Every family has them, the relatives that come to stay and never leave.

They make loud noises in the middle of the night. They poke in your things, and move your cheese.

Bermudian writer John Cox has relatives like this, but his have been hanging around for about 200 years.

Mr. Cox is the author of 'Bermuda's Favourite Haunts', and a number of historic books about Bermuda.

He rated his historic home, Orange Valley, in Devonshire, as one of Bermuda's most haunted locations.

The property was first purchased by his ancestor Captain William Cox in 1796. By Christmas 1802, Orange Valley was built and the Cox family resided there.

Mr. Cox is the sixth generation of his family to live in the house.

His father, Michael Cox, owned it before him.

"When I was about 12 years old, all sorts of strange things started happening," said Mr. Cox. "I occupied the west bedroom upstairs with my younger brother, Henry."

Mr. Cox would be awakened by a hand shaking his shoulder. In the darkness he would hear footsteps in the room, and then see strange lights coming from under the door.

"It got so bad, that I was unable to sleep," said Mr. Cox. "I never saw anything. These episodes would happen about twice a week, not usually more than that.

"The last time I heard them was when I was 18. But I could close my eyes and hear them again. They were so distinct. I remember lying there and going into a cold sweat. It was really disturbing. Even though in the darkness I couldn't see anything, I would start to hear objects being moved around on the bureau.

"I would try to talk to the footsteps. I would always say 'please, stop this; you are really scaring me'. They would stop, but they would start again two nights later."

Mr. Cox's brother Henry would never hear anything. But later, Mr. Cox moved to another bedroom, and his youngest brother, Donald, took his place.

"My parents told me not to tell Donald why I was giving up the room," said Mr. Cox. "But within days, my younger brother started hearing footsteps and seeing eerie lights.

"My parents started to question whether something was going on in the house. Donald stayed there until I went away to boarding school, and then he changed rooms. On holidays I would be back in my old room."

He experienced the strange sounds again for the last time when he was 18 years old. Then he decided to move out of the room altogether.

"At about this time, we held a séance in that room with some relatives and friends," said Mr. Cox. "We were all young. There were no grown-ups involved.

"We put a round table in the centre of the room. We lit a candle in the centre of the table. Each person would touch their thumbs together and then you [put] the last fingertips of your hands to the fingertips of the next person so you have an unbroken circle. I wondered who was in that room."

Family wisdom had it that it was probably the ghost of Laura Cox, who died in 1861 of palsy. She was in her 50s.

Mr. Cox and his friends tried to summon Laura Cox.

"I spoke and said, 'we are trying to contact the spirit of Laura Cox, would she give us a sign that she is in the room'," said Mr. Cox. "Suddenly, the candle blew out. It was a dead still night in the summer time.

"About two or three seconds later, it relit. Everyone looked. The flame started to rise from its usual length, and it must have gone up three or four inches. It is a shame we didn't hold our ground, being teenagers. We all screamed and left the room. We don't know what the outcome might have been."

It is known that Laura Cox kept a garden at Orange Valley. She had a brother living in Baltimore, Maryland who often sent her the latest roses for her collection.

"There were some old steps that went down to her rose garden," said Mr. Cox. "Over the years the gardner had dumped some rubble on the steps. Her garden had disappeared.

"One day, a cousin brought her daughters over to play with my sister. She was going around the house, when suddenly by this chimney she encountered this woman.

"The woman was completely silent. Her hair was tied up on her head and wore a long dress. At first, my cousin didn't realise she was encountering a ghost. The woman just pointed across the garden to the pile of rubble and seemed distressed. My cousin looked where she was pointing and looked back and the woman had vanished into thin air."

To appease the ghost, the Cox family planted some roses on the southern side of the house.

"There haven't been any sightings since then," said Mr. Cox. "In some cases, I think you have to believe in ghosts to see them. Obviously, when I was 12 to 18 I was on a frequency that tapped into that."

He later worked at Verdmont where he said he was open to experience the paranormal.

"But it never happened," he said.

"I was quite disappointed." But Mr. Cox did use his experiences to write two volumes of 'Bermuda's Favourite Haunts' with Joan Skinner and Mac Musson.

"When we did 'Bermuda's Favourite Haunts', it was very rare to find someone who had both heard and saw a ghost," he said. "Usually, it was one or the other. When we started doing research on hauntings, that seemed to be universally the case."

He said one of Bermuda's most haunted houses is Winterhaven in Smith's parish, today home to the Brown-Darrell Clinic.

"They had a poltergeist there that would move objects in the house," he said.

The poltergeist is reported to have moved a large cast iron stove when a group of workers were looking the other way.

In Mr. Cox's book 'Bermuda's Favourite Haunts' he also mentions Palmetto House in Devonshire as being haunted.

Palmetto House was recently renovated by the Bermuda National Trust.