My first husband, the writer Rayne Kruger, was friendly with Lord Armstrong, who owned Bamburgh Castle. In the 1950s, when Rayne was young and struggling, Lord Armstrong would lend him the castle keep as a bolthole in which to get on with his writing. He and his then wife had a cat called Gato. Every night when they sat in the sitting room, Northumbrian wind howling outside and waves crashing below, the cat, sleeping in front of the fire, would suddenly wake. At exactly the same time each evening, he’d stand up, back arched, hair on end, and his eyes would follow what Rayne swore must have been a cat-ghost, slowly walking round three sides of the room and then vanishing through the wall. It had to be a cat-ghost, he said, because Gato’s eyes followed his progress at skirting level, not human level. And only Gato could see him.
This is an extract from the Christmas issue of the Spectator, out now. To read more ghost stories, click here