London Rental Opportunity of the Week: What Happened in the Dread House? Edition

What is it? A house you will never be able to afford, scum
Where is it? In Leytonstone, home to, let's see here… ah. 'LEYTONSTONE: Man charged with pub murder', so
What is there to do locally? Be slaughtered in a pub, go and watch Leyton Orient play with a load of football hipsters who go "actually, this is real football, like. None of your Premier League, Sky money, actually good crap. Hey: which one of Garrincha's legs was your favourite?"
Alright, how much are they asking? One point two of your million pounds, good sir!

Well you see what we got here is £1.2 million worth of prime real estate property, six bedrooms, 20+ photos thereof, and to truly consider the majesty of this building we have to ask the question:

YO: WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED IN EVERY ROOM OF THIS DREAD HOUSE?

And so welcome, friends and enemies alike, to this very special edition of the London Rental Opportunity of the Week series, called, nominally, 'Yo: What The Fuck Happened In Every Room Of This Dread House?', in which we ask the question: yo: what the fuck happened in every room of this dread house?

Starting as we must with Photo #1:

Oh, just a… just a normal house. Nice, actually. What colour is that, would you say? Sort of grey-y purple, I guess. A… would you go so far as to say 'mauve'? It's a colour, anyway. Yes. Nice house. Pleasant. Yes.

Load of DVDs? Check. Massive murky fish tank? Check. Men in Black memorial framed print? Check. Black sheets? Check. Two what look like coiled cobra bookends? Check. Aggressive red-and-black colour scheme? Check. I can tell you exactly what happened in this room: a 17-year-old boy practised his nunchuks really intensely before watching Scarface on Blu-Ray one thousand times in a row then stalking every girl in his year's Facebook profile pictures as far back as 2008. That is what happened in this room.

See Photo #3 sort of gives you a clue as to what the house was, rather than what it might be: the hallway is filled with the exact kind of junk and ephemera (too-thin hallway rug, Alsation dog print w/ motivational quote, door with loads of glass in it, massive fuck off roll of bubble wrap), that suggests to me this house was split by the room and rented out to students or recent graduates from disparate London universities, the kind of student house where nobody interacts and everyone eats in their room, and is sort of weirdly harmonious because nobody really shares a native tongue to write passive-aggressive notes out in, and everyone has a PhD, and—

AND THE DEVIL DID COME TO ME, MY BOY, AND DID IMBUE ME WITH HIS POWERS, AND I DO COME TO EARTH TO SLAY YOU, AND SINNERS OF YOUR KIND, AND YOU SHALL BOW TO ME, MY BOY, BEFORE THE TERRIBLE POWERS OF ALL THAT IS WITHIN ME, YOU SHALL BOW AND TAKE THE OATH, AND I SHALL STEAL FROM YOU YOUR BLOOD, AND YOU SHALL DIE BY MY VERY HAND, MY BOY, YOU SHALL DIE BY THESE CLAWS AND FINGERS—

Just a very useful room, a very useful box room. It is unlikely anything unreasonable happened here. A bit of storage for empty suitcases, maybe a nice place for a box freezer to go, for storing, you know. Severed human arms and legs.

The door is padlocked shut from the inside and there's an armchair up against it, which is the fucking most haunting thing I've ever seen. So what happened in this room was: an old man lived his entire life in this room and then died in it, alone and in silence, sat upright, in that chair he always sat in, without anyone really knowing he was ever there at all. The BBC wrote an article about how nobody knew his identity. Police had to go to his funeral because he had no living relatives. That sort of thing.

There's no way the carpet in this room hasn't been ripped up seven, maybe eight times to wrap and roll bodies up in. "Why… why does the carpet keep going missing?" the landlord's saying. Hands on hips, he doesn't understand it. "How can a carpet go missing?" The guy who lives in this room and does murders doesn't seem to know. "I'm going to have to add on £200 across the house to the rent, now," he's saying, and the man just nods. "You know. For all the fucking carpet."

This is the room your uncle – on a break from Aunt Lynn – tried to start his hip-hop career in.

Nobody has stepped foot in this room for years, ever since the bodiless screaming started.

Nothing says 'this house is worth £1.2 million' like a kitchen door with whoever was locked in here for months as punishment's fingerprints clawed into the very wood of it. The bleach, of course, is for all the blood.

'Hmm,' the previous occupant said. 'How can I make this ultra creepy nan-died-here room even more ominous?' They thought for a second. 'I know: a fucking eerie portrait of the scariest woods on earth, steeped in fog and mounted on the divider wall.'

Note how the carpet on the stairs is worn down where all the bodies got repeatedly dragged thru it.

This shot is often the last glimpse of the world the escapees got before a tire iron came down on their head.

Notice the lock on every door and doorway. Soothing, isn't it? Almost like human remains haven't been melted down that bath with strong acid, sometimes. Almost.

What happened here: this is where the only normal member of the household, Brian, used to lay on his bed in silence, after brushing his teeth and washing his face and cooking his little dinner, before huddling by the brick fire for a few precious minutes, double-locking his door, and staring eyes open at the ceiling all night while the sound of screaming filled the basement floors.

The person who lived in this cupboard-cum-room was also the sort of person who has a fridge-freezer in their room and has to play Tetris with an armchair to get into their wardrobe, and thus is definitely, definitely a murderer. Notice how nobody has the telltale blu-tak stains on their walls that might suggest print mounting, poster hanging. No. They are too preoccupied with killing people to have interesting walls.

DO NOT CHECK UNDER THAT LAWN FOR SKELETONS. DO NOT CHECK INSIDE THAT FURNACE FOR TEETH.

Things That Happened Here: the three murderers and one normal dude who lived in this house met to have a cheery, if overcast, BBQ, and when Brian asked, "What… what meat is this? It's so… chewy" the three murderers just laughed and laughed and laughed.

What Happened Here: this is where a murderer went to relax and listen to Goldberg Variations really, really, really loudly, while softly stroking a portrait of Heath Ledger as the Joker.

This kitchen has a bunch of teatowels carefully arranged over the hob and oven (???), two washing machines stacked on top of one another (???), someone whose diet seems exclusively to be white bread rolls and dried herbs (???) and, squint up there in the corner a little bit, and I'm pretty sure that's a portrait of Gaddafi (???). Still: proof that even a group of murderers' blood-stained mega-mansion isn't too good to have a couple of Sports Direct mugs.

What is the moral of this story? There is no moral. 'Don't do murders,' I guess. 'Don't make your bedroom a shrine to both Freddy Krueger and stabbing.' 'Why the fuck are there teatowels all over the cooker,' you know. 'Why are there so many cookers.' No morals, only questions. And for £1.2 million and a deep police-led exhumation of the garden, all this could be yours.

@joelgolby

More from this series, bleak as it is:

Wanking Banter Bros in Tooting!

A Bed in a Kitchen in Euston!

A Windowless Prison in Brixton!