AND I was 14 years venerable when I first saw/encountered ghosts. My father and stepmother had just bought this venerable farmhouse outside the town of Ford, right on the River Arun in Sussex, England. It had a lot of land, including rights to the river. As the oldest boy with two brothers and three sisters to look after, I was always the babysitter when my parents went out. It was one of those nights, just after putting my brothers and sisters to bed, that I felt someone watching me. I grabbed a poker and after lighting a fire in the living room, I started checking all the rooms, still holding the poker. Since I didn't find anything or anyone, I calmed down, put the poker back by the fireplace, and decided to go to sleep.
As I left the living room I grabbed the railing and started to walk up to my room. As I was walking up the stairs I looked up and then froze in place, up there was a crystal clear figure of a man dressed in pirate clothes looking straight at me. I could see through him because there was a painting on the wall behind him that was still observable. He was shaved and had a bandana on his head, a sword at his side, and in his right hand he held a goblet of wine from which he was drinking. He just stood there and looked at me, then he smiled, his lips moving as if he was talking to me but I couldn't hear him. He raised the goblet as if to toast me and drank from it. Then he turned around and disappeared into the wall.
When I told my dad what I had seen, he just laughed and said that he had visited him too and that it wouldn't be the last. He then explained that the house we had moved into had been a favorite hiding place for pirates many years ago and still was.