Awful Antique Shops

I see Dead People's Stuff

How do you get your thrills on Halloween? We just take a tour of our local ‘antique shop’. Owned by a house clearance company, it's the end of the road for dead people's stuff, and the sight of all those personal things piled-up high - as if a JCB was involved, not a human hand - is more chilling to me than any horror film.

It's a clever trap. A Victorian building offers a respectable face to the high street with an almost tidy and ordered interior, you browse at ease, but once you step through the door at the back - into the much older buildings that lurk behind -  it begins. No wall is straight. No angle is 90 degrees. No floor is level. Under your feet a crazy patchwork of grimy linoleum, mildew carpet and spongy floor boards fractures your sanity, but you barely notice.

I spotted three church organs like this with the
cliché pull-out stops labelled in gothic writing. Unfortunately, not one of them read "bats"

And then there's the stuff. Pictures so crammed in a box so it’s impossible to look at them. Pianos going slowly insane in the dampness. Suitcases piled-up behind a wooden staircase.

This room had many metal hooks embedded in the ceiling.

When you do pull-free of these spaces and head for daylight, you don't find yourself back in the safety of the high street, oh no. You blink a little and realise you've arrived at the centre of the Antique Shop experience, in a courtyard, also crammed with things, things full or rainwater. Surrounding you are more doorways. And more rooms. Waiting.

The courtyard. Rainwater gathers in Grandma's best china.

The owners have another outlet in town. There things are cherished: dusted, ordered, displayed in cabinets with posh price labels tied on a string. But this stuff failed the test. Poor peoples' stuff; stuff they don't think they can sell.

It’s ghoulish to walk around, I admit. But the stories these things tell.

Photo albums. Boxes labelled 'Mrs Mason's House'. Shell monstrosities bearing the legend A Souvenir from Scarborough.

Then I see things from my Grandparents' houses (not the actual thing but something just like). Then I see something that was brand new when I was a child. The shudders keep on coming.

It's curtains.

I giggle at other people voicing my thoughts:

'Oh my God! There’s another room.'

'I’m going to need a bath after this.'

'Urgh it’s full of rainwater; who would buy…?'

How many Christmas Dinners have these witnessed?

In one room are several dolls houses that have been hand-made, probably because the family could not afford one from a shop. That's what happened in my family, anyway. These seem especially sad.

At this point in our ride, my boyfriend (a photographer) asked if we could leave now, because he was getting the same kind of cough he got when he had to take photographs in that dead man's house. I said to him 'har har, very funny'.

Then he reminded me of the details of the job, and I remembered it did happen.

A few years ago, he had to take some 'before and after' shots for a cleaning company that specialised in clearing houses after people had died. People that had never cleaned or thrown anything away. He recalled the dead rat they found in the living room under a pile of junk, with dead maggots inside. Opposite the comfy chair was a stack of take-away trays to head height.

Time to go indeed. Sleep well.