I'm just going to come out and say this, as simply as I know how. Arsenal goalkeeper Manuel Almunia moved into a house that was built on the site of an abandoned psychiatric hospital, and now his wife is being haunted by the ghost of "a monk-like figure with a candle in his hand." Almunia himself has heard chains rattling around corners. Stereo equipment is turning on at full volume in the middle of the night. Arsène Wenger has given Almunia permission to go home from training at lunchtime, to give his wife a reprieve from the terror of being alone in the house with a potentially hostile, potentially music-loving spirit.
This is not a metaphor. The news says this is happening. The ravaged spectre of a long-dead monk is moaning after dark at the top of Manuel Almunia's stairs. The house was built on the ruins of an asylum called Leavesden Hospital. A hunched, dark figure is slipping back into the woods. All over Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, the rooks are flying up out of the trees. This is the fear that knows how to work a CD changer, but can't come to grips with the operation of a contemporary flashlight.
Have you ever encountered something so great that it left you speechless? That's how I feel about this story. On the one hand, it's obviously the whole reason The Run of Play ever came into existence. Some things are meant to be, and the convergence of Wilkie Collins, Monk Lewis, the Emirates Stadium, the Daily Mail, the hidden grave visible only by summer moonlight, Arsène Wenger's dietary strategy, the Black Friar from Don Juan, lunchtime traffic on the M1, and Melmoth the Wanderer is clearly the destination toward which this site's complex destiny has pointed all along.
On the other hand, what is there to say? Someone is going to think of some jokes involving Jens Lehmann and a borrowed Jedi robe, but no. No. This is not a laughing matter. Can you try to understand that. This is football at the maw of the impossible.
I'd like to venture, tentatively, the idea that this is really good news for Arsenal. For you or me, it would be a cold thing for our spouses to wake us up in the middle of the night with their screams. It would be a hard chill to hear their stories of the semitransparent monk at the foot of the bed. But isn't that the kind of pressure you want your goalkeeper to face every day? Being a goalkeeper is essentially the process of managing levels of panic, and I can't help but think that a bending free kick is going to seem a lot less horrifying to a man who is already living in a movie that would do $30 million on its opening weekend based on its power to make teenagers spill their gargantuan buckets of popcorn.
It is indeed true that this gentleman's house is situated on the grounds of an old asylum, I know this as I live just around the corner.
When I was a child, I recall visiting my grandmother (who lived within a mile of the old asylum) and one summer afternoon, I remember hearing what I thought was an old air raid siren from the war.
This was, apparently, the siren from the asylum that warned local folk that a dangerous inmate had escaped…
Whispers of a deranged and mainiacal escapee would soon spread across the close knit neighbourhood, prompting windows and doors to be locked at night despite the stifling heat of August.
Naturally, this was quite sufficient a terror to fuel my nightmares throughout my stay there during those hot days in the 70's.
As for the apparition of a monk holding a candle, I cannot make the connection for this spectral figure to appear at all.
To my knowledge, there has never been a monastery or church situated on the site at any period in the past.
Should you ever manage to take the trip up along Horseshoe Lane, you will by chance see the site of the old asylum to the right, guarded securely by cold and dark victorian cast iron railings… even to this day it still demands a certain degree of mystery and foreboding.
From Eddie Murphy:
"[normal voice] It's real scary. You know what I was wondering about movies? I was watching those movies — I'm moving out of my house, I was watching movies like Poltergeist and Amityville Horror. Why don't the people just get the hell out of the house? … You can't make a horror movie with black people in it 'cuz the movie'd stop, you'd see niggers runnin' down the street, the movie's over! … That's the movie. You can't have a movie like that. See, white people, you all sit on the toilet, see blood in the toilet, and you all go get Ajax. … Brothers won't sit on the toilet. … Movie be just like this: [brother's voice] "Wow, baby, this is beautiful. We got chandelier hangin' up here, kids outside playin', it's a beautiful neighborhood, I really love – this is beaut–" [demonic whisper] "Get out!" [brother's voice] "Too bad we can't stay." [instantly spins, starts walking upstage] … "
A goalkeeper also has to be smart enough to play the angle, know when to attack, when to retreat. This guy obviously doesn't.
hahahaha what a wonderful story. The world conspires generously to fuel your blog, Brian.
"But isn’t that the kind of pressure you want your goalkeeper to face every day?"
Well, actually, no, I prefer the goalie to have a good night's rest, especially when the race is getting tighter. Something has to give if they are constantly stressed out.
I've found a slightly more detailed take on Ana Almunia's haunting here. I think it will be interesting even for those of you who have joined the growing consensus that having your goalkeeper haunted by a potentially malevolent spirit isn't the best development for your team.
Plinth, I want to thank you for what may well be the best single comment I have ever received. And Timoteo, for what is certainly the best use of a 25-year-old Eddie Murphy routine to make a strong point about a haunted goalkeeper's house.
And Spangles, it certainly does.
i live really close the asylem was great we use to go and play arcades in the loby when we were kids. they use to let some of the nutters out every now and then, there was one lady who we called the parrot lady cus she swore at kids and one man with a helmet who ran in to trees. on a darker note i was in the field with my friend and we found a horse had been stabed in the neck turned out to be an old inmate. there was a church on the ground it was on the other side of the road. this place was creepy! my girlfriends mum work in the hospital and said it was very haunted.
when it closed down me and my friends entered the hospital it was horible all the paded cells and lots of old equipment and lots of dead pigeons!
aparently they use to incinerate the dead and the ashes would fall in the crops in the allotments and aparently this is why most people in abbots are wierd!