It all started when my mother, my younger sister, and I moved into a new-built Housing Commission, semi-detached house in the western suburbs of Sydney, Australia in 1980. I was 8 years old then. I continued to live there until I was 16 and then moved back there when I was 20. So this all took place over a period of about 12 years.

Everything I am writing here I have been a witness to. Some of this is just too weird to believe, but it is all true.

As the house was part of a large housing commission estate, there were always lots of kids around when we first moved in. Some of the houses had yet to be completed, and we found the half-built houses the best places to play hide and seek. That was until a group of us went into one house and saw a cat "crucified" to a post!

The first thing that I remember happening in our house was the sound of a small child's voice calling out, "Mummy!" I was home sick from school, but my sister was at school that day. My mother and I were the only two people home at the time and we both distinctly heard someone calling out "mummy" from upstairs. We didn't think much of it at the time.

The bedrooms were upstairs, and when I would come down for breakfast in the mornings, I would see the kitchen cupboard doors swinging back and forth, gently.

Almost as soon as we moved in, I started having a recurring dream. In it, I would move my bed away from the wall and there was a small tunnel-sized hole in my bedroom wall.

Inside this tunnel lived a young girl who wanted to be my friend and talk to me. I would have this dream every night, and we quickly became friends. I felt very comfortable with her.

This dream occurred at least three times every week for the entire time I lived in that house. Over time, the girl started to become demanding. She didn't like any of my "real" friends and she hated the man I would eventually marry.

Please remember the "dream girl" as she becomes important as the story progresses.

The house was always chilled. It could be 35 degrees Celsius outside, but when I went in the house I would need to put a jumper on. My sister and I had a séance with some friends in a small room under the stairs about six months after we moved in. We really didn't know what we were doing; we just thought it would be cool.

Nothing happened until we packed up and tried to leave the house. All the doors and windows had been key-locked and we couldn't get out. We had to ring my mum to come home and unlock the door for us.

My mother started dating a new man at this time and he seemed nice. He eventually moved in with us. And then he changed. He became a monster. He tried to kill my mother a couple of times and tortured and abused us kids. He died in a New South Wales prison after being sentenced for attempted murder of another woman.

Everyone who stayed in that house for more than one week became severely depressed, like they were wrapped in very heavy blanket that made them want to shrink down to nothing.

When I was 16, I started dating my future husband. He never wanted to be in that house very long; he couldn't stand the oppressive feel of it. His parents lived up the coast and we were getting ready to drive for four hours to visit them. I was getting ready in the bathroom. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement in the bathroom doorway. I thought it was my boyfriend or mother coming to speak to me, so I turned toward the doorway.

The girl I had been talking to for close to 11 years in my dreams was standing in the doorway... for two seconds, and then she was just gone! I told my boyfriend and mother straight away, but I don't think they really believed me.

My boyfriend and I finished packing the car and headed off. The four-hour trip ended up taking us 8-1/2 hours due to the many mishaps that happened along the way: I lost my wallet with all over our holiday money, our dogs paw was almost crushed in another car's door, I suffered from something weird that made me vomit, sweat, and shiver for the whole drive. It stopped as soon as we arrived at our destination.

We were away for one week, and when we got back to the house, it was 3 a.m. So my boyfriend brought our luggage up to our bedroom and we both climbed into bed. Approximately ten minutes later, the radio came on very loudly, and the song playing was Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time". The radio stayed on long enough to play the chorus and then it switched itself off again. We had been away for one week and had not set the alarm when we got back.

Up until then, my boyfriend had been really nice. Now he changed, too, and within three months, he had attacked and tried to kill me in that house. The police were called and he held them at bay with a machete until they eventually overpowered him.

My mother died of "natural causes" 17 days after this event took place. So I was now living in the house alone, or so I hoped. I noticed some mouse droppings around this time, so I set some traps, emptied the kitchen bin, and went to sleep on the lounge.

When I woke in the morning, I went to the kitchen to put a new bin liner in the bin as I hadn't done it the night before. In the bin were six dead mice. There were no dead mice in any of the traps or anywhere else in the house.

Two days later, I came home from work and noticed a trail of ants in the kitchen. I followed them to the underside of my round, six-seater kitchen table. The underside of the table was a writhing, heaving mass of ants! My table was an ants nest! I had to take it out back and burn it. There were millions and millions of ants.

A week later I came home from work late at night and just wanted to go to bed. I didn't turn on any lights until I reached the second floor and then I turned on the bathroom light. That's when I saw them: millions of tiny baby huntsman spiders covering the walls and ceiling of the stairwell. I spent the next two hours spraying them with fly spray. By the time I was finished, there were so many dead spiders on the floor that it looked like a carpet.

About three days later, I woke up and walked downstairs and into the kitchen. I couldn't believe my eyes. There were hundreds and hundreds of blowflies covering the dining room window! I sprayed them, swept them up, and went out for the day. On my return, I saw that the window was again covered in blowflies!

Over the years, I had gotten used to the feeling of someone watching me from the stairwell, the voices calling out for help or "mummy", the doors opening and closing, the bone-chilling coldness, the little things that would go missing only to show up days later in the same place... but now it seemed different.

I was using a hammer to put some nails up to hang a couple of pictures in my lounge room. I placed the hammer beside me and picked up another nail... the hammer was gone! I searched for two days and couldn't find it. On the third day, I came downstairs to see the hammer hanging (slightly swinging) off the kitchen counter -- by the claw part of the hammer. It seemed like it had only just been put there.

That afternoon I wanted to wash the bedroom curtains. I carefully took the curtain rod down from the window and then inched the curtains off the rod. The curtain rod was over 6 feet in length and I placed it behind the bedroom door, then went downstairs to wash the curtains. As they were lace, they were dry within an hour, so I took them back to the bedroom to rehang. The curtain rod was gone. I never did find it and ended up having to buy a new one.

The housing estate was built on part of the land that was once the Third Convict settlement in New South Wales. It was the place where they sent the really bad convicts. At the time that I lived there, there was still a tree that was known locally as the "Hanging Tree," and it was about 300 metres from my house.

Over the years, my friends and I found many convict artifacts: balls and chains, spikes, nails, guns, tiles, and lots more. I don't know what was going on in that house, but I do wonder if any of the following tenets have ever experienced anything like what we did there.

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