It's that time of year when ghosts surface, the turn of the season when wind and rain make patterns of the past. I thought of that, as the woman in the supermarket came at me wide-eyed, gabbling like she had seen a ghost. In a way she had, clutching my arm as she slunk behind me for cover. She hid behind me, until her former tenants finished their shopping. In the meantime, I heard the whispered tale.

As a single professional female in her twenties, she bought a house in a redbrick Dublin suburb, at a time when interest rates were high, astronomical by today's rates. She was a working professional woman, with a demanding job and a demanding social life. I remember her as being at first nights and openings of art exhibitions. As she cut quite a dash on social occasions, I imagine her dress and shoes bill was substantial.

To help pay the mortgage, she decided to let the basement flat of the large elegant house. It was her first experience of letting, with a couple settling into the large basement underneath and herself above, busy decorating and having dinner parties. She was thrilled with her house, with owning her house, with living in her house.

The couple in the basement came via a friend. "I said okay, without actually considering if they were suitable. I was travelling and agreed by phone to let them into the basement. The first time I met them, they had already moved in. God when I think of it. How naive can you be?"

Within weeks she found out, as noise and music percolated upwards at all hours of day and night. Especially at night and especially, it seemed to her, all night. She was a light sleeper at the best of times. These were not the best of times. When she complained, the couple stood shoulder-to-shoulder and abused her, saying she was a rich bitch who didn't care about anybody except herself.

She moved her bedroom up a floor and had pained exchanges with her tenants, as she met them coming-and-going from the basement flat. She also met an assortment of other people, who seemed to be visiting the basement flat. Sometimes, she picked up items from the front garden which made her wonder what was going on.

She found out when the Garda Drug Squad broke down her basement door, in the early morning pong. The couple were bailed to appear on charges and returned to the flat. But their behaviour did not change. When the parties and noise below became unbearable in the early hours, as she lay tossing and turning, trying to sleep, she decided the tenants had to go. For everyone's sake, she felt, it would be better to part company.

"I gave them notice. Then the phone rings late at night, there's heavy breathing and the phone is put down. I'm a woman on my own," she broke-off to see where they were in the shop, we moved to another part as she resumed her tale.

She took a solicitor's advice, got a friend to help put their belongings out in the garden and a locksmith to change the locks. The couple left, but for months afterwards, there were noises in the back garden at night and she faced a vandalised car in the morning. Ripped off wipers and wing mirrors, that sort of thing. No sooner replaced than damaged again.

Then it stopped. She had not seem them again, until now - in the witching season in the supermarket, where she and I skulked by the special offers of pumpkins with cut-out heads.

"God almighty," she said, crossing herself and looking fearfully after the pair, now departing the check-out. A true story of the season, or what?