Despite competition from 49 properties across the country, 57 Chigley Well Crescent, Chigley Well Green, Chigley Well in Pallister Park has been assessed as the most haunted house in the country.
12 experts from the Institute of Ghastly Ghostly Ghouls, Poltergeists, and Unpleasant Smells, spent 3 nights at the property last week, and at a press conference held at the dead of night last night announced it as the winner.
Paul Scratchings, Chief Assessor at the Institute, who has qualifications on haunted houses and ghostly stuff as long as your arm, addressed the assembled journalists and reporters. ‘We went in there honestly expecting nowt but came out absolutely fucking shit scared, and when I say absolutely fucking shit scared, I mean absolutely fucking shit scared, scared. Some of us haven’t slept for days and that’s nothing to do with not having proper beds to sleep in.’
Many in the audience were quite shocked by the language used by Mr Scratchings and there were many murmurings of discontent, although the general consensus seemed to be that if he was using that type of language, then they really must have been really fucking shit scared. We could hear some alternatives being discussed with things like ‘extremely scared’, ‘scared witless’ and ‘scared to death’, although no-one died so probably not appropriate, suggested as being preferable to the description of Mr Scratchings.
He explained there were a number of criteria used in their assessment. The main one was having a horrible nightmare, waking up and being relieved that it wasn’t real, but then something really horrible happening to make you unsure whether you really had woken up, or had just woken up in the nightmare, and so there was still the potential for even more horrible things to happen because you were actually still having a nightmare. Scratchings explained that all 12 assessors experienced this on at least 8 occasions, with him personally having 23 such experiences. ‘Absolutely fucking shit scared, I was’, he reiterated. The murmurings about the language started again.
The other criteria were the number of ghostly apparitions, volume and frequency of dog howling, volume and frequency of creaking doors, number of conversations with disturbed and menacing looking children, real or otherwise, and the pungency of putrid smells. It seems that 57 Chigley Well Crescent was the top performer in all categories.
The house will now be the UK representative in Europe’s Most Haunted House competition to be held in Transylvania, Rumania this February. The property will be completely dismantled, shipped over to the European mainland and completely rebuilt by expert building people who specialise in haunted houses. There are some concerns about the additional costs due to Brexit red tape and the new import and export tariffs on haunted house parts, but organisers haven’t really thought about that yet so they don’t anticipate any significant problems.
The Atkinson family who have lived at the property for over 27 years spoke with pride about the achievement of their lovely semi-detached house. ‘We knew the house was haunted, mainly because of the putrid smells, although my husband and children do absolutely reek,’ quipped Mrs Atkinson, ‘but we had no idea it was as fucking shit scary as Mr Scratchings and his team have described. We’ll move into temporary accommodation now while the house is dismantled, and let’s just hope that Brexit doesn’t fuck it all up for us.’
Anyway, if you think that Mr Scratchings should have used less vulgar language when describing their state of scaredness, then please contact us at FNOM@hottail.eu.uk and we will think of a bygone time when everything was much more lovely and cuddly than it is now.
Fantastic News of Middlesbrough 