Hodgson Family, Enfield, England — Shadows Hide
by Dawg
Under the sullen English dusk, the house turns cold and mean,
Hodgson’s modest living room, once tranquil, now obscene.
Night seeps through every windowpane, devours each ounce of light,
furnishings rise in silent protest, trembling at unseen might.
A mother stands with children pressed tight to her chest,
as drawers slam open, cupboards empty, peace denied its rest.
The floorboards creak without a step, wallpaper buckles in shame,
every ordinary object here is twisted in a ghost’s cruel game.
Whispers fracture sanity, a growl in a child’s throat–
Janet’s voice split double, a guttural, unholy note.
She’s speaking in the dark for someone who cannot be seen,
words bruised by something ancient, violent, and unclean.
No priest’s cross, no skeptical scorn can banish what’s inside;
it turns the bedsheets ice-cold and will not be denied.
Through endless hours, shadows slither, spinning fear through every room,
daylight flickers feebly, outnumbered by the gloom.
Weeks bleed into months, hope battered and thin,
every laughter drowned out, faith silenced within.
Even when the worst subsides and the poltergeist withdraws,
its legacy is carved in silence, its memory is law.
The air never quite clears, the temperature never warms;
each creak, each shadow, each fleeting form–
a reminder the house was marked, that sanity paid a price,
that the invisible hands of the dead roll the living like dice.
In Enfield’s haunted quarter, legends breed in whispered tones–
where spirits have a talent for rearranging homes,
and the terror that began in shadows still hides in every wall,
the Hodgson house remembers, and the dark recalls it all.