The Walled up Room
Created | Updated Nov 16, 2005
In many ways hauntings are inflicted on innocent people through nothing more then coincidence. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even something as innocent as decorating could ignite a tortured spirit into returning to where they once walked the living world.
The gravel drive crunched under the weight of the white transit van as it drew up outside the large detached house. Adorned on the side panels of the van was the printed legend ‘A.D. Macdonald Builders’.
Mr Macdonald sat in the diver’s seat. “Here we are then,” he said to his apprentice. Adrian Macdonald was a man in his late forties and prematurely grey. He enjoyed working in these big houses; it was a glimpse into how the other half lived. Through his many years of experience he had also learnt, on the whole, that the wives of these rich households were not adverse to a dalliance with a bit of rough like himself. Many a bored housewife had accidentally walked in on him wearing nothing but a towel or dressing gown, and after the usual silver tongued repartee the inevitable would happen.
McDonald’s hopes on this job though would be dashed. The lady of the house was a young good looking girl in her mid twenties, far too young for someone of his age to make any kind of move on.
“Bloody Hell!” said Andrew his apprentice looking at the house, “these must be rich?”
“Ey lad,” said the older mentor, “We’ll do alright out of this job.”
Twenty minutes after their arrival the two artisans stood in the large kitchen, both of them holding a hot steaming mug of tea in their hands.
The man of the house Douglas Robinson was giving the two workmen the run down of the job in hand. His young wife, Kylie, twenty years his junior stood by his side. It was her who had decided that she wanted a new kitchen. The whole lot had to come out, a wall knocked through into the old outhouse and a new kitchen fitted.
Ady’s eyes lit up, the kitchen currently in residence was hardly a year old. The hob by the look of it had never been used. The glass fronted oven door had not a mark on it. No doubt they ate out most nights. With a little care this kitchen could be removed and sold on at a profit. This job he would enjoy.
The removal of the units and appliances took all but a day; each piece carefully packed in bubble wrap and placed in the van.
The next morning the builders were at the house at nine sharp. The kitchen became a no go area as the sledge hammers and bolster chisels came out. The wall between the kitchen and the outhouse was coming down after finishing their second cup of tea. Ady and Andrew donned their protective equipment, hats masks and goggles before taking the heavy shifting gear to the wall.
On the first strike the old plaster shattered, shooting in all directions like shrapnel from a bomb blast.
Several strikes later a layer of dust covered both the kitchen and both of the builders.
The heavy head of the sledge hammer impacted once more with the wall. Two bricks disappeared in the darkness beyond the other side.
As the dust settled Ady looked in the newly formed hole. Through the dust covered goggles he couldn’t see a thing in the darkness, removing them to obtain a better look.
Peering into the hole he could see nothing. No light was shining into the outhouse. That was strange. He looked out of the kitchen window, the outhouse door was open. Some natural light should have been finding its way in from somewhere. “Go and have a look in that door”, he said gesturing toward the outhouse door, “See where we’ve come through.”
Andrew, grateful for a breath of fresh air went out into the garden and disappeared through the green door.
“Can ya see anything?” Ady shouted out to his mate.
“No,” came the muffled response.
What was he talking about? He had to have a look for himself.
Andrew had been right, no hole in the outhouse wall, “It must be a double course.”
Back in the kitchen Ady took a black rubber torch out of his tool box, turned it on and shone it into the newly formed hole. He needed to know the distance between the bricks. It could alter the kitchens dimensions, something he hoped would not be the case. At worst it could rest in the surveyors being called back in.
The beam of light shone into the dusty darkness. A smell filtered out of the hole. It was a putrid smell of something rotten. The beam shone about three feet before it hit the second wall. “Strange, a three foot square room? Waste of space.” He muttered to himself.
There was nothing to be seen.
Andrew came back into the house from the garden. Even though the sun was out now, he felt a definite chill in the room as he returned. Must be all the bare brick, it always made a room feel colder than it was.
“Ah, you’re here then.” He said with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “Come on, let’s get on then.” Andrew picked up his own hammer. “Have you just come in?”
“What?” Andrew asked.
“From outside, have you just come back in from the outhouse?”
“Yer, why?”
“Oh I could swear you were stood behind me.”
“No.”
The destruction continued.
Moments later the sun shone bright rays of light into the room illuminating the clouds of dust as well as the ever growing hole in the wall. Andrew took another swing on his heavy hammer. The whole of the left side of the wall collapsed into a pile of bricks on the floor. Both men jumped back to avoid the falling masonry. Clouds of dust filled the air penetrating the paper dust masks that protected their lungs. Andrew erupted into a fit of coughing almost bending him double. He held onto the door frame for support as he continued to bark.
Slowly he stood up, fanning the dust cloud away he looked into the hole where the bricks had up until then lay.
“Jesus, Christ!” he shouted, as he looked into the hole now illuminated by sunlight. He saw a skull looking back at him. Not only a skull though, a whole skeleton sat leaning up against the side wall.
Three weeks later the two builders were gone. Kylie had her new kitchen, Douglas was happy because once again he was not only keeping up with the Jones’s, but well ahead of them.
It was a warm summer night, the couple had invited two other couples around for an evening of drinks and dinner, and of course an opportunity to show off their new state of the art kitchen.
The newly decorated room was still in the spotless pristine condition it had been left in by the cleaner who had come in to liberate the room from the builder’s destruction. Who was cooking tonight’s meal then? thought more than one of the arriving guests. In fact the catering was being delivered, Kylie had commented earlier that evening to one guest, “How can I enjoy myself while cooking all night?”
Once everyone had arrived Douglas just happened to mention about taking the drinks out into the garden, unavoidably taking them all through the kitchen. Once in that room the guests were treated to a guided tour. They all stood there while Douglas told them the cost of everything, and then the final gloat, the story of the gruesome discovery of the bricked up body behind the wall.
“Where is it now?” asked Edward. Edward was Douglas’s boss. He was a man in his eighties now, though anyone meeting him for the first time would not put him down as past fifty.
“Once the Police had been and had a look the medical research students came in from the University. They took the bones away to run tests and research the age.”
“So, where was it then?” it was Emma, a friend of Kylie’s who had asked, purely from morbid curiosity.
“Just here,” demonstrated Kylie pointing under the breakfast bar.
“Does it haunt the house then?” Emma asked excitedly.
“Well…” began Kylie, but Douglas who didn’t like the subject of ghosts interrupted her.
“No, no it doesn’t.”
With a chuckle of laughter the party passed out into the garden to enjoy the evening sun. Kylie held her school friend back for a moment grabbing her by the arm as she followed the other out. “It does.” she said quietly.
“What?”
“It comes back and moves things. Doug says I’m imagining things, but I’m not.”
“What does it do?”
“I’ll show you. Give me your wine glass.”
She placed both her own and Emma’s glass on the black marble breakfast bar. From a cupboard Kylie took a bag of flour and lightly dusted a thin layer of flour around the glasses. “Now we just have to wait. Grab another glass of wine.”
Kylie and Emma each holding a freshly filled glass each joined the others in the garden, leaving the kitchen empty, almost empty.
At eight o’clock the dinner was delivered, buy nine thirty the meal was over and the bottles of wine on the dining table were empty.
“Would anyone like more wine?” asked Kylie playing the ideal hostess. Douglas did. “Emma, would you like to give me a hand, in the kitchen?”
It took Emma a second to take the hint, but then she suddenly remembered the experiment they had arranged earlier in the evening. "Oh, yes of course.” She said enthusiastically quickly following Kylie out of the room.
Slowly the two women entered the darkened room. By this point both women had forgotten about the trip to collect more wine and had only one thing on their mind. Kylie switched on the light ‘click’. Turning the corner Kylie smiled to herself, she had been proven right. It hadn’t been the most scientific experiment ever undertaken, but it had worked. Kylie was jubilant, Emma on the other hand felt faint.
Both glasses had moved at least half an inch. A crescent of undusted worktop was visible next to the base of each glass. It appeared that both glasses had been dragged along the surface about a quarter of an inch.
“There you see, I told you. Sometimes things fall off the end, I hear them crash on the floor. The ghost can’t have been feeling very energetic tonight though.”
Emma couldn’t speak. Her mouth hung wide open in amazement.
By the time the two women returned from the kitchen the rest of the guests had seated themselves in the living room. The room was quite dark with books lining two of the walls from floor to ceiling.
“Are you alright Emma?” John her boyfriend asked as she appeared back in the room. “You’re as white as a sheet.”
“It was the ghost.” Kylie announced to the room. The comment was much to her husband’s annoyance.
“How many times do I have to tell you, there’s no such thing as…”
“Oh yes there is,” interrupted Emma.
A sudden tension had entered the air of the room, Edwards’s wife Margaret could feel it and decided it was time to exorcise these ghosts. She had hardly spoken for most of the night; it was as though that something else preoccupied her thoughts all evening, now though she unleashed her wisdom on them. “There is one here.” She said.
Everyone looked around at her almost in shock as such a quiet women could talk with such force and authority.
“I have felt the presence here since I arrived earlier tonight.”
“Are you a medium?” asked Kylie.
“I am.” she said. Edward remained silent. He, like his old friend didn’t hold with such practices, not only were they unholy, but the product of a deranged mind. That was his opinion.
The two young women held a different view and were both thrilled with the prospect of having a real medium in the house with them. Emma asked the question Margaret knew was coming, it always did.
“Can we have a seance?”
“Of course we can.” she replied in a calm friendly voice.
“Do we have to sit in a circle and link hands or something?” Kyle asked.
“No. We don’t do that sort of thing anymore, well only in the theatre and that’s just for effect.” She said with a smile.
“Come on everybody, let’s do one.” Kylie invited everyone to join in. Douglas and Edward who were sitting closest to the fire shook their heads defiantly; such things did not amuse them.
Strangely enough the fire was on. No extra heat was required, this after all was the middle of summer, but Douglas had paid a lot of money for a fire that simulated a flame effect without producing any heat and on a night it was always on.
Emma, Kylie and Emmas' boyfriend Paul each pulled up a chair and sat in a rough arch around Margaret. “Oh hang on,” sad Kylie jumping up and turning the lights off.
Margaret sat in a high backed armchair; she closed her eyes and prepared herself to transgress to the other side. The flickering fire light danced on her face. That was the only illumination in the room giving her an almost devilish appearance. She took in a large breath then began to speak, “I can feel two spirits present in the room.”
“Two?” Kylie said shocked.
“One is old; she had been here many years. Murder. She was murdered. Pain I can feel pain, starvation.
She was walled up, why?” a tear had started to roll down Margaret’s cheek. Was she really feeling the pain of murder victim?
“Who was she?” asked Emma.
“A servant girl, she was, oh no, she was pregnant with the Masters child. He had her walled up. She is still in pain, I can feel it.
I don’t understand, she’s been here for many years, but she’s only just arrived. I don’t understand?”
Kylie did, “She was trapped in the walled up room the builders found. Knocking the wall down must have released her.”
“That would make sense.” agreed Margaret. “The other has just arrived. I can’t see them though, not yet. I don’t think the spirit body has had chance to form yet.” She fell silent for a minute before continuing, “Do you want to leave this place?”
She must now be talking to the spirit, the others thought. “Then move towards the light, do you see it, do you? Can you see it, yea that’s it, move towards it and you’ll leave this place. Both of you, yes if you wish.”
“Edward,” Douglas began to talk, he was silenced by his young wife.
“Shh,” she said abruptly.
Margaret relaxed her body, sitting back in the chair. She bore a happy smile on her face, it was the greatest gift of a medium to help a poor lost soul into the light, and tonight she had the pleasure of assisting two such wanderers in eternity. Opening her eyes she looked around, “There, they’ve gone.”
“Who was the second spirit?” Paul asked.
“I don’t know, some other poor lost soul.”
It was all over. Kylie turned on the lights.
Douglas took a drink of his claret and glanced across at his old friend, “Edward, do you…” he came to a halt mid sentence. Edward was staring into space; his glass of red wine had fallen from his hand and rested on his lap, a scarlet stain on the lap and thighs of his tweed suit.
“Edward?” Douglas repeated in a raised voice. The urgency in his voice instantly attracted the others’ attentions. Douglas jumped up out of his seat and knelt down beside Edward. Putting his fingers around his wrist he searched for a pulse, none could be found.
Edward was dead.
He had passed over to the other side only a minute or so earlier.
FINI
The gravel drive crunched under the weight of the white transit van as it drew up outside the large detached house. Adorned on the side panels of the van was the printed legend ‘A.D. Macdonald Builders’.
Mr Macdonald sat in the diver’s seat. “Here we are then,” he said to his apprentice. Adrian Macdonald was a man in his late forties and prematurely grey. He enjoyed working in these big houses; it was a glimpse into how the other half lived. Through his many years of experience he had also learnt, on the whole, that the wives of these rich households were not adverse to a dalliance with a bit of rough like himself. Many a bored housewife had accidentally walked in on him wearing nothing but a towel or dressing gown, and after the usual silver tongued repartee the inevitable would happen.
McDonald’s hopes on this job though would be dashed. The lady of the house was a young good looking girl in her mid twenties, far too young for someone of his age to make any kind of move on.
“Bloody Hell!” said Andrew his apprentice looking at the house, “these must be rich?”
“Ey lad,” said the older mentor, “We’ll do alright out of this job.”
Twenty minutes after their arrival the two artisans stood in the large kitchen, both of them holding a hot steaming mug of tea in their hands.
The man of the house Douglas Robinson was giving the two workmen the run down of the job in hand. His young wife, Kylie, twenty years his junior stood by his side. It was her who had decided that she wanted a new kitchen. The whole lot had to come out, a wall knocked through into the old outhouse and a new kitchen fitted.
Ady’s eyes lit up, the kitchen currently in residence was hardly a year old. The hob by the look of it had never been used. The glass fronted oven door had not a mark on it. No doubt they ate out most nights. With a little care this kitchen could be removed and sold on at a profit. This job he would enjoy.
The removal of the units and appliances took all but a day; each piece carefully packed in bubble wrap and placed in the van.
The next morning the builders were at the house at nine sharp. The kitchen became a no go area as the sledge hammers and bolster chisels came out. The wall between the kitchen and the outhouse was coming down after finishing their second cup of tea. Ady and Andrew donned their protective equipment, hats masks and goggles before taking the heavy shifting gear to the wall.
On the first strike the old plaster shattered, shooting in all directions like shrapnel from a bomb blast.
Several strikes later a layer of dust covered both the kitchen and both of the builders.
The heavy head of the sledge hammer impacted once more with the wall. Two bricks disappeared in the darkness beyond the other side.
As the dust settled Ady looked in the newly formed hole. Through the dust covered goggles he couldn’t see a thing in the darkness, removing them to obtain a better look.
Peering into the hole he could see nothing. No light was shining into the outhouse. That was strange. He looked out of the kitchen window, the outhouse door was open. Some natural light should have been finding its way in from somewhere. “Go and have a look in that door”, he said gesturing toward the outhouse door, “See where we’ve come through.”
Andrew, grateful for a breath of fresh air went out into the garden and disappeared through the green door.
“Can ya see anything?” Ady shouted out to his mate.
“No,” came the muffled response.
What was he talking about? He had to have a look for himself.
Andrew had been right, no hole in the outhouse wall, “It must be a double course.”
Back in the kitchen Ady took a black rubber torch out of his tool box, turned it on and shone it into the newly formed hole. He needed to know the distance between the bricks. It could alter the kitchens dimensions, something he hoped would not be the case. At worst it could rest in the surveyors being called back in.
The beam of light shone into the dusty darkness. A smell filtered out of the hole. It was a putrid smell of something rotten. The beam shone about three feet before it hit the second wall. “Strange, a three foot square room? Waste of space.” He muttered to himself.
There was nothing to be seen.
Andrew came back into the house from the garden. Even though the sun was out now, he felt a definite chill in the room as he returned. Must be all the bare brick, it always made a room feel colder than it was.
“Ah, you’re here then.” He said with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “Come on, let’s get on then.” Andrew picked up his own hammer. “Have you just come in?”
“What?” Andrew asked.
“From outside, have you just come back in from the outhouse?”
“Yer, why?”
“Oh I could swear you were stood behind me.”
“No.”
The destruction continued.
Moments later the sun shone bright rays of light into the room illuminating the clouds of dust as well as the ever growing hole in the wall. Andrew took another swing on his heavy hammer. The whole of the left side of the wall collapsed into a pile of bricks on the floor. Both men jumped back to avoid the falling masonry. Clouds of dust filled the air penetrating the paper dust masks that protected their lungs. Andrew erupted into a fit of coughing almost bending him double. He held onto the door frame for support as he continued to bark.
Slowly he stood up, fanning the dust cloud away he looked into the hole where the bricks had up until then lay.
“Jesus, Christ!” he shouted, as he looked into the hole now illuminated by sunlight. He saw a skull looking back at him. Not only a skull though, a whole skeleton sat leaning up against the side wall.
Three weeks later the two builders were gone. Kylie had her new kitchen, Douglas was happy because once again he was not only keeping up with the Jones’s, but well ahead of them.
It was a warm summer night, the couple had invited two other couples around for an evening of drinks and dinner, and of course an opportunity to show off their new state of the art kitchen.
The newly decorated room was still in the spotless pristine condition it had been left in by the cleaner who had come in to liberate the room from the builder’s destruction. Who was cooking tonight’s meal then? thought more than one of the arriving guests. In fact the catering was being delivered, Kylie had commented earlier that evening to one guest, “How can I enjoy myself while cooking all night?”
Once everyone had arrived Douglas just happened to mention about taking the drinks out into the garden, unavoidably taking them all through the kitchen. Once in that room the guests were treated to a guided tour. They all stood there while Douglas told them the cost of everything, and then the final gloat, the story of the gruesome discovery of the bricked up body behind the wall.
“Where is it now?” asked Edward. Edward was Douglas’s boss. He was a man in his eighties now, though anyone meeting him for the first time would not put him down as past fifty.
“Once the Police had been and had a look the medical research students came in from the University. They took the bones away to run tests and research the age.”
“So, where was it then?” it was Emma, a friend of Kylie’s who had asked, purely from morbid curiosity.
“Just here,” demonstrated Kylie pointing under the breakfast bar.
“Does it haunt the house then?” Emma asked excitedly.
“Well…” began Kylie, but Douglas who didn’t like the subject of ghosts interrupted her.
“No, no it doesn’t.”
With a chuckle of laughter the party passed out into the garden to enjoy the evening sun. Kylie held her school friend back for a moment grabbing her by the arm as she followed the other out. “It does.” she said quietly.
“What?”
“It comes back and moves things. Doug says I’m imagining things, but I’m not.”
“What does it do?”
“I’ll show you. Give me your wine glass.”
She placed both her own and Emma’s glass on the black marble breakfast bar. From a cupboard Kylie took a bag of flour and lightly dusted a thin layer of flour around the glasses. “Now we just have to wait. Grab another glass of wine.”
Kylie and Emma each holding a freshly filled glass each joined the others in the garden, leaving the kitchen empty, almost empty.
At eight o’clock the dinner was delivered, buy nine thirty the meal was over and the bottles of wine on the dining table were empty.
“Would anyone like more wine?” asked Kylie playing the ideal hostess. Douglas did. “Emma, would you like to give me a hand, in the kitchen?”
It took Emma a second to take the hint, but then she suddenly remembered the experiment they had arranged earlier in the evening. "Oh, yes of course.” She said enthusiastically quickly following Kylie out of the room.
Slowly the two women entered the darkened room. By this point both women had forgotten about the trip to collect more wine and had only one thing on their mind. Kylie switched on the light ‘click’. Turning the corner Kylie smiled to herself, she had been proven right. It hadn’t been the most scientific experiment ever undertaken, but it had worked. Kylie was jubilant, Emma on the other hand felt faint.
Both glasses had moved at least half an inch. A crescent of undusted worktop was visible next to the base of each glass. It appeared that both glasses had been dragged along the surface about a quarter of an inch.
“There you see, I told you. Sometimes things fall off the end, I hear them crash on the floor. The ghost can’t have been feeling very energetic tonight though.”
Emma couldn’t speak. Her mouth hung wide open in amazement.
By the time the two women returned from the kitchen the rest of the guests had seated themselves in the living room. The room was quite dark with books lining two of the walls from floor to ceiling.
“Are you alright Emma?” John her boyfriend asked as she appeared back in the room. “You’re as white as a sheet.”
“It was the ghost.” Kylie announced to the room. The comment was much to her husband’s annoyance.
“How many times do I have to tell you, there’s no such thing as…”
“Oh yes there is,” interrupted Emma.
A sudden tension had entered the air of the room, Edwards’s wife Margaret could feel it and decided it was time to exorcise these ghosts. She had hardly spoken for most of the night; it was as though that something else preoccupied her thoughts all evening, now though she unleashed her wisdom on them. “There is one here.” She said.
Everyone looked around at her almost in shock as such a quiet women could talk with such force and authority.
“I have felt the presence here since I arrived earlier tonight.”
“Are you a medium?” asked Kylie.
“I am.” she said. Edward remained silent. He, like his old friend didn’t hold with such practices, not only were they unholy, but the product of a deranged mind. That was his opinion.
The two young women held a different view and were both thrilled with the prospect of having a real medium in the house with them. Emma asked the question Margaret knew was coming, it always did.
“Can we have a seance?”
“Of course we can.” she replied in a calm friendly voice.
“Do we have to sit in a circle and link hands or something?” Kyle asked.
“No. We don’t do that sort of thing anymore, well only in the theatre and that’s just for effect.” She said with a smile.
“Come on everybody, let’s do one.” Kylie invited everyone to join in. Douglas and Edward who were sitting closest to the fire shook their heads defiantly; such things did not amuse them.
Strangely enough the fire was on. No extra heat was required, this after all was the middle of summer, but Douglas had paid a lot of money for a fire that simulated a flame effect without producing any heat and on a night it was always on.
Emma, Kylie and Emmas' boyfriend Paul each pulled up a chair and sat in a rough arch around Margaret. “Oh hang on,” sad Kylie jumping up and turning the lights off.
Margaret sat in a high backed armchair; she closed her eyes and prepared herself to transgress to the other side. The flickering fire light danced on her face. That was the only illumination in the room giving her an almost devilish appearance. She took in a large breath then began to speak, “I can feel two spirits present in the room.”
“Two?” Kylie said shocked.
“One is old; she had been here many years. Murder. She was murdered. Pain I can feel pain, starvation.
She was walled up, why?” a tear had started to roll down Margaret’s cheek. Was she really feeling the pain of murder victim?
“Who was she?” asked Emma.
“A servant girl, she was, oh no, she was pregnant with the Masters child. He had her walled up. She is still in pain, I can feel it.
I don’t understand, she’s been here for many years, but she’s only just arrived. I don’t understand?”
Kylie did, “She was trapped in the walled up room the builders found. Knocking the wall down must have released her.”
“That would make sense.” agreed Margaret. “The other has just arrived. I can’t see them though, not yet. I don’t think the spirit body has had chance to form yet.” She fell silent for a minute before continuing, “Do you want to leave this place?”
She must now be talking to the spirit, the others thought. “Then move towards the light, do you see it, do you? Can you see it, yea that’s it, move towards it and you’ll leave this place. Both of you, yes if you wish.”
“Edward,” Douglas began to talk, he was silenced by his young wife.
“Shh,” she said abruptly.
Margaret relaxed her body, sitting back in the chair. She bore a happy smile on her face, it was the greatest gift of a medium to help a poor lost soul into the light, and tonight she had the pleasure of assisting two such wanderers in eternity. Opening her eyes she looked around, “There, they’ve gone.”
“Who was the second spirit?” Paul asked.
“I don’t know, some other poor lost soul.”
It was all over. Kylie turned on the lights.
Douglas took a drink of his claret and glanced across at his old friend, “Edward, do you…” he came to a halt mid sentence. Edward was staring into space; his glass of red wine had fallen from his hand and rested on his lap, a scarlet stain on the lap and thighs of his tweed suit.
“Edward?” Douglas repeated in a raised voice. The urgency in his voice instantly attracted the others’ attentions. Douglas jumped up out of his seat and knelt down beside Edward. Putting his fingers around his wrist he searched for a pulse, none could be found.
Edward was dead.
He had passed over to the other side only a minute or so earlier.
FINI
