In my scary northern university halls in Durstby, I never felt quite at ease. Several creaky sounds emanated from different places at once, even when everyone was out. The spooky trees outside my window seemed like long haunted claws reaching over my bed at night to caress and then strangle me, this they never did but it was only a matter of time I thought, and went back to sleep.

After eight months of this and other ghoulish behaviour, such as woodlice infestions and a strange roudn fungus growing on the walls, I screamed and saw a vision I will never forget. It was the spookiest scary face I had ever seen, it had a long wiry muttonchops, and no eyes, with blood coming out of the eye sockets. He howled horrifically, like a man howling with a bad throat:

" - - - "

But I did not understand him, his throat was so dry, so he lead me out to the garden where to my horror, where there had once been a humble space hopper there was now a grave. Between his rattling cough and the heavy shovel he held out to me, I knew what I had to do.

I doug and doug for what must have been 12 minutes though it felt like more, everywhere covered in horrible woodlice , until I saw what the spooky face had wanted me to see.

There were bits of old paper, covered in creepy woodlice, and a disentegrated old sponge. Once I had found these things, the face, and the grave, disappeared before my very eyes.

I never told a living soul about this night, until graduation day when they told us of a horrific story. Underneath the rusty old spacehopper in Grundy Court, a man named W C Muttonchops had buried his council tax forms in 1912. Cackling at how easy it was to get away with such a crime, he did not realise that instead of earth he had buried the forms in woodlice. Before his selfish cackling was finished, he slipped into the hellish pit of woodlice, who wriggled and writhed over his face, all climbing into his mouth like something from a film, one by one they crept, into his choking mouth, meanwhile other woodlice buried him under the ground. It is rumoured that the woodlice ate his eyes but refused to touch the rest of him, knowing how impure and evil this soul was, who thought to compromise his council for his own personal gain.

As years went by, the site was forgotten and a space hopper was put on it. But what truly chilled me was the space hopper never returned after that dreadful night. The Fungus and woodlice stopped, but the sight of that scary face never left me behind. And I thought, what if I had been the one who hadn't paid my tax, would it be me not W C Muttonchops?