My name’s Matt….., and I don’t have a car. To be more specific I don’t have a driver’s licence. Yes I am the legal age to get one (me being in the UK where the legal age to drive is 17) The issue isn’t my age…..its the money. A bit of back story, I grew up in a small town in Wales in the UK. My family is split. which means I live with my Mom, little brother and Stepdad. And I would spend the weekends at my dad’s small house a town over. Now, about my money problems. I knew I wanted a license to drive….I mean who doesn’t? so…. to save up money for a license my dad said I could deliver advertisement leaflets to people’s doors. These advertisement leaflets were just small thin paper booklets that advertised my dad’s business. and he was his own boss so I kind of got the job on the spot! Anyways, now onto the letterbox.
This took place in June of this year, I had been doing this door to door leaflet posting job for 2 months now and its been going good. So far I had earned 50£s. Yeah…I didn’t get paid much. But! I was sure that by August of this year I would have enough money to pay for lessons. On this particular day I was in a small town by the sea in wales (this was nowhere near my home town by the way) My dad had given me a bag full of leaflets to deliver today. He told me the normal stuff such as “Don’t post the leaflets into people’s doors who have the ‘No junk mail’ sign” or “keep away from the houses with big dogs”…you know? that stuff. My dad told me what street to do and I told him I would be done in no time. He nodded and we went our separate ways (He, going off to do the other street)
Some time passed and I had done about….10 houses so far? I was on the right side of the street and I came up to the next house. It was an old thing, The walls were crumbling and the windows were dusty. for a second I thought it was abandoned and I exactly hesitated going up to the front door. I did go up to the front door….unfortunately. As I walked up to the front stoop of the old house I got a sense…..that I shouldn’t be there. It was remined me of the time me and my two friends went to an abandoned coal mine when we were about?…..13 or 14? What I’m saying is….the feeling I got from being in front of this house was…unsettling and I needed to leave….right now. I ignored this feeling and reached into my yellow bag (which I’ve had since I was 12) and pulled out a leaflet with my left hand and I was about to open the letter box on the old looking red door in front of me when…..in the corner of my eye….I saw something. I saw….a shadow move from inside the dusty and dark window to the left of me. I know I could just be the owner looking to see who was about to post random shit through their letterbox but, it still creeped me out. I tried to ignore that too, and as I touched the rusty and sharp golden letterbox of the ageing front door I felt my heart sank….
It felt warm….., I didn’t mean that the letterbox had become warm because of the hot June weather no….it felt like I was touching something that….was alive. I had a cat at home, she would always come up onto my bed and sleep next to me. and every time I would pet her and hug her she felt warm and alive…..that was the same kind of thing I was feeling as I touched this letterbox…..it-felt-alive. At the time I chalked it up to the summer heat, even though it had been raining on and off in this area for about a week….and it was very cold. I slowly felt around and pulled the golden letterbox open… and as I did it almost felt…..as if….I was sticking my hand in to a grizzly bears jaws….because I felt the sensation of my right hand…..being breathed on.
Weird?…
I wanted to get this whole weird experience over with so I held the letterbox open with my right hand and I slid the leaflet in and as soon as the leaflet made contact with the floor behind the door I felt a intense amount of pain hit my right hand! AND A LOUD CLANK! I knew what had happened, the letter box had come down on my hand (the one that had been holding the box open) and by my hand I mean mostly my fingers because as forced to letterbox open and pulled my hand free my fingers were swelling and it felt like they had been bitten by some wild animal!
I cursed and stepped back from the front stoop.
I looked angrily at the golden rusted letterbox while clutching my fingers in pain.
“FUCK, AGHHHHHHHH!” I screamed
I closed my eyes tight and winced from the pain! after a few seconds of swearing and pain filled grunts I opened my eyes and looked at the blood red door in front of me.
Did that really just happen?…
I know for a fact! that the letterbox didn’t close naturally no, I’ve had that happen to me before this….this was something else. I kept a firm stare on the golden letterbox as I took another leaflet out of my bag and slowly…..I stepped towards the door. and as if it was a baby being fed by it’s mother….the golden and rusted letterbox….opened up.
Holy shit.
This thing….could exactly be alive. I slowly inched closer and…I tossed the leaflet into the letterbox with a swift motion. And, as soon as it passed through the letterbox…..the letterbox closed with a clank. I starred at the thing for a few seconds and for a while, the pain had left my fingers. And then I realised….the letterbox…..and the door….had this energy to them….a strong energy……I could feel it.
as the pain in my hand came flooding back I quickly exited the front garden of that place and walked back to my dad’s car…..leaving that house…and its door behind.
A few days later, I was at home on my computer talking to my friends when I randomly remembered this whole incident and decided to google the area that creepy ass house was in. I scrolled for an hour looking for anything to do with that house or any letterbox related incidents. eventually, I found something. It was a news article documenting a small incident that happened way back in the 1920’s in the same town that creepy house and its door currently is… the page read “local small town man missing for a week, no leads and was last seen at work working the night shift” I kept reading and I learned that the ‘missing man’ worked at a factory that made doors and over wooden related objects. I also found out that he was very involved with a gang which was feared a lot by the locales of the town at the time. I kept reading and apparently the ‘missing man’ owed this gang a lot of money. I mean as the article said, he was last scene at his place of work and that gang could have very well cornered him and maybe used one of the factory’s many woodchippers and other machinery to ‘dispose of him’
A grim but real story started to form in my head. And after many angry messages from my friends I decided to ditch the research and go back to playing with them on my pc.
I don’t know if I’ll ever return to that small town, with that small and that decrepit house….. but, if you are ever in the UK and ever see a blood red door, with a golden rusted letterbox…..don’t stick your fingers in there…….trust me….it hurts like hell.