THREAD So @Rebec_King and I went on *quite* the psychological rollercoaster last night - let me tell you a story of a suspected body in our walls, a deadly condition, and the weirdest council email I've ever sent...

So we're settling down for bed and hear a scuffling in our walls behind our bed. No biggie, we thought. Our building is more than 100 years old. It's a mouse. Right? The scuffling became a banging. Far too big to be a mouse. Is there a space behind this wall, we thought?

Maybe a boarded up chimney - DIY expert @EEkirstie once said she thought there might be a fireplace behind there. Maybe a bird's fallen down. Surely we can't just leave it to die? So - in our pjs - we get up and fetch a claw hammer. Time to open the wall.

It doesn't take long to break through the plaster. It's definitely hollow. On the fourth or fifth strike, I punch through and something spills out. WTF is that, I say?

Hair.

A matted bundle of hair. We both froze. Surely not? The unthinkable. Is there...a body back there?

I swear we didn't breathe for a minute - it was a bundle of brunette hair with grey strands. A hollow space in the wall behind our bed, where we've been sleeping for two years, and now hair is spilling out of it. Is there a murder victim behind here? Is this a house of horrors?

I contemplated calling the police right then at midnight. But what would I say? We had to confirm. So I hammer away at the plaster again and more strands fall out. Fucking hell. @Rebec_King's on her phone furiously trying to find alt answers. Wait, she says, maybe animal hair?

'They used to use animal hair to bind lathe and plaster walls, it could be that.' Phew. So *probably* not a dead body. No 999 call tonight. But looking closer, there are a LOT of white strands. That's never, asbestos, is it? So we keep googling. It could be.

We've gone from thinking there's a dead body behind the wall to possibly creating two on this side. All while the dog's asleep beside us. Fuck fuck. More research, desperate to find another answer. 'Wait!' @Rebec_King cries. Animal hair plaster and asbestos aren't used together.

'Oh thank god,' I reply.

'Yeah...but animal hair walls sometimes have anthrax in them.'

'Wait...WHAT?'

'Yeah...anthrax...and it's pretty deadly.'

So we've gone from dead body to asbestos to anthrax in the space of 20 minutes. Long and short of it is we immediately fled the...

...bedroom and slept in the living room where we also currently eat, relax and work. This morning I had to email the council to ask if they could help with our (possible) anthrax problem. Is sending an anthrax email the 2020 version of sending poison in the post?!

So the lesson:

Stop watching gory murder dramas, don't live in haunted old buildings, care less about possible trapped birds, don't hammer through your own wall and most importantly...

REMEMBER THAT 2020 IS SO AWFUL IT MIGHT GIVE YOU ANTHRAX POISONING.