I’m twenty-four, working two jobs in Manchester, and I’ve learned that laundromats at 2 AM are either completely dead or filled with the kind of people who have nowhere else to be. I preferred dead, obviously. That’s why I picked The Spin Cycle on Deansgate—it was always empty when I needed it.
I mean, working doubles at the café and then evening shifts at the bookshop meant my washing piled up something terrible. By the time I had a free moment, it was always the middle of the night. My flat didn’t have a washer, so here I was, every Tuesday around 2 AM, loading my clothes into the third machine from the left. Same routine for six months.
The thing about routines is you notice when something breaks them.
That particular Tuesday, I walked in with my two bin bags of washing, and I heard it immediately—that rhythmic churning sound, water sloshing against metal. I looked down the row of washers. The end one, number twelve, was running. The round window fogged with steam, clothes tumbling inside in that hypnotic way they do.
I didn’t think much of it. Someone else doing late-night washing, you know? Except… I glanced around the laundromat. Completely empty. No one at the folding tables, no one in the toilet, no one outside having a cigarette. Just me and that running washer.
I loaded my clothes into my usual machine, added the powder, fed in the pound coins. The whole time, I kept glancing at number twelve. The clothes inside were dark, tumbling over and over. Red light glowing above it, indicating it was mid-cycle.
Maybe they just stepped out, I thought. Went to the petrol station next door or something.
But something wasn’t right. I’d been coming here for six months, always at the same time, and I’d never seen anyone else. Never. That was the whole point.
About twenty minutes later, my washer was humming along nicely, and number twelve was still going. I checked my phone, scrolled through Instagram, tried to ignore it. But that sound—that constant churning—it got under my skin. I kept looking up, watching those dark clothes tumble.
I should have just left it alone.
Instead, I stood up and walked over. The closer I got, the more I could see through the fogged glass. The water inside looked… wrong. Too dark. And the clothes—they weren’t just dark colored. They were stained. Heavily stained.
I felt my heart start to pound.
I pressed my face closer to the glass, cupping my hands around my eyes to see better. The water was definitely dark. Reddish-brown. And those stains on the clothes—they looked like someone had tried to wash out something that didn’t want to come clean.
Blood. It looked like blood.
“Maybe it’s just… rust from the machine,” I whispered to myself. “Or fabric dye. People wash weird things. It’s fine.”
But I didn’t believe it. Looking back, I realize some part of me already knew.
The cycle should have ended by then. I’d been there almost thirty minutes, and it was still going. Same position, same tumbling motion, like it was stuck in a loop. I reached out, my hand shaking, and touched the machine. It was cold. Not warm like a washer that’s been running. Ice cold.
I pulled my hand back fast.
The front door was only about twenty feet away. I could leave. Just grab my washing later, or forget about it entirely. But I couldn’t move. I was fixated on that window, on those clothes spinning endlessly in their dark red water.
I don’t know what made me do it—curiosity, stupidity, maybe some part of me that needed to prove I was being paranoid—but I grabbed the door handle of number twelve and pulled.
It shouldn’t have opened mid-cycle. There’s a lock mechanism, you know? Safety feature. But it opened easily, and a wave of freezing air hit me, along with the smell. Metallic. Coppery. Unmistakable.
Inside, the drum was full of clothes—shirts, jeans, towels—all soaked in dark water. Not rust-colored. Not dye. Blood. Fresh enough that it hadn’t fully oxidized, still that deep crimson in places. A white shirt tumbled past the opening, and I could see handprints on it. Desperate handprints.
I stumbled backward, my trainers squeaking on the linoleum. The washer kept running, even with the door open. That shouldn’t happen. That couldn’t happen.
I ran to the front counter, where an older bloke usually sat reading the paper. He wasn’t there. I slapped my hand on the bell—once, twice, three times.
“Hello?! Hello, I need help!”
A door behind the counter opened, and the attendant shuffled out, looking annoyed. I’d seen him before—grey hair, thick glasses, perpetually bored expression.
“What’s the problem, love?”
“The washer—number twelve—there’s something wrong with it. There’s blood, and—”
“Number twelve?” He looked confused. “That washer’s been broken for years. Condemned, actually. We’re waiting on parts to fix it, but basically, no one’s used it since I started here.”
I felt my blood turn to ice. “What? No, it’s running right now. I just opened it, and—”
“Can’t be running, love. It’s not even connected to the water line.”
We stared at each other.
From across the laundromat, clear as anything, came that sound. The rhythmic churning. Water sloshing. Clothes tumbling endlessly.
The attendant’s face went pale. “That’s… that’s not possible.”
But we could both hear it.
I didn’t wait for an explanation. I grabbed my bin bags—forgot about my washing entirely—and I ran. Out the door, into the cold Manchester night, and I didn’t stop until I was three streets away.
I moved flats two weeks later. Found a place with an en-suite washer, paid extra for it. I don’t care about the cost. I’ll never set foot in a laundromat again.
But sometimes, late at night when I’m trying to sleep, I hear it. That churning sound. That endless washing cycle. And I wonder whose clothes those were. Who they belonged to. And why they can’t ever get clean.
To this day, I still hear it running.
