We must have all experienced being alone and lost at some point. The sense of being abandoned can be terrible. ‘Crouch End’ is a story about a young couple who find themselves alone in an unfamiliar neighborhood, and their predicament worsens when a blind spot opens up a portal to another realm.
They fight to find their way back to normalcy while dealing with weird images and entities that cross their path. ‘Crouch End’ is an episode from Nightmares & Dreamscapes, a Stephen King anthology series. This episode, which dives into tales of parallel universes, unexplained happenings, and ghost towns, is a thrilling ride that will have you glued to the screen.
Crouch End – A Ghost Town with a Secret
The episode opens with shots of an eerie abandoned house, with strange visions foreshadowing the events of the story. As the opening credits roll, a hysterical young lady, Doris Freeman visits the police station to lodge a complaint about her missing husband, Lonnie Freeman. Their son, Robbert works at the station and he hears her story about these strange supernatural events along with his co-worker Ted Vetter.
As Doris relays the events that preceded the disappearance, the scene shifts to Doris and Lonnie checking into a hotel in London for their honeymoon. They have a strange encounter with an older couple in the elevator, and then eventually settle in the room and have lunch together. Over lunch, Lonnie opens a letter from his friend ‘John Squalls’, a solicitor who works in London.
It appears that he wants the couple to come over for dinner at a place called ‘Crouch End’. They hail a cab to ‘Crouch End’, when cab drivers warn them to stay away from the place, and that strangers don’t go there. Finally getting a cab, the driver tells them about a ‘thin spot’ in Crouch End that connects to a different dimension. Doris starts to get a bad feeling about the place and sees strange visions of strangers. They even drive past a ‘Sixty Lost in Underground Horror’ sign, and Doris wonders if this can be a bad sign.
As they near their location, Lonnie realizes he lost the napkin with the address on it. He steps out of the cab to call his friend, while the driver tells Doris that Crouch End was built on a mass grave. It was built on top of a ‘tawan’, a druid word that means a place of ritual sacrifice. The driver further tells her that the bodies found in the ‘Slaughter Tower’ were still fresh and not decaying, and Doris exclaims that he is making the story up.
She steps out of the cab and explores the houses where she sees a cat through a house window. She reaches for it and taps at the window, only to find that the cat has one bloody eye. Horrified, she moves away and goes back to Lonnie, as the couple finds themselves all by themselves with no one to ask for directions. They walk around the place, when two young children make fun of them and run away. The couple continues to hitchhike, and Lonnie insists that they are capable of finding the directions on their own and are not lost.
Finally, Doris convinces him to ask for directions at a police station but he finds no one there. The couple starts arguing over the directions, and Doris finds the place creepy and asserts that there is more than what meets the eye.
They reconcile and walk around while talking when they hear the voice of an old man growling in pain. Looking around for the source of the noise, they find a burned black hole in the middle of a barren lawn and Lonnie moves towards it. Doris warns him to stay away and is worried that they have come across the blind spot they had been warned about. She tells him all about the tales the driver warned her about, but Lonnie checks the place out anyway.
Things go from zero to a hundred very quickly, as something attacks Lonnie and he starts screaming for help. Doris tries to make her way to him but is unable to move past the bushes when she once again sees visions of the strangers and cat and the children that she found suspicious earlier.
A hand reaches out to her, and Lonnie gets thrown out of the bushes with tremendous force. Lost and terrified over these strange events, the couple runs away and looks for help when they end up near a direction sign for the ‘Slaughter Tower’. Doris asks Lonnie about being attacked, and what happened to him in those moments he was gone but he refuses to talk about it. Claiming that it’s all a blank, he tries to change the subject and talks about his missing jacket instead.
Doris suggests that they return back to the hotel, while Lonnie still insists on going to the dinner and calls his friend. However, his phone loses charge and the couple tries to figure a way out of the place. Lonnie starts acting strange and asks Doris to not repeat what they experienced to anyone back at the hotel. He even refuses to go back the way they entered the place and sees a vision of a strange silhouette that freaks him out.
Taking an alternate route, Doris reassures him that if this were indeed a ‘thin spot’ phenomenon then it has to get over soon and that they have nothing to worry about. They come across a clock tower and make their way across the clearing when they see a whirlwind of sand around them as the children, and the cat gets sucked into the pit of a hole in the center of the whirlwind. Doris clutches a pole, while Lonnie seemingly blacks out and sees the same cat and children flash before his eyes.
After a while, things return to normal and Lonnie clutches Doris’s hand and drags her with him through a tunnel. He asks her to come together like they promised to stay together and the couple shares a brief emotional moment when they hear the sound of cars and pass the tunnel. Doris spots a cab, and as she turns to point it to Lorrie, he runs back to the tunnel as if he were not in control over his movements. He insists that he knows the right way to escape, and talks Doris into returning to him.
As she walks across the tunnel, a tall dark monster obstructs her path and she loses sight of Lonnie who has seemingly disappeared. Doris sees strange visions and somehow manages to make her way across the tunnel. As she looks for her husband, she runs past the same ‘Sixty Lost in Underground Horror’ sign they had encountered earlier; confirming that her hunches were right.
Doris runs around the town and comes across the children once again, who seems to know that she has lost her husband. The boy mutters strange incantations, and Doris’s vision once again changes as she sees Lonnie smiling at her, happy that she returned and kept her promise.
As he opens his arms wide to reunite with Doris, there is a disruption from the ground beneath as a strange creature with three tentacles that end in mouths emerges and swallows him whole. On closer look, one can observe that the tale incorporates elements of Lovecraftian horror in many instances.
Doris escapes the place and spots an exit from Crouch End. As she makes her way outside, the children try to pull her back but she manages to escape. Asking an older couple for help, Doris locates the police station and finds Robbert, who addresses her as a mom. She relays the incidents from the past few hours and spots a cat in the police station. Robbert addresses the cat as ‘Lonnie’ and informs her that they found the cat just today. As the episode comes to an end, a terrified Doris looks at the cat and finds it to be the same one-eyed cat from Crouch End.
Why you should watch Crouch End?
Exploring the supernatural horror genre, Crouch End is a tale full of layers of mysteries, terrifying creatures, and a ghost town that quite literally brings different worlds together. With a runtime of 44 minutes, the episode is well-paced and manages to capture the essence of the works of Stephen King.
The episode, directed by Mark Haber, does an excellent job of bringing the plot to life, and the actors, special effects, and voice effects altogether make for a whole package. If you are a fan of anthology horror, ‘Crouch End’ makes for a thrilling watch!