 A Really, Really
Haunted House
By Michael Hukin
Back in my
college days, when I was in Birmingham, England,
studying English Literature and Language, there
was a time in my second year where I moved into a
large house located in the inner-circle suburbs
of this huge sprawling industrial city with four
college girls. This may sound like the setting
for a bad porn movie, but in actuality it was
from neccessity - the course I took was
predominantly female, most of my college friends
were female, and in an effort to relocate myself
from the scary criminal-activity house I had
originally moved into when I first arrived at
Birmingham Polytechnic, I turned to my Litty
friends and together we found this large,
comfortable end-terrace building in a not-too-bad
neighborhood.
My roomates -
Louise, a small red-head from Brighton with a
disposition to get very anxious about the tiniest
thing. Kim, a tall blond seemingly unflappable
Yorkshire lass whose family ran a fish-n-chip
shop. Theresa, another Yorkshire girl but with
dark long hair and from a very, very Catholic
upbringing. And finally Tracey, a short round
Irish native from one of those tiny tiny farming
villages who was the only one of us not studying
English, she was a friend of Theresa's and
studied communications, I believe. Always a weary
smile on her face, Tracey was the fulcrum keeping
this house of mismatched intelligentsia together
with her homestyle knowledge and long-practiced
patience. She was also the one who put this whole
story into motion and scarred us all for life....
One night for
absolutely no reason whatsoever we decided,
because we were bored watching TV and there was
nothing going on at The Student Union, to have a
seance. I'd never been involved in a seance
before but I was all revved up to try it out and
see if something would actually happen. Tracey
and Theresa took command immediately, they seemed
to have more knowledge than they really should
have on the workings of the thing. I was
volunteered to find a huge piece of paper and
draw out a home-made Ouija Board while the rest
of the gang prepped our dining room table. It
should be noted that Kim was out for the night,
visiting her boyfriend Adam on the other side of
town, and another friend had showed up, Natalie,
a cute-as-pie chipmonk-faced little Southern girl
who was also on our course. Louise was asleep in
her room having taken an early night, so, almost
too perfectly, it was the four of us gathered
around the tanle as things kicked off - myself,
Theresa, Tracey and Natalie.
Tracey had a pad
and pen to write down anything that happened.
Theresa was doing the communication side of
things, asking the spirits to talk to us. Me, I
was nervous, expecting nothing but hoping for
something, anything to happen. There we all were,
around this paper scrawled with letters numbers
and words, a finger each on an upturned glass in
the center of the grid. After only a few "Is
Anybody There?"'s the glass slowly moved
across the table to the YES box. I was thrilled
and immediately considered this night a success
from that one six-inch movement. Through a series
of questions we gathered that we were talking to
the spirit of a young girl who had died in the
house. As soon as we were getting interested in
the young ghost's story, she disappeared, saying
'Got To Go Now' and the glass went static. Fuck.
It took only a
few more minutes before things started getting
really weird. Between the room we were in and the
hallway leading to the front-door was a curtain.
The curtain started moving like it was being
blown by a fan. The one light we had on started
flickering. Natalie started whimpering. Everyone
was silent so I jumped in for the first time and
asked if someone was there. The glass shot to YES
like a bullet. I asked for a name. The glass,
still with four fingers on it, shot around the
board like lightning and spelled out THE DEVIL.
At this point,
everyone had changed. Theresa was quietly shaking
in her seat, Natalie had removed her finger and
was sobbing like a baby in her seat, Tracey had a
look of utter fear on her face and I was
goosebumped and chilled yet still incredibly
intrigued. You don't REALLY believe you are in
the presence of Satan himself, you know? Yet it
was obvious from the actions of the glass that
no-one was fucking around and pushing it, it was
just impossible.
Tracey asked the
'devil' why it was here. The glass spelled out
LOUISE IS SLEEPING. Tracey asked again, what do
you want? The glass, now only with mine and
Theresa's fingers on it, because Natalie was
bawling and Tracey was writing, spelled out I SEE
KIM.
Us last two took
our fingers off the glass and everyone was
silent. The light flickered again, and, I swear
to God, the glass, untouched, started zooming
around the board not stopping for about 2
minutes. It was repeating a phrase over and over
again, and that phrase was 'I AM GOING TO KILL
YOU'
Tracey screamed
at me to take the glass outside and smash it,
which, after a few seconds of worrying about this
cray fucking spirit escaping the glass and
possessing me or something if I picked it up, I
did. I grabbed the glass, ran through the
kitchen, out the back door into the yard and
smashed that fucker on the concrete. Back inside,
the lights were normal, the curtain was still,
and there were three very, very shaken girls
sitting around a table.
We vowed to not
tell Louise or Kim what had happened. In fact we
vowed not to ever talk about it again. At least,
until the really weird shit started.
A few days later
Kim came down from her upstairs room to tell us
all that there was a scratching sound in the
attic and we may have mice. Note here that
everyone had an upstairs room except me. I had
the one downstairs bedroom, located right at the
front of the house just inside the front-door.
Pass my room and you could either turn right to
go up the stairs or go forwards through the
curtain into the living room. Right above me was
Theresa, and upstairs on the other side of the
house was everyone else, and the bathroom. OK...
Kim herself went
up to the attic to take a look with a flashlight
and see if she could see anything. She came down
a few minutes later screaming. She couldn't or
wouldn't tell us what had happened. I was next to
go look, despite the fact I was terrified, and
everyone gathered around the bottom of the ladder
as I went up to the attic with the flashlight. I
slowly poked my head in, quickly scanned the
attic space in a circle, and at the far side of
the attic I saw a flash of something that was
absolutely not supposed to be there and, yelling,
fell back down the ladder landing on my ass and
fucking up my legs temporarily. Even now I cannot
tell you exactly what I saw, just that it was not
right in any way shape or form. We all retreated
downstairs and confessed to Kim and Louise what
had happened at the seance. Everyone was now
extremely nervous and on edge - especially me and
Kim. We'd fucking seen it, whatever it was.
The next day
myself and Kim were the first ones home from
classes. We went into the kitchen to cook and
found all our cupboards empty of dishes, plates
and cups. A few seconds later we found them, all
of them, stacked in neat piles inside the fridge.
We left them there so that everyone else would
believe us.
That same night,
after removing the crockery from the fridge and
ordering pizza, we were all home sitting around
the living room when we heard thunderous
footsteps running up and down the stairs on the
other side of the curtain. It went on for about
an hour. We spent the night in the living room
until the sun came up then silently went off to
school as usual.
Thankfully, it
was holiday time, and we all left Birmingham that
weekend to go spend a week with our families. We
hoped that when we got back everything would be
back to normal.
Of course, me
being the nearest to Birmingham, I was the first
one back after break. I honestly didn't realise
that I would be spending one night alone in the
house before the rest of the gang returned, and
once that sunk in, I decided to take everything I
needed into my bedroom, play music loud all night
and await the return of my pals without venturing
upstairs or, for that matter, out of my room at
all. I locked the door, too.
It didn't take
too long before the footsteps started again.
Someone or something was TEARING up and down the
stairs which, you'll remember, were right next to
my room and came out into the downstairs hallway
just inches from my bedroom door. This went on
all night and I somehow managed to fall
asleep as light
was breaking. I woke up around 9 am desperate to
piss and, screwing my courage to the sticking
point and encouraged by the lack of footsteps
now, creeped up stairs and used the bathroom as
fast as I could before running back down to my
bedroom. As I came into the bedroom I saw that
something was on my mirror. I looked and saw, in
red writing, the words I AM GOING TO KILL YOU
I waited out in
the street for four hours until other people
started getting home from their breaks.
Other weird
stuff happened over the next week, including
people's bathwater turning red after they got
into it, more running footsteps, lights going off
for no reason, more scratching in the attic, and
bizarrely, the bathroom window, which was painted
over and shut tight, would one day be wide open
and the next be painted over again like it had
never been touched.
We decided to
move.
On the day of
the move, with all of us splitting up and moving
in with different friends, we left the house
together with our bags to take the bus across the
park. As we crossed the park, we looked back at
the house and noticed, for the first time ever,
that in a row of a good 50 houses, ours was the
only one that seemed to be leaning at a
precarious angle over the street. A crooked house
of ghosts. We never went back, and I have no idea
what happened to the other players in this story
after college ended. I hope they're ghost-free
now.
Email Michael Hukin
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