The normally joyous and inspiring fireworks of New Year over Poprad seemed bombastic and bad-tempered, almost as if we were trying to blast 2020 to kingdom come.

For hours before midnight this beleaguered mountainside city shook and reverberated to what sounded like bombs and the rattle of heavy gunfire. And by the time the clocks turned the year from hell upside down, the air was thick with cordite.

And a ghastly pall of smoke hung over the tenements and high rises like gathering ghosts.

Maybe it was the thunder and rattle of the fireworks drowning them out but we didn’t even hear a church bell ring.

No. We weren’t welcoming in a new year, we were shooting down one that had gone so dreadfully wrong.

The fact that the Slovak government had felt it right to announce a few hours earlier that they were being forced to tighten restrictions on our lives as a surge in new coronavirus infections hit ‘record levels’.

Health Minister Marek Krajci had just said the new restrictions include a ban on meeting of people from different households, including relatives.

Ski resorts and churches had to be closed too, he said.

Slovakia has 179,543 confirmed cases with 2,138 deaths. The increase hit a record of 6,315 cases last Wednesday.

The new clampdown comes in to force on New Year’s Day at 5:00pm and remains until January 24.

“Given that the critical epidemiological situation in Slovakia and the measures adopted on December 12 have not had sufficient effect, I’m glad that the cabinet unanimously agreed on stricter measures,” Health Minister Marek Krajčí was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, the pandemic caused London’s annual New Years’ Eve fireworks display to be cancelled.

But there was a light and fireworks display over the River Thames broadcast by the BBC just before midnight. It ended with David Attenborough asking everyone to work in 2021 to help our “fragile” planet.

In the Vatican City Pope Francis missed a New Year’s Eve prayer service. It was apparently because he was suffering back pain.

Pope Francis asked people to help those in need.

President Emmanuel Macron used his New Year’s speech to confirm a his health ministry tweet that shots would be offered to health care workers. There is a lot of scepticism in France over the safety of the new vaccines.

#pope #vatican #slovakia #covid #newyear #recordinfections #france #uk #fireworks #2020 #2021

CLICK THE VID BELOW – AND LET’S DANCE!

Let’s drum up some happiness for the New Year! A Happy New Year from the Andrea and Leigh at the leighgbankspreservationsociety – we’ll keep on going and doing our best to make a difference … so, let’s biff covid, bash fears for the future and have a good time! We did a couple of years ago when we found the Caledonians rattling their drums at the future in Buchanan Street, Glasgow. And if you can’t get out because of lockdown – don’t be in tiers … let’s rock the lounge with this inspiring BIG BASH FOR THE FUTURE!

#2021 #2020 #glasgow #drums #newyear #covidbash #happynewyear

Andrea Martin-Banks writes:

I CAN HEAR the clock tick. I have never been so afraid in all my life.  The house has been like this for more than a week now, ever since we got permission to knock it down. And I don’t know what to do … but I do know if I don‘t do something soon, Harry Snape is going to kill Leigh.

Ten years we’ve been haunted by this house, but it’s never been this bad before. We’re trapped inside a nightmare. We’ve done everything right, cleaned the doors with brine, there’s frankincense and dried sage in the corners of every room and we’ve lit white candles and pinned prayers to the chimney breast.

The Land for Sale board outside rattles insanely.  Logs are roaring on the fire … but the room is   so cold   my breath is frozen in the air.  The clock ticks …

… footsteps on the landing. Snape’s back and he’s furious.  Annie Campbell’s been freed, you see,   and she’s taken all of his children with her.

Leigh moved in to The Old Stores, a beautiful old English village house in the Midlands, in 1987. He lived there alone in its 20 echoing rooms.  He’d paid £50,000 for the old place but from day one things went bump in the night, there were faces at the windows, footsteps and the smell of a dead thing on the landing.

Leigh is the gentlest person I’ve ever known but there is a darkness going back to his childhood. I met him in the village pub after my marriage floundered and I moved in to the Old Stores with my boys on Millennium Eve.  But the house never welcomed Adam, aged 14, or James, 17. James refused to stay, he was so terrified. Adam chose to live in the front with its inglenook and oak beams but he was scared to be alone in there.

Adam said: “I was in a bed when something woke me up. In the moonlight I could see an old man bending over me. He kept leaning closer and closer to me. Then he screamed into my face, it was if he was blowing the life out of me.”

The next Christmas I was dressing the tree in front of the log fire. I used to be a florist and decked the old oak fireplace with beautiful displays of mistletoe and holly.  Leigh and I were both kneeling, putting baubles on the tree when I shivered: “Gosh, somebody’s just walked over my grave.”

Neither of us felt remotely intimidated by our visitor though. I think it was Annie Campbell seeking comfort.  Another time – I remember, it was 4am – we were lying in bed holding hands and listening to three children playing in the lounge. They were giggling. At times like this, our house was a home.  But a few nights later, Snape pounded down the landing   and rapped his knuckles on the bedroom door just to let us know he was still around.

The paranormal investigators arrived from Warrington 30 miles away at midnight. It was like a military operation. They put an infra-red camera in Adam’s room and sealed it off. After two hours the house was quieter than an abandoned grave but then Martin Ward, aged 43, co-ordinator, nodded towards the infra-red monitor and I saw a diffused ball of light dancing on the screen.

“A Circle of Confusion …” Martin smiled. “In a sealed room too.”

And that was just for openers. Hundreds of orbs were flitting around the screen and electrical equipment around the house started to pick up impossible temperature changes.  The Ghostbusters picked up footsteps on the landing and the sound of something heavy being dragged down stairs, exactly where the stench of death lingered.

Three days later, the house was still crazy. Leigh had gone to bed early and I’d stayed up watching TV. He could hear a snarl, half asleep he tried to drown it out with the radio. But the louder the radio, the louder the snarl.  Then he saw a pale-green glow by the wardrobe … it looked like worms feeding on a pile of disgusting rags on the floor. Something was moving under them, rising and falling.

Leigh jumped out of bed and bound naked down stairs.   As he burst into the lounge something flung me sideways onto the couch .   I remember being angry with Leigh and demanded: “What did you do that for?”

“I didn’t do anything …”

“You were here, in front of me, holding my wrists and talking to me. Then you pushed me over.”

The three mediums from London arrived the next day.  They’d been deliberately kept in the dark about their destination.  Shawn Jones chose   the top of the stairs and that’s where she saw them, three children and a teenage girl.

“Her name was Annie Campbell,” Shawn said. “Harry Snape bought her to look after his three children after his wife died. Her family in Edinburgh sold her, she was barely fourteen. I’ve released her and the children. They’re gone now.”

I asked: “Why were they here?”

“He tried to rape her and she ran down the corridor with him in pursuit. That’s the footsteps you can hear.  She couldn’t escape him and when she died, she couldn’t escape the house. He strangled her on the stairs, you see. The children didn’t know what to do, so they stayed with her.”

“Is he still here?” I asked.

Shawn smiled sadly: “Yes. I’m sorry.” Then she turned to Leigh:  “It’s him who is master of this house, Leigh, not you … but he gets his strength off you, off a deep-rooted fear you have from your own past.”

The clock ticks. Dust falls through the ceiling. Snape’s angry and stamps around. Leigh suddenly launches himself at the door and in that same instant the boots begin to crash down the landing towards us. I grab Leigh’s arm and shout: “Where the hell are you going?”

“To face him!”

They say that if your fears are real, then you have to face them. And I know Snape is taunting Leigh over his past.

Leigh   throws the door open – the air in the hallway is foul, putrid.    Snape, so full of hatred that even the ground rejected him, is standing there, tall as a tree and dressed in black.

Leigh said afterwards: “I could see   through him, right into myself … I saw things I’d forgotten about, things I didn’t want to remember.”

We can move on in our lives now and we’ve decided to repair the old house instead of knocking it down. Annie Campbell and her three wards have  moved on in their deaths, but sometimes I wonder where did evil Harry Snape go?

This story was ‘stolen’ by an unscrupulous internet site and used with the intention of raising advertising revenue. The copyright to this story belongs to Leigh G Banks and Andrea Martin-Banks … the matter is being presented to relevant authorities. Our story had been clumsily and amateurishly re-written but this is the original version from more than a decade ago.

#ghosts #paranormal #villageofthedamned #truehorror #leighgbanks #copyright

CHRISTMAS EVE UPDATE: Sadly, Bob Dylan’s hedge was burnt down in 2018 when wildfires hit Malibu … Bob was lucky but many of his neighbours weren’t, their homes were badly damaged, satellite pictures still reveal the scars of the devastation. Bob actually replaced the lights with a manger – it was apparently a blow-up one.

We are still running the story below, we believe it still an amusing story of the eccentricity of the world’s greatest songwriter … but we publish it with respect to those who suffered awful loss in the fire.

Well, what do you think? Do you prefer Bob’s colourful baubles before they went electric?

Any how, the Preservation Society thought it would take a festive look at how the jokerman of rock Bob Dylan has caused a bit of  light relief in Malibu for Christmas for the last decade.

We wrote in 2019: The geriatric, but still wayward star, has had the Christmas lights at his £100million Point Dume compound scoffed at for years – and not without reason!

When, nine years ago, he first paid his skewwhiff homage to tradition on the massive hedge which hides his home from the world, it was just an untidy rope of bulbs – some looking broken.

That’s when Merrill Markoe,  known for her work on The David Letterman Show, spotted them as she drove home, one dark and chilly night,  and decided to photograph them.

Her chronicling of the lights over the years became an hilarious series of articles insinuating Bob is using them to send secret messages to the world.

She said: “I wasn’t planning to write about Bob and his lights this year, but the events of 2016 left me little choice. In a year that took both David Bowie and Leonard Cohen and left Donald Trump in their place, it was impossible to ignore the fact that the world was in desperate need of timely reflections from Dylan, this year’s recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.”

Sure enough, the messages in the display could be his most complex Christmas message ‘since god rest me merry gentlemen’ on his 2009 festive album.

But there is no doubt somebody at the Point Dume complex –  a bit of a scrapyard actually, for the old vehicles Bob uses in his wrought iron gates sideline  –  has put a bit more effort in to it all this year and there are more bulbs and certainly a bit more colour.

And Merrill says there appears to be the letter N hidden in the hodgepodge of lights which could be an allusion to Bob’s Nobel Prize debacle – the old curmudgeon sent his old amour Patti Smith to collect it instead. She gave a rendition of Hard Rain for the gathered academics and literati and unfortunately forgot the words.

About his Royal Bobness’s house … it’s an eccentric mix of Santa Fe, Spanish, Moorish and, unexpectedly, Russian styles – including a tower crowned with a copper dome – and a lounge big enough to ride a horse through.

Good on ya Bob!

#christmasintheheart #bobdylan #christmaslights #Pointdume #Malibu #feastivefun

Night whiter than light. A million angels coming down. Here we are, on Krakola Hova, the coldest place in the universe. It’s colder than winter in hell. Three thousand feet up and as white as a corpse. The world is blank.

Baron Peter Pokeski’s sedan comes out of nowhere, slow as an old black dog. The chauffer knows the way. He don’t needs no lefts or no rights, no ups and no downs.

He heads for the steam at the end of the road.

At the abandoned Radio KHT station a mile higher up, MistaResnick Chychovski – dirty old gypsy of this wretched province – throws the last of the floorboards on the fire. The bloody smell of copper stinks the flames. Snow careens around the mast. The moorings creak and pull. It’s minus 65 outside.

The road to the mast is a dead road. Thunder Road. Only Pokey Pete goes up there in these depths of winter. But Resnick needs the wire and wood …the wire to sell and the wood to burn … makes winter in his family’s chicken shack a bit more comfortable. So he goes up there too. Sometimes …

…this last time is fatal, though. His tractor engine froze. Probably because he shared the ethanol alcohol almost glass for glass with his radiator before setting off.

Resnick comforts himself: Wol-fffs freeze so quick up here, they comes back in the thaw. Dat’ll happen to me, yahoo!

KHT’s white noise makes his ears crawl to the back of his head. He snarls at something he can‘t see, like a fat old dog snarling at an empty space. It’s the roof coming off.

Baron Pokeski’s black sedan is as steady as a tiny ship in the vastness of the snow. He and his chauffer are heading home to Castle Steam.

The fire ebbs. It’s dying. The cold is making what is left of Resnick’s feet go dead.

The roof flaps like a tethered bird. Lights start a-poppin‘.

His wife is gonna hate him. Not because he is froze to death, but because there will be notin’ at all comin’ in, not-even wii-ire an’ woo-od.

Well, Mista Resnick Chychovski, you shouldna siphoned the generator’s diesel into ya tractor, should ya? Now it’s frozen, like the rest of your wasted life.

Resnick gulps from his almost empty bottle of Slivovica. One last chance – Castle Steam. Maybe he can make it there.

Pokey Pete won’t turn even a gypsy away in this weather. Besides, the hotel is always empty in the blizzard season. He could hole himself away in the cellar without Pokey even knowing.

Orr … a rrrooooom …

He’d never been in a rrrooooom in his life. Now, that’d be a story to tell the wife! Holed up in a rrrooooom at Pokey Pete’s for Christmas. And Old Pokey never catched on! Hahhah!

It’s less than a mile away. That’s all. But it might as well be ten thousand in weather like this.

He crosses to the window and looks down into the steam.

The castle’s a strange place, mediaeval and foreboding, high turreted walls and a spiral keep covered in hundreds of thousands of small stone ducats. It’s ancient forest of guards are long gone. Now its battlements are protected by razor wire and dogs.

He’s gotta be able to get there though. That’s what gypsies do – they get there.

Baron Pokeski’s sedan pads its way across the metal bridge as the prostithenai of the Portcullis rises with an electronic sigh. The sedan slides into the warmth of the earth.

Josef, cadaver of a chauffer with a thick moustache and an unlucky left hand, helps him from the back seat into the thermally-heated underground car park. Baron Pokeski has a bit of difficulty walking. He is grossly overweight because of his inhuman life-style.

He waddles like a duck as Josef helps him in to the lift to the penthouse at the top of the spiral keep.

He is sweating, smells toxic and looks ridiculous in his big red Santa outfit. But Baron Pokeski feels good.

Handing out Christmas presents to orphans in Chicken Town warms the hearts of the peasants and puts his reputation on the back burner, he smiles.

Resnick watches lights go on at Castle Steam while his own pop out. The roof thrashes.

Inside his sweltering penthouse, Baron Pokeski waddles to the window and surveys the white-out. He likes it when the world is empty, when there are no tourists bathing in his thermal pools. They are the bane of his life. He’d like to eat them alive.

His eyes are drawn to a thin plume of smoke coming from the old radio station. Probably a stranded hunter.

Resnick turns his back, crosses himself and goes to the fire. He grabs a smouldering plank to use as a torch. The roof yowls as the radio mast whips like a fishing rod.

Baron Pokeski uses an ancient key to unlock the door to his counting house. There is a gift in here he hates to give. But he has to give it at this time of year, every year. Polite society calls it counsel tax.

Three hundred and sixty million krowns is what it really is. Three hundred and sixty million krowns in used notes in a big red-wrapped present handed over to the mayor and the chief of da big po-leece at midnight every December 25^th.

You peoples down there in Stinky Town don’t have to pay nottin, nottin – everrr. I’s bitten out ears and torn off breasts to get to this castle. I done things you people wouldn’t believe. I’s ripped out souls and slept with the dead. Every year I gives you all dis money, I gives your chil ‘ren gifts … an’ still you hate me. But I takes it all wid-out a murmur – and ya knows why? Ya knows why? Cos I owns ya, I owns ya, like the mangy dogs you is …

I is da wrath of your God.

The timer on the camera goes off. Flash! Baron Pokeski grins, sticks up a thumb and jabs an elbow into the money. Private protection – a photo – proof in a flash – if it’s ever needed.

Hah! Anyways, three hundred and sixty million krowns ain’t worth zilch to the Hungarian gun metal magnates he do da business wid …

When he was a lonely child, snubbed by the mountain kids because of his bad posture, his fatness, his ugliness and the strange voices inside his head … well, he’d play alone in the ruins of Krakola Hova castle.

The ghosts became his friends. He talked to them incessantly and they told him secrets. They told him about Baron Igor, the 15^th century castellan of Krakola Hova.

He was a despicable man. Charged the sick and dying all of their fortunes, no matter how small, to bathe in his healing waters.

Well, one sunny afternoon Baron Igor found a little angel in a hovel by the side of Thunder Road and beat her half to death. Then he raped her.

Undercover of the night, he threw this little angel from the Spiral Keep into the moat. Her stomach and her head burst as she hit the rocks … and the waters have bubbled ever since.

Baron Igor got a blood lust. Villagers and mountain people were thrown from the keep just because today was a day.

Then one day, in the height of winter, an alchemist turned up at the castle gates. A band of thieves on the Baron‘s land had left him half dead.

Igor sneered and demanded gold.

Fatal.

The alchemist cast a spell which turned gold to stone. The baron’s kingdom burst into flames. The villagers crushed him with his own useless ducats and ingots.

Castle Steam remained a burnt our ruin for 350 years.

Well, the young Peter Pokeski loved these stories. And when he made his fortune from gun metal, he moved in with the ghosts. Thought maybe he’d make a movie … someday.

Meanwhile:

Chicken Heights, on the outside of town, is buried in the blizzard. Only the sentinel smoke of wood-burning stoves gives a sense of equilibrium.

Mrs Chychovski moves inside the shed, trapped like a balloon in a box. She sucks deeply on her pipe and coughs like a truck. Smoke settles across the ceiling.

“Chh-hrissstmasss starts early for dat bassst-aaard agaiyin,” she gurgles inside her phlegm.

The grandchildren are restless in the cupboard under the bed. She can hear them, scuffing like rats. Their mother snores above them, stinkin’ drunk.

Dah!

Dah shack is barely big enough for two, let alone da whole family. Dem kids ain’t vell eiser. Gotta poor skin and skinny hairs, each one of’m.

The camp is built on top of a toxic dump. They gave them the lease, portable TVs and the wood and the nails to build their shacks – beguiled them with genocide.

Now they can’t escape. Rotting feet sticks’m to the ground. Putrefying to contract. Signed their lives away on a slippery slope. A place in da country to bring da kids up, don’tcha know.

That mountain air and those healing waters, hehehehheh!

All the gypsies at Chicken Heights are rotting from the ground up, you know. Toes black as talons, nails squirmin’ like worms.

A Tilley lamp makes shadows dance on the wall of the shed. The portable TV spins out of control.

Mrs Chychovski spits phlegm at the stove to watch it fizzle. She is twitchy. She knows Resnick went to Krokola Hova. And she knows the truth is that the snow is so deep he can’t find his way home.

And there isn‘t even a godforsaken window in here where she can leave a light on for him.

Thunder Road is buried under a billion tiny diamonds. Castle Steam has vanished in the snow. Not a moon to give a clue to up or down, left or right.

Even the Slivovica and a last gasp to God can’t stop Resnick being afraid. He knows the roof is about to come off.

He’s too old for this kinda game, anymore. Hah! Was a day when his feet could set a street aa-nn fi-aarr– eyes like coals, sweat shooting like stars. Now I’s just a fat old man.

He boots a door – the plank fizzes and spits like a sword. It’s a cupboard. His sword melts cobwebs. It’s filled with papers, old scripts, weather reports, schedules. Jeeezz-uz, man – dat’ll keep you’s vaaaa-rm.

He gets to stuffin’ his clothes with the old papers until he’s like the Michelin man.

Then the roof really does come off. Right above his head. An avalanche comes down. Concrete and snow. He slams that cupboard door and puts his hands on his head. The noise goes on forever. Thunder Road. Cavernous echoes. A noise bigger than the night trapped inside the snow.

Rubble kicks the cupboard door off its hinges and snow and dust pours in. It chokes him quicker than a copper‘s helmet. He stumbles into the maelstrom and is floored by the wind.

That roof peels like the lid on a sardine can. The mast thrashes, moorings whistling and cracking.

Then the whole place turns turtle. Jetsam. And Resnick drowns under a tonne of grey foam. A silence deeper than death. Angels come down fast. Lead dolls.

He knows he has to go … turns on his side … pushes up through the icy rubble.

And right away he spots the mast – it’s flopped down, all the way to the edge of the precipice. A rusting and corroded tightrope out of hell. And, suddenly, he knows what to do.

Da straights and da narrers, heh! He laughs and sets off crawlin’ dow-wyn Salvation Road!

The precipice is filled with whispers and tales and a whiteness cleaner than God. And yet he can smell the devils down there. But there is nowhere else to go. Resnick swings out over it.

He drops into oblivion, flapping in the G‘s, kicking his legs about – until he hits the hillside skidding. He’s slicker than a stone across ice, like a fat bullet.

Nothing’s going to stop him until he hit’s rock bottom.

And he hits it quicker than he expects. Rock bottom comes out of nowhere and slaps him in the face. Out for the count.

“Yes, but he’s reached the walls of the castle … at least he’s got a chance now … “ he hears an angel explaining to somebody as he shoots into unconsciousness.

It’s Josef who saves him. He’s hurrying, shivering, along the battlements in his flip flops, headed for the thermal pools. He looks a sight in his fish-eye goggles and stubbly bathing cap.

By chance he sees what looks like a dead starfish in the snow. He knows right away it’s the hunter. He can smell him from the battlements.

Whagtt to doogghhh, whagtt to dooogghhh ..? He’s shivering and wishing he’d smeared on some goose fat.

Ah, what would Pokey do? What would Pokey do?

Well, it ees Christmas … goodwills to all mens – an’ alls dat kinda stuff. Maybes, a should rescue eem – ees Chris-maz an’ we don’t get no guests for dinner. May bee a shud rescue eeem, he cud entertain Pokey an’ mee’s. Them hunters, they’s allas got stories ta tell … rippin’ da hearts out of bears an’ wolves … heheheh … an’ eatin’ dem’s intestines while dey is goood’n hots. Hohohoho! Merreee Christmazzzz!

Josef sees the dead starfish in the snow as a surprise gift for his boss. He shivers and turns on his flip flops.

Next thing ol’ Resnick knows is that he’s waking up in a king-size bed, in a real vaaarm rrrrooom. He’s never felt winter so vaaarm There’s poultices on his feet too. And his sheets are turned down. His boots shine and a whole new suit of clothes is laid out for him.

Josef’s breath is like a bird‘s nest on his face… “W-velcomme to Chris-mazz at Caste Steam, mista.” His face is as grubby as the moon and his moustache reeks of tobacco: “Ve dines at ni-yne.”

He places a rough kiss on Resnick’s forehead. His flip flops leave marks on the parquet.

Resnick takes in his surroundings with a sense of awe. Is this really a rrrrooom? It’s as big as a house! The whole of Chicken Heights could move in here!

He rattles his fist like it’s full of dice and hisses: “Yeh … sank yuu God, sank yuu!”

Resnick slides out of bed like a big naked gorilla and pads around on his sneaky new bandages. It don’t take him but a minute to sniff out the little metal cupboard full of shot bottles and beers by the window.

“Oohhhh … sank yuuhhh God ….sank yuuuhhh …”

Two hours later it’s he who is acting like the millionaire as he follows a sober-suited, proud moustachioed Josef down the stairs into The Great Hall of Windows. Josef has a glove on his unlucky left hand.

The Great Hall of Windows is filled with signs he can’t read, coffee and cigarette machines he’s never seen and a closed fast food bar that he can’t imagine.

At the end of the hall on a metal promontory is The Conservatory, like a giant glass eye looking out over the steaming lakes.

Castle Steam has four of them bubbling away. It sweats down there. Curtains of steam. The bulb lights flicker … rainy nights all over the world …

Baron Pokeski beckons from his table inside The Conservatory.

“Velcommm to mine Castdel of Steeee-am.” He has a limp wrist. So sinister.

He is dressed for the occasion in a silver and gold Porsche windjammer and a hand-stitched Mercedes baseball cap. “Da peoples pays me to come inside my kingdom.”

He waves his arm around The Eye, like a magician. “ Yet, you is here forrrr free?”

He twists like a bloated snake: “Eeees all mine, you uner‘stan‘?

“I am king of da centre of da earth.”

He turns solemn as he surveys all that he has become. The night is so hot inside The Conservatory.

The meal they shared was wonderful though, brandy schnapps borscht followed by goose inside a dying swan.

And now the cigars are good. And so is the Slivovica. Josef imbibes attentively from the servant’s seat.

Baron Pokeski is waxing lyrical with a glint in his eye: “I vill buys my own aira-lina and fly touristas in – I have already bought an aira-port, next I buys Polan‘.”

He laughs right out loud.

“I knew where the pipe was, you see. Da ghosts showed me, all those years ago.

Ze show me how to turn the lakes back on – they taught me to make ‘em bubble agai-yan.

“The pipe has breath hot enough to melt your soul. Eternal power, warmth and wealth. Been there for millions of years. And I controls it.”

Resnick fills his glass to overflowing. The Tetra mountains are like cold white sharks teeth against the grey blue of the sky.

Baron Pokeski’s eye is gimlet as he snaps: “ Zen zey vent to var – and lost. But I’d gone straight into gun metal. Became known as the New Alchemist – da man who turns blue steal inta yella gold. There has been no true alchemist in dis country since Baron Igor kilted hi-mmmm..

“I s da God … I turns metal into gold and vater into liiiiii-fffe.”

He’s apoplectic with laughter. Resnick slams back his drink and joins in with gusto.

He finds that hysterically funny too and his face is fit to burst – little deaths, if you don’t allow them to kill you, will always make you stronger.

Well, Resnick clicks his soggy heals about and punches a hole with so much pride he almost falls out of his chair. Gypseee pri-yde, he whoops!

“Eeees a meetin’ of da miiiind-es Pokey – I hopes you doesn’t min’s mi callin ‘ ya’s dat, a term of frien’sheeep’n affexions, eeef a may be so po-li-ete – burrr, eees a meetin’ of da miiind-es, heheheh! Makes ya wanna larrrf, doe it.”

He smiles proudly, sucks on his cigar and tips the wink at Ol’ Pokey: “We is wannada kin’, mi ol’ mucka. We knows how to makes sometin‘ outa sometin that dowin’t belon’ to us. We is a little on the trashy side but we is bretheren, an I is very happy to dines wid you tonite … ”

The smile slips from Baron Pokeski’s lips and he tips back his Mercedes cap and sighs: “Where you from?”

“ Da sky …da dust …da win’ … an’ da road.”

Well, they share a mellow laugh.

“You a lucky man, then?”

“Eye-am…”

“You from Chicken Heights?”

“I got family there.”

Pokey raises an eyebrow: “You let your family live on a toxics dump?”

“I’m lookin’ out for a better part of town – but, you knows how it is … sometimes, times is hard.”

“You gots no money?”

“Sure I gots money, how else I be able to spen’ win’er in a spooky place like this?”

Hahahahahh. Heehaw.heehehheh. Somehow, the laughter ain’t so shallow this time.

Pokey Pete warms to him. A moment’s inspiration. A something-for-not‘in-guy who likes to thin’ he’s the kiddy. A fool player. He can be sold a package. Right there, in the centre of his eye. Away-Days in the healing water … Pokey Pete’s Proprietary Poultices, Steamy Nights. He sees it all going on – a nice little out-of-season earner. He feels kinda inspired.

Oh, how Christmas Night is flying by …

Resnick tells ol’ Pokey about the black market in copper wire – “Seezzz, I is da Alchemist too …we is star-crossed, man, I tells ya.”

Then he brags of his copper kettles and hooch like his daddy used to make. Why, he even invites ol’ Pokey down to his humble abode in Chicken Heights for a noggin or two.

They is havin’ a gay old time, slappin’ thighs and shakin’ their big hips about. Hohohohoho. Hahahaha. They is shakin’ hands and slappin’ high fives and the third bottle of sliv vanishes.

Josef yawns. It’s – 1am and he’s bought himself a present of a moustache colouring kit that he’s dying to try out. But he knows what’s going to happen, Baron Pokeski is so drunk, he’s going to start making them dem-anns on his unlucky left hand.

I ain’t no pervert, Josef reminds himself. I jus’ wants to help Mista Resnick to his vroom. Mah liddle treat. Heem gotta saucy smell cuu-min’ off his burnin’ feet …

Ah, but Baron Pokeski will want to make his dem-anns – it‘s the same every year. A small deposit in da palm, helps secure mah future, he likes to say. Like it‘s a joke.

Josef feels his skin crawl up and down his spine. He’s getting angry and he doesn’t want to, not on a night like this … he doesn’t want to spoil anything.

Pokey says I’s morose all ada tiiime, anyvays.

“Josef-f! Josef-f!” Baron Pokeski is up and waddling towards him with a sense of purpose. He’s redder than blood and sweating grease. “Hey – Josef-f!” He sounds breathless. “Hey, Josef-f!”

He reaches him and throws a blubbery arm round his shoulder: “Josef-f! Josef-f! … dis ma-an issa my frendt … whatev-ver he wan’s he kin have. Ees you’re jab to maik sure he is happy … vat ever dis ma-an wan’s he gets, okay. Dis vill be da Chist-tmaass of his life time – you tell eem, you tell eem …

“ I cans give eem more gold than his angels can hold …heheheh!”he begins to sing and waltz.

Josef nods solemnly.

Baron Pokeski grabs another bottle of sliv and waddles back to his guest laughing for no reason other than he is a happy man at this moment. It’s a pity he’s so drunk though, he’ll have forgotten all about it by morning.

At 2.17am precisely Pokey Pete falls unconscious on the table. His baseball cap flops in front of him like a begging bowl. Resnick has been snoring like a pig for the last forty minutes.

Josef is tense, watching for any signs of life. Nothing. Daaat’s gooood, daaaaat’s gooood. He helps Resnick to his feet with a growing sense of anticipation. Mista Resnick smell goooood tonite-ah …

But half way up the stairs, Resnick comes around. “Hey, you remem’er Baron Pokeski said I could have anything I want for dis Chris’mas?”

A terrible, terrible fatal mistake …

… Baron Pokeski’s black dog comes out of the white on skis. Siii-fff. Blades slashin’. Aerial crackin’. Siii-ffff! Crack!

Josef kicks through Chicken Heights like a coach and horses. People are fallin’ outa bed, shacks is ghettin’ trashed. Tilleys bounce in the air, spittin’ fire an’ skin … shit! There’s homes goin’ up in flames! People burnin’! Whole families up in smoke! Disappearin’ before your verr-yeh verr-yeh eye-zzz.

Kids that got lucky scurry ab-aat in dem snow, pickin’ up trashed Christmas presents and shiverin’ themselves to death. Man, dey all gonna be popsicles for da wolves before morning. Hohoho.

The black sedan slides to a halt at No 117a Chicken Heights. It fizzes in the gutter, a holocaust in its wake. Josef leap out like a monster and raps on the door.

Mrs Resnick bounces off the walls. Fat girl drunk as a skunk, Resnick’s chiv – a snake’s tongue – in her hand.

Josef recoils as the balloon spits garlic and sulphur in his face. “Whatcha fackin wan’”.

He bows respectfully and presents her with an invitation to spend Christmas with Baron Peter Pokeski, VIP, at The World-famous Castle of Steam

She bounces aroun’ like she is filled with helium an’ squeezes out of the chicken shed in her pink shell suit with those plastic hoola-hoops in her ears – and she knows she is da beezzzz kneezzz. Heeheheheehheh! Eyes painted. Hair in corkscrews. Toothless and bronchitic. She winks at Josef.

“Skoda’s too good for the likes of us then – whhhoohoowoo – Mista Take-Us-Up-To-Santa?”she clucks like a chief hen as she slides into the gaping rear of the Super Trooper. The family slips in too.

One drunken daughter and two turtledoves and a village in a scare tree. Hohohohohohoh. heheheheheheheee!

The Chychovski’s have embarked on their final journey.

******************************

Not’n good’s ever happen to me in my whole lifes, Mrs Chychovski sighs as she dries her hair with a towel …

… even them lizard scales on my skin …

“ … I ain’t never stood naked inside hot rain before …”

She smiles.

Resnick snores like it’s his final breath. “Don’t even knows I’s here.”

She catches her eye in the mirror, looks forty years younger … you know, hair tousled, skin shinin‘. White room. Bathroom. Safe as hospitals.

Gretchin binds her feet with towels. Starts a triumphant jig, but it’s too ambitious so she settles for a soft shoe shuffle. Soon stops that too though, catches her face in the mirror again. Feels a bit of a dork.

She changes the subject in her mind: “He had a goood ni-accht, heh,heh,heh.”

Gretchen climbs in beside him and slips her arm around his atoll of a belly. She sniffs. Masculine. Balsam – liniment. “Finally, he smells like rich man’s feet.”

She presses her face into his armpit. Her tongue flickers. He ain’t smella dis youn’ since he vas twen’y van. Gretchen drools.A fly-paper lick. He al’as makes ‘Gretchen feel jus’ lhaak a vomannn …

Hmmm. She licks him some more. Then the kids come in. They all hunker down together like a family should do.

Daylight arrives inside a glaucoma sky. Cold metal sun.

The kids get up early. It’s so vaaarm. And, the bed is sooo soft, it makes them succulent little joints twitch. The door to the corridor moves like blades on ice and them little daisies slip out hand-in-hand.

Them little daisies is so happy. This is another land. They can see it through the windows. Sweating boulevards, steaming fountains, dripping domes … gardens of Eden growing in the coldest place in the universe.

Cheeky little kids, naked as the day they was borned, running along on big bound feet.

Momma senses they is gone and comes out of her coma like a banshee: “Where’s da fackin’ kids!” Well, she bounces across Gretchen and is off after them.

There they ees! Leedle faces licking the sugary-syrup windows and thems leedle arses waggin‘, all sassy-like.

Kalashnikovs aimed straight at their belly buttons. Twitchy triggers.

Momma appears. as naked as a shock, and them guys below cock their pistols and dive for cover.

Momma pins the kids to her sides by their ears and moves them backwards. Just then The Big Chief of Po-leece chucks the last bag of dosh into his snow mobile and looks up.

His heart is a slug in salt.

The little fat man waddles into view. He looks up as shiny as new shoes. He thinks on his feet.

He waves his arm, blusters and laughs: “They ees my family, ya fackin’ idiots. Is da fackin’ keeeds, can‘t ya see, can‘t ya see dem leedle face-sss. Forget it. You’s got what’s you came for. Now, goes home. Goes home … until next Christmas.”

The Big Chief of Po-leece looks down on Pokey: “You don’ haves no family.”

Pokey smiles up at him: “I got money, mate – dat gives me all da family I ever wan’, whenever I wan’.”

A snarl comes back: “Keep’m at home then … don’t let’m out on da streets no more. Okay?”

Baron Peter Pokeski summons up his dignity like a primal scream. He lets it out in a toxic hiss: “I pays for you’s family too, remem‘r?“ He sighs: “You go an’ make sure dey is safe huh? There‘s a gooood cop …”

He turns on his heels.

Josef looks ridiculous in his new combats, leather glove and pink moustache twitching as Baron Pokeski waddles towards him.

Josef jumps in, nervous, like he gets slapped a lot: “You tol’ me Mista Resnick could have any-sin’ for Christmas …”

“So, you got him his fackin’ family?” Baron Pokeski pushes past him: “Get rid of zem.”

“But ..?”

“Put’m in the chamber.”

***********************

“It’s freezin’ in here Momma,” this little girl’s whimper is smaller than an echo.

Momma don’t hear nothin’ anyway – she is a-screamin’ an’ a-hammerin’ and fightin‘ for her life. Everybody’s lifes.

She is a wild thing skimmin’ across nickel slabs, swingin’ on the rafters and kickin’ over blood drainers.

Josef fiddles about in the dark outside the cryochamber, trying to punch in the code for Chill. But he’s panicking … his unlucky left hand is making a hash of it …

… Mista Resnick is barely tied to his bed. Somebody’s got to look after him. Make sure he don’ escapes.

He flicks the switch again and everything goes blue. Dat’s cooool.

Josef is hot and flustered He got a touch of emphysema these days. And a touch of asthma. Sometimes, all dis dashin’ about gets too much. Sometimes, you jus’ wans a ni-icce cuppa tee an‘ a sit dow-wun.

He minces down the corridor, heart missing a beat. Mistahh Resss-nick-ahh needs hisssa feets-a kissin’.

A solemn song flicks on in his head: “Oh, gypsy guy, da han’s of Harlem cannot hold you to its heats, you gypsy eyes so faaaast and slashin’, you flamin’ feeets is burnin’ up da streets ...”

He keeps hearing it over and over in his head.

A light fizzes. Flaps. Flashes. Fades. Fizz. Fade. Flap. Fizz. Fade. Fizz. Fade. Fizz. Fade. He is pounding through a strobe. Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

Helicopter. Glaucoma. Metal Sun. Thwack! Fizz. Fade. Fizz. Fade. Thwack! Thwack!

He throws himself to the floor.

The sky opens its throat and the mayor‘s chopper slides in. Josef slithers along the corridor.

He is a snake, head slitherin’ under the sheets. Mista Resnick groans with expectation. Josef obliges. He starts at the toes and works his way up to the middle …

Ah yah sucker, you does is every times, I tells ya … pull it out! Pull it out! Ah but no. Splish splosh. I wastakinaborrth …he spits on the pillow next to Resnick‘s head.

Then Josef touches Resnick’s lips with his own. Only a gesture. “We all gotta hide da truth Mista Resnick, he sighs: “Sleeps tight.”

He ties him to the bed again. Resnick snores deeper than ever.

I’s gotta deal with the kids, yah see. They’s gotta be my first concern. Josef checks that the sheet are wound tight.

Now, cryogenics is a funny old business. A legitimate thing. Grew from the legends of the mountains, wolves that come back to life every thaw. Polish invention in the 1920s, apparently, although others claim it as their own every now and again.

It’s mainly used to straighten out the molecular structure of iron and steel, nowadays.

Leavin’ a coupla kids in there with their Momma and their Grand-momma for 36 minutes then? Well, you’ve got flesh and blood ice cubes man.

The blue light is flashing red. Luckily the alarm is on mute.

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! The helicopter sucks up ribbons of angels. Josef flattens himself against the wall. The ‘copter turns into a spider on the ceiling of the sky and vanishes.

The Red Light throbs and he slips in to the chamber.

The kids are dead. So is Gretchen … and Momma … suspended in animation … wrapped around each other … heat-seeking limbs, a face sucked inside a mouth, childish thighs spooning a dead arse. Distorted flesh, pornography, love in death, frozen in a moment.

Josef’s pink moustache shatters like coral.

Three floors below Baron Pokeski comes out of his counting house with a philosophical look on his face and a bottle of Sliv in his hand. He flicks a switch and bellows: “JOSEF!”

The Tanoid has a second’s delay before it belches: “JOSEF!” Jesus jumps and Mary chains! Its shouting right behind him … I gotta hide da kids …

Next thing Josef is a crazy man throwing the Chychovski family into oblivion from Spiral Keep. They whistle through the glaucoma becoming little cubes, tiny diamonds, as they hit the moat, crashing apart like a hobo hit by a train.

Josef, a vulture with an unlucky claw.

“Joseffff …” that voice chills his spine. His feathers fall and he flutters at the Baron’s feet. He pulls him up by his frozen hair.

“I had to makes a decision.” Josef bares his chest with the pride of a wounded soldier: “In zee absence of a high-her rank – Sir!”

The Baron throws him on to the slab: “You kilted leeeddle womens and chil‘rens.”

Josef presents his nipple to his commanding officer: “ … it’s our empire … all empires have their secrets.”

Pete’s voice goes deader than liver: “What’s my empire got to do with you?”

Josef’s insides twist: “You says I is your left han’ man.”

“My unlucky han’ …da han’ I should punish wiz a broken bottle.”

The Baron goes to cuff him but turns away. Contact makes him sick.

“Bring. Mista Resnick here …”

Josef slithers away.

The Baron looks down on the rainbow of his guests and sighs. Sometimes money can’t even buy you a conclusion.

Old ghosts begin breathing down his neck, already they are spinning new legends, like plates on canes. He can hear his history go into a loop – old news on an airship – moments flicker inside a cave.

His heart is a dirty bird.

Resnick comes back from the dead with a belch. His mouth tastes of sugar and his head is pounding. But he feels goooood. Well, that was a night to remem’er, if he had any idea what happened. Woohoo! He laughs.

And tries to get out of bed.

First thought is that he’s had a heart attack. Or he’s paralysed. It don’t take long for him to realise he is tethered though. Woohoohoo! He laughs. Gretchin, you is a ba-ad girl.

He laughs out loud when Josef slaps a leather collar around his neck and pulls him to his feet.

Josef delivers the little fat guy with no clothes on and steps back respectfully. Resnick is already starting to shut down.

“He-eyeeeee, you-ha guy-zzz…I-eees freezings.”

Josef steps forward and cuffs him: “Shaddapp.”

The Baron: “Velcome to Desolation Row.”

He enjoyed Resnick’s company for Christmas …but … cruel to be kin‘, cruel to be kin’. He hears ancient voices again. “Cruel to be kin’ … cruel to be kin’ …”

The Baron grabs Resnick by the throat and pulls him to his mouth: “Your family has been sacrificed, ol‘ chap. It is for the greater gooood, While they was on this earth their lives was pointless – but now they protect a secret.”

Resnick is dying fast from cold: “Did God decides zis?”

“Your wife and your children were turning to rotten flesh, Mista Resnick, you knows this – you couldn‘t look after zem. Now they is gone to be angels .”

Well, while Josef holds Mista Resnick still, Mista Pokey digs an ingot from the wall and pushes it into Resnick’s throat. He dies quick.

++++++++++++

THE ANGELS OF KRAKOLA HOVA

GALA OPENING

The Lakes at Castle Steam

October 17

VIP ONLY

Anybody who is everybody is a VIP today. As long as they are on the outside of the castle walls quaffing weak beer.

The RSVPs are of course on the inside, enjoying sherry and champagne.

Security helicopters dance illogically in the air above it all as the new tourist station – Radio KHT – less than a mile away mashes up their signals.

On the inside a whore with all the charm of an aging leopard leads the big Chief of da Po-leece into a lavatory.

On the outside the band plays stately … Kalinka, Kalinka, Kalinka Ki-ya … a double bass, a violin and a cimbal. Less important dignitaries, thieves and gypsies dance hand-in-hand round stone rotisseries where tiny game birds hiss and spit.

Listless boys slouch and smoke in corners while girls with legs up to heaven smile wickedly at anything that moves. This is a good time.

Inside or outside, everybody is already trying to drink Peter Pokey dry and its only 10am.

Inside his aerie Baron Poke ski is as cool as a vulture. He is as-happy-a-man-as-anybody-in-the-kinda-business-he-is-in can be. He’s got the knack you see, and having the knack means becoming invincible. It means you re not of this world.

“Josef was a fool,” he sighs to himself.

“I vas faithful …” Josef is still angry.

Baron Pokeski doesn’t flinch. He knows when he comes around. He ain’t fearful.

The Baron raises his glass in the air: “You took the wrap okay.”

“I din’ have no choice …” Josef spit’s the words.

That makes the Baron laugh. He rattles like a train.

“Yes, Josef but you got the chance to protect our empire, okay?”

The room goes still. He’s gone, just as quick as he butted in.

The Baron swigs his salute in one. He crosses to the centre of the eye. Josef’s body is nothing but leather and bone now. It’s still there on a cross at the top of Spiral Keep.

It’s where the villagers nailed him the day The Baron told them what his left-han’ man had done to that tragic family from Chicken Heights.

He hurled Josef to the baying crowd from the battlements. It vas the only thing he could do.

“And today I gives you this … your very own holy waters,” Baron Pokeski’s bronchitic voice crackles from the Tanoid.

The blind and the sick and the drunk and the profane wave and cheer as they frolic for free in the moat at the newly-named Chychovski Point.

He’d sold them all a package. Right there, in the centre of his eye. Away-Days in the healing water … Pokey Pete’s Proprietary Poultices, Steamy Nights –

“I’s given you your very own Lourdes,” he crackles inside his own bombast.

Such a nice little out-of-season earner. That‘s his knack, you see, making good out of bad. And this time the people have become pilgrims to the man who changed their world and made legends of their own.

It’s a brave new world. The Baron has paved over what was left of Chicken Heights and turned it into a sports stadium with a heated pitch and a bar. He’s moved the residents into housing association blocks in the centre of town too. And he’s given them their own healing waters.

The knack never fails him, you see. This time Baron Peter Pokeski has found the way to be God.

TAGS: Radio, mythology, murder, mountains, eastern europe, tourism, history, castles, good, bad, evil, corruption

We received this impassioned plea from a Mostonian this morning … although the day is coming to an end for the beautiful edifice at the heart of Moston… people still want to fight for it… and there still may be time.

This is what the latest message said: “My heart cries every time i pass this once magnificent hall. It’s beyond belief that MCC or English Heritage have not raised a voice to save this 500 year old hall. The value of this piece of history isn’t about money, it is far more valuable than that. What this place has to offer for generations to come is priceless. Unless the Council act it seems that know matter how important this building is it will only be worth whatever a pile of rubble cost. IT MUST BE SAVED.”

THIS ARTICLE IS FROM THE ARCHIVES – but we at the preservation society think it is still relevant because of the renewed interest created by Urban Collective … the info contained in the article is still useful … We are happy to find out what can be done to save Hough Hall – help us! Share this article!

There is definitely something that can be done to save Hough Hall, the Marie Celeste building of Moston. And the first person who should have cared about this ancient building is of course the man who owned it.

Certainly, when he and his partner  Heather Mawhinney, less than 20 years ago,  bought the historic pile, which stands just off Moston Lane, next to a Victorian primary school, they must have known at least a little of what they was letting themselves in for.

And when they put a £200,000 price tag on it a couple of years later they would have been aware that if it didn’t sell or it wasn’t restored – or even repaired – this small piece of England was being condemned to a slow and shameful fall from the pages of history.

Now there, of course, could have been a hundred and one reasons for Roger Barnard’s lack of action.

We have also heard many suggestions of what might have gone on in the rigours of  his life, which we won’t highlight here.

https://leighgbankspreservationsociety.blog/time-to-get-in-a-huff-over-towns-hall-of-sadness/

And what we do know is that owning a Grade 11 listed building can become like a dead albatross round your neck.

The sad truth is however, that owners of listed buildings in the UK are under no statutory obligation to maintain their property in a good state of repair. They can quite literally let it fall down and the land it stands on can become a lucrative plot for building.

We are not suggesting for a minute that this is – or ever has been – the plan for Hough Hall.

The responsibility for the future of this beautiful and evocative 17th century farmhouse – one of the only remnants of the rural history of this North Manchester suburb – also lies with two organisations who should right now hang their heads in shame.

The first one is of course Manchester City Council … you see, despite what they say,  local authorities can take action to ‘secure repair when it becomes evident that a building is being allowed to deteriorate’.

But MCC nailed their colours to the mast when they told the preservation society’s chief researcher Andrea Martin-Banks there was nothing they would do to protect the near-derelict hall.

History in a hole.

The next port of call then is Historic England.

They say on their website: “Historic England have produced guidance to help owners and purchasers of vacant buildings to reduce risks by undertaking an ‘active management approach’ that can prevent unnecessary damage, dereliction and loss of historic fabric.”

But when approached by Andrea, Historic England simply referred her back to Manchester City Council.

***

So, the only hope Hough Hall has of surviving into its next century on this earth is you, the people of Moston.

This is what some of you have had to say in the last couple of weeks …

These are some of the comments made after this story was originally published last year:

Callum Andrews This marvellous pressure group, which I’m backing, already has the ball rolling. Maybe you could ask Joyce Lightfoot to speak with Leigh also. I support Leigh and back him 110% on behalf of my group, if he needs me to do anything I’ll do my best. He needs more people from Moston to back him so we have a bigger voice.

North City Community Action Group Leigh how about getting a public meeting together so a focus group can be created to take this forward

Lorna Hardaker Very sad. Too many historical buildings are lost due to sheer neglect. An intervention is required.

Joseph Mysko I would love for this building to be restored absolute travesty to see it in such a state!!!!! Looks like the history is as forgotten about as much as the residents that currently live in the area. I see so many beautiful pictures of how moston was on here it’s just incredibly sad  

 Jennifer Clarke I have read and left comments.
I hope the council don’t procrastinate so long that they deem it unsafe and pull it down like what happened to some other places.

 Damian Witherington Leigh I’m led to believe you are the driving force behind the campaign to save Hough Hall, is this correct? or are you just raising the awareness of the plight of this building?

There have literally been thousands of likes and comments on Facebook and other platforms since we first published this story – but not too much action.

The people to contact at Manchester City Council and Historic Britain are:

Sir Richard Leese, Leader of Manchester City Council T

Telephone: 0161 234 3004

Email: [email protected]

Duncan Wilson OBE is the chief executive of Historic England

Telephone: 020 7973 3250

Email: @english-heritage.org.uk

Don’t let this fight end here. Disinterest is the wrecking ball which destroys hundreds of listed buildings across the UK every year but there are Urgent Works Notices, Repairs Notices and Section 215 Notices. Make the people who are in charge of our history use them.

These are just some of the buildings which at some stage have become awful ghosts of themselves, Victoria Mill, Grimsby, Old Bute Road Railway Station, Cardiff, Old Library, Stafford, Mount Street Hospital, Preston, St Paul’s Church, Boughton, Chester.

But the list is endless.

The preservation society has to move on now but we are more than willing to advise and help anybody who wants to fight to save Hough Hall – we will also publicise everything you do. Contact us through the site or on messenger.

Fight for YOUR history.

Leigh G Banks

Some say that Whitby’s red sky at night is its own bloody history burning like celluloid across the clouds.

There is no doubt that this old fishing-smacked village on the North Yorkshire coast is a place where the roads of the dead have often crossed. And indeed shipping clerk Bram Stoker was so taken by Whitby’s darkness that he based his terrifying story of Dracula there.

Even today some pundits of the occult say it is the blood of Dracula’s young innocent victims which defiles the sky as the sun sinks into the sea.

Others though say the redness is because of the curse of the Bargtjest, the Hound of Hell that dines in the gutters of the fishing village on hearts and lungs torn from drunks and the unwary. By day the Bargtjest is said to sleep in the labyrinthine smugglers’ tunnels and caves beneath the red roofs buffeting against the sides of the River Ersk.

So, if you venture out on the ancient cobbled streets after St Mary’s bell has tolled the demise of another day, listen out for the Hound of Hell … listen again, you might hear a lupine howl drowning out the crash of the waves.

Whitby is certainly an uneasy place for those who don’t have spiritual goggles on the backs of their heads – the Bargtjest could be there to knock you down around any corner, outside any sailor’s cottage or down by the teeming, fishy dockside where the gulls and cormorants wait to pick you clean.

And watch your step if you visit the tall lighthouse at West Pier, the stairs are said to be the miserable stomping ground of a one-armed lighthouse keeper who fell to his death from the cliffs in the mid-19^th century. He is furious still, after all these centuries, and grins as he tries to push you down the stairs…

But could it be the salted blood of the sea which leeches into the sky? The cold cold North Sea has certainly swallowed the fortunes and the happinesses of so many who chose to dock their lives in Whitby.

Just before Bram Stoker arrived a ship called The Demetrius hit rocks outside the harbour, its macabre cargo of occupied coffins tumbled into the sea. The locals still spin yarns about the dead washing up on the beach.

In the seventh century Whitby was a place of learning, Caedmon transformed from Anglo Saxon cowherd to poet there and the abbey, on the crest of East Cliff, was to become the leading royal nunnery in Britain.  After the Norman Conquest of 1066 William de Percy dedicated the abbey to St Peter and St Hilda. It was St Hilda who believed the 199 steps leading up to the abbey were a test of faith.

Some say St Hilda’s ghost, wrapped in a dark shroud, can be seen in the Abbey’s highest window. Her apparition is folded in the pages of Bram Stoker’s Dracula too.

Another awful wandering wraith is the pitiful Constance de Beverley. She fell for a handsome young knight and overnight her chastity became a thing of the past. The good virginal nuns of the abbey were incandescent and bricked her into a wall of the dungeons. For days and nights her screams drowned out even the sea and the howls of the Bargtjest. The good denizens of Whitby turned a deaf ear.

Soon after, the handsome young knight was found beheaded a day’s ride away at a crossroads outside York.

One witness said said he was studying the abbey from the docks when he saw an impossibly large black dog running silently up the 199 steps to the abbey and tried to capture it on film.  What he got instead was this dramatic picture of the skies over Whitby heavily laden with blood.

Later as he studied it he saw the face in the clouds – it looks for all the world like a handsome man trying to climb down into the abbey where his love is howling for her life.

But then there are so many lost souls looking down out of the blood in the sky over Whitby.