Flushed With Fear
Oct 29, 2005 | Weird |
A desperate Suffolk hotelier has turned to one of Britain's leading occultists in an attempt to exorcise an apparently possessed toilet which has been terrorising the third floor of his establishment; driving out guests and traumatising staff. "It doesn't matter how much disinfectant you pour down the pan – it still exudes a foul odour! It's like an elephant has farted on the third floor some nights," says Jack Steddings, proprietor of the 'Marble Palace' in Great Yarmouth, explaining his decision to call upon the services of self-styled pagan High Priest Keith 'Doc' Shields. "Even if you put the lid down and close the door, the smell creeps out and into every room on the floor! It's stifling and oppressive – many guests have complained of nightmares brought on by it! I truly believe that it is the stench of pure evil!" This stench is just one manifestation of the allegedly evil behaviour the toilet – which was reputedly once owned by renowned black magician Alestair Crowley – has exhibited over the three years that Steddings and his family have owned the 'Marble Palace'. "Nobody likes using it after dark – we've had to resort to issuing chamber pots to third floor guests," he explains. "Not only is it freezing cold, but guests who have tried to use it have often found the door locked and hideous gibbering and straining noises coming from inside. The sounds culminate with a bloodcurdling groan, a mighty fart which rattles the door followed by a huge splash and the sound of the toilet flushing! The door then flies open to reveal an empty kazi!"
However, such goings on are mild compared to the terror suffered by some unwary users of the haunted commode. "One old bloke who was staying in Room 303 a couple of years ago got caught short in the night and had no choice but to use the toilet," reveals the forty-two year old hotelier. "As he perched his bare backside on the freezing seat, he suddenly found himself gripped by a powerful force which started dragging him down into the bowl! He could actually feel the icy water lapping his cheeks! The suction was so great that his bowels evacuated themselves involuntarily – he thought his intestines were going to be sucked out and vanish down the U-bend!" The supernatural assault ended as abruptly as it had begun, with the elderly guest being explosively ejected from the bowl by a gigantic jet of liquid excrement. "The door flew open of its own accord and he flew out into the corridor," says Steddings. "He was covered from head to foot in the most evil-smelling shit imaginable! Of course nobody believed him at first, we all thought that he was just incontinent and had crapped himself!"
The Steddings' initial scepticism was quickly dispelled by subsequent supernatural occurrences centering on the third floor cacatorium. "Often is was just little things, like guests suffering from the sour apple two-step suddenly finding that the toilet paper had vanished, or sudden blockages which would cause overflows when it was flushed," says Jack's long suffering wife, Maude Steddings. "Those overflows were horrible – a seemingly endless stream of brown water with faeces floating in it! It would soak into the carpet, warp the floor boards and run down the walls of the lower floors. The stains were virtually impossible to remove!" Indeed, it was one of these overflows which resulted in a member of staff fleeing the hotel in terror. "Our concierge, Roger, went to unblock the toilet after complaints about the smell," Maude recalls with a shudder. "He couldn't see anything in the pan itself, so he stuck a piece of coathanger wire down the u-bend. When he felt it encounter something, he quickly pulled it back, finding that it had snared a huge lump of crap. To his amazement, the more he pulled, the more that came out- it seemed endless! When he had about six feet of it out of the water, it suddenly sprang into life and coiled itself around him like a gigantic brown snake! As the end came level with his face, a mouth opened in it and it spoke to him!" A shit-stained Roger ran shrieking from the toilet, tore down the stairs and left the 'Marble Palace', never to return. Now a recluse, he refuses to divulge what the talking turd actually said to him.
Following this incident, the weird toilet phenomena became both more frequent, and more disturbing. "One guest returning to his room after a night at the pub claimed that he heard his name being called from the toilet bowl," says Jack Steddings. "When he bent down to investigate the seat came crashing down on his head and he felt himself being pulled into the bowl!" The unfortunate reveller was only saved from drowning by the intervention of two friends, who attempted to pull him from the bedevilled bog. "At first he seemed stuck fast, then the toilet just seemed to let him go and the three of them flew backwards out of the kazi," Steddings explains. "Apparently his ejection was accompanied by this huge belching sound and a rush of foul smelling wind from the bowl! It was so powerful it rattled windows and blew open doors all along the third floor! Plants and flowers withered as it touched them – It smelt worse than a brewer's fart!" Another incident involved an hysterical female guest who claimed that she had seen a misshapen figure climb out of the toilet bowl one night. "We never got to the bottom of that," admits Steddings. "She described it as 'oozing, brown and surrounded by buzzing flies', and reckoned it chased her down the corridor to the door of her room! We did find some inexplicable shit stains on the carpet and what looked like the print of a hand smeared in crap on her door!"
Top occultist Keith 'Doc' Shields has no doubt that the troublesome toilet is indeed a seat of evil. "It has quite a history – madness and death seem to follow it everywhere," the bearded fifty three year old pagan declares. "It was originally installed in Boleskin House, home of notorious Satanist Alestair Crowley, nearly a century ago! Apparently Crowley performed some kind of evil sex ritual involving this toilet – a maid who went to clean it the next morning was driven insane!" After Crowley's death the toilet, along with many other fittings, was sold by his estate, and ended up in a London hotel. "Many guests suffered ruptures whilst sitting on it and tragedy finally struck when Judy Garland was found dead on it," explains Shields. "The toilet was subsequently sold to Elvis Presley, who installed it at 'Gracelands', with tragic results!" Somehow it found its way back to Britain, where it sat in the storeroom of a Suffolk bathroom fittings wholesaler for several years. "I thought it was odd at the time that they practically gave it to us," muses Steddings. "Come to think of it, the plumber who installed was pretty suspect – all sorts of weird symbols tattooed on his arms!"
An inspection of the toilet's plumbing confirmed Shields' worst fears. "The main waste pipe doesn't connect to the sewer – it just goes straight down into the ground! Into the bowels of hell, I suspect," he says. "I have no doubt that the evil excrement which attacked the concierge came direct from Beelzebub's bottom!" Mindful that two previous attempts at exorcism have ended in failure – in 1926 famed ghost hunter Harry Prince literally shit himself to death after trying to clean the commode with a Papally blessed toilet brush, whilst in 1969 Bishop Felix Bowdler's attempt to fill its cistern with holy water resulted in the cleric's insanity and refusal to ever go near a toilet again, (for the rest of his life he crapped out of windows instead) – Shields is confident that he can succeed. "I intend performing the 'Full Moon' ceremony, where I bare my arse – each cheek adorned with powerful occult symbols to it," he explains. "If I fail, it could have dark consequences of Biblical proportions for the whole of humanity!
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