The Bricked-Up Stairwell

The house on Mulberry Lane had always been a burden to the Holloway family. Built in 1902, it was a cramped, terraced house in a suburb of Manchester, where the soot from the mills seemed to have permanently stained the bricks. The interior was perpetually cold, even in summer, and the walls wept with damp. The air was thick with the smell of coal dust and decay. It was a house that seemed to hold its breath, as if waiting for something.

The worst part was the staircase. It rose from the kitchen, a narrow, creaking set of steps that led to the bedrooms above. From the very first day they moved in, the Holloways felt an oppressive presence emanating from that stairwell. It was a weight in the air, a prickle on the back of the neck, a sense of being watched by unseen eyes. The children would refuse to walk past it alone, and even the dog would growl at the bottom steps, hackles raised, tail tucked.

In 1898, Great-Uncle Arthur, a bricklayer by trade, had had enough. With the family’s blessing, he bricked up the side of the staircase, sealing off the entire under-stair area and the back of the steps. He left a small gap at the top, just below the ceiling, perhaps for ventilation. To finish, the family hung heavy red curtains at the bottom of the stairs, covering the brickwork and the gap. The curtains were a strange, vibrant crimson, a stark contrast to the gloomy kitchen. They were intended to add some life, but instead, they only made the staircase more ominous, like a doorway to a forbidden place.

But the feeling never left. The Holloways continued to feel the weight of a malevolent gaze from that stairwell. They would catch glimpses of movement in the corner of their eye, a flicker of darkness behind the curtains. They would hear faint sounds at night, like the creaking of a footstep on a stair that was no longer there. The family learned to ignore it, to live with the constant dread, but it wore on them. They became a quiet, anxious lot, prone to illness and bad luck.

On the cold, grey afternoon of May 18, 1940, Elsie Holloway was at the kitchen table, darning a sock, while her husband, Albert, was reading the newspaper. The wireless was crackling with news of the war. Their son, Thomas, was twenty years old and serving in the Royal Navy. They hadn’t heard from him in weeks. Outside, the rain was a steady drumbeat on the windows.

Suddenly, the red curtains at the bottom of the stairs rustled, though there was no draft. Elsie looked up, her needle freezing in mid-air. Albert, sensing her stiffness, looked over, his paper forgotten. They both stared at the curtain, which now slowly parted in the middle, revealing the dark gap behind the bricked-up staircase. And from that gap, a figure stepped out.

It was their son, Thomas, but he was not as they remembered him. He was a silhouette, a shapeless outline of a young man, devoid of detail, like a living shadow. And yet, unmistakably, it was him. He walked towards them, making no sound, his feet not quite touching the floor. He smiled, a thin, hollow smile that did not reach his eyes, and then, as if he had never been there, he vanished. The curtains fell back into place, swaying slightly.

Elsie and Albert sat in stunned silence, their hearts pounding. They knew then, with a certainty that came from the depths of their being, that Thomas was dead. They did not speak of it, but they clung to each other, weeping soundlessly. A week later, the telegram arrived. It was the standard, dreaded form: ‘We regret to inform you…’ Thomas had been killed in action at Dunkirk. He was only nineteen.

The grief was overwhelming, but it was compounded by a chilling realization. The house had shown them the truth, but not because it cared. It was a warning, a premonition, but also a taste of its power. The stairwell, the bricked-up stairs, the red curtains – they were all part of something dark, something that had been waiting in that house long before they had come.

Years passed. The Holloways buried Thomas, and life went on, but the house grew heavier. Elsie would often sit in the kitchen, staring at the red curtains, waiting for another vision. She would see the outline of the stairwell in the dark, and she would feel the malevolent presence more strongly than ever. It was as if the house had tasted their sorrow and was hungry for more.

When her second son, James, was called up in 1944, Elsie’s fear became obsessive. She would sit by the curtains, praying, bargaining. But the house only offered silence. James survived the war, but he came back a broken man, haunted by what he had seen. He would wake up screaming, claiming that the shadow of his brother was standing at the foot of his bed, pointing at the stairwell.

The family never truly escaped. Elsie died in 1955, some say of fear. Albert followed a year later. The house passed to James, who never married, and he lived there alone until his death in 1974. He never spoke of the visions, but his eyes always darted to the stairs. The red curtains remained, dusty and frayed, until the day the house was finally condemned.

When the bulldozers came, they found the bricked-up staircase. And sealed within, in a small cavity behind the bricks, they discovered a child’s skeleton. It was not from the Holloway family, but from the previous owners, a child who had died in 1895, a little girl who had fallen down the stairs and broken her neck. The house had been built on that tragedy, and it had never let go. The bricking-up had not silenced the evil; it had merely given it a foothold. The stairwell had been a doorway, and the red curtains had been a veil, and the family had become part of its story. But even as the house fell, those who demolished it claimed they could still feel a cold, dark presence, watching them from the gap where the stairs used to be.