Fairlight
Junior Acolyte
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2018
- Messages
- 43
- Location
- England
A few recent strange events have conspired to lead me to overcome my inherent laziness and actually get round to posting this stuff.
It starts with a minor plumbing issue shortly before the Covid lockdown, first the cold, then the hot water washbasin taps in the bathroom developing intermittent, but persistent dripping, which I could temporarily remedy by stripping and cleaning the tap assembly, but after a few days the dripping would start again. Sourcing replacement washers etc was beginning to become a bit more problematic with all the DIY shops, plumbers suppliers etc closing down but I guessed I could live with the inconvenience of a minor leak as long as it didn’t develop into something more serious, also somewhere around the house (attic, garden shed) I knew I had a spare couple of taps which I could cannibalise for parts, I just couldn’t locate them at the time.
One of my brothers had just moved in to the house next door, having bought it only a month or so before the lockdown commenced and in his explorations of the place had discovered a dull and dust covered post-horn in the attic, which he duly cleaned then proceeded to endear himself to his new neighbours by “playing” from quite an early hour, typically at about 8.00 am most mornings. The early results were not particularly musical but the sounds had a suitably apocalyptic quality (some very reminiscent of the strange trumpet/horn like sounds apparently being heard around the world and posted on You Tube) and particularly prescient with the escalating pandemic.
Bizarrely our leaky plumbing then began to produce similar noises as though in some kind of sympathy to the horn sounds and I can honestly say that at times it was difficult to be sure from which source the sound was coming! I should mention at this point that there had been no sound from the plumbing until several days after the horn had begun to be “played” but thereafter the sounds developed both in scope and frequency to the point where every time a tap was turned on anywhere in the house, or the loo was flushed, a variety of sounds could be expected ranging from the horn like sounds to pulsing “coughing” sounds or sounds like a braying donkey, loud and reverberating through the whole house! I had assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that the hot water system might be the culprit because of the “pulsing” nature of some of the sounds (possibly emanating from a pressurised central heating system) but when I isolated the bathroom basin cold tap the noises stopped, and after I had replaced the internal valve they never returned so, as alluded to in the June issue of FT, dodgy plumbing not poltergeists. So nothing supernatural but an interesting and strange coincidence, but there was more strangeness to come.
And here’s where it does get a bit weird.
Last week I went with my partner to a nearby pub for a couple of drinks. Earlier in the day I had been next door helping my brother move some furniture and I happened to take a snap of the post horn (of doom!) on my 'phone. We were discussing these things and I passed her my 'phone displaying the photo on the screen....as I did this I picked up my pint which was about one third full and the glass slipped out of my hand and broke on the table, maybe not that strange and maybe not that unusual, although I don’t recall spilling ale like this before...perhaps I was just a bit careless....but what happened next was. I stood the glass back up on its base (it was a tulip glass) and we began mopping up the spilt ale as best we could when the already cracked glass “exploded” into fragments, showering the table top with shards of glass.
I went to speak to one of the bar staff, the broken glass presenting a serious hazard to any customer using that particular table. When I mentioned how the glass exploded she responded “Oh yes that happens a lot in this pub!” she went on to say that empty glasses regularly exploded behind the bar theorising that the high temperatures used in the glass washing appliances might be to blame. I replied with words to the effect of “but doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd?” and she immediately replied with words to the effect of “I’m sure this pub is haunted, there’s definitely a ghost here!”
And that’s about it...so far!
It starts with a minor plumbing issue shortly before the Covid lockdown, first the cold, then the hot water washbasin taps in the bathroom developing intermittent, but persistent dripping, which I could temporarily remedy by stripping and cleaning the tap assembly, but after a few days the dripping would start again. Sourcing replacement washers etc was beginning to become a bit more problematic with all the DIY shops, plumbers suppliers etc closing down but I guessed I could live with the inconvenience of a minor leak as long as it didn’t develop into something more serious, also somewhere around the house (attic, garden shed) I knew I had a spare couple of taps which I could cannibalise for parts, I just couldn’t locate them at the time.
One of my brothers had just moved in to the house next door, having bought it only a month or so before the lockdown commenced and in his explorations of the place had discovered a dull and dust covered post-horn in the attic, which he duly cleaned then proceeded to endear himself to his new neighbours by “playing” from quite an early hour, typically at about 8.00 am most mornings. The early results were not particularly musical but the sounds had a suitably apocalyptic quality (some very reminiscent of the strange trumpet/horn like sounds apparently being heard around the world and posted on You Tube) and particularly prescient with the escalating pandemic.
Bizarrely our leaky plumbing then began to produce similar noises as though in some kind of sympathy to the horn sounds and I can honestly say that at times it was difficult to be sure from which source the sound was coming! I should mention at this point that there had been no sound from the plumbing until several days after the horn had begun to be “played” but thereafter the sounds developed both in scope and frequency to the point where every time a tap was turned on anywhere in the house, or the loo was flushed, a variety of sounds could be expected ranging from the horn like sounds to pulsing “coughing” sounds or sounds like a braying donkey, loud and reverberating through the whole house! I had assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that the hot water system might be the culprit because of the “pulsing” nature of some of the sounds (possibly emanating from a pressurised central heating system) but when I isolated the bathroom basin cold tap the noises stopped, and after I had replaced the internal valve they never returned so, as alluded to in the June issue of FT, dodgy plumbing not poltergeists. So nothing supernatural but an interesting and strange coincidence, but there was more strangeness to come.
And here’s where it does get a bit weird.
Last week I went with my partner to a nearby pub for a couple of drinks. Earlier in the day I had been next door helping my brother move some furniture and I happened to take a snap of the post horn (of doom!) on my 'phone. We were discussing these things and I passed her my 'phone displaying the photo on the screen....as I did this I picked up my pint which was about one third full and the glass slipped out of my hand and broke on the table, maybe not that strange and maybe not that unusual, although I don’t recall spilling ale like this before...perhaps I was just a bit careless....but what happened next was. I stood the glass back up on its base (it was a tulip glass) and we began mopping up the spilt ale as best we could when the already cracked glass “exploded” into fragments, showering the table top with shards of glass.
I went to speak to one of the bar staff, the broken glass presenting a serious hazard to any customer using that particular table. When I mentioned how the glass exploded she responded “Oh yes that happens a lot in this pub!” she went on to say that empty glasses regularly exploded behind the bar theorising that the high temperatures used in the glass washing appliances might be to blame. I replied with words to the effect of “but doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd?” and she immediately replied with words to the effect of “I’m sure this pub is haunted, there’s definitely a ghost here!”
And that’s about it...so far!
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