The only reason that I'm writing about Dreatown is to deflate the mystery, because there’s a danger of it turning into a dark tourism spot - like The Paris Catacombs, the Sea of Trees or like Pripyat was before the war. I’ve even seen adverts on Airbnb offering guided tours of the area. I will be open about what you’ll find here in the hope of dissuading anyone from coming.

To begin with the obvious question: yes, there are ghosts; yes, you will most likely see them. But they are blurry, smeared things that don’t respond to the living. It is more disappointing than you expect, and this is all that you’ll find. Nobody has ever returned from Dreatown with any insight into death and afterlife. There’s nothing more to say, other than that something of some residents’ souls linger on the streets.

If you are still insistent on visiting Dreatown then I advise you to make your visit as short as possible. Walk up the high street, turn around, walk back, and never return. Do not be tempted to sit in one of the cafes, or to drink in the Red Admiral pub. There is a single Bed and Breakfast place, but the rare guests are only novelty-seekers or people looking to make content. They get little from the place apart from a tiredness that seeps in like damp and never leaves. There’s a reason why searching for Dreatown online returns very few results.

How do the residents survive? That I can’t tell you. It is a place best left to those suited for it. Visitors have been ruined by wandering the backstreets around the factories, whose main product is hopelessness - in addition to the sort of unbranded ready meals you find in convenience store freezers.

When you see this place mentioned on urbex boards or as a modern ghost story, it might sound like a dare. Hopefully, my explanation has convinced you that there is nothing worth looking for here. The grey of this place never comes out. It’s as dangerous as the radiation in the center of Chernobyl’s exclusion zone. An hour spent in the damp cafe by Dreatown’s bus stop will never leave you.

Background

I wrote this for my regular writing group. The prompt was the MR James title, ‘A Warning to the Curious’. It was inspired by a recent trip that involved some urban exploring.