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Spooked On The Job: Your Haunted Workplaces

Hale The Elk said:
I used to work in the offices of a recruitment agency. Leading off from our office was a smaller room which housed a franking machine and the paperwork for all of the temps who worked for the company. One day I was franking the mail with a colleague ready to take to the post office. There was a rack attached to the wall containing job cards for temps who had left. The rack suddenly started shaking uncontrollably for no apparent reason.

In one of the other offices there was also a radio that would turn itself up.
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Was there a rather large antenna of any kind in the vicinity?
 
There was a Senior Lecturer at the College where I work, I didn't know him well but he was a nice chap and had a distinctive laugh. Unexpectedly about 25 years ago, he drowned on holiday in Africa . The report said he'd wandered off from a camp party at night for some reason and next morning it was evident where at the river bank he'd struggled to get out of the water. A couple of years later I started doing the AV maintenance in the evening when the College was largely deserted. I'd hear his laugh in the empty corridor outside a particular room around 7 pm and immediately think ' oh I know who's still working .. no hang on ?!' I didn't actually hear the laugh, I heard the echo of the laugh in my ears - does that make sense ? This happened maybe 6 times and every time I was fooled into thinking he was outside in the corridor, before rational brain had a chance to catch up.
 
I work from home now. (Not haunted!) But I did work in a haunted building. It’s now been converted into flats, but at that time it was a 3 storey place with two companies: the one I worked for and, next-door, a t.v. company (something to do with SC4) The two companies shared toilet/kitchen facilities that ran along the back of the ground floor.

The street (Newport Street, Swindon) is supposed to be old and one of the pubs just along the road (used to be the Old Town Tavern now the Steam Railway, I think) was an old coaching inn back in the day.

Because it was a relatively new business the two directors and some of the staff would be working all hours of the night. Once when they were upstairs on the first floor they heard steps running up the stairs and right to the room where they were working — the door crashed open. No-one and nothing there.

One of the directors was getting ready to go out straight from work one evening and alone so he used the ladies toilet to comb his hair etc as it had a mirror. He swore he saw a dark haired women behind him wearing some sort of cameo choker.

I didn’t much like working there alone doing overtime, but I never saw or felt anything save one day when I was down in the kitchen. It was the end room, with the ladies toilet just beyond and the gents further down.

I heard footsteps (like a woman’s in heeled shoes) coming down the corridor, clicking on the tiles and then stop. I thought it might be the part time secretary from the SC4 company going into the ladies and didn’t think much of it, but then decided I needed to use the room too, and waited a bit — nothing. I stepped out of the kitchen to look, but the door of the ladies was open.

I just stood there for a few seconds thinking, ‘Odd’, or that I just never heard them flush the loo or go back up the corridor or something, and went back into the kitchen to get my bag, and the steps started again, right by the kitchen door and went past me as if walking through the wall. I had that ‘every hair on the back of my neck stood up’ thing and just froze for a moment, then bolted. (After that when I worked alone in the camera room which was dark, I just played music very loud :D )

Anyhow, the SC4 people had a basement in their part of the building where they stored their filming equipment.One of the men was in there alone at the weekend and heard the most tremendous crashing and breaking as if all of it were being thrown around. He rushed down to find everything unbroken and in place. (He also asked my boss, when he saw him, to check that we hadn’t been broken into or anything and the noise hadn’t come from us. All was fine).

The pub, where I often had a sandwich on Fridays, had a well in the courtyard, covered over or bricked up, but they were having some work done on the place so it was opened up for a time. The landlord said that for the days it was opened he would come down to see a trail of water from the well going to the door of the front bar, under it, to behind the bar. So he’d mop it up and the next morning it would be there again, although any water in the well was way down. He got people in to see if there were leaks from the bar etc, and nothing. His big dog, that slept behind the bar, refused to do so when the well was open.
 
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I used to work in a building in Warwick which was (apparently) haunted.

It started life as a bakery and was built, I believe, at the turn of the 18th century. It had all of the creaks, groans and drafts you'd expect from a building more than 300 years old, which probably added to the ambiance. While I didn't ever experience anything major, both myself and colleagues occasionally mentioned the feeling of someone being stood very near to the back of your chair, only to turn around to see nobody nearby.

Another (quite senior) member of the team claimed to see the outline of somebody stood in the corner of the reception area when she was leaving one night, but, frustratingly, didn't go into too much detail when she came to recount the story months later!

I now (well, in non-COVID times) work in a converted hospital, but have yet to experience anything spooky. Will keep you posted if I do!
 
Years ago about 1978 I worked for Crossley Carpets in Halifax a big Victorian mill complex in what was called the Plain Wilton Shed, there had been rumours and tales ever since I started about "something" in the cellars where some of the machine parts were stored.

I was working night shift and about 3:00 in the morning (yes that time again!!) I asked my colleague Jim to go and get me a set of shuttle hammers. He seemed to be gone for an inordinate length of time so in the end I went to look for him.

The cellar was dim and dingy lit by only a few low wattage bulbs, s I entered I shouted for him and as I did so he came charging round the corner of some of the racking we kept the parts on.

His eyes were wide, I don't believe I've ever seen anybody's eyes as wide and he was obviously terrified. I helped him back upstairs, there was a tea machine just down the corridor at the top and I got him a cup of tea.

I sat him at a table in the little smoking area we had and asked him what had happened.

he said he was looking for the correct size of hammer when he "felt" something behind him, thinking it was me or one of the other loom tuners he turned around and said, and his point he actually burst into tears, something "big and dark" had reared up over him and made a "hissing noise"

He was pale and trembling, definitely in my opinion suffering from shock.

He was off work for quite a while and it was noticeable that none of the older hands even thought to mock him about it. The loom tuners made an unofficial rule that from then on we went down there together.
 
I worked for an engineering company in the NE of England in the mid 90s (I've posted this a few times some of you may have read this, some not) The office was an old L shaped building in a yard. Hard to describe this building but through the door a small office on the right, on the left a counter & open plan office & then a door in the corner to the other part of the L (if you see what I mean) in this office there was a toilet & a door to the outside. This led to the front of the yard & a little alcove which was like a short `alley` about 15ft long & about 6ft wide, nothing above us except for attic space & a slate roof.

Any how at any one time there would be me & the office manager (who I will call Pat) who sat in the open plan office. Now apart from the phones ringing, us talking or the radio, most days you could hear a pin drop as we worked. A few times we heard someone in the other office walking about & taps & knocks.....as expected we`d get up to see who had come into the office through the outside door (back office) & 9 times out of 10 no one...…. The door into the other office was 90% of the time open & quite a few times through the gap through this door, you'd see a figure or a dark shape `flit` past, only for no one to enter our office. Pat & I both agreed that we never felt threatened or scared but that on some occasions when we happened to be on our own for whatever reason, there was always a feeling we where being watched & this feeling would really get to you (on a few occasions Pat admitted that she had gone outside for 1 or 2 mins & then gone back in just to shake the feeling off or let it subside).

One Incident (out of many) which unnerved us the most happened one afternoon (winter time, clocks had gone back & it was approx. 3.30 - 4-30pm) all the lads (engineers) where out on a project or inspection, & only Pat & I where in the place. I had turned my chair around to face Pat (normally we worked back to side - my back to her left side) out of the corner of my eye I noticed a figure move / flit past the window at the end of the office, Quickly I jumped up ( I thought someone was in the yard stealing or up to no good) I shouted to Pat `quick Pat` & she got up & followed me, I went through the door into the back office & threw the door open which led into the alley way, it must have took me about 2-3 seconds to do this, I jumped out to catch `whoever` - no one..... No one could have gone out & through the gate in that time, no one could have jumped the wall etc & the figure in all honestly looked as if they'd come through the end wall of next door ( a solid brick wall_ & into the alley way...…we closed the front gates (temporarily) & looked around the yard, workshop, cabins, loft etc...…..nothing. Me & Pat at first thought one of the lads may have been having a laugh but no, they all pulled into the yard about 30-40 mins later.

Across from the L shaped Office block was the Warehouse / workshop, my mate Bill (not real name) worked in here, He was a few years younger than me (about 23-24) & had been in the army so things like, bumps, knocks & ticks wouldn't have scared him so easily, but he admitted to me a few times that things got quite spooky.

He sometimes used an angle grinder & wore safety glasses or goggles, a few times when he knew fine well he was on his own, he would see things out the corner of his eye, & thinking it was a customer or member of staff, take his goggles off & head to the area he`d seen someone & of course no one around....(he mentioned that it had happened a few times & it wasn't a spark or a reflection but seemed like someone walking into the workshop).

He mentioned that once he & a colleague where working together when they both heard a noise in the loft area, (above the workshop with a wall `open` so as to receive supplies etc) footsteps, shuffling, there was only one way in, one way out & no one had passed them, so they went up there, nothing...

I mentioned to Bill my experiences & he had one similar to mine with regards to hearing someone in the other office....& that time when me or Pat where not there & he heard the other office door open & close & thought this was the manager coming into the office.....Bill said he walked through speaking to who he thought was in the office only for him to enter the office & find it to be completely empty, he said he thought he was going `potty` when that happened....

One evening, working late at another site he had to come back to the yard on his own, The works van needed to be put in the workshop. You would unlock / open the office door, lights on, turn the alarm off, get the workshop keys from the drawer, head to the workshop to open the workshop door, & the shutter door (to drive the van in), once done, close the shutter door & lock the workshop door, then put the keys back in the office drawer & turn the lights off & put the alarm on, he said from opening the office door he felt watched & dread, his hair was on end & he felt someone stood in the corner of the office hated him & wanted him out of the there. This was just getting the keys `out`, he had to go back in to put the keys away & set the alarm!! He put the van away & said on the return to the office, he felt as if whoever it was would hurt him, his nerves went & he does not know how he did it to this day but managed to do all those things in a matter of seconds before running out of the main gates to his car. He was told off the next day (the manager had informed me of what happened) he had put the alarm on, but not turned the office light off or locked the door, but there was no disciplinary as the same had happened to him on many occasions (it did happen to me also) & the same feelings exactly too.

Another time Bill came running into the office & lambasted one of our lads (John) for walking out of the workshop & seemingly ignoring him, whilst he was calling him to help with some work...….(the lads all wore red overalls) only to be told by John he had just walked from the changing cabins straight into the office & had not been anywhere near the workshop. Bill did admit he glanced up & thought it was John but couldn't be sure now... There was a similar incident where one of our engineers saw someone in blue overalls (our engineers wore red) & shouted to them `wont be a minute`, when he entered the workshop they'd gone & again hadn't come into the office.

Other incidents where tools or pieces of machinery going missing & turning up (after a search) in the same place or area they had gone missing from, another one was our manager (Mick) was in the `loft` area one day & heard someone enter the workshop & shout `hello` (for attention) for Mick to reply & say `one second`...…Mick came down from the loft to find the workshop empty, he then came into the office & was surprised to find no one, when he mentioned the `voice` we told him no one had been in the office... he checked the workshop & yard, no one...…..again one way in & out of there (the fire exit to the workshop was alarmed & would have gone off if opened).

I'm sure there's more little incidents like the above but there the ones that I remember most.
 

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Bororeturn1 said:
York......lots of Haunted places
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I have a relative who works in a tourist trap on Stonegate. She says that most of those shops do have cellars and therefore potential storage space for stock but that many if not most of the shops won't use the cellars but actively pay out for storage elsewhere in the town centre. Apparently, the famous ghosts of Roman soldiers seen marching through the cellars of the Treasurer's House are also still seen, frequently - in the cellars on Stonegate. I don't think this is a well known story even though it involves one of the most famous ghost stories in the world.

Husband knew one of the women who used to work at Clifford's Tower. She said that they regularly heard footsteps - sounded like a group of people, IIRC - in one of the stair wells after they kicked the public offsite at night. They would have to check they hadn't accidentally shut someone in and there was never anybody there when they looked.

Knew someone whose parents owned a restaurant, years ago, not far from the Minster (behind the minster gardens, I forget which gate it is). They'd frequently lock up the restaurant at night, everyone went home and come back next day to find the chairs lifted off the tables where they left em at night (or thrown around, again IIRC, because I was told this years back). They were the owners and knew no-one else had the keys.
 
There was a little girl when I was small. The olduns told me she imaginary.other then that i used to work at The Bell in Hounslow. That used to be hanging place. For punters and hundreds years before for criminals. There were ghosts.
 
Details? :) Pretty please?
 
From https://www.hauntedhostelries.uk/haunted-inns/london-boroughs/hounslow/the-bell/

I don't mean to be a cynic (merely a curious fortean) but "live gibetting?" yeah, was that really a thing? I thought gibets were for people who had already been hanged. There's a ghastly book here and I dont' think it mentions such a thing and I'm sure it would. https://archive.org/details/hanginginchains00hart
I feel like someone on the website above is getting a bit carried away in their wish for things to be as revolting as possible. Maybe they're getting confused with the fact that you would be hanged from a gibbet. Certainly you're live when you get up there but that doesn't last long at the end of a rope. And then after that there may have been 'gibbetting' which was the body being hung in chains on there until it decayed. Beyond revolting.

Also (less revoltingly) I think the owners of that pub need to check how they're storing the beer if the barrels are exploding :)

pedantic cynic out
 
My wife used to work in two haunted locations, other than carpetright in Cambridge. The first seems to have dried up in recent years but the second is still active, and things were reported as recently as Christmas, with figures and strange noises. Previously, there had been things moving by themselves and the sensation of being touched.

These are in West Norfolk but I can't reveal the locations as they are special care homes. I'll be mentioning them (again, with no names) in a forthcoming book I'm writing about the town's phantoms.
 
Eponastill said:
I don't mean to be a cynic (merely a curious fortean) but "live gibetting?" yeah, was that really a thing? I thought gibets were for people who had already been hanged.
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Yup, it was a thing. It is what was also called being 'hanged in chains'.
(safe Spooky Isles site)

GIBBETED: THE LAST LIVE GIBBETING IN ENGLAND

It involves being suspended outdoors in a body-hugging cage that utterly restricts all movement. There you’re left to the mercy of the crows and the cold. All who were put into a gibbet would leave a skeleton – the flesh having fallen from their bones, their tastiest bits having long since become carrion – perhaps whilst they still drew breath. Not pleasant.

We know of the last person to ever have been gibbeted alive. It happened in the 1830s in Baslow, directly east of the historic Chatsworth House in Derbyshire.
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Edited to tidy up quote/link confusion.
 
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escargot said:
Yup, it was a thing. It is what was also called being 'hanged in chains'.
(safe Spooky Isles site)
The torturous tale of the last live gibbeting in England[url]
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I don't want to quibble with such an esteemed contributor as your molluscan self but the book I linked to is specifically called 'hanging in chains' and it's about hanging people's dead bodies in chains after they've been hanged (dead) already??
https://archive.org/details/hanginginchains00hart/page/70/mode/2up
and I think the writers of these webpages have got the wrong end of the stick.
And actually this page https://archive.org/details/hanginginchains00hart/page/94/mode/2up and the ones following (p98), kind of 'snopes' away the idea of live gibbeting and he calls it a 'superstitious belief in a poor vulgar fiction'...
so I'm still going for 'piffle'.

(btw I'm not afraid of trading in my FF webpoints to get EnolaGaia on the case haha)
 
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"Gibbeting" was a common term for several forms of public execution (the Halifax Gibbet was a guillotine), but 'hanging in chains' specifically referred to the Gibbet cage - and I have not yet found a case of this being a form of execution in this country. The condemned man was hung until dead and then placed in a Gibbet cage as both a denial of a proper burial and a deterrent to others. Live gibbeting I believe may have been carried out in the West Indies as a specific punishment for a slave that rose up against his rightful Master, but not in England 10 years before Victoria acended the throne. I have looked up some of the names of those gibbeted on the Spooky Isles site and they were all executed before being being caged.
 
Posted this one a few times, but here it is (for any newbies)

I worked for a short period in retail, (90s) the company specialised in Motor car accessories & parts. This was in the N.E. of England & at the time there was approx. 5 - 6 shops in the area.

I was only young & as I could drive & used my own car I was asked to cover some shops at short notice. One shop I was asked to cover had a bit of a reputation & although it was situated near other shops on that stretch, sometimes it was deathly (no pun intended) quiet. Myself & a colleague over a period of a few weeks felt & noticed certain things that un-nerved us a bit & luckily for me this was my last spell with the company before I started work elsewhere. Any how back to the events.

The back area of the shop (office / safe / store room) was bare & no decoration or attention was paid to it. In the far left corner was the safe, (a hole in the floor with a small hatch which was opened with a key) this area we noticed gave us goose bumps & the hairs on the back of your neck stood on end. It was the feeling of being watched, as if someone was physically stood over you as you opened & closed the safe, not a very nice feeling at all. Of course being the `safe` we had to open this first thing on a morning & last thing at night (or if the amount in the till was over a certain amount, then further visits) This area was deliberately concealed & poorly lit (in case of break-ins) this led to some stairs to the first floor above the shop & a flat which was vacant (more of this later). The first instances in the shop where taps & knocks, bangs, the feeling of being watched & CotEM (Corner of the Eye Movement) which happened quite a few times.

Once my colleague & I where stood in the shop talking to a customer when a `baby seat` which had been placed on the top shelf (& had been on this shelf for a few months) seemed to leap (not fall) from the shelf & land in the middle of the shop whilst we where all stood there. Once this customer had left & as it was a quiet day we decided to `re enact` this event by putting the seat back in its original position & tapping the seat a little until it slid off the shelf...…each time it fell to the bottom of the shelves & not the 7-8 foot it had travelled to earlier, on its own.

Another time my colleague & I stood open mouthed as footsteps went from one side of the room upstairs, across to the other.....slow / steady ….once they stopped it was a case of `you go first, No you` etc...…..until we both locked the front of the shop & both of us went up stairs, we both `armed` our selves with what we could find just in case some one had broken in...…..we checked all over the place...….nothing. Again walking from room to room we felt, watched, not welcome & just a very unpleasant feeling that we weren't allowed or wanted up there.

The strangest incident I suppose was when I was working `out the back` probably sorting out stock etc & my colleague was in the front of the shop cleaning shelves & had a bucket of water & various cleaning materials etc....he had looked up to see a guy standing at one of the shelves, my colleagues hands where wet, so shouted me, I replied & a few seconds later walked out `what`.....my colleague tilted his head round the shelf & nodded in the direction of where this person was, only to be shocked that he wasn't there anymore.....I walked to the door & looked out, no one he described (tall man in brown & wearing a cloth cap). There was a bloke there a second ago !!!!!! Oh right...….& back to work it was.

I left a few weeks later for pastures new, & haven't seen the shop in years. However the last time i happened to pass by, it was a tanning salon.
 
I've never seen Bororeturn1, but, from my incredibly reliable psychic third eye, am definitely getting the very strong sense that, yes, Bororeturn1 is extremely lacking in healthy color due to lack of sunlight.
Not only that, but Bororeturn1 is in need of a boost of light to counteract SADD, which undermines the immune system. Serious ill consequences imminent. Must go to tanning salon ASAP.
 
I'm not sure if I work in a haunted location, but there's been a couple of odd instances - and more staff seem to be picking up on this, just recently.

One weekend about seven years ago, I was working alone on the third floor of our 1980s city centre office block. The building had just switched from a hardwired telephony exchange setup to a new networked VOIP system, and my task as a support office bod was to ensure all the extensions in my section were functional before everyone came back in on Monday.

In basic terms, I had an enormous list of extension numbers for the couple of hundred people working on the floor, and I had to manually dial each one from a desk phone to verify the number was now connected by listening to it ring out on my handset. Any that returned an engaged tone, or nothing at all, I was told to log for the engineers to take a look at, and then go and put a sticky note on the non-working handset.

This was pretty tedious work, but The Powers That Be had decreed it necessary. I wasn't totally alone in the seven-storey building, since there were security guards in their ground-floor room by the back entrance, but there was clearly no one else in the big open plan offices, or the smaller rooms and stores that led off them. The overhead lights were on motion sensors, so most of them shut off about ten minutes after I sat down and stayed off, and while there was light coming in from the windows around the edge, some areas towards the middle were fairly shaded.

The vast majority of phones were correctly connected, and I think only one or two failed to ring out. I was cracking through the list rightly, and since it was now approaching half four, I was hopeful that I might be able to get away slightly early.

Jabbing at the next extension number on my list, I heard two ringing pulses from my handset and, at the same time, could faintly make out the matching sound of a phone ringing in one of the smaller offices down the corridor.

I ticked the line on my list, and moved my hand to press the 'call cancel' button on my phone. But just as I went to touch it, there was a sudden click on the handset, and a voice said, "Hello?"

I was surprised, though not quite alarmed. I'd thought I was alone on the floor, but people did occasionally come in on the weekends to clear urgent items.

"Hello?" I replied, slightly confused more than anything and holding the handset closer to my ear. I noticed then that there was a weird sort of metallic hum on the line, almost like a hollow whistling noise.

"Hello?", said the voice, again. It seemed somehow far away, slightly distorted. Flat. Male. Older. Or that's how it sounded, anyway. I hadn't actually spoken to anyone yet using this new VOIP system, so I'd no idea how it would sound like to have a conversation. Maybe this was what it was like? The hum grew suddenly louder for just a second or so, then cut to complete silence.

I said 'hello' a few more times, but there was no response. I pressed the call cancel button and, on releasing it, got only the usual 'line available' tone from the earpiece.

Perplexed, I dialled the number again, and I heard it ring out in the office down the corridor. And it just rang. No-one picked it up.

I hung up, and checked the list to see what room the network socket was installed in. It was one of three large offices down in the corner of the building, used by senior managers.

Unsure whether there was a fault in the line, or if there actually was someone else working on the floor, I dialled the extension number on my mobile phone and moved towards the door that led from the big open-plan office out into the corridor. As I walked across the floor, the motion sensors in the ceiling triggered the lights to come back on, and I could hear the phone in the other office continuing to ring.

More lights came on as I stepped out into the corridor, and walked on down towards the corner offices. These comprised a door off the corridor into a central office with a small seating area, two secretaries' desks, a copier and a small kitchen area, with doors to three separate offices for senior staff leading off it. I could still hear the phone ringing, from the smallest of the three offices. This office was on the other side of the wall from where I'd just been sitting.

On stepping inside, the space was virtually empty. It had belonged to a Director who had retired a month or two previously, and all the furniture had been removed, save for a filing cabinet and a computer hard drive sitting on the floor. The phone was connected to the hard drive, and was still ringing.

I cancelled the call on my mobile, and looked around. The offices and corridor had all been in darkness until I stepped in, so clearly no-one had been moving around in the area. Besides, no-one would be working in here - aside from the lack of a desk, the hard drive on the floor had no monitor or keyboard.

If the phone handset in this office had been silent the first time I dialled, then whenever someone picked up I would have assumed that there was a crossed wire somewhere causing the number to ring out to a different phone somewhere else entirely. But it had rung before being answered, twice. Was there some sort of intermittent fault? I dialled the number again on my mobile, and the handset before me began to ring. I then reversed the process and used the phone on the floor to dial my mobile number, and it connected and began ringing, showing the correct number on the caller ID display.

Mildly creeped out by the abandoned office, and suddenly aware of how alone I was, I slunk back to my own desk. I didn't know enough about the system to understand if it was possible for an intermittent fault to do what seemed to have happened. But it seemed to be working ok now, so I didn't add it to my list.

I quickly finished off the rest of the list, and skedaddled. As I signed out down by the guards' room, I asked if there was anyone else working in the building. I was assured there was not.

To be fair, I didn't give this episode very much thought afterwards, chalking it up to some weird teething issues on a new network. The new system worked ok, and before long I moved out of the support office to a junior management post - still on the third floor, though.


A little over a year ago, I was walking along a corridor on the far side of the third floor, on my way back from a meeting. There are pairs of fire doors fitted at intervals along the corridors, and these are fitted with self-openers activated by a wall-mounted button. Ostensibly installed for the benefit of staff with mobility issues, the self-openers render the doors so heavy to open that most staff just push the buttons as they approach the doors as a matter of course.


As I rounded a corner, I could clearly see one single door of the pair about 20 yards in front of me begin to slowly swing open as I approached. There was no one else around to have pressed the button ahead of me, and even if there had been, I would have been able to see them further up the corridor as the fire doors are glazed. But I was the only person in the corridor.


Now, not initially seeming like really a weird thing - they're meant to open in pairs, but sometimes they don't. It's just about possible that there was a fault with the button, except for the fact that the self-openers are enormously noisy and jerky in operation. This door opened completely silently and smoothly as I approached.

As stated, the mechanism is immensely heavy and makes the door very, very difficult to open if you try to push or pull it manually without pressing the button. There was no possibility that it could have swung open of its own accord, or been blown by the wind (there was no air movement). As I drew closer, the door snapped shut again, as if released. Warily, I pressed the wall button and both doors groaned into life and opened with their customary electric motor whirring and clunking.

It may or may not be relevant, but these doors are adjacent to the directors' offices, where the odd phone incident happened a few years previously.

Puzzled, I jotted it down in my diary, just as a reminder - just around 4.30pm on Thursday 27 Feb 2020. The same time of day as the picked-up phonecall.

Obviously, a few weeks later everything went a bit weird with COVID-19, and the building was shuttered while staff were instructed to work from home.

I called into the office in early May to pick up some files, and again in September to return said files. There was no one else on the third floor on either occasion, and the offices did seem a little creepy - but I put this down to not having been anywhere for some months, coupled with a general sense of unease at how quiet the normally-busy office building was.

I wasn't back in again until December, trying to resolve a printer network issue. On arrival, the open plan office on the third floor was empty, but the lights were on and I could see some PCs switched on across a couple of desk pods, so clearly some staff were about.

I was busy at my desk, and still wearing my long coat along with a dark facemask, when the door from the corridor swung open, and three staff members from another team ambled in with takeaway coffee cups. One of them, on perceiving me, gave a startled yelp, then looked closer and laughed, muttering to her companions, "Oooh, I thought that was the ghost for a second!"

Another of the staff chuckled as well, "No, sure the ghost's down the other end." He indicated the darkened far end of the room; down where my old desk used to be - that one that backed on to the disused Director's office.

They wandered back to their desks and, although I wanted to ask them to elaborate, I couldn't work out how to raise the topic without seeming weird. (I didn't really know them; as I said it's a big office and they're not in my unit).

Then, last Thursday, I was back in trying to fix the print issue again… and saw this pinned to the wall.

IMG_20210225_154516~3.jpg


Well, okay then.

Maybe I had better start asking around... starting with John.
 
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