A Writer's Wonderland [PDF] - University of Portsmouth

Nathaniel Dalby
Second year Creative Writing student.
The Red House
Sometimes I sit up all night thinking about it. The soul we found trapped in its corridors. I’ve
sold it, packaged it. Maybe some would call it a blessing in that respect. But it’ll always be a
mystery to me. I’ll tell you the story, if only to keep it in the family consciousness. Then, as far as
I’m concerned, time can have it.
Back in our heyday, Stuart and I would ramble. Stuart Copland was my fellow rambler
and partner in all my daft little endeavours. We had dreams of being journalists, you see, and we
reckoned that if we went roaming on some sort of Hunter S. Thompson-esque adventure then
we would have collected enough photographs and accounts to be able to make it big. We
thought that maybe we’d even find our own little place in the world.
The Red House in York was part of one of those old “Ghost Tours” they have in historical
cities; bits of pulpy fluff to keep the tourists happy. Now, Stuart; he couldn’t resist this sort of
high-drama journalism, and had approached the local paper, asking to take some photos in the
house itself for the culture section. They commissioned him, and he blustered in, striding with
smug pride and papers in hand.
‘A Ghost Tour? Really?’ I sighed as he eagerly slapped the papers onto the desk.
‘C’mon now, taking a few pictures in a supposedly haunted area of Northern England called
“The Red House”? Where’s the danger?’
‘Ridicule, becoming unemployable, maybe even death,’ I scoffed. I hadn’t really mellowed by
then. I wasn’t as grey as I am now.
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