Many years ago when I was living in France, one of our favourite pastimes was touring around the endless countryside and many regions of this fascinating country.

On one such occasion we were visiting Normandy, just northwest of Paris. The main scope of our trip was to drive along the stunning coastal cliffs around Etretat, Yport and Fecamp, finishing off at Dieppe, besides savouring the extraordinary regional delights such as their mouthwatering seafood, the many cream based dishes, their superb cheeses, accompanied by lovely apple cider and potent calvados.

We also intended ending our journey by meeting my ex-wife’s brother and his wife, and all spending the night at her mother’s house, in a tiny hamlet, a few kilometres inland from Dieppe. They lived in quite a small apartment in town, but her mother had a very big old house, which was much more convenient to accommodate guests.

So we finally arrive in this little hamlet, literally lost in the middle of nowhere. We got there around dusk, just in time before it became totally dark, especially as it was a sombre and overcast day. As soon as we glimpsed the old house, we were rather struck by its impressive, even foreboding appearance. It stood strangely on its own, away from the other buildings, and had a distinct eerie and sinister feeling to it.

It was one of those large dark stone and black timber framed houses, known as colombage, so typical of the area. We shook off our initial apprehension as we were greeted in by my then brother and sister-in-law, and told to make ourselves comfortable. We were shown to our room right up in the attic, which was furnished with the oldest, heavy, rustic furniture I had seen in a long time.

When we descended to the dining room for dinner, we finally met our sister-in-law’s mother, who was standing oddly by the window of the dimly lit room, staring out into oblivion. She turned around towards us ever so slowly, virtually in slow motion, until we caught sight of her shocking face. She looked exactly like a witch. There were no two ways about it. It was really a witch we were looking at. She had tiny black evil and deeply-set eyes, a long pointed hooked nose, and an even longer chin with a rather ugly wart at its tip. She even cackled when she spoke to us, in her derisive and scornful way.

There was obviously something terribly wrong with this woman, and I am not only referring to her evil looks. She had a sneering, disdainful way of talking to you, and she stared constantly and directly into your eyes, never pulling them away for an instant. Even as we sat around the large dark oak table to eat, somehow each and every time I dared look up, I always found her staring straight at me, in the most unnerving of ways.

Then half way through the meal, she stood up and walked out of the room without saying a word, only to return a few minutes later, pushing an old squeaky wheelchair in which sat her own dying mother.

This was our second big shock of the evening. Her mother was totally paralysed and immobile, but worse still she was also blind and she stared out into the darkness with large horrifying white eyes, while her jaw laid permanently hanging at a very odd angle.

As may be expected, in the circumstances we did not quite enjoy our dinner, and to be honest I cannot even recall what we had eaten that evening. We finished quickly and made it quite obvious that we wanted to retire to our bedroom to sleep.

The witch insisted on coming up with us to lead us back to our room. On the way up she firmly informed us that the only light in our bedroom was the large central chandelier which had eight bulbs, so she insisted that we switch it off at night. What an odd thing to say, I thought. When we got to the bedroom, she opened the door for us, virtually shoving us in, bade us a good night in a clearly mocking tone, and literally slammed the heavy door shut, before proceeding down the corridor, cackling and moaning on her own.

We just looked at each other speechless, really not knowing what to make of all of this. Why hadn’t my brother-in-law mentioned any of this. Surely he too could see the perturbing situation. It was simply one of those mind-boggling situations which just left you speechless, with absolutely no words to describe it.

So we switched off the lights and got into bed. But that’s when the real terror started. The room was in total and perfect darkness. There was nothing, not even the tiniest glimmer of light anywhere. Just complete and pitch black darkness in every direction, no matter how much you desperately looked around.

But the most unsettling thing was that we could distinctly feel a strong sense of evil all around us. There was a morbid and foul sensation filling the room and engulfing us within it. And as it was also perfectly silent, as the saying goes, the silence was deafening. My ears were ringing loudly inside my head.

We just laid there shaking, terrified, hugging each other. Neither of us ever slept. We wouldn’t dare allow ourselves to sleep, making ourselves even more vulnerable to the malicious elements lurking all around us in the dark and preying upon us.

Only half way through the night, I desperately had to use the bathroom, and couldn’t hold it any longer. The word reluctant doesn’t even start to describe my feeling, as I had to crawl out of bed and fumble around blindly in the total darkness to the door, were the light switch was located. By then however, my ex-wife seemed to be finally sleeping, so I left the lights off not to wake her, as I made my way outside into the corridor.

But when I returned and opened the door, I distinctly heard her panting furiously in bed. I quickly switched on the light in a mad panic and there I saw her, lying in bed, with her eyes wide open, and with the most petrified expression ever. She was pinned to the bed and unable to move. Her head and neck seemed to be held down by some ghastly force, visibly being thrusted down into the bed and pillow with great weight.

I flew at her in wild panic. And as soon as I was about to pull her up she literally launched up at me from the waist up, hitting me hard on the chest with her head. She finally came to and started screaming and shouting and weeping uncontrollably, hysterical in her state of total horror and shock. I held her hard in my arms desperately trying to calm her down.

When she could finally talk, the very first thing she told me, was to pack our things there and then and leave immediately without further delay. It did seem like the most obvious thing to do, but somehow even in such terrifying situations, some amount of logic still remains. I was wondering how on earth we would explain our sudden disappearance in the middle of the night to her brother. I was worried that they might call the police, when they didn’t find us in the morning. This was well before the time of mobile phones and we didn’t know the land line number of the house, to inform them the next morning that we had decided to leave.

We discussed what we should do over and over. One thing which was sure, was that we were leaving the lights on! I was also having visions of us getting lost in the surrounding woods and driving around aimlessly in the dark, which was not a very comforting eventuality either. And then, as we continued contemplating the best plan of action, little by little we could see a growing glimmer of light coming in through the window. It was morning and soon the sun would rise, so we might as well do our best to endure the last couple of hours, saving ourselves a lot of very awkward explanations.

We were downstairs very early, packed and ready to go. Even showers and shaving could wait until we got home. We would rather get out of this evil place smelling dirty, than spending even a few minutes more than we had to.

So we had the obligatory so-called breakfast, which in those days consisted only of the French traditional large handleless bowl of black coffee and slice of plain dry bread, and got the hell out of there.

As we were about to exit through the front door, the witch approached us, looked at us malevolently in the eyes and uttered “I told you not to leave the lights on”. We just rushed out without even replying or speaking to her. We jumped into our car and raced off as quickly as we could, in any direction. I only looked back once, when we were about a hundred metres away from the house, and I could swear that I could see her in the window staring right at us.