Three Days at Allerdale Hall

The Answer to A Dilemma

"I don't know what to do, the Longleat video was a total winner last year but I can't just return there for Halloween again now that I've done the ghost tour."

I gave my phone a pointed side glance, as if I were on facetime and could be seen rather than speaking to my best friend through speaker, then I trained my eyes back onto the computer and continued clicking through, continuing the gruelling task of editing my latest video.

"True," he replied, "don't sweat it, something will come up."

"I kind of am sweating it, dude, I've got what? Three weeks before Halloween and I have no idea what special thing to do."

"Why does it have to be special?"

"I'm a ghost channel, if there's any kind of channel people would expect a Halloween special from then it would be one like mine, right?"

"Hm, I suppose," he let out a long sigh. "I dunno, but I gotta hit the hay. I'll keep an eye out for you but hey, there's loads of country manors out there, another one is bound to have some ghost stories."

"Hopefully, there's no way Longleat is the only ye olde country manor with horrific stories."

"Nah, impossible, anyway I gotta go, night."

"Yeah, goodnight, sleep well."

Reaching over, I tapped the circular red button on my phone and listened for the tell-tale hang up beep before I looked back to my screen, letting out a loaded sigh.

My phone sat atop a pile of pamphlets that I had collected from random supermarket stands, the plastic ones they would keep by the door and would go largely ignored by most shoppers as they exited.

Granted, that had been me at one stage, walking past all the advertisements for attractions, theme parks and holiday venues.

I knew of local areas, such as Longleat, from talks with my family in childhood and, as I grew older and more into my horror fanaticism, I took a deeper fascination with estates, manors and churches.

The more history, the better and boy, was England filled with some dark history, deeper than merely the wars that had been needlessly instigated.

Ghost stories and myths became a large thing for me as I grew older, though looking back at my younger years there were still clues as to who I would grow up to be despite the bright colours of my bedroom walls.

Fairytale books were set beside Funnybones on the bookshelf, Pokémon was interspersed with episodes of Count Duckula, Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids and Courage the Cowardly Dog, which I probably wasn't old enough to be watching at that point, but my parents never shied away from letting my brother and I test our limits, allowing us to flourish into who we wanted to be.

I couldn't confidently say that their bringing us up on the likes of The War of the Worlds and Iron Maiden didn't play a large influence, so it was no surprise when I grew up to be into horror and the likes of Winnie the Pooh.

It was likely as surprising to them when I turned around one Sunday and told them that I wanted to start a channel about the grim and haunted history of England.

Though it took a year to cement exactly where I wanted to go with my channel.

Looking back at some of my old videos made me cringe, listening to me ramble as I wandered around aimlessly with no actual goal.

It wasn't until my seventh video that I caught on to a vague idea and that was by pure chance.

---

"Hey, why don't we go for a drive?"

I raised my eyebrow and looked to the right side of the room, eyeing my younger brother over my laptop as he lounged in the corner of the couch, scrolling through his phone.