Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

Best Offer Accepted

I don’t know when I first noticed how cold it was inside when outside the house the air was warm—beautiful, in fact. I could’ve stripped down to nothing and still felt like I had too many clothes on. But inside, it was cold, and I mean dead cold.

Nothing I did changed it. I even had the heat pump checked, just to make sure it was working properly. The guys who came to give it the once-over gave me a strange look, like I was crazy. Of course, that all changed once they came in and felt how cold it was for themselves. That’s when they understood what I was talking about.

They pulled that fucking thing apart, checked every piece of it for any possible fault, but found nothing. Not one fucking thing was wrong with it. After a few solid hours of searching, all they could do was charge me for their time and leave.

Now, this is the part that sent me into a spiral. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken it so seriously, but I needed an answer to my problem, and any answer would do. As they were leaving, one of them made an off-hand comment. He said, “If I was you, I’d call a preacher. Maybe it’s a ghost!” We all laughed, but once I shut the door, my mind ran wild with the idea. Maybe there was a ghost. Aren’t cold spots indicative of ghosts?

I spent the next few hours on YouTube, watching paranormal investigators run through pitch-black corridors screaming as they tried to determine if the buildings they were investigating were haunted. Once I’d watched my fill, I decided the house was indeed haunted. Armed with this conclusion, I quickly headed out to collect supplies. Seven hundred dollars later, I was back home with my booty: a state-of-the-art thermal camera, a digital recorder, a MEL meter, and a device called a spirit box. Apparently, spirits can talk through this. In all the YouTube clips I’d watched, these seemed to work well.

It only took me a few minutes to set everything up. I was shaking with excitement and maybe sweating a little bit with nerves. My heart skipped as I turned on the spirit box, and I held my breath in anticipation. It instantly started hissing, spluttering, and convulsing with reverberated white noise. The guy in the store said it scans thousands of radio signals every few seconds, and spirits can use the energy it creates to say words across the spectrum.

Three hours passed without any contact. I’d asked so many questions that I’d started yelling at it. I was on the verge of throwing the thing out the window when something finally happened. The thing sparked, and then, as clear as day, a voice came through—one I recognised.

“You got ripped off, boyo. If I wanted to talk to you, I would’ve done it a long time ago.”

I sat there for what seemed like forever, in the cold, wondering what the hell had just happened. Nothing else came through after that, no matter how many times I begged it to. The next morning, I packed everything back in their boxes and tried to return it to the store, but the guy pointed out a sign on the counter: “All items firm sale, no returns, EVER!”

That’s why I’m selling this on eBay, in the hope of making something back. So, make me an offer.

Do you think I should tell you a little bit more about the stuff, or is this story enough of a description?