My mischievous side would beg to ask…

…’since when do ghosts need to open and peer round doors?’ 😉

Rarely, especially if the door hadn’t been closed in the first place.

What I meant by a ‘strange’ house was a house that was not your own; a house that, maybe, you may have been a little more alarmed at the appearance of a strange (and by that I mean somebody that you did not recognise) man in your bedroom at three in the morning. I’m not suggesting that you were unfamiliar with the house; only that you would be less familiar than with your own house.

Don’t see what any familiarity with the house has to do with seeing a head come round the door, hearing a laugh, then seeing it withdraw.

The point I was trying to make about recognising your goddaughter’s father was to examine what you actually saw. In fact, the only thing you can say you saw was ‘a man’ (rather than a woman, for example). If you’d seen your goddaughter’s father well enough to recognise him you wouldn’t have had to ‘assume’ it was him.

Sorry for being thick, but that makes absolutely no sense to me, whatsoever.

So, woken at three in the morning, in a room so dark that you couldn’t recognise somebody you knew extremely well, you saw ‘a man’ and, based on elimination conclude that it could only have been a ghost?

I saw a man’s head, which was withdrawn; I’m not making any assumptions, since you’re making enough for the two of us. As far as I’m concerned, it was an occurrence that I cannot explain, though the child’s mother felt that she could. For me, it remains a mystery, so I leave any explanation to those who are soooooo much cleverer than I, so far with no success.

How about this for an alternative scenario: you’re babysitting and your goddaughter’s mother comes home at about three in the morning. Naturally she checks on her children who are, presumably, in bed. Strangely her daughter isn’t in her cot so does the mother just shrug and go off to bed herself or does she look in on you to find her daughter? She finds you both, has a chuckle about it, and when you ask about the ‘man’ in the morning she pulls-your-leg with a nice ‘ghost story’? Maybe? Is she particularly quick-witted or mischievous?

Her night shift was 10 p.m. – 6 a.m. plus a half-hour walk back home, so she got home in daylight. As far as I’m aware, she’d never had an operation on her vocal cords to make her laugh sound masculine, and the “head” had short hair, while hers was shoulder-length.

Maybe you dreamt what you ‘saw’? It seems a little strange to me that in a strange house

I’d been a regular visitor there for 3 years, godfather to the daughter for two years, and an older son for 5.

being responsible for the protection of a young child that you went back to sleep immediately after you were disturbed by somebody that you didn’t recognise entering a bedroom at that hour

.
I assumed it was her father; who else could it have been?

It also seems strange that you asked where your goddaughter’s father was (thinking it had been him); don’t you recognise your goddaughter’s father by sight?

Does your house have only one room? Theirs didn’t, so I assumed he was elsewhere in the house.

Excuse me for asking these questions but I’m a sceptic (as you can probably tell).

Questions I don’t mind; the underlying sarcasm and curled lip I do find offensive.

My mother always maintained she’d seen a ghost, in an old house before the war.
In 1987, I was baby-sitting my goddaughter, as her parents were both on night duty; during the night she crawled out of her cot, into my bed, and went to sleep in the crook of my arm. Around 3a.m., I was woken by a man’s head appearing round the door, looking at us, chuckling, then withdrawing, and I went back to sleep. In the morning, I went downstairs, and found the mother, so asked where her husband was. “He’s not home yet.” “Then who was the bloke who came into the bedroom?” When I described his deep chuckling laugh, she said, “Oh, that was my dad; he often comes up from Cornwall to check on us.” Her father is dead, and buried, in Cornwall, since the 1970s.
I’ll keep an open mind, thank you.

I began to wonder if Ming the Merciless was going to make an appearance; please tell me the scriptwriter didn’t get an Oscar.

I’m guessing you signed then!

Wrong; not very good at this amateur psychology lark, are you? I don’t watch the programme, nor do I have the slightest interest in it. Character assassination, however, is something I detest.

Those on the smarter half of the curve at least. So where are you?

I’ve no idea, but I have five GCE O-level, and one A-level, passes, if that helps.

It is interesting to see how people are spinning this story…………

Please, spare us the pseudo-Freud psychobabble; until Clarkson gives his reasons, everyone is just guessing, and your guess carries no more weight than anyone else.

As George Carlin said: Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

Also realise that half are smarter than that, and since you have no idea on which side of the dividing line the signatories are situated, the remark is utterly pointless.

the fact is he is alleged to have assaulted another member of staff,.

Actually, the report was that he took a swing at the other man, but didn’t make contact. While all those who can’t stand the man are spending so much time vilifying him, and making all sorts of wild accusations, nobody is asking what the other man did to make him lose his temper; now we hear that Clarkson reported the incident, which doesn’t sound like the behaviour of a guilty party, but, apparently “Innocent until proven guilty” shouldn’t apply to someone we don’t like.