It was on a Dutch Caribbean island I started my life and lived in a colonial style house only a few minutes walk from the barracks. At the age of eleven my parents took me to a neighbouring British island where English was the only spoken language and everyone was so friendly.

Our new house was just four minutes from the sea. Once I woke up in the middle of the night, sat up and looked out of the window. It was then that I noticed a man standing outside our neighbours house.

He held a rifle over his shoulder and looked directly in through their window. Not once did he look at me, so I carried on enjoying the view of palm trees with branches swaying gently in the mild breeze. After 5 minutes or so, I thought that the man was not going to look at me. And so with sleep in my eyes returned to my bed.

The following morning at breakfast I told my parents about the man. I remember telling them that he did not wear a uniform like soldiers in my previous home town.

A few months later whilst out strolling with my cousins, we were stopped by one of the villagers. She asked how my English was coming along and we chatted for a while and then as we bid each other goodbye, she said, 'So, I heard you saw Mr Brown last year?' 'No, no no', my cousins interrupted her, 'you're not supposed to tell her'. The woman walked away mumbling 'those spirits are all over the village'.

Immediately we returned home, I questioned my mother, wanting to know what the woman meant. "We did not want to alarm you", she said, "but it happened a good few years before we came to this island. Mr Brown who used to live next door found out his wife had several male friends and became very angry. He took his rifle, shot and killed one of them, wounded another, then he killed himself. We think it was his ghost you saw looking in their window when you woke up last year in the middle of the night".