All season Geoff and I have been writing articles with our thoughts on why West Ham’s season has been so poor and so uninspiring, putting forward our theories. But my friend Stefan King, a massive fan of both West Ham and the band Queen, who also writes horror stories, insists that we have got it all wrong. He sent me his most recent short story to read. He certainly has a very vivid imagination. I thanked him for his work of fiction and he sent me a one word reply. “Fiction?” I’ll leave you to make up your own mind.
“Boleynian Rhapsody – Hammer to Fall”
A tale of profound dread, psychological turmoil, and an ancient force with an insatiable thirst for pain, all cloaked in claret and blue.
The 2024/25 season was not just bad; it was horrific; it was apocalyptic. West Ham didn’t merely lose games; they deteriorated; they decayed from the inside out. The rot wasn’t confined to the results; it permeated the walls, the players’ bodies, and the air.
No one dared to voice it, but something or someone had followed them from the Boleyn Ground. When they demolished the old Boleyn stadium to make way for nearly a thousand dwellings, they believed they were moving forward; progress, the next level, corporate boxes; they would become the best team in the country, in Europe, in the world. But some things, some very ancient things, resent being forgotten. How dare they move!
Legend has it that the Boleyn witch, Anne Boleyna, had a son. A creature that was born wrong, all teeth and shadow. They imprisoned him in the tunnels beneath the Upton Park pitch, feeding him rats. He was born under a blood moon, a night when the veil between worlds was thinnest. He was a creature of darkness, with eyes that glowed like embers and a voice that could freeze the soul. Anne hid him away, knowing that the world would never accept him. She taught him her secrets, and together, they wove a web of power beneath the Boleyn Ground. Every time the Hammers won, they said it was him—howling beneath the turf, sated by the sacrifice. It was dismissed as East End folklore.
Anne Boleyna was no ordinary witch. She was born in the 16th century, a time when fear and superstition ruled the East End. Her mother, a healer, was accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. Anne, then a child, watched in horror and vowed revenge. She grew up learning the dark arts, mastering spells that could bend reality and summon spirits. Her reputation spread, and soon, she was feared and revered in equal measure. She passed it all to her son.
For a time after the stadium move all was well. Nothing outstanding but it was always going to take time. Then David Moyes had some spectacular results and led them into Europe. Unbelievably a European trophy was secured. But then everything unravelled. The victories ceased, and the nightmares came to the fore. Moyes couldn’t stop the decline, and by the end of 2023-24, he was gone.
A new head coach arrived—Julen Lopetegui from Spain. By November, every player was plagued by night terrors. One gouged his own thigh with a fork muttering, “I must bleed for the badge.” Others vanished during an away trip to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. One lost his mind. Security footage showed his ghost wandering onto the pitch alone in the dead of night. He was rarely seen in good form again.
December arrived with a visit to Leicester. A goal down in under two minutes. Another defeat. Some of the travelling West Ham supporters turned on manager Julen Lopetegui, jeering at him towards the end of the game. Home or away it made no difference. The season was turning into a nightmare.
The year ended with a 5-0 home defeat to Champions-Elect Liverpool. Fans began disappearing before the end of the game. At first, it was those seated in the Trevor Brooking Stand. Then entire rows throughout the stadium. Empty seats, still warm, coats and phones left behind. The official explanation? “Evacuations due to a fire alarm.” But nobody heard an alarm. The footage revealed something else, figures crawling up from the touchline. Pale and long-limbed, wearing kits from the ’60s. Former players. Faces familiar from grainy black-and-white films, but distorted. Skin stretched too tight. Eyes set too deep. Moving with that horrible jerky grace, like puppets at the end of rusty wires.
Then came the fog. It rolled in one day during training, low and dense, smelling like you wouldn’t believe. It was thick and oppressive, wrapping around the players like a shroud. Once it touched someone, they were never the same. They spoke strangely, moved differently. One player bit a goalpost and laughed and laughed until his jaw unhinged. Another began scratching marks into the dressing room tiles. The fog carried whispers, voices from the past, echoing through the corridors of the London Stadium. It was as if the fog was alive, a force that fed on fear and despair.
The players’ experiences grew increasingly harrowing. Night after night, they were tormented by visions of the witch and her son. Some players reported seeing shadowy figures lurking in the corners of their rooms, whispering secrets in a language they couldn’t understand. Others woke up with unexplained bruises and scratches, as if they had been in a struggle. The team doctor was baffled, unable to find any medical explanation for their symptoms.
During training sessions, the players moved like automatons, their eyes vacant and their movements stiff. They spoke in hushed tones, afraid to voice their fears. One player, in a fit of desperation, tried to flee the stadium, only to be found hours later, wandering the streets of Stratford, muttering incoherently about the witch’s curse. Another player, who was once the star striker, refused to step onto the pitch, claiming he could hear the witch’s laughter every time he touched the ball. What chance of him ever scoring any goals again?
The head coach was found in his office one morning, kneeling within a circle of matchday programmes, that he refused to leave. He had written one phrase over and over on the whiteboard: “She demands the chant. I can’t leave the circle until she hears the chant.” But what chant? He didn’t know the chant.
It surfaced once, on a social media recording by a fan before the servers mysteriously crashed: “Come on you Irons, bleed for her name, forge us in fire and burn in her flame.” The clip was deleted within minutes. The fan who uploaded it went missing. His flat, newly built above the old Upton Park pitch, was found empty except for a claret and blue scarf tied into a noose and a puddle of water on the floor—still rippling, forever rippling.
A new head coach arrived. But did things improve? By April, the club was dead in the water. But not relegated. They would fight another day. But what would 2025-26 bring? Fortunately, Ipswich, Leicester, and Southampton were also having nightmares.
It was as if, for one whole season, West Ham United had never existed. But the London Stadium still stands. You can hear it at night. That chant. Warped and slow, echoing out into the empty Stratford streets and the surrounding Olympic Park.
Some say if you get too close, you’ll see lights on in the stands at night when the stadium is empty. You’ll hear boots on the turf. A final match being played in the shadows, for no one and everyone. They say the witch watches from the boxes now. Forever smiling and waiting for kick-off.
The great Queen song “Hammer to Fall” can be heard repeatedly through the PA system.
But the Hammer never truly falls.
It just waits to rise again.
Under The Hammers 