The ghost stories are always about houses on hills. Great big mansion things where centuries of travesties untold have occurred that scar not only the land, not only the house but also the surrounding village whose peasant folk feel the horror deep within their bones. Unimaginable terrors that shriek throughout the night and desperately clutch to the nearest living human in the vain hopes that they shall finally be avenged only to add that poor soul to their ranks of the damned.
Yeah, this story isn't like that.
This story is set on a council estate officially called Hope Le-Thorpe after the duchess who founded its creation as a spontaneous act of charity and not at all to cover a financial scandal she was thoroughly involved in. The tenants simply knew it as Thorpe and cheerfully called themselves inmates as the area was of such a reputation that whole generations lived and died there, serving their life sentences with the rest of their neighbours.
While a great deal of stories take great pains to tell the reader that the locals Do Not Speak Of The Horror, the residents of Thorpe didn't care much for this. They knew the haunters by name and cussed up a storm when their poltergeist broke their new TV as if they were their teenager and not a centuries old lord who was sick to death of the way the electricity in the air made him feel like he was fading into nothingness.
One particular example of this is Margery Zackers, or Bloody Margy as everyone else knew her. Usually in the way they complained "Bloody Margy's at it again, screaming at that fecking viscount. I bet he wrote on the walls in sparrow blood again - and just when she'd repainted it too." and sometimes they just laughed and said "Ah, Margy's getting right angry with her old fella! Either she'll scream her bloody head off one day or he will!".
They didn't have to wait too long until her latest rant about dead birds hidden underneath her bed was cut off with a loud, wet thud. Sadly beheadings weren't uncommon in Thorpe to the point where the on-site officer declared it suicide on scene and claiming the viscount was just her "madness". His own death the next week would also be ruled suicide while the other residents knew then that the viscount's movements weren't nearly as limited as some of the other haunters.
For instance Lilly, the remains of a circus elephant that had been buried on the site's ground in 1734. She never moved, having been hacked to death while still alive as payment for her owner's gambling debts and thus missing her legs and most of her trunk. She currently resided in the Plinkton household in the kitchen. Mr Plinkton had tried so hard to raise the counters to cover her completely but she always seemed to hover just above it, her mournful eye never blinking, her hacked up trunk reaching out to the family whenever they came by.
Yeah, this story isn't like that.
This story is set on a council estate officially called Hope Le-Thorpe after the duchess who founded its creation as a spontaneous act of charity and not at all to cover a financial scandal she was thoroughly involved in. The tenants simply knew it as Thorpe and cheerfully called themselves inmates as the area was of such a reputation that whole generations lived and died there, serving their life sentences with the rest of their neighbours.
While a great deal of stories take great pains to tell the reader that the locals Do Not Speak Of The Horror, the residents of Thorpe didn't care much for this. They knew the haunters by name and cussed up a storm when their poltergeist broke their new TV as if they were their teenager and not a centuries old lord who was sick to death of the way the electricity in the air made him feel like he was fading into nothingness.
One particular example of this is Margery Zackers, or Bloody Margy as everyone else knew her. Usually in the way they complained "Bloody Margy's at it again, screaming at that fecking viscount. I bet he wrote on the walls in sparrow blood again - and just when she'd repainted it too." and sometimes they just laughed and said "Ah, Margy's getting right angry with her old fella! Either she'll scream her bloody head off one day or he will!".
They didn't have to wait too long until her latest rant about dead birds hidden underneath her bed was cut off with a loud, wet thud. Sadly beheadings weren't uncommon in Thorpe to the point where the on-site officer declared it suicide on scene and claiming the viscount was just her "madness". His own death the next week would also be ruled suicide while the other residents knew then that the viscount's movements weren't nearly as limited as some of the other haunters.
For instance Lilly, the remains of a circus elephant that had been buried on the site's ground in 1734. She never moved, having been hacked to death while still alive as payment for her owner's gambling debts and thus missing her legs and most of her trunk. She currently resided in the Plinkton household in the kitchen. Mr Plinkton had tried so hard to raise the counters to cover her completely but she always seemed to hover just above it, her mournful eye never blinking, her hacked up trunk reaching out to the family whenever they came by.
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