Things That Go Bump In The Night

I awoke in the early hours of Monday morning to see this hovering by my bed.

When I'd stopped screaming, my mum (for it was she) explained that she had heard doors banging and the garden gate was open.  She'd got up and, ever aware of the black out situation that in her mind has persisted long beyond the end of the war,  had decided to investigate using only the light of her torch.  Never one to be afeared of ghouls and ghosties, she'd presumed that I'd rushed off to deal with an emergency so had come to see if I was still in bed.  I was.  But that put paid to sleep for the night.  Of course, the gate was closed and the howling gale that was raging outside (adding to the atmosphere when an illuminated figure in a shroud (or was it a nightie?) appears by your bed in the middle of the night) was making the sash windows bang.  It could have been doors banging.  Yet another reason to get the window man back as soon as possible.

When I'm scared in the night (and, being of a nervous disposition, I often am), I turn to the wise words of Spike Milligan, who said:

Things that go bump in the night
Should not really give one a fright
It's the hole in the ear
That lets in the fear
That and the absence of light.