In August 1998, I rented an old lodge house on a country estate just outside Bangor-on-Dee, Wrexham. From the moment I moved in, I felt welcome, at ease and happy. The house was very old, at least 100 years or so, and had originally been quite small, so a kitchen and spare bedroom above had been added.

Almost immediately, I noticed one or two odd things. The original parts of the house were always very cold, despite central heating, an open fire and even the boost of a fan heater. At first I put this down to the thick stone walls and suspected there was some damp.

Then there was the smell of soot. In one corner of the lounge or in the stairwell, there would sometimes be a strong sooty smell, even though I had not had the fire let recently. It would come and go, usually accompanied by a corresponding 'cold spot'. These things can no doubt be explained away fairly easily. The following however cannot.

A few days after moving in, I began finding dead butterflies in my bedroom. And not just an odd one or two. There would be half a dozen at a time, just scattered on the floor, always the same kind. I hoovered them up, checked under the bed and all around the room and went out for a few hours. When I returned, there were several more. This happened regularly during the 12 months I lived in the house, even in the winter when there was snow outside and not a live butterfly to be seen anywhere. The room had a fireplace, but this was blocked up and never used. The windows were original leaded ones but with secondary glazing over the top and were always kept closed. I was the only one with keys to the house and the burglar alarm code, so no-one could have entered while I was out. There was no way that the butterflies could have entered the room that I could find. They were always dead. You would expect one or two to at least be fluttering about a bit, but these were dead, old and dried out.

I moved out as I met someone and we bought a house together out of the area, but when I did leave I felt a tremendous feeling of regret and loss. Shortly after I moved out, a man rented the house, but only stayed for two months. My friend from Worthenbury went out with him at the time, and he told her that he could not live there because he felt threatened and unwelcome, and had the feeling that someone was standing behind him 'giving him daggers'. However, what really frightened him out of the house him was the dead bats he kept finding in the bedroom.

At this point, I had not mentioned the butterflies to my friend, although she subsequently asked me if I had experienced anything odd there, then mentioned her boyfriend's experiences. My dog and cat also refused to stay in the bedroom, even if I was there.

I'd be really interested to hear if anyone else has had a similar experience, or knows of any stories of ghosts in the Worthenbury/Holly Bush area.