I’ve never really had any reason to be truly scared. Looking back, there isn’t one experience I can think of that truly terrified me. I’ve jumped countless times, from sudden, loud noises or catching something move in my peripheral vision. I cannot recall ever fully screaming or shouting, but maybe that’s because I’m not a very outspoken person anyway and would rather mask my feelings from others.
I lost my eldest daughter once, she was two and we were in B&Q (a hardware store). They have model bathrooms and kitchens. There I am admiring some taps or tiles or whatever it was, I turn around to the shower she was messing in and, poof, gone. That was terrifying, but I wasn’t scared, more frantic; full disclosure, I found her taking a dump on one of the display toilets, not my proudest moment having to tell the employee they needed a cleanup in isle six.
Anyway, so I haven’t ever really been terrified… except once.
It happened back when I was 17. I’d left school that summer and had six weeks before starting college. It was baking hot in the small, rural town that I lived in. Situated pretty much in the middle of England, it’s an old coal mining town and, a bit of British history here, all the mines were closed down which dessimated both the economy and job opportunities of the small pit towns throughout the country. Back to my town, if you’re old enough, or at least look old enough, you spend your time in the local pubs. If you’re not you have nothing else to do but roam the streets seeking your own entertainment. Me and my friends were the latter.
On the main road through town, away from other houses, stood a dilapidated house known as the O’Brien’s. A four story, six bedroom mansion, compared to all the other houses in town. There was an old couple who lived there who, at this point, had passed away some years prior, called… you guessed it, the O’Brien’s. They had two daughters who had moved abroad and had never claimed the house, so it just sat, for years, building up dust and rotting away. A perfect opportunity for somewhere cool, private and exciting for six teenagers to hang out.
The house had a ridiculously big back garden, which was equally ridiculously overgrown. It literally took us the good part of a day to stomp down a pathway through the nettles and brush. Once through, there was a garage that we could drop down onto, which we pulled up the roof of to gain access. We spent nearly all summer in that house, hanging out, graffiting the walls, drinking, smoking etc. But there was one room that eluded us. From the garage, you headed through a kitchen, which now only considered of a broken window that had been boarded up and a damaged set of cabinets on the back wall. You then stepped into a hallway which looked right through to the front door, with a bathroom and 2 other large rooms on the left hand side. On the right were the stairs to the second floor. The staircase was built against a wall and had wooden planks running vertical. Directly opposite the kitchen door, built into the back of the staircase, was a large metal door that had been painted white, the paint now a sickly yellow dusty colour and flakey. This door was locked. It simply wouldn’t budge. And, looking at the hinges, it opened inwards.
The house was big enough that we just kind of forgot about the locked door. We’d spend most days up in the two rooms of the third floor away from the road outside to avoid any passersby hearing us and phoning the cops. That was until one of the lads decided, for no apparent reason, to light the moth ridden curian on fire with a Zippo he was messing with. The curtain, dust covered carpet and old, crinkled wallpaper went up in seconds. We only made it out by smashing the top window and jumping into a dirt mound at the side of the garage, I think if adrenaline hasn’t been coursing through us it would have been a hell of a painful fall. We hid in some bushes over the road and watched the fire engine put out the flames, but before that could it had engulfed the second and third floor. The second was still usable once we got the courage to re-enter the house, but the third was gone, just the outer walls and what was left of the roof. Shame really.
So, we were confined to the bottom floor. The garage was too dark to see in, and only had an old table we’d found that you’d normally use to put the paste on wallpaper, we used it to get in and out of the roof. The kitchen wasn’t much brighter, and the front room had a big bay window that overlooked the footpath and road outside so that left us a small, bleak back room to chill in, which got boring very quickly. Boredom led to curiosity, and I noticed that one of the wooden planks on the side of the stairs was loose, and that there was an open space behind it, finally we could see what was behind the metal door… what a mistake that was. They say curiosity killed the cat, but in this instance it questioned my whole belief.
The wooden panels were surprisingly hard to pull off, even for six fairly athletic teenagers. So we went out scouting and brought back a few torches and a crowbar. It was still a slog, but we finally managed to remove two and a half of the panels. Shining the light into the hole revealed another staircase that led downwards. Yet, it looked as though it was decades older than the rest of the house. Cobwebs engulfed every surface. And the stench of musk and damp attacked your nostrils if you got anywhere near the hole. After some giddy behaviour, some pushing and shoving and a game of six man rock, paper, scissors, I grabbed a torch and slowly stuck my head through the hole.
The room was darker than dark. So dark that the beam from the torch could be seen cutting through the blackness. I shone it down the staircase first, it went down deep. The hole we had made was maybe four or five steps from the door and there were at least twenty-five below it. At the bottom, a wall, and a doorway to the left. I swung the torch to the right, towards the door, not expecting to see what I saw at all.
The door was definitely locked, tight, with three separate dead locks that ran down the side, all barred. But, what caught me by surprise was on the small lip of the top step, pushed firmly against the door, was a really outdated fridge. The ones that were squared and about waist high. I told the lads stood behind me and they laughed, thinking I was joking. One by one they stuck their head in the hole, checked out the bottom of the stairs and then the fridge. Each one as confused as myself. I remember sitting down, smoking a cigarette and debating how and why it would be there. The door clearly opened inwards, which meant the door must have been locked, from the inside, then somehow the fridge put up against it, from the inside. We spent the rest of the day checking the garage and surrounding area of the house for a trap door or another entrance/exit to the cellar but couldn’t find anything. We put it down to the sheer size and state of the garden and went home. The next few visits to the house was us trying to decide who would enter the cellar first. No one wanted to. And no matter how many games of rock, paper, scissors we played it was always best out of a higher number. Until one day, I’d had enough.
We were at in a circle, in the other room. Messing with stuff and just generally chatting. Except me, I just sat and started at this hole, this dark void in the wall. Finally, I got up, exclaimed my intentions, took the torch from my pocket and stepped inside. Everyone else quickly, and very excitedly followed.
Immediately the first few layers of the wooden steps just disintegrated under my feet. They turned into a mulch of damp splinters that clung to the sole of my shoe when I lifted my foot. It was worrying, but the stairs seemed sturdy enough. Each step I took downwards, the temperature dropped rapidly and the air seemed to get thicker and thicker, the inches of dust that I kicked up didn’t help also. Admittedly, I was a little scared, but I had five other lads behind me so it was impossible to turn tail now. I headed down and reacted the second to last step. I could see the doorway, which lead to an open room. Pausing, I regained my courage with a few shaky, deep breaths and stepped through.
The room was in a worse state than the stairs. Webs littered the rafters and floorboards above like moss, they hung from the ceiling in clumps, all tarnished with dust, weirdly, thinking about it now, we never saw any spiders though. The floor was carpeted in a layer of debris from the rotting wood above, dust and dirt. It was a miracle non of us ever fell through the floor above, this place was a mess. The room was huge, expanding underneath the bathroom and both rooms on the first floor. And it was dark. There was no light source, other than the torches three of us now carried. The room stood empty, except for a wooden table smack bang in the middle. No chair. Nothing around it. But in it stood a metal plate, crudely bashed into shape, with the remnants of a black goo on it. Next to the plate stood a tall, uncorked green bottle. One of the boys went over to it and picked it to. It sloshed as he did so. With a liquid of deep brown and layers of dirt inside. I never smelled it but apparently it was putrid.
At first, we didn’t see the other doorway, it was in the corner directly opposite the one we had entered. No door, just total darkness. We tried to shine our torches through it but they didn’t seem to cut through the shadows. It was like there was actually a door there, one that drained the torchlight. For some reason I didn’t muster the courage to go into that room, and neither did anyone else. We simply turned and left, feeling like we’d had enough adventure for the day.
Over the next week or so we invited girls and other friends to the house. But all refused to enter the basement. We found this hilarious. And would dare one another, more to show off than anything, to go down there either on our own or in pairs, without a flashlight, and see how long we could stay down there. Now, not once did I get scared while stood in complete darkness down there. It was kind of calming. But none of us ever got the courage to enter the other room. In hindsight, we should have questioned more why the door was metal, or why it was locked from the inside and how a fridge got up the stairs and placed in front of the door, as a barrier, from the inside also. But, full of excitement and immaturity, it never crossed our minds. We just assumed that there would be some sort of other exit in the other room which led to the garden.
Word quickly went round through the year groups of the O’Brien basement. And we definitely fed the rumours of it being haunted. Teenagers would ask us how to get into the house and for us to show them the barricaded door/basement. So, because we thought we were cool, we spent another day making a maze in the garden, squashing pathways down that led away from the garage. We would then invite people into the house, lead them through the garden, into the garage and show them the hole in the stairs.
It got quite popular. And we decided to cash in on the opportunity. We told people that if they wanted to see the basement then they would have to do the initiation. As they came in, we would have one person sat on the fridge, and another at the bottom of the stairs, both with torches and send the people into the first room, telling them that they had to stay in there for 10 minutes, with the torches turned off and then we would let them out. This went of for a while, and it was fun at first. A lot of people bottled it as soon as the torches were turned off. But some stayed. We’d cheers them back up the stairs when they completed it. It was a cheesy little ritual we created. But still, everyone refused to go into the other room, when questioned they just said they didn’t feel comfortable. Until my little brother and his friend came.
They were two years younger than us. And initially, we refused to let anyone who wasn’t our age into the house. We were there all the time, and there were 9 of us in the friend group, so it was pretty easy to deter people away if there managed to find the entrance at the garage. But, after constant pestering and the initial curiosity of others dwindling, we decided to invite them along. We made a big deal out of it, taking them to the dilapidated fence at the back of the garden and tying their jumpers around their faces as we let them blind through the maze of shrubbery and thorns to the garage. It was a decent drop from the hole in the roof and, even though my brother managed it, his friend had to be lowered down by his arms. Once inside they were met with the stench of smoke that lingered from the floors above. We walked then through the kitchen and showed them the makeshift entrance to the basement. We told them the story of the metal door and how it didn’t make sense and have them the option of staying in the first room, in pitch black, for 10 minutes or go in the second room in pitch black for 5 minutes, an offer a lot of people initially picked until they got down the staircase.
“Second room” they said in unison. We all laughed, expecting them to change their minds immediately.
One of the lads slipped through the hole in the wooden boards and turned right, heading up the stairs and positioning himself on the fridge. I went through next and positioned myself at the foot of the stairs. I’d just like to say, at this point, all of us ‘regulars’ felt complete comfort going down to the bottom of the stairs practically alone, we’d all taken it in turns when bringing people down here and had done it numerous times each, so this time was no different. There was a giddy, nervous atmosphere when the two youngsters entered the staircase. The torches we used were cheap ones we’d gotten from the market, so they cast a eerie yellow glow. Slowly, my brother and his friend made it down the stairs, clearly attempting to show face and act unmoved by the state of the rotten, decaying wood around them. But as they trenched through the mulch they stuck close together. They took their time, so much so the guy at the top shouted for them to hurry and both nearly shit their pants. When they finally got to me I told them that this was the first room, shining the torch around the room through the doorway, and that there were to go into the next one, aiming my beam through the darkness to the frame of the other door. The room was a decent size, and as stated the torches were cheap, but I remember taking notice that the beam that cut through the first room never seemed to illuminate the second room at all, as if there was an object obstructing it’s path.
My brother’s friend walked into the room, and as my brother walked past me I grabbed his shoulder and told him that he didn’t have to do this, and if he did then he could back out whenever. With a nod and a dismissive wave he followed his friend.
They crossed the room, passed the table, and disappeared through the second doorway, as if walking through a dark stage curtain. I hit the button on my Casio watch to start the countdown from five minutes. I then aimed the beam of my torch up the staircase. The guy sitting on the fridge smiled excitedly and looked at his watch.
“I really need to do piss dude, I’ll be right back” he said, jumping down and disappearing back through the gap. I stood at the bottom of those steps for what seemed like forever. I could hear the faint giggles from across the first room, they seemed muffled, as if hearing voices from behind a door.
“How long left?” My brother’s voice shouted.
“3 and a half minutes” I replied, checking my watch.
Now, in the basement, despite it obviously being underground, there was never an uncomfortable temperature. It was never really cold. There was never a chill. And, while being down there countless amount of times, not once had any of us felt any sort of breeze. But, and this memory still haunts me a little, especially when there is a sudden shift in temperature, I noticed that I became very cold stood at the bottom of the stairs, to the point where I could see my breath when checking the time against the light on my watch face.
The mumbles from the other room had stopped also. I tried to focus on them, see if I could hear any movement or the nervous noises they had been making before, but nothing. I remember getting freaked out, I don’t know what about, but I could feel my heart beating faster. The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood on end. I turned on the torch and stepped into the first room.
“Yo, you guys alright?” I called out. Nothing. No reply.
“Oh, stop fucking about, times up” I called again, and again no reply.
I shone the torch through the doorway of the second room, but just like before, it was as if the beam cut through the first room and then stopped at the doorway.
I crept closer, calling my brother’s name, but he never replied.
Then, as clear as day, so loud it hurt my ears after the silence, a voice, deep, brash and distorted, as if the sound had been twisted bellowed.
“Leave, now!”
I froze on the spot. Eyes fixated on the doorway. Then, emerging from the gloom ran my brother and his friend. Both as white as snow. Both with tears and snot streaming down their faces. The look of pure terror on their faces is something I have never been able to get rid of. They bolted straight past me, which snapped me out of the trance and I followed suit. Before we could reach the doorway to the stairs, the sound of crashing came from the stairwell. Four ridiculously loud bangs, and the noise of snapping wood.
The fridge was embedded into the wall at the bottom of the staircase. Without stopping we all scrambled over it. The staircase itself was a complete mess, large splinters of wood stuck up like spikes. Luckily, and I don’t know how, we managed to clamber up on our hands and feet without injury. Half way up I looked towards the hole in the wall, praying it would be in reaching distance. Both the young lads were in front of me, both sobbing and screaming.
Both ran straight past the hole in the wall. The metal door, locked before and with no key (we looked everywhere for it) stood open. Light from the garage exit spilled through the kitchen and down into the basement. As if it showed us the quickest way out. Instinct had set in by this point. And all three of us darted through the door, onto the table and up through the garage. My brother’s friend, too small to get down on his own, managed to get out without help.
We ran through the garden maze. At some point I had to grab hold of my brother to stop him from going down one of the many dead ends we had created and, without word, took the lead. We raced to the fence, squeezed through the hole and collapsed on the field behind the property.
I looked around. And there, also sat on the grass, staring at the three of us, was everyone else who had been in the house. No one said a word. Everyone looked as scared as each other, except for the two younger boys. They wept, for a long time actually, as we all just sat there in silence and let them do it. Once they had stopped, we all got up, without a word, and went home. My brother said nothing to me on the way, or when we got back, he went into his room, I went into mine and that was the end of that.
No one went into the house again. It stood for a year or two then was demolished. Apparently one of the daughters had finally come over and claimed the land, only to sell it to some new build project. Now, a group of six houses sit where the garden and house were. Nice looking houses to be fair. My brother still refuses to walk past that estate. They never built on the land directly above the cellar. Apparently, and I’ve never actually had this confirmed, but the builders refused to fill the cellar in for some reason, just bricked it up and left it as open space despite being able to fit a perfectly good house on there.
We only brought it up once within the friends group and only because I convinced myself that it had been one of them that had opened the door somehow and moved the fridge, but they all swore it wasn’t, they said that as soon as it started getting really cold in the house they got spooked. They heard the voice and headed for the kitchen, noticed the door was open when they heard the loud bangs and bolted. I tried asking my brother about the room but he completely shut down when I did. He quickly stopped being friends with the kid who went down with him, said they no longer had anything relevant to talk about.