they were closed this day.

My Dad was standing out the front of the veranda, leaning on the balcony, overlooking me as I was gardening. I got up and walked over to his little dog and my little dog, sniffing around an area where we had seen a King Brown snake not long ago, so I kept an eye on them. 

As I was scanning around, my Dad said something to me, and I turned back to look at him to answer and then saw this tall shadow figure glide from left to right inside his bedroom. Now floor to ceiling in our rooms are 12 foot or 3.5 metres, and the french doors are 2.2 metres tall.

Through the mottled coloured glass, I could see the top of its head, which was partially cut off by the door frame. It moved across the room towards the side window of his room. It was very dark, and I could see the head and the shoulders, and then it went into a dark-like form of a long body and had to be over 7 feet tall.  

Walking quickly into the house and into his room, I found nothing.

Finally, he asked me what was wrong, and I said I thought I saw something moving in his room and then just had to leave it at that. Only because my Dad was not into anything like ghosts and what have you. He would say things like that was all bumpkin, but I did see him shiver, like someone walks over your grave.

He had terrible nightmares that night, as I heard him moan and cry out in the night. So finally, I got up and asked him if he was okay because it was terrifying to listen to him moaning. He woke with a terrible start and said he was having a horrible nightmare. So we got up and had a cuppa, because who wants to go back to sleep after a nightmare?

My Dad fought a hard battle; the old boy did and got another year before it all got too much, and he passed in 2018. His last words were, “Up, Up and Away!” Which I thought was fitting as he was going “Up Up and Away!”.