4-2-26
Dodleston
In the quiet village of Dodleston, Cheshire, Ken Webster brought home a borrowed BBC Micro computer to help with notes on renovating his old cottage. One evening in late 1984, after a long day, he powered it up and discovered a new document file had appeared in the word processor—something neither he nor his partner Debbie had created.
The first message read like an old poem, full of odd spelling and cryptic warnings: “Your nightmares are of fame and growth and death. The light box speaks to those who listen. Beware the vertical plane where time folds upon itself.” Ken stared at the glowing green text, convinced it was a glitch or a prank. He deleted the file, but the next day another one materialized, this time more direct: “I am Thomas Harden, who dwells here in this house in the year of our Lord 1546. Why do you intrude upon my home with your strange lights and voices? Begone, spirit, or I shall call the priest.”
Ken typed back a skeptical reply on the keyboard, asking who was behind the joke. Hours later, while he was out at the pub with friends, a response appeared: “You call me a liar and a fool, yet it is you who haunts my chamber with this devil’s box. The walls shake when your words come through. Tell me, ghost from the future, what year do you claim?”
The exchanges grew longer and more heated. Thomas described his life as a farmer in Tudor England, complaining about the “light box” that glowed without fire and spoke in tongues. He accused Ken of witchcraft, while Ken pressed for details only a historian would know. One message from Thomas stood out: “The priest says demons walk in the vertical plane. Your box pulls me from my time. Stop this sorcery before the shadows claim us both.”
Debbie witnessed the files appearing on their own, the cursor moving as if guided by an unseen hand. Strange footprints—six-toed and dusty—marked the floorboards despite the couple’s efforts to clean them. Then the tone shifted when a third voice joined the conversation. A new file emerged one night, written in modern but evasive English: “This is Lukas from 2109. The rift you have opened spans centuries. We watch from the future, but the manipulators interfere. Do not trust the light entirely. Time is not linear; it bends where the cottage stands.”
Ken demanded proof—simple math questions or future events. Lukas dodged most queries, offering only vague warnings about unseen forces twisting the timeline and hints of a greater intelligence behind the communications. “The spirit you call Thomas is caught between. We in 2109 see the echoes, but the box weakens the veil. Beware what crosses fully.”
The messages continued off and on for nearly two years, blending confusion, fear, and reluctant curiosity across the eras. Thomas grew more desperate, describing nightmares of glowing screens and voices from nowhere. Lukas remained cryptic, sometimes vanishing for weeks before returning with fragmented alerts about “the vertical plane” collapsing.
One stormy afternoon in 1986, as Ken sat alone at the computer typing a question to Thomas, the screen flickered wildly. Text poured out faster than before: “The rift pulls too strong. I feel the pull… the light takes me. No more the box.” The cursor stopped. Silence filled the room, then a faint hum rose from the machine. Ken watched in disbelief as the words on the screen dissolved into static, and a presence seemed to detach—cold air rushing past him, carrying the faint scent of earth and old woodsmoke.
From that moment, the computer fell quiet. No more files appeared. The spirit that had spoken through the glowing screen had crossed fully into the present. It now resided in this ring.