Chloe's Leavers Blog - finally :)

Michael has blogged about Halloween...

Well, I would just like to start by saying just how much I have enjoyed the past week, I genuinely love waking up and having Yew Tree all day. If I could quit mainstream education and just do Yew Tree all the time, I would. Alas, I need the qualifications and the sandwiches at my school are pretty damn good.  Anyway, brace yourself for a rather long blog by my standards, might want to put the kettle on for this one…

As this week has been my first time doing Halloween at Nostel (I should clarify by saying that for the last week I’ve been doing Halloween at Nostel) I had absolutely no idea what to expect. When I arrived at Sarah Thomas a few days before out first official rehearsal, I was informed that I was to be a plant, I don’t mean like a daffodil or something (Good God I’m hilarious), I mean a plant in the audience. Along with my partner in crime Miss Lucy Tranter, aka Tranter we devised our characters. James and Beth were also going to plants with us, and we would alternate tours. Me and Tranter settled on the characters of Meg and Ryan #nopunintended.

These two young individuals would be on a first date. Meg is not at all keen on the idea of missing Skyfall to walk around some old dingy attics, while Ryan thought this exciting first date would definitely wow her into going out with him. Oh how wrong he was…

The following Monday, we pulled up in The Mooremobile (Special thanks to Jess for driving me back and forth everyday!) and set off to our little camp for the week. After getting a quick health and safety meeting and what not, it was time to set foot into the attics! DUN DUN DUN! #neverbeenmoreterrifiedinmylife

As it was my first time ever setting foot inside the house I once again didn’t know what to expect. Apart from the usual old mansion interior with paintings on every wall that seem to follow you where ever you dare go. The interior of the house was actually really interesting, and it got me thinking how something like this could possibly have been built so long ago… I suppose most old structures are like that really.

Once started climbing the old, beaten servant’s stairs that led to the Attics of the house, the old nerves started to go. And this was in broad daylight! I had no idea how I would ever come up here by torchlight! Anyway eventually we stepped foot into the attics, and actually I think I might communicate my following feelings in the style of a 30s crime-drama novel… Just read the next bit with a New York accent… Because why not?

I had felt uneasy since I started climbing the stairs, but once we set foot into the ancient rooms that made up the attics, the penny dropped. I saw wall paper peeling, floorboards rotting, and for whatever reason, abandoned bathtubs decorated the place. The smell of dust entered my nostrils like an unwelcome visitor, who I could tell was going to over stay their welcome. Once I had become acquainted enough with the first cavern, I peered around the corner to get a look at the rest of the cave. What met my eyes wasn’t exactly what you’d find in your regular attic, like old toys, boxes and moth-eaten coats and stuff, but instead a long, narrow and unnerving corridor was there to greet me. What was down there I didn’t want to know, and I’d hate to meet the guy who did. Even in daylight this place gave me the creeps. But I’d need to get used to it eventually, so I swallowed my fear like a pill and edged into the corridor…

Well, I hope you enjoyed that. Moving swiftly on… Over the remainder of the day me and Tranter got more used to the Attics, maybe it’s because they weren’t crawling with Grey Ladies or vampires yet but nevertheless we were kind of used to it. 

Meanwhile back at camp Team Little Beth were devising the play and how they ever got it together in two days I’ll never know, they all did a brilliant job I must say.

The next day ran pretty similar, I, Tranter, Buden and Beth grew more confident with our characters through the means of devising small role plays that unfortunately will never be seen…
The whole thing really felt like it was coming together, though it was still hard to believe that we went on the next day.

Anyway, we did.

We arrived the next day ready as you could have asked of any Yew Tree company, and psyched up to scare some innocent Nostel goers to their very cores… 

One vocal warm up later we went into the house, and while the rest of the attic people were put in the actual attics, we plants went into the staff room. Little did we know how many cups of coffee we would make in this room… After a while of waiting around for the first tour to arrive, me and Tranter were on, we entered ‘in character mode’ and stood waiting for the tour to start. Now, a lot of Ryan’s character was just unintentionally annoying Meg which rest assured I had no problem doing.

Once our tour guide Karen arrived, we were in business. We were escorted around the ground floor of the house while being told all manor of spooky stories to quench our thirst for a ghostly thrill.

Until we came to the elevator, where we were told the unfortunate story of a young woman called Nancy, who had a tragic accident with the elevator many years ago and had unfortunately died from it. Nancy is still treated with great respect by all of the Nostel staff today, and it was humbling to hear that she wasn’t treated as just another ghost story, but instead as a very important part of the houses history.

After out tour of the ground floor we were given torches and started to make our way up into the attic. Now, remember those old nerves we talked about earlier? They were back. Yep, even after spending a considerable amount of time up in the attics, I was still spooked. That is until we were actually in there. Once we were up in the attics themselves it felt a lot more familiar and comfortable, which is rather odd for a haunted mansion…

It wasn’t until Karen had left us up there when I realised that we would be getting a few extreme ghost hunters who did believe in all this ghostly business. Now I’m strictly against this idea but it was kind of fun pretending to be spooked by all of it.

After some scares by the odd Grey Lady, a rocking horse, and some pretty eerie vampires we came to the end of the tour, which didn’t go quite as planned for the couple Meg and Ryan. You see Meg saw something in the window! A face! Which no doubt scared her enough into wanting to be escorted out immediately, which of course had to be Ryan. Of course all of that was actually our real purpose for being up there, so Meg could freak out and be escorted out, all just to raise the scariness of the atmosphere, but as we did more tours we realised that we could just raise the scariness of the atmosphere by just being on the tour and acting scared, which was nice to do… Plus we got to watch the brilliant Ouija board scene which at times was genuinely terrifying, up to the point where a quiet ‘meow’ was actually the sound of an undead soul.

Aaaaand after doing one tour we would hang in the staff room until our next one and repeat the whole process, not a bad way to spend your evenings I’d say.

Anyway, that’s my Halloween at Nostel experience! I do hope you enjoyed reading about it. Apologies for it being rather long but my fingers just kind of jumped into a mind of their own and carried on typing and typing and typing and typing and typing and typing.

All over all I have really enjoyed spending my week with brilliant people doing brilliant Yew Tree and I cannot wait until next Halloween when we shall be doing it again!

Until next time.

X