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Spooked On The Job: Your Haunted Workplaces

Large industrial kitchens; when they are closed down for the night are incredibly creepy places to walk through. I served my time in the hotel business in the late nineties and when I was on late shift at a large resort hotel, we would have to leave the building via the kitchen service door. To get to the door required walking through a gargantuan kitchen which was lit only by those florescent insect-zapping gadgets. I always, ALWAYS felt watched from those dark shadows cast by the banks of gas ranges, ovens, fryers, the 4 slightly-menacing Hobart mixers and the stock pots. So much sharp steel waiting in the darkness.
 
heisenbear said:
Large industrial kitchens; when they are closed down for the night are incredibly creepy places to walk through. I served my time in the hotel business in the late nineties and when I was on late shift at a large resort hotel, we would have to leave the building via the kitchen service door. To get to the door required walking through a gargantuan kitchen which was lit only by those florescent insect-zapping gadgets. I always, ALWAYS felt watched from those dark shadows cast by the banks of gas ranges, ovens, fryers, the 4 slightly-menacing Hobart mixers and the stock pots. So much sharp steel waiting in the darkness.
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This is an environment that casts large and irregular shadows. Our genes evolved to worry about this. The jungle, the kitchen. Could be a raptor behind any of those mixers.
 
Swifty said:
Where and how did it appear ?
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It was over the other side of the office, on a bank of desks. we were the only people in the office, aircon wasn't on. I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, it looked like my co worker had thrown it if he was standing behind me, which he wasn't. It made a quiet noise when it hit the desk, bounced once then bounced onto the floor.
 
Ive posted about a few places ive worked in that was (or seemed) haunted. One place I totally forgot about was when I left college & started work at electrical wholesalers. Office on the right as you walked in & a warehouse which covered about 80% of the site. Whilst in the warehouse some days (filling in for warehouse staff) id see a lot of things out the corner of my eye, but put it down to the shelving......however even when stood still & looking at an piece of equipment on a shelf, something would make me `look up` at a certain area of the shelves etc. Also at the back of the warehouse was a boiler & too the right of this a section of shelving which came to a `dead end, in this area more than any other part of the building, noises, more movement & just a feeling of unease.

My boss wasnt happy one morning (just tired i suppose) as hed already been out at 3am due to the burglar alarm going off. The `alarm` panel showed which alarm & time etc.....it wasn't one near the doors or windows etc & came from `that area`. He put it down to a spider crawling over the detector, but we werent so sure it was that sensitive. Another time he was called out & found a stack of cable which had been neatly & evenly stacked had fallen over, of course setting the alarm off but again not sure if it was the weight or pressure making it fall or not.

One morning I remember coming into work & a bit of `goss` about `the ghost` & that my manager (who was usually in first & opened up) had drove past the windows into the industrial estate & had sworn hed seen someone sat at one of the desks near the window. He wasn't too alarmed initially as he & the assistant manager had a set & he thought it may be him, but he said that he got a bit more nervous as he `unlocked the door` & then realised the alarm was still activated, all lights off etc. etc.

I was told by our van driver that the estate was built on an old hospital, whether Its true or not im not sure & ive never checked of followed this up (plus our van driver was a bit of a Walter Mitty character & you wouldn't trust him as far a you could throw him).

It would be interesting if there was maps, & documents etc. ill have to inquire.
 
Eve11 said:
It seems that I might. My workplace is old, built onto the foundations at least of a medieval property on a medieval street. The upper part looks like it was extensively rebuild in 18th century, with an extension on the back I'd say was latter 20th century. It's a shop and has been used for trade/retail for at least 200 years- I've done some research.

The stock room and offices are on the first floor, and this is where the oddness has been. So far a locked door that we're not allowed access to for health and safety reasons (it leads to an upper floor and attic) has been found open a number of times. The kettle in the kitchen area kept switching itself on when no one was in there - I did not witness this myself but colleagues have, and blamed it on the electrics. I have felt a sense of someone watching me, and on a couple of occasions following me, in there. It always seems to be coming from the area of the locked door, but it seems to come and go and most of the time I feel nothing.

However today I had my first experience of something more tangible. There's a short flight of stairs leading from the stock room to the kitchen (which also feels a bit odd) and I sat there for an unofficial break after shifting some stock. I could see the entrance to the small kitchen but not into it. I heard a very loud repeated clicking or rapping about 6-8 times. It COULD have been the kettle switch being hit because it has a loud click, but it definately didn't switch on, or something else. I stood up straight away, being the intrepid fortean explorer I am, and went into the kitchen. It's tiny, you could only squeeze 3 people in at a time and there's no other entrance. As I entered the air seemed smokey and a bit dim but it cleared after a moment and brightened up (it was sunny outside). There was no more sound from the first step I took towards it.

There was no one else on that level, there's only one way up and I was sitting next to it, no other way into the kitchen than the one I could see, and it's the first floor above a large locked and definately empty courtyard so no one outside.

I've researched the history of the building and found nothing unusual, though it is a very old town centre with quite a few ghost stories attached to some of the other buildings.

One point of possible interest - there's effectively a river in the basement. There's a watercourse running through the town that was been buried and built over centuries ago, and we apparently have some kind of culvert that floods when it rains and you can hear it like a waterfall when you're near the cellar door. That is also sealed locked so I've never seen it. We're not allowed access to that either, again for health and safety reasons.
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I think our buildings might be twins. Ours is a shop that started off as shops in the early Victorian era. We have spooks on all inhabited floors. We have a locked upper floor (also H&S). I have been up there though and it's not nice. Oh yes and we have culvert in the basement. We too are in a town centre.

I'll be back later with more info but I was just stuck by how similar they were. I kept checking I hadn't written it lol.
 
MorningAngel said:
Not spooky, just untouched for decades full of dust, cobwebs and missing floorboards.
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I forgot to mention the delightful pigeon graveyard on the flat roof that one of the doors leads to. Interesting a friend had also been up there but there was no graveyard when she'd looked.

Right to the ghosties. Like I said the building has been shops since the early Victorian period. Eventually a drapers took over all four shops and kept expending. It went out of business in the 70s and our shop took over.

In the basement the ghost is of a monk apparently, we call him Norman and I always make sure I say good night to him when I close the basement up for the night. Apparently they tried to exorcise him once but it didn't work and everyone who went down there felt ill. Apparently he's there to protect us. I don't think I've seen anything down there. But there was a double boxed toy on the cement floor that went off while I was a distance from it. One colleague however was at the top of the basement stairs with a limited view saw some legs walk past. She thought it was the other manager the only other person still there (or so she thought) but she turned out to be somewhere else. Also my friend saw 'Norman' walk through racking and a wall. The basement was only made in the 1930s as it's under some of the extension (There are original basements but they are hard to get to and last I heard the ladders were rotten). It was used as an air raid shelter during the war too. Also as I said above it's got a river culvert, I'm not sure if the body of water helps.

On the ground floor there is a nun apparently although she seems to keep herself to herself. She's supposed to hug you if you're down but as far as I know none of my colleagues or I have experienced anything. I did however have a customer talking about her like he could see her!

In the main stock room upstairs we have been told there's children although someone saw a male figure up there and I saw a black mass that was adult human shaped. I also saw what looked like a colleague go past on the other aisle but I was there alone and the person I thought it was would certainly have tried to freak me out. Things go missing and I'm not sure if it's always us or sometimes the spooks.

I didn't understand how we have a nun and a monk in the shop. Our town did have a Priory but not very near to that part. However I did find out not long ago that there may have been other Priory buildings as well as a convent near there, which would make more sense. So they may well have been there a lot longer than the current building. I wonder if the nun frequented the first shop. That would be very interesting to know.

We did a ghost hunt near Halloween one year after begging for years. We didn't find anything of course, you don't if you go looking. Best I got was a streaky orby thing. There was a motion activated toy that nearly made me sh*t myself though.
 
My work is a place that just keeps giving. One of my colleagues was in the locker room alone when she saw a man reflected in the mirror. When I was first in on Friday I found the mirror on the floor, maybe he didn't like being seen.
 
I own and operate a small business which amongst other things, involves moving and transporting sensitive/confidential documents to be archived. Back in 2010, I was undertaking a job for the local council. I had to remove approximately 50 cardboard document crates from the middle floor of a soon-to-be-demolished office building. This building was built in the early Eighties and was built on the site of an old theatre where a terrible tragedy occurred in the early 1900s. More on that later.

There were only 2 entrances to the building. The main entrance, which was locked and shuttered and the rear entrance, which was a single door that could only be opened from the inside, This door was at the end of a short corridor which lead to the stairs to the upper floors. I had to get the boxes, which were in an empty room just off the first-floor landing, take them down the stairs and put them in the corridor by the exit door, ready to take out to my van. The custodian of the building had given me the keys and had gone back to his post manning the reception desk of another council property a block away. So I had the place to myself. Halfway through shifting the boxes, I was taking a quick breather in the downstairs corridor when from somewhere up above, I heard the distinct sound of three footsteps. Bump. Bump. Bump. And then the sound of a door slamming shut. I froze. The building was closed and sealed, as I had shut the only available door to keep unwanted guests out and there was no way anyone could have got past me as I was between the entrance hall and the stairs the whole time. I phoned the custodian and asked him if he had come back to my building. He said he hadn't but would come back over. 5 minutes later, he knocked on the access door and I let him in. He shut the door behind him and I told him what had just happened. He looked a bit pale but we decided to do a sweep of the building just in case there was a stowaway lurking somewhere in the offices upstairs. We searched the whole place and found nobody.

When we finally got all the archive boxes into my van, I handed the keys back to the custodian and he locked up. He said he had heard stories about the building and things going bump in the night, as well as the daytime.

This office building was built on the site of a former theatre, as mentioned earlier on(text lifted from Wikipedia)

'The Garrick Theatre was built in 1882 and renamed in 1909 after David Garrick, the actor and theatrical manager, who was born in Hereford in 1717.
In 1916, during World War I, a fund-raising concert was held "for the benefit of the Herefords and Shropshires"[2] (two local county regiments, the former actually being part of The Worcestershire Regiment; the latter the King's Shropshire Light Infantry) at the Garrick Theatre, Hereford.[3] One of the turns was provided by more than forty local school-children,[2] wearing snow maiden and Eskimo costumes made in part from cotton wool,[3][4] even though its use was prohibited in theatres, due to the risk of fire.'[2]

'As a group of 13 children were leaving the stage, one of their costumes caught fire: within moments, all 13 were alight.[2]

By the end of the night, despite rescue efforts by members of the cast and audience,[2] six children had died.[3] Two more died subsequently from their burns.'[3]


'A joint funeral for five of the victims was held at Hereford Cathedral.[2][4] The public stood "ten deep" in parts of nearby Broad Street as the funeral corteges passed. Soldiers served as pall-bearers.[2] The girls were buried at Hereford Crematorium,[3] but the precise location of their graves is lost.'

'The subsequent inquest heard conflicting claims. Faith Mailes, the concert organiser, whose daughter died, said that she had seen a smoker, backstage, discard a match.[2] Theatre staff and others present denied that anyone had been smoking.[2] Verdicts of accidental death were returned'.[2]

'At a meeting held in Hereford town hall in September 1916, it was decided to raise £500 with which to endow a memorial cot on the Children's Ward of Herefordshire General Hospital (since demolished).[2] That target was exceeded, and the cot was unveiled there, together with a memorial plaque, in April 1917'.[2][5]

'The theatre was rebuilt later in 1916, but subsequently demolished.[3] Another plaque, mentioning the fire, marks its former location, on Widemarsh Street.[3][4] As of 2014, local residents are campaigning for a "lasting memorial" near the site'.[3]

Next door to the now-demolished Garrick House offices, is a multi-storey car park that was built just before the office block. The car park itself has a funny vibe and it's also been the site of a few suicides since it opened. It's impossible to walk through it without getting an uneasy sensation of being watched, even on the top roof levels.
 
Mr Majic said:
Well over the weekend the workplace was active, plenty of bangging and noises and something play games peeking around the filing cabinets.
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Can you tell us a bit more?

Is this a generally recognised phenomenon with your workmates? Do you discuss it amongst yourselves? Any particular stories to share?
 
Not my workplace as such, but I used to volunteer for a charity which briefly had an office in this building:

http://www.bellsfarm.org.uk/

I think the council may have owned it at that time or some charity, so the office space was free of charge ad we were thrilled to have it. We had a monthly meeting in an upstairs room there - we got the office space later. I think I have posted before about the night when some of us stayed behind after a meeting. We had the keys and had been shown how to arm the alarm system. This was probably around 20 years ago. A person working there warned me that other groups had been locked in, and that there was a female ghost in the building this person and others had seen. She liked men and children and disliked women. As we were an all female group, we were told to expect 'something' might happen. The person who worked there wasn't on the premises at night in those days, and so we were expected to arm the alarm system and lock up and leave.

When we came to leave - which we had done before with no problem but IIRC this meeting went on longer than usual - we realised we were locked in. We couldn't get out of the fire door for a reason I forget (set off the alarm?) By a total fluke, one of our members was married to a locksmith so she rang him and he came out and had to 'rescue' us. He couldn't explain it either. It wasn't too scary as there was a few of us, but I'd have been terrified if alone or with just one other person...

I happened to be into living history at the time and was told a group of re-enactors sleeping there overnight had some weird experiences - some of the men were goosed (and no-one was that close to them!)

I will be honest and say every time I approached and left, I always felt like I was being watched and from a certain window. We all talked about it openly after a while and I wasn't the only one. This window was the room where we had our committee and other meetings.

I had to be in the office alone quite often but in broad daylight and with other workers/volunteers in the building, but I was still really scared. It never felt 'right' somehow and whatever it was felt malevolent.

Looking at the website I see viking re-enactors still meet up there so would be curious if they have had any experiences. I know someone who worked there claimed to have seen a female ghost and at pretty close quarters if I remember right (can't recall if more than once and I don't want to say owt to identify this person although if you ever read this, would love you to recount what you saw).

I never actually saw her but a good half dozen of us had the experience of being locked in, that night and I know we weren't the first. It was strongest in that room where we met (not our office).
 
GhostInTheMachine said:
Not my workplace as such, but I used to volunteer for a charity which briefly had an office in this building:

http://www.bellsfarm.org.uk/

I think the council may have owned it at that time or some charity, so the office space was free of charge ad we were thrilled to have it. We had a monthly meeting in an upstairs room there - we got the office space later. I think I have posted before about the night when some of us stayed behind after a meeting. We had the keys and had been shown how to arm the alarm system. This was probably around 20 years ago. A person working there warned me that other groups had been locked in, and that there was a female ghost in the building this person and others had seen. She liked men and children and disliked women. As we were an all female group, we were told to expect 'something' might happen. The person who worked there wasn't on the premises at night in those days, and so we were expected to arm the alarm system and lock up and leave.

When we came to leave - which we had done before with no problem but IIRC this meeting went on longer than usual - we realised we were locked in. We couldn't get out of the fire door for a reason I forget (set off the alarm?) By a total fluke, one of our members was married to a locksmith so she rang him and he came out and had to 'rescue' us. He couldn't explain it either. It wasn't too scary as there was a few of us, but I'd have been terrified if alone or with just one other person...

I happened to be into living history at the time and was told a group of re-enactors sleeping there overnight had some weird experiences - some of the men were goosed (and no-one was that close to them!)

I will be honest and say every time I approached and left, I always felt like I was being watched and from a certain window. We all talked about it openly after a while and I wasn't the only one. This window was the room where we had our committee and other meetings.

I had to be in the office alone quite often but in broad daylight and with other workers/volunteers in the building, but I was still really scared. It never felt 'right' somehow and whatever it was felt malevolent.

Looking at the website I see viking re-enactors still meet up there so would be curious if they have had any experiences. I know someone who worked there claimed to have seen a female ghost and at pretty close quarters if I remember right (can't recall if more than once and I don't want to say owt to identify this person although if you ever read this, would love you to recount what you saw).

I never actually saw her but a good half dozen of us had the experience of being locked in, that night and I know we weren't the first. It was strongest in that room where we met (not our office).
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This sounds familiar to the experiences that people have had at The Belper Arms in Leicestershire. However it's haunted by a ghost called "Five to four Fred" who likes women, but dislikes men.

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/topic/10981-the-randy-ghost/
 
My first job on leaving school in 1978 was at a branch of Greens Cameras and Hi Fi in my local high street. The building covered three floors and had been built in 1966 when the high street had been modernised, replacing the Victorian shops that had formerly occupied the space. Within days of my starting work one of my colleagues had mentioned having seen the figure of a man on the stairs leading up to the stock room on the second floor, the rest of that floor and the one above were not used except to store old shop fittings. I took the story with a pinch of salt and just assumed that they were trying to freak out the new guy.

Now, I never actually saw anything ghostly myself, but I did witness a couple of events that I still don't know quite how to explain. The shop was in a quiet location and was not very busy (I remember one occasion when the entire takings for the day were 37p, all I'd sold was a single battery), and it was during one of these slack periods that my work colleague and I were were just idly chatting in the shop when we heard an almighty crash come from behind a partition that blocked off the manager's office from the shop floor. Going to investigate we were shocked to see that somehow a heavy wooden door that had previously been sandwiched between the partition and a long storage unit was now laying on the floor. Somehow it had levitated up between the storage unit and partition and had then flown across the corridor before hitting the floor. Strangely, neither me nor my workmate seemed phased by this, and I recall we just lifted the door up and put it back, with some difficulty, to where it had come from.

As I lived closest to the shop and I had the keys, anytime the alarm went off it was me who had to go and check the premises and reset the alarm, something that happened regularly. There was never any sign of anyone trying to break in and the alarm was checked for electrical faults etc. and found to be working perfectly, but still the alarm would inexplicably trigger.

The other incident that I recall happened on my day off. I was in the high street doing some shopping and just popped in to Greens to say hello to the woman who was working as the manager at the time. She was on the phone as I walked in and, as soon as she saw me, said something in to the phone about it being alright now, hung up, and then proceeded to tell me that someone had locked themselves in to the toilet that was next to the kitchen on a kind of mezzanine at the back of the shop. She had actually been on the phone to the police, but for some reason she thought I'd be able to deal with it instead!

So, I grabbed a wooden bat that was kept behind the counter in case of any trouble, and made my way up to the kitchen. The door was indeed locked from the inside, the only way of fastening it was a barrel bolt, and the toilet window was barred on the outside. I banged on the door a few times, telling whoever was inside to open the door or I'd kick it in - at this point I was thinking someone must have come in to the shop without the manager noticing and had ensconced themselves in the bog. When I go no response I did what I'd promised and kicked the door in. The toilet was empty, the bolt was drawn across and my kick had dislodged the rest of it so it was hanging from the door jamb. I still have no idea how a bolt could close on its own in an empty room

The premises is a Chinese Restaurant now, I often wonder if they are feeding hungry ghosts....
 
Excellent story Clear Light (and you made me laugh with the 37p). I mean those are two seemingly inexplicable poltergeisty-sounding occurrences aren't they. It's hard to imagine how either could happen at all, 'normally'.
 
The_English_Rose1988 said:
This sounds familiar to the experiences that people have had at The Belper Arms in Leicestershire. However it's haunted by a ghost called "Five to four Fred" who likes women, but dislikes men.

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/topic/10981-the-randy-ghost/
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Ha! Yes, she was apparently, also a randy ghost according to the then-Viking re-enactors. She'd only physically touch men and in a bum groping kinda way.

Although she was kind to babies, IIRC - one of the actual sightings was someone who saw her standing over their (very young) children, but looking sort of protective. Not threatening at all. I wish I could remember the details of that. Someone who worked there only told me that after I'd been going a while. But then it's not the sort of thing you'd tell a stranger.

But the atmosphere generally - oppressive and I know there are physical phenomenon that can account for that hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck feeling.

I don't remember who was the first of our group to actually say out loud they felt like they were being watched from that window, when in the car-park but I recall that it wasn't just me.

I could only stand being 'alone' in the building, going in before meetings to set up, as I knew that others were still elsewhere in there, if not with me. I don't think I'd dared have been literally the only person in that building - day or night.
 
MorningAngel said:
I just asked one of the ladies that's been there the longest if she'd seen anything. She has, she saw something black and swishy in the basement before she was told what was supposed to be down there.
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Was it the tail of a black cat? Cat's tails can be very swishy.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
Was it the tail of a black cat? Cat's tails can be very swishy.
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Nope much bigger. While I think a cat would be great it would have tripped us up by now also my other colleague would have had a massive asthma attack if one had been about.
 
Last year I worked in Sau Mau Ping, one of Hong Kong's most 'haunted' public housing estates. Basically, in HK an area gets a reputation as haunted if a lot of murders or suicides happen there. There are a couple of areas like Tin Shui Wai (a depressing new town in the middle of nowhere) and the estate I worked on that are economically depressed and have relatively high rates of suicide and domestic violence. Other places get a reputation as suicide destinations, such as the (otherwise lovely) island of Cheung Chau.

Sau_Mau_Ping_Estate_Overview.jpg

(Sau Mau Ping)

Deaths in a building directly affect the property price, due to the idea that there may be restless spirits hanging around. See how this real estate website lists haunted buildings.

Although murder rates in Hong Kong are among the lowest in the world, there do seem to have been quite a few memorably grotesque murders (look up the Hello Kitty murder or the Braemar Hill murder if you want to get nightmares). One such was that of the 'flowerbox murders' that occurred a long time back in Elizabeth House, Wan Chai.

1990_1.jpg

(Elizabeth House)

Rents are still low in this building, which lies in one of the highest-rent areas in the world.


During my couple of years working in SMP, I didn't see any ghosts of course, though there were a couple of newsworthy crimes that happened in the area.
 
The building I work in is said to be haunted. Before it became offices it was a hotel, this I know to be true because I've seen postcards, it's said there was a fire there with fatalities, but I've had difficulty verifying that.
I've never seen anything but some colleagues have reported things, from the mundane such as cold spots and odd noises to the very creepy such as disappearing skeletal figures in the lift.
 
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