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Going back a few years now, but a friend (Fra Dolcino, used to frequent the 'Lith) used to live in a house that was... odd. A newsagents' on a street corner, the house was built so that the corner of the street bent the front of it, if you get what I mean - the main entrance to the shop jutted out in the centre. The bedroom directly above the shop didn't have a single 'straight' corner in it. Lovecraft would have liked it. One of the other bedrooms was lined with cupboards along two of the walls, six feet or so off the floor, that had those plastic clip latches on them. Every night, without fail, you could hear the cupboards squeaking open.
Anyway, the one night there were a few of us sleeping round as we'd organised a trip to a do at the NEC for the next day and the house was near the railway station. We'd been downstairs watching telly and everyone else had drifted off to sleep in front of the wrestling. The downstairs living area was all open-plan, a living/front room sepaated from the dining room by two arches that had a fireplace in the middle of them. I'm sat there, just about to doze off, when a male face appears around one of the arches, about half a foot up, and grins at me. I stare, it stares back. I put it down to drowziness and join the others in the land of nod. Don't tell anyone else about it, and soon forget it even happened.
Three years later I'm at the new house of the same friend, talking to his mum. The subject of the old place comes up and we get on to how it was generally a weird building. She then starts to tell me the following story: One of her friends had popped round one night for a chat. Fra Dolcino's mum gets up to make a cup of tea and leaves the other woman in the living room, watching the TV. A couple of minutes later she comes back in and notices that her mate looks a bit shocked. She asks what the problem is. Her friend's just seen a man's face appear around the fireplace.
Shit seemed to follow this guy around for a while, wherever he lived. This new place was in a grotty council terrace. Previous tennant an old woman who kept stray cats, she fell ill and died in hospital. Council come to inspect the flat, find fifteen or so moggies in the main bedroom. This is the same bedroom that F.D. took for his own when he, his mum and his brother moved in. Wakes up one night suffering from sleep paralysis - can't move, can't breathe, feels like someone's sitting on his chest and holding his arms down. Manages to get his head up enough to see and old woman sitting in the chair in the corner of his room. Falls back to sleep. Wakes up a bit later to find that a stray cat has managed to get into the house and is asleep in the corner of the room, under the chair.
Ooh, now I want to tell you about the UFO and atmospheric phenomena I've managed to notch up, too. |
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