Hellooo!!

Typically I review a book before I interview but as this relates to one of the most mysterious events of the 1990s it felt appropriate to set the scene for the 21st century audience and the ‘younger’ readers for whom this is less recalled. The name ‘Wellbrook’ still sends a shiver for many who recall when it first entered our consciousness but it is an event still shrouded in mystery. A project exploring those who survived Wellbrook is even more intriguing and I can confirm that the stories Dan Coxon and his research team are both engrossing, uncanny and will leave an impression long after reading. I was pleased to have the chance to ask Dan a few questions about how this collection came about and a recap about why The Event has left a shadow on our memories.

For me I first heard of Wellbrook while studying for GCSEs. The sixth form heard about it on their common room radio, and it obviously shook us all up. Where were you when you heard about it?

I’d actually left school at that point (I’m showing my age here!) and was in my first year at university. I remember being in lectures all morning, then coming back to find our halls of residence in chaos. There were literally people crying in the corridors – I think someone on the floor above me had a cousin at Wellbrook. We all expected there to be clarification of what exactly had happened as the story unfolded over the coming days, but as you know, all these years later it’s still unexplained.

Because of how young those affected were, it has never been something even the newspapers wanted to intrude upon and pre-internet and mobiles there is no evidence but it’s a name people say in hushed tones. Why has it both been remembered and yet at the same time kept fairly hushed up?

I wish I had a simple answer to that, but I don’t. I’m sure you’ve read the conspiracy theories online – that there was some kind of gas main rupture that caused them to hallucinate, that the government were trialling top-secret weapons nearby, that some of the students had been messing around with a Satanic ritual and it got out of hand. Of all the theories that sounds the most likely to me, but who really knows? I think it’s the mystery that has kept people hooked almost as much as the terrible tragedy, and the lives that were lost. We don’t know exactly what happened, and it’s looking increasingly unlikely that we ever will – but in that vacuum dark stories breed.

Now we come to the Yearbook and your investigations into the survivors. Can you tell us how this all started?

I’ll be honest – this wasn’t a project that I planned to take on! I had plenty of other things in the works, and Wellbrook was the last thing in my mind. But then I stumbled upon what appeared to be a genuine 1993 yearbook from Wellbrook High in a second-hand bookshop in London, and it send me down the rabbit hole. I still have that battered and defaced copy of the yearbook, but it’s almost entirely unreadable – it’s been scribbled over and scratched at until barely a word is legible. I’ll admit that I became kind of obsessed with it, though, and started looking into what had happened to the handful of survivors in the intervening years – and what I uncovered was a whole other tale of strange occurrences and terrible, terrible luck. Given the writers I know, it made sense to bring in some help to tell their stories.

It seems safe to say the former pupils you’ve explored have lived in the shadow of Wellbrook but your team’s work seems like almost it makes them susceptible to even more macabre events. Coincidence or something more?

I think it’s all part of the mystery of Wellbrook, isn’t it? None of us fully understand what happened there back in ’93, but clearly it was something deeply strange and on the fringes of human experience. Obviously some of the survivors were physically scarred, but it seems they were all scarred in a deeper way too. I don’t want to talk about it in terms of a curse (there’s enough of that on the internet already), but it certainly feels like they were marked in some way. Not a single one has led what you’d consider an ordinary life.

How did your team piece together these stories? Were people willing to talk? 

Mostly we were met with silence. It’s not entirely surprising – I can’t imagine anyone wants to relive what happened thirty years ago. But a few were willing to talk, either to myself or one of the contributing writers, and we were able to piece together clues from our research online too. Gloria Reisland, the school’s old languages teacher, agreed to talk to us a couple of times, and she was able to fill in  some of the gaps. Unfortunately we weren’t able to talk to Mr Maitland, the school’s headmaster at the time. As you know, he passed away before it came to fruition. I’m sure he had his own story to tell.

Do you think we can ever find out the truth of Wellbrook so many years on? Do you think it could ever happen again? 

I can still scarcely believe that it happened at all – so the idea of it happening again seems so far-fetched that I can’t imagine it. I guess we don’t fully understand what caused the events of that day, though. As for whether we’ll ever uncover the truth, part of me hopes that we don’t. Partly because I enjoy the mystery of it, but mainly because, as things stand, nobody knows what really happened at Wellbrook High back in 1993 – and maybe things are better that way. If that door were ever fully opened, then we may not be able to close it again.

Thank you very much Dan.

I hope Gentle Readers that this has set the scene for the remarkable collection to be published 28/3. Among the research team bringing these previously untold stories into the light are writers such as Penny Jones, Helen Marshall, Phil Sloman, CC Adams and many more. My review of this project will be out nearer the time but I found it shiveringly great and you can pre-order via For Tomorrow – Black Shuck Books