When You’re Not There, Pennyland

Tonight’s story takes us across the city to the charmingly named Pennyland estate. There’s a lovely tradition in MK where the street names on each estate are themed, and my witness told me all the streets there have coin-themed names. I’m not far from a new build with streets named for space exploration, with Hubble Drive and Barnard Way, but the story you’re about to hear is anything but celestial.

My witness would prefer to remain anonymous, so I’ll call her Fiona. She’s lived on Pennyland since the 1980s.

Fiona got in touch to share an unsettling experience she had after going on holiday. She had left her only set of keys with friends who were feeding her cats. Before returning home, she called to arrange collecting them, only for them to ask who else she had given a key to. She told them there was no one. That was when they explained what had happened. One day they arrived to find a window open, even though they were certain they had left it shut. They also mentioned leaving a can of cat food out for the next visit, only to return and find it had been completely emptied, not knocked over or spilled the way you might expect if a cat had gotten into it, but neatly cleaned out.

Her friend became so uneasy she refused to go into the house alone, saying it felt strange.

Fiona herself never experienced anything directly, but she was curious enough to look into it. At the time, the Milton Keynes Development Corporation still had an archaeology section. When she contacted them, they confirmed Pennyland had been built over Iron Age, Saxon, and Roman sites and said other residents had also reported odd occurrences in the area.

She told me that while most of her friends are happy to visit when she’s at home, some feel uncomfortable going in if she’s away. There is nothing specific they can put their finger on, just an unshakable sense that something is off. Fiona has always felt fine living there, though she admits it is the sort of story that makes you think twice about what a house remembers.

Pennyland is another totally new part of the city for me. I was in an unusual hurry when I went to take my photographs, so for once I got a taxi from the other side of the city. Fiona didn’t say exactly where she lived, and I didn’t ask, so I picked a street name at random and asked to be dropped off at Leopard Drive. I was thinking of the big cat but it turns out it is another old coin name.

I didn’t have a particular destination in mind, so I just wandered, turning corners at random and photographing typical houses for the gallery below. To my surprise, I came out onto a marina, and ut felt like stepping into a different city altogether. I hadn’t checked a map in advance and had no idea I was anywhere near the canal.

Even on a sultry and overcast July day, the air humid and tense and badly in need of a thunderstorm, Milton Keynes continues to surprise and delight.

Fiona’s story is quietly haunting, especially at this time of year when many of you will be heading away on summer holidays. There is something deeply unsettling about the idea of things happening inside your house when you are away, unable to intervene or rush back.

I know I always feel slightly uneasy when I’m away from home. I keep that anxiety at bay with technology: I have smart cameras covering every room so I can beam myself virtually back into my home just by checking an app on my phone. Sometimes living in the future is amazing.

I find that incredibly reassuring most of the time. But sometimes I wonder: what would I do if, one night, unable to sleep, I opened the app to put my mind at rest, and saw something I couldn’t explain?

Imagine the camera’s usual overhead view of my quiet, orderly kitchen, everything in its place. But in the corner, something pale and formless, like mist. Maybe at first I would think it was just glare or a smear on the lens, so I’d pinch and zoom in… And the shape would shift, condensing into something almost human.

And then, as I watched, it would lift its head, featureless and dark, and turn to face the camera. As if it knew I was watching. As if it could see me too.

And I’d know it would be waiting for me to come home.

Thank-you to ‘Fiona’ for trusting me with this story and thank YOU for reading!
If you have a story of your own to share, I’d really love to hear it.