The Bad Scare
The Dark Behind the Cellar Door
A very scary childhood experience that still haunts
The cellar door, bathed at night in an eerie yellow glow, was always ajar. It would have been better had the adults remembered to shut it each time they came back up.
Leaving the door slightly open caused absolute terror in a small girl, a child who had already seen and heard things that’d make you want to run screaming from the house.
It wasn’t my first experience of being scared out my wits. I was born in my aunt’s house in South West London, decorated in red and gold, in my mind a setting fit for a Hammer horror movie. I grew up listening to stories about “grey lady ghosts” in her bedroom and other strange, inexplicable occurrences.
She spoke about the haunting of the old Edwardian terrace the way others speak about bad weather; “It’s here to stay, deal with it”.
At the age of nine, my family moved six houses up the street, a replica of my aunt’s house, but without heavy velvet drapes, no gold and red flocked wallpaper.
