Small World: Haunted house whodunnit The chief suspect in the Cleethorpes murder? Mother says it’s me. By Jem Clarke

Jem Clarke is in his very, very early fifties, is five foot zero inches tall and has never left the family home in Cleethorpes, which he shares with his parents... Mother is ill. She is normally a resolutely robust woman – so her sickness resonates through every inch of the house. Bonkers ‘professors’ of psychical research bang on about how ghosts may simply be projections of the past from energy absorbed into the walls of old buildings. This house is now haunted by the living. As I have been in the same dwelling for 50-something years, the house speaks directly to me. Each board-creak and pipe-clank can be decoded in seconds, so in synch am I with this crumbling pile. Now I hear floorboard seven and nine on the upper landing croak after midnight, I know mother is on the move. The timbre tells me her destination is the front...

I’m afraid this isn’t one of our four free articles available in full, which are set out in the first two rows of the ‘Magazine’ page.
Please click here to find them.

To buy a digital version of this issue for just £2.99, click here