A True Ghost Story for Christmas

It is a tradition here, to tell a ghost story for Christmas, so I thought I would share this one with you.

Completely irrelevant to the story,
I just like the image.

A few years ago, my husband and I were on holiday in West Cork, Ireland, staying in our usual rental cottage, an old lighthouse keeper's cottage, perched on the rocky coast. 

The cottage we stayed in, the flat roofed glass bit was one huge
living room and kitchen, bedrooms below.

The old cottage had been renovated a few years earlier, turned into a topsy-turvy house, the top floor being an enormous glass box, the lower floor became two bedrooms, with a family bathroom located down a long hallway, right down to the far end of the house.

We always chose to go out of season, so the two or three other cottages on Rock Island were nearly always empty.   It was beautiful.   We could enjoy the skies and the sea, no matter what the weather.  There was a pub just a short drive away, or an even shorter row, had we a rowing boat, where they served the best fish chowder, ever!     The scenery was magnificent, there were plenty of places to explore, and the people we met were warm and friendly, ever ready to engage in conversation.

We loved the place.

Our holiday was drawing to a close and, after a day spent out in the fresh air, we went to bed.    I was wakened to the sound of what I took to be someone dropping a marble, from a height, whereupon it hit a hard floor and rolled a short distance.     This was repeated over and over, until it drove me crazy...it wasn't at all frightening, just irritating.

I could see that my husband was still in bed, sound asleep, so I couldn't blame him for this one.   I also knew that there was no one else in the house, or in the cottage to the right of the house - and anyway, there was a huge hallway, and a large yard between the two buildings.    The marble continued to be dropped, sounding as though it was in the bedroom.   In the end my patience snapped and I said something along the lines of "Pack it in!" - something which my mother used to say when we were being irritating.

The noise stopped.   Peace returned.   All was well, I fell back to sleep.    A couple of hours later I woke up desperate to spend a penny.   Because we had stayed there so often, and the place was almost as familiar as home, I didn't bother to put the hallway light on for the journey along the dark hallway, nor did I close the bathroom door - there were just the two of us in the cottage, I was awake, husband asleep.  No need to close it.   

I heard very heavy steps coming along the corridor, so I called out "Hang on, I'm in the bathroom."     Silence.

I went back to the bedroom to discover that my husband was sound asleep, just as I had left him.   I woke him to tell him that the bathroom was free - he hadn't been out of bed, didn't want the bathroom, was grumpy that I had woken him.   

The following night was our last night in the cottage, there was no repeat of the noises, or the footsteps but, just in case,  I did wake my husband to come and wait in the corridor when I paid my nocturnal visit to the loo, and I put the lights on in the hallway and bathroom!   I was well and truly spooked.

We haven't been back since.

I rarely think about that night, but the other day I dropped a 5p coin on the dressing room floor, the sound was exactly the sound that I had heard repeated over and over again that night.    Not a marble then, a coin of some kind - even though there was no one else there, and the bedroom floor was fully carpeted - as to the heavy footsteps down the hallway...?

I suppose old cottages have their secrets, and that was a very old cottage, despite the very modern alterations.