Editor's note: this story contains scenes of incest or incest content.
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INTRODUCTION & DISCLAIMER - When a family of five moves from London to Essex in 1991, their dream home turns out to be something of a nightmare, infested by ghosts and poltergeist activity. Pretty daughter Poppy, a nice-natured but naive girl is the main target of the haunting, invisible ghosts harassing and scaring her almost daily.
Left alone in the house for a long weekend, Poppy and her stepbrother Brett encounter paranormal happenings which force the step-siblings to share first the shower and then a bed together. This leads to more interesting things as the scary night progresses ...
All characters and events are fictional, with similarity to real persons living or dead coincidental and unintentional. The story contains supernatural themes, incest between step-siblings, scenes involving a female character using the bathroom and references to menstruation, which may not be to everyone's taste. The word fanny is used as slang for vagina on a number of occasions. Only characters aged 18 and over are involved in sexual activity.
Please enjoy 'The Ghosts Made Us Do It' and rate and comment.
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If somebody had predicted that I would one day encounter the supernatural and that I would also become intimate with my stepsister Poppy, I would have said that I didn't believe them on either count. Only I would have used stronger terminology than 'I don't believe you.'
I was never a kid with a great imagination, and never into science fiction or fantasy, or indeed fiction in general. I never believed in ghosts or other types of spirits such as poltergeists, and always scoffed at and was scornful of the very notion. Anything and everything had to have a logical and rational explanation firmly on Planet Earth.
I was most definitely not thinking of the supernatural in the early months of 1991 when my Dad Warren and my stepmother Leah began the process of selling the house in London where we lived, and finding a new house in the Chelmsford area of Essex.
Our semi-detached house in London was nice enough, but starting to age a bit and with only one bathroom was rather small for two adults in Dad and Leah and three teenagers in myself, my stepsister Poppy and my stepbrother Jacob. Originally there were four teenagers when my older brother Simon lived at home, but Simon had joined the army after finishing school and we now only saw him when he was on leave.
The added benefits of moving to Essex included more fresh air and that Chelmsford was an easy commute for Dad and Leah, who both worked in the finance industry respectively as a bank manager and a financial planner. It was also easy for Poppy, Jacob and I to get to the school we attended in London. Our school was a private school, so Poppy and I who were undertaking our A-levels that year would not have the stress of changing schools, and Jacob who was a star footballer could continue with the specialist football program at the school.
While selling an existing house and attempting to buy a new house at the same time can be stressful, in Dad and Leah's case things ran pretty smoothly. There was an interested buyer on our London house who put in an offer after one viewing, and on a trip to Essex to look at suitable houses Dad and Leah found a perfect house that had everything they desired and more. The offers went through without fuss, and in March 1991 it was goodbye London and hello Essex.
I really liked our new house from the first time I saw it, and it was in a nice street with nice neighbors. It also stood on its own, unlike the semi-detached house I had grown up in. Most of all, I was happy for Dad and Leah that they had found a place they loved so much. Dad had been hit pretty hard when our Mum Lucy, who had always been fairly flighty and irresponsible, suddenly left our lives one day to accompany her secret boyfriend - an Australian traveler - back to his home in Sydney. There was no warning, no note, no explanation, no apology, nothing. She simply left her husband and two young sons behind in England and went overseas to Australia with her new lover. We never heard from her again aside from divorce formalities conducted through a lawyer. In all the years since, Mum never sent either Simon or I a Christmas or birthday card.
My brother and I were really happy when Dad met and married Leah, and we both liked her too. She looked different from Mum obviously, Mum had red hair and green eyes which was a feature shared by Simon, while I had inherited Dad's brown hair and brown eyes. Leah was a petite little lady, only four feet eleven when barefoot and had blonde hair, a fair complexion and blue eyes.
Like Dad, Leah was a divorcee and had had the stress of an irresponsible former spouse, in the form of her ex-husband Moses, Poppy and Jacob's father. Moses was originally from Egypt, although he was of Christian background rather than of Muslim faith. What religion Moses was probably wasn't relevant, because it probably wouldn't have made him better organized or more responsible. He was always one of those people who was perpetually running late, always short of money and always leaving everything to the last minute. He would often be hours late when he had to pick up his daughter and son, leaving Poppy and Jacob most disappointed.
Yet despite Moses's failings as a father and husband, it was impossible to dislike him, as he was easygoing, a nice guy and had a great sense of humor. Simon and I liked him as did Dad, and while Poppy and Jacob had so often been let down by their father, they clearly loved him. Although Moses was not going to be nominated for father of the year anytime soon, at least unlike our Mum there was at least an effort from him to be a part of his children's lives, to try to be a responsible parent and to have a respectful and polite relationship with his former wife.
Moses was a tall man - about six feet two - and his two kids had inherited his height, as well as his Egyptian features, both Poppy and Jacob looking more like their father than their mother. Jacob looked like a younger version of Moses, although with a slightly lighter complexion obviously due to his mother's genetics.
Another thing Jacob had inherited from his father was his sense of humor, and he was always making jokes. Although Dad, Simon and I found that a little bit of Jacob went a long way and that Jacob found himself funnier than the rest of the world perceived him to be, we could not help but like him. Leah and Poppy were not nearly so impressed with Jacob's sense of humor. With Leah it was because she had many years of trying to control her hyperactive son both at home and in public, and having conferences at school to discuss his antics. With Poppy, she often bore the brunt of her younger brother's practical jokes, such as him jumping out from around a corner and bursting a plastic bag behind her or him turning off the bathroom light while Poppy was using the loo, so she wasn't a fan of his humor either.
As for Poppy, she stood at an impressive six feet tall when barefoot. I think poor Leah must have felt like a pygmy in a land of giants at times. Dad, Simon and I all stood at six feet tall, her ex-husband and her son were over six feet tall and her teenage daughter stood a full foot taller than her. Poppy also had a much bigger bone structure than her petite mother, although Poppy was not fat in any way. Maybe she could have lost a pound or two on her bum, but nothing aside from this. Another noticeable difference between mother and daughter was their boobs. Leah had small breasts, probably an A cup, while Poppy's massive mammary glands easily filled a D cup.
However, it was in general looks that Leah and Poppy contrasted the most. Thanks to her father's Egyptian background, Poppy had classic feminine beauty often observed in Middle Eastern and North African women. Like her brother, Poppy's skin tone was not as dark as their father's due to a Caucasian mother, and her complexion was a flawless mocha color. Poppy had long, dark and slightly wavy hair and the highlight of her pretty face was her big brown eyes, again a big contrast with her blonde mother's pale blue eyes. Seeing Leah and Poppy together, it was hard to believe that they were even distantly related, much less mother and daughter.
While very beautiful, Poppy unfortunately had some shortfalls in her personality. She had always been quite awkward, nervous and highly strung, and it wasn't hard to make her cry, almost anything sad, scary or stressful brought on the waterworks. Poppy always tried so hard to do the right thing and would always want to do someone a good turn rather than a bad one, yet despite her best efforts things would go wrong and she would wind up getting into trouble.
Definitely naïve and something of a dreamer, Poppy's physical beauty wasn't enough to win her popularity at school either with students or teachers. Her height might have been an advantage at a sport such as netball, but again despite trying really hard she didn't have the talent to succeed at sports and only earned the ridicule of the other girls and the disappointment of the sports teachers, who thought that such a tall girl would be a major asset to the netball team. Poppy did have two good female friends at school, a really overweight blonde girl and a red haired girl with bad skin who was probably at the end of the line when looks were handed out. To a cynical observer seeing pretty Poppy with her friends it might have looked like Poppy was a mean girl who surrounded herself with overweight and unattractive friends to enhance her own beauty, but this was definitely not the case.
At home, the opinions upon Poppy between Dad, Simon and I were mixed at best. Dad tolerated her and was polite, but it was a curt politeness like he was dealing with a customer or colleague at the bank that he wasn't overly fond of. I think Dad would have always liked to have a daughter, but unfortunately stepdaughter Poppy did not quite measure up. Things most definitely did not improve when Poppy was getting her driver's license, and Dad attempted to give her some lessons before her upcoming test. It didn't go very well, to put it mildly. In something of a paradox nervous Poppy passed her test first time, while I had performed better while learning to drive but failed my first test, getting my license on the second attempt.
Simon could not stand Poppy, and would do his best to avoid her, answering her in terse monosyllables when it was impossible for him to avoid conversing with her. The dislike was not mutual, the nice-natured and naïve Poppy was always trying to be friends with Simon in her awkward way, but she never got very far.
"Brett, I don't know how you can put up with her, much less like her," Simon said to me one day.