The Richmond Haunting (COMPLETED)

Chapter 9:

First this.

Paul Saunders is a born and bred Mancunian, lives in the south, and, like everyone who has grown up in that part of Manchester, has a thick Mancunian accent.

And like a good part of people from the North-west, family to him is everything.

That and getting sloshed on a Friday night and the rain is spitting fine, and tea is your main meal, not something you drink. That's a brew.

When asked about that house on Richmond Street — he doesn't mince his words.

True fucking right, I believed it was haunted!

And again, you're asking me, do I believe what I'm saying? I can see it in your eyes, the self-doubt. Well, how many houses do you know that can make you afraid when you walk past them? Not many, eh? And take a look at me; I'm not exactly a skinny fuck; I got muscles on muscles. Been inside a few times; for stuff when I was younger.

But I sorted my life out when my daughter was born.

Yet, it's that house you want to hear about. Well, hear this.

I moved to Richmond Street in 2006, after I began working as a painter and decorator, I learned the trade in prison. In there, you need something to occupy your time; otherwise, you get bored, and that's never good.

It was perhaps — a few months after moving to that street — I began to notice really weird shit happening at that one house.

I live across the road, and one night, it must have been three in the morning; I woke up to hear somebody banging on the front door.

At first, I thought it was the guy living there; he had been out for the night and forgot his house keys, but then I started to hear this man; yelling and shouting.

I'm not startled by people shouting, but fucking hell, I'd never heard anyone so angry.

I got out of bed, thinking; what the hell, and looked across the road. It was just an old guy.

Not what I expected, and the old guy.

Well, this is where it gets crazy. He couldn't see me looking out of my bedroom window because his back was turned and my bedroom light was off. But he made this slow turn and looked right at me.

Just stood there, looking at me, and before I knew it, he came marching over.

That really caught me off guard because the old man didn't look like much. A gust of wind could blow him over. Yet, he came storming over, and the next thing; I knew he was pounding on my front door.

And I mean really knocking the shit out of it; I thought the ceiling was going to cave in!

Me: 'Did you go downstairs and answer the front door?'

Fuck no, I was scared.

Me: Scared?'

Look, I don't know what it was, but that old man, for some reason, he really scared me.

I don't think; he was even real.

Now, this.

Throughout the weeks that followed, Fiona and Steven heard nothing from the newspapers.

And those weeks brought in more terrors.

Sometimes mild, a chair sliding across the kitchen floor, footsteps in the bedroom when it was empty.

Other times they were more terrifying, faces appearing in the bathroom mirror, a woman screaming.

But the worse had to be the fainting spells — they were getting out of hand. Three times a week, Fiona would have them.