Funny you should mention this.. I've been rereading my old FT's of late & spotted this in the letters pages.. (Hope FT don't mind me reprinting it
) *Dons typing gloves*
David Hambling's piece on lost underground stations & subterranean citadels which exist beneath London [FT108] reminded me of something a neighbour told me in the summer of 1996.
He was a maintanence & repair engineer for large heavy duty machinery and explained that once he had a repair job under the Palace Theatre in Manchester city centre. After finishing the job, he tended to wander around to kill time, or to duck out of other work required of him elsewhere. This time he meandered around many corridors and down stairways & was amazed at the length of the corridors & rows of doors facing him. He was further astonished to find some open areas resembling poorly-lit streets. Although it was difficult for him to judge their actual size, he noticed there were very large and very clean corridors and types of streets going of in all directions.
Feeling a little uncomfortable, he decided to head back up, but was confronted by two men who took him into a room and questioned him for over an hour. Both were dressed like military police, but somewhat dated in appearance. One of them searched his wallet for identification. Having nothing to hide, he answered all their questions, although they never seemed happy with his answers. To his relief, he was eventually guided up stairs and through doors and allowed to go on his way.
Expecting that a complaint would be made to his employer followed by a reprimand, and not having time to go to the next job, he felt disgruntled and went home - only to find his house had been broken into and ransacked.