This has been our first.
Until next time…
DISD CHALLENGE: Day 2 | Lizzie B
229,957 views. Feb 27, 2018
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Lizzie B
3,045 subscribers
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In five days, I’m going to meet a vampire.
That vampire’s going to kill me.
I’ll be dead in five days.
Hey guys! Lizzie B here. As you can see, I’m still here – so far anyway! This is, of course, day two of the Dead in Six Days challenge.
Guys, I’ve been sent my first challenge from a vampire called Vladlena.
And I smashed it. Of course!
If this is all a bit too spooky for you, please head on over to have a look at my shopping-haul videos, which are all available down there in link-land. I’m also going to be un-boxing some wonderful products that the lovely people at Vainglorious have sent. As you know, Vainglorious are my absolute fave make-up brand. They could even make our friend Vladlena look half-human, they’re that good.
So it’s still snowing here – still snowing everywhere – still freezing. Like, it’s not even fun snow, that you can make snowmen in and stuff. It’s so hard to do anything. It’s like someone’s pressed pause. Everything’s just ground to a halt. The gritters can’t grit cos it’s too icy. I mean, how is that even a thing? You see all the little kids on their way to school, slipping about, cars getting stuck, roads being closed. I swear, when I was a kid, snow was much more fun. Half the schools round here are shut so there’ll be kids everywhere.
I’m staying in. God, when did I become so old? I’m twenty-four and literally five days from death.
If you want to see my day-one challenge, ‘Play Lurky in the Dene’, you can click the little linkaroo down there. If a load of screaming girls in the dark is your thang then go for it. Let’s just say, maximum lurky was achieved. But not like any game of lurky you’ve ever seen before.
Off you pop. Go on, have a click, I’ll wait here.
Righty-ho then! Onward with the challenge. So, as I said yesterday, I won’t be passing the next challenge on; I’ll be doing it myself. You better believe, Vladlena.
Soooo, I’ve been reading the comments from yesterday – thanks guys for the love and all the support. Here’s some answers:
Thank you so much, but I’m really not that brave at all – but you know I could easily just duck out of the DISD challenge at any point. You know me, though: when I say I’m gonna do something, I’m gonna do it, right?
Yes, those medals in the background – all mine. Yep. Hang on…
Here you go – this one’s for, like gymnastics, in, like, year nine! This one’s from a brief flirtation with dressage when I was sixteen. I know, right? It was fun and everything, but, you know, you change, you grow up and realise life isn’t Malory Towers. Look, here’s my commemorative boxed set of all the Malory Towers books – beautiful, aren’t they?
The rest of these medals and stuff are for sports mainly – football, hockey, that sort of thing. I was really sad I had to give it all up and concentrate on the channel. I guess that’s why I keep them around. Thanks for the question, though! Ten points for originality.
What else is there? Yeah, believe me, I’ll be in need of a humongous shopping haul after this one! Primark won’t know what hit it! I’ll be sure to upload that as soon as the challenge is done, unless, of course, I’m DEAD!
Soooo, the brand, spanking-new challenge, day two! Yes, it’s already here. OK, OK, I’ll get to it.
It got delivered as soon as I posted my ‘Lurky in the Dene’ video. I’m only going to show you a bit of it, though, because our undead friend has been pretty specific about who she wants to involve in today’s challenge.
So here you go – as you’ll see, it’s not really much of a challenge, but better than the last one I suppose.
‘Snowball Fight in…’ and she’s told me exactly where this needs to be done. I can’t say any more now, you’ll just have to wait and see.
OK … wow. So Vladlena clearly knows who I am and wants me deep in the brown stuff with this challenge. That shows that I was right then, doesn’t it? Vladlena’s a subscriber! Hi babe!
This is where stuff gets real, I suppose. So if you’ve been, like, living under your duvet for the past few months, the challenge goes like this:
Vladlena sends me a challenge. I have to do it, and do it good!
I upload the video to YouTube. Then she sends me one more.
If I don’t wanna die in six days, I pass that task on to someone else.
But you’d better believe I’m not doing that. In six days I’m gonna meet me a vampire!
I hope.
So I’m gonna dig out my warmest gloves and hat and thermal leggings, cos you’re about to see a snowball fight like no other!
This is a shout-out for anyone who wants to join the craziest snowball fight ever! Just hit ‘like’ and ‘subscribe’ and I’ll pick a handful of lucky subscribers to join me!
That’s it. Ciao for now, lovelies! Please don’t forget to give that thumbs-up a little tap if you liked the video, and hit ‘subscribe’, and if you know what’s good for you, tap the bell icon so you’ll hear as soon as the next video goes up – the snowball fight of epic proportions! Just think, you could be a part of it!
Keep chattering in the comments, guys. You know I love answering your questions.
Let’s see if I survive day two!
See you laters, alligators!
Episode 2: The Flying Monkeys
—My first one was something stupid. Everyone got a stupid one at first, that’s how it would start. Like, everyone was doing them. Then, once you’d uploaded it, you got a harder one, and you passed it on. Remember that ice-bucket challenge thing in 2014? It was like that. Everyone was doing the Dead in Six Days challenge. No one actually believed it, though. No one believed you’d actually die. It was, for most people, just a laugh. Just something to do.
My first one was ‘Drop a bag of flour in Sainsbury’s’. That’s all it said. But, like, you knew you couldn’t just do it dead boring, like it was an accident. Well, I suppose you could, but you wouldn’t get many likes. In order for it to be good, you had to make it funny or original.
That was the whole point of it. No one was even bothered about the vampire thing. There were some people who became internet-famous, like, overnight, from doing the Dead in Six Days challenge. Did you see the lad who got ‘demon possession in an exam’? I think he got excluded permanently. Didn’t matter though, did it? Look where he is now! There was an interview with him on someone’s channel the other week. He showed everyone how he made that green stuff that came out of his mouth in his history exam. Chewed up peas and stuff. Gross. But he’s a legend now.
Mine was pretty lame really; I just wandered round Sainsbury’s with some friends. We were giggling like we were school kids. That’s how it made you feel – like a kid again! We got the flour and went to the self-service checkout, and that’s when I did it. I just started messing with the scanner until the little red light came on and an attendant came over. It was this dead fat one with a tache – oh God, that makes me sound like such a bitch, but it was so funny! She came over, and I dropped the flour, and it just exploded! It went all over both of us and this man next to us, and everyone just started shouting. I just ran out the shop. It felt really naughty, you know? It did OK. I mean it wasn’t up there with the best, but it was decent.
But the one Elizabeth did – the snowball fight one – that was one of the best. Even at the time, people were saying it was one of the best, not just after … what happened. It was so funny. My dad was going to report it as a hate crime, you know? He said that it was racially motivated, but how could it have been? It was a snowball fight. Yeah, so some stock got a bit wet. But it’s hardly a burning cross, is it?
I can’t believe I’m laughing about it if I’m totally honest, like, because my dad was so upset at the time. I can�
�t believe I’m laughing. Not after what happened to her.
But the thing is – and I feel well guilty for saying it – that video banged. Everyone had the snowball fight in dad’s shop on their phone. I was getting loads of lads telling me I was fit, and I got a lot of people asking me out. I guess I got to feel what it was like to be her – to be Elizabeth Barton for a while, you know?
I remember the first challenge she got. Day one. It was brutal. What with the snow and everything.
‘Play Lurky in the Dene’.
It doesn’t sound right now does it? Not without, like, proper context. It sounds creepy. But you see, the whole point of it was that you had to make the whole thing, like, fun. The challenge itself never sounded interesting. Vladlena the Vampire always just sent a boring message – no emojis, just text. It was up to you to make it cool, see? That’s how people got famous from it.
I have to say, I couldn’t quite believe it when Elizabeth picked me to help out with that first challenge. There was a good ten of us, and we all knew that being in one of her videos was big. We all upped our game.
We went down the Dene when it was dark, because that would be scarier. It would look better on the video, everyone screaming and running about. Like something off one of those old ghost shows my mam liked, like Most Haunted. It wasn’t fun, though, not at first, cos it was freezing and snowy, even worse down there. Like, all the trees had these icicles hanging off them and the stream was frozen. It was just so still and quiet and weird. It was like everything was just dead. Everyone had their hats and gloves and scarves on. You couldn’t tell who was who. We also had masks on – you know those rubber horse heads, yeah? That was Lizzie’s idea. That’s why it did so well, I think: playing lurky in the dark with everyone wearing horse heads. It was an amazing idea.
I was ‘on’ so I had to go under the echo bridge while everyone hid. So I closed my eyes, just playing along. I was shivering, my teeth were chattering. It was dark, and the cold was going straight through my gloves. After, like, five minutes standing still, I couldn’t feel my toes. I could hear everyone running off, slipping on the ice and giggling. It was dead weird cos it was so quiet, there was no wind down there, just the cold. I counted to ten, dead loud. When I opened my eyes there was just absolute silence. It was well weird down there, everything was frozen still. It looked like it must have back in the Victorian times, or whenever. It was like time had stopped. Proper spooky.
I got out my phone and started filming myself doing loads of heavy breathing like I was terrified. It was spooky down there but I wasn’t really scared; I was wandering about, up and down the path, like, waving my phone about, pointing it at the bushes, cos I knew someone would jump out at any minute. I kept thinking I was going to slip over. They don’t grit the paths down there.
Then I heard a noise.
I looked up and saw someone on the bridge. They had their back to me. I thought none of them would have gone up on the bridge. We never planned that.
We never said we’d do that.
I was a bit scared for a second because, well … because of all those old stories you hear when you’re little. The Ergarth Vampire. The ‘Beast from the East’.
The figure wasn’t looking at me, they were facing the other way, just staring out. I was just about to say something when I saw they had the horse’s head on.
I filmed it on my phone cos I thought it was a good shot, like, maybe Elizabeth could have used it, you know? Just this person stood on the echo bridge in the dark with the moon behind them. Then they turned around, and that’s when I realised who it was and I dropped my phone.
That’s when it all went wrong.
Welcome to Six Stories.
I’m Scott King.
Over these six episodes, we’re looking back at the murder of Elizabeth Barton, who during the vicious cold of March 2018, was barricaded inside a ruined tower, left to freeze to death, and then brutally decapitated. We want to know why three young men took it upon themselves to do such a terrible thing to an innocent young woman.
I’m here in Ergarth, Elizabeth’s home town, where the crime happened, speaking to six people, each of whom have a link to the case.
We’re not here to solve a mystery; we’re here to discuss what happened.
We rake up old graves.
This small town, which clings to the north-east coastline of England, has a strange legend associated with it; a story of a vampire. This vampire was supposedly brought back from the Battle of the Alma, during the Crimean War in 1854. Around the same time, what was then a small farming community went through a spell of extreme cold – similar to that seen 160 years later. Disease and misfortune plagued the area, culminating in the vampire’s death: three young farm hands locked her in Tankerville Tower, before removing her head and burying her body in Ergarth Dene.
This story has been perpetuated through the generations, tumbled and tossed until no one can be quite sure what its true origins are. What is certain, is that the murder of Elizabeth Barton in 2018 shares chilling similarities to the tale of the vampire Vladlena, known locally as ‘The Beast from the East’.
Last week we gave voice to someone from Ergarth’s older generation, and his perception about what was going so wrong for three young people that they did such a terrible thing to an innocent young woman – someone who was attempting to do good in a deprived town.
This week we’re going to speak to someone who knew Elizabeth personally.
Amirah Choudhury is twenty-four years old. She attended the same secondary school as Elizabeth Barton, and both young women worked part-time at a pet shop when they were in their early twenties. I meet her at a chain coffee shop just off Ergarth High Street. It’s good to get inside, away from the smell of Flynn’s Meats that is particularly pungent today. It’s Amirah’s lunch break and the place is half full. We wait in the queue together: the clientele is mainly older people and a few young men in suits, scrolling through their phones. A few people looked up when Amirah entered, and one of them smiled. We have to wait awkwardly for a few moments as the baristas try to prevent a man entering the shop. He’s muttering incoherently but it’s his eyes that stay with me: empty, lost, as if he has given up.
Amirah shakes her head.
—Spice zombies. They’re everywhere now. Remember when that stuff was legal? It wasn’t even that long ago. There was a shop where you could buy it, just up by the pizza place. You see them all over now; dribbling on themselves and passed out. Elizabeth was trying to help people like him, and look what happened to her…
The man bangs half-heartedly on the window before careering away down the street. Everyone shifts in their seats. Amirah directs me to a booth at the very back.
She lowers her voice.
—You’ve got to be, like, careful. Everyone’s so nosey here; everyone knows everyone else’s business. Like, everyone in here now knows I’m talking to you. And everyone else will know in seconds.
Amirah’s right. Ergarth, being a small town with a few unwelcome skeletons in its closet, has come together since the murder of Elizabeth Barton. I know that since our first episode, there have been a few photographs of me, taken candidly, I may add, circulating on social media. Amirah tells me not to worry.
—Oh yeah. People do that all the time. You have to be careful what you wear, make sure you don’t look a state, cos someone’ll take your picture, and before you know it, you’ll become a meme. No one wants that sort of fame. Like, I’m sure you with … like, what happened last series … I’m just saying people will want photos and that. Plus you’re with me.
—Is that a problem?
—For some people, yes.
Amirah mimes zipping her mouth closed, and she writes something on a napkin, which she then passes to me:
There’s still people here who think I had something to do with it.
We communicate in this analogue format for a few more moments. A little later, I’ll come to why Amirah’s been looking over her shoulde
r since Elizabeth Barton’s death. Amirah tells me she’s not really present on social media anymore as a consequence of it. That’s hard, she says, because everyone else is.
—We know Elizabeth was a big social-media user. Do you know if she shared the same fears as you in that sense?
—Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if there was ‘fear’ – she had haters, of course; everyone who’s anyone does. But she just didn’t care. There was far more love for her out there. Look here, her Instagram is still up. Take a look.
Amirah hands me her phone and for a few moments we scroll through Elizabeth Barton’s photographs. She has more than fifty thousand followers on Instagram; Amirah tells me that before she died she had at least twenty thousand. There were significantly more subscribers to Elizabeth’s YouTube Channel, where she went under the name Lizzie B. According to everyone I’ve spoken to, Elizabeth’s channel was on its way to the upper echelons of YouTube fame.
—She was gorgeous. She was funny. She was talented. Everyone loved her. She was, like, Ergarth’s very own Zoella! Like, you would see that bright-red car of hers buzzing round Ergarth. She always had it super-clean; those big eyelashes on the lights. I miss that. She could have been as big as Zoella as well; if those three hadn’t done what they done. What they did to her is just … I mean, it’s just beyond horrific. It’s beyond normal. There’s hating someone and then there’s that. It’s inhuman.
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