Unexplained Late-Night Office Noises

[gavin burnett]

Hello all.

This is probably not the most exciting story posted, but rest assured that everything that I am going to tell you certainly happened.

This story is not the most frightening thing that has ever happened to me, but it is certainly the most baffling experience that I have had.

To give a bit of background, I had a job back in 2001 doing IT work. At the office where I was working it was possible to gain access at any day and time through the use of a swipe card to open the main door. You had to then sign in and out using a book left at reception, as the receptionist would not be there outside of normal office hours.

One Friday night, I had been home from work for a few hours when I realized that I had left my phone charger in the office. Since I did not have a spare charger, my phone battery was almost flat and the office was only a fifteen minute drive from my flat; I decided to go in to pick it up. That evening I was reinstalling Windows onto my home PC so I needed to download some drivers, but I did not have the internet in my flat. So - I could do two jobs in one trip.

I got into the office at about 8PM. It was mid-October, so it was dark when I got there. The office building itself is quite old - built in the 1950s it had wood flooring throughout, single panel windows, and big chunky cast iron radiators. It was also surrounded by tall trees, and the interior lighting at night was barely adequate. A lot of people found the place spooky even in the daylight! The place never bothered me to be honest; well - up until this night!

In order to get to my desk it was necessary to enter the main doors, walk past the reception desk and then turn left, and push open some double doors which lead into a long corridor. This corridor has doors to a number of small offices on the left hand side, and the last door on the left led to a bigger open plan office that had my desk. The right hand side of the corridor also had doors to smaller offices and a large meeting room. The corridor ended with a double door fire exit with a "push to open" bar on it.

I got to my desk and put on a desk lamp I had on it. The lights in the office were off, but I could see to get to my desk due the light coming in from the corridor. I pocketed my charger, and started using my work PC to open up the website with the graphics card drivers I wanted. I clicked download and sat back in my chair watching the progress bar. I always remember the fact that the download had got to 13% - probably due to the fact that at that point I heard this very loud scraping noise coming from the meeting room.

To me, it sounded exactly like a metal chair being dragged across the wooden floor - indeed the meeting room had that kind of chair. The striking thing was that the sound was so loud and piercing that it sounded like someone was pushing down hard on the chair while dragging it across the floor - the kind of thing my mates in school used to do to annoy the teachers at the end of a lesson. The noise was so loud it made me jump.

I got up from my desk and went to the meeting room - entirely expecting to meet a cleaner, security guard - someone like that. When I got into the corridor I saw that the meeting room door was a few inches open, and the lights inside the room were off - you see that jet black look in the open gap as you are standing in a lit corridor. I stuck my hand into the gap and reached in for the light switch - rather nervously I must admit! I flicked the lights on and pushed the door open - only to find nobody in there. The chairs were all tucked up under the table. Everything was in order.

I had become quite concerned about burglars at this point, so I checked that the windows were all locked - they were. No broken glass either. There was only one door in and out, and I even looked under the meeting table. Nothing. The thing that struck me was that the room was bitterly cold - like walking into a winters night.

I then went back into the corridor and checked all the smaller offices - all the doors were locked. This was not a surprise as the people who had their own offices would routinely lock them when they went home every night. As I was trying all the door handles, I realized that there was no way someone could have gotten out of the meeting room and ran to the end of the corridor to get to reception and outside - it only took me five seconds to get to the corridor from my desk, so I would have seen them - and there was a hard wood floor, so I would have heard their footsteps as well. If they had tried to go the other way to get to the fire door I would have walked into them as they would have had to come past my office door. The fire door was also closed and secure, and it makes a lot of noise when opened as well - so I would have heard it opening.

I was not frightened - I just felt baffled, as it didn't make sense. I knew from the sign in book that I was the only person in the building, and I had checked all possible hiding places as well. There did not seem to be anything else I could do, so I went back to my desk, pulled my USB key out of my work PC and got the hell out of there!

As a footnote, the people I work with were quite fun guys and I decided after the event to keep my story to myself, as I knew that they would find the whole thing hilarious and I would never hear the end of it. I kept quiet for a couple of years - until I left the company. On my last day the team took me to the pub for a farewell drink, and since I was leaving I told my boss my story. I entirely expected him to laugh at me but instead he went quiet for a few seconds, and then proceeded to ask me why I thought he used a laptop for his work instead of a more powerful desktop PC. When I told him I thought he just preferred a laptop, he told me that the actual reason was that he always makes a point of packing up and going home before it gets dark outside - and he had a laptop so he could keep on working from home during the autumn and winter when it got dark before our finishing time of 6PM. I asked him why this was, and he told me in all seriousness that on a number of occasions when he had been working late in his office, he had stopped what he was doing as he was getting in his words: "a strong sense of threat and menace" from the corridor outside his office. He added that on a few occasions he had gotten up from his desk to check the corridor, as he got a very strong feeling that someone was standing by his office door. He never saw anyone. The thing with my old boss was that he was a big ex-rugby player who was very no nonsense and was not scared of anything, so for him to tell me that some invisible force could unnerve him enough to make him leave the building was quite a shock to hear.

I know that when this story gets posted it might attract criticism or people trying to investigate further, so I have not mentioned any specific names or places. I am also still in contact with my old co-workers, so in order to protect their privacy (and my career!) I have not mentioned any names. Rest assured that all these events happened as stated.

In conclusion, I want to state that I don't believe in ghosts at all. I personally think that anyone who claims to have seen one is either mistaken, or a hoaxer. However, to this day I cannot come up with an explanation for the source of that sound. I was alone at the time, so there is nobody that can back my story up; but I know what I heard.

 

[catseye]

Cracking story, Gavin! In my opinion it's these little puzzles that are really captivating, more so than the big scary monster half-seen in the graveyard.

 

[Frideswide]

Most excellent! thank you for posting @gavin burnett - and welcome

 

[escargot]

Hello all.

This is probably not the most exciting story posted, but rest assured that everything that I am going to tell you certainly happened.

This story is not the most frightening thing that has ever happened to me, but it is certainly the most baffling experience that I have had.

To give a bit of background, I had a job back in 2001 doing IT work. At the office where I was working it was possible to gain access at any day and time through the use of a swipe card to open the main door. You had to then sign in and out using a book left at reception, as the receptionist would not be there outside of normal office hours.

One Friday night, I had been home from work for a few hours when I realized that I had left my phone charger in the office. Since I did not have a spare charger, my phone battery was almost flat and the office was only a fifteen minute drive from my flat; I decided to go in to pick it up. That evening I was reinstalling Windows onto my home PC so I needed to download some drivers, but I did not have the internet in my flat. So - I could do two jobs in one trip.

I got into the office at about 8PM. It was mid-October, so it was dark when I got there. The office building itself is quite old - built in the 1950s it had wood flooring throughout, single panel windows, and big chunky cast iron radiators. It was also surrounded by tall trees, and the interior lighting at night was barely adequate. A lot of people found the place spooky even in the daylight! The place never bothered me to be honest; well - up until this night!

In order to get to my desk it was necessary to enter the main doors, walk past the reception desk and then turn left, and push open some double doors which lead into a long corridor. This corridor has doors to a number of small offices on the left hand side, and the last door on the left led to a bigger open plan office that had my desk. The right hand side of the corridor also had doors to smaller offices and a large meeting room. The corridor ended with a double door fire exit with a "push to open" bar on it.

I got to my desk and put on a desk lamp I had on it. The lights in the office were off, but I could see to get to my desk due the light coming in from the corridor. I pocketed my charger, and started using my work PC to open up the website with the graphics card drivers I wanted. I clicked download and sat back in my chair watching the progress bar. I always remember the fact that the download had got to 13% - probably due to the fact that at that point I heard this very loud scraping noise coming from the meeting room.

To me, it sounded exactly like a metal chair being dragged across the wooden floor - indeed the meeting room had that kind of chair. The striking thing was that the sound was so loud and piercing that it sounded like someone was pushing down hard on the chair while dragging it across the floor - the kind of thing my mates in school used to do to annoy the teachers at the end of a lesson. The noise was so loud it made me jump.

I got up from my desk and went to the meeting room - entirely expecting to meet a cleaner, security guard - someone like that. When I got into the corridor I saw that the meeting room door was a few inches open, and the lights inside the room were off - you see that jet black look in the open gap as you are standing in a lit corridor. I stuck my hand into the gap and reached in for the light switch - rather nervously I must admit! I flicked the lights on and pushed the door open - only to find nobody in there. The chairs were all tucked up under the table. Everything was in order.

I had become quite concerned about burglars at this point, so I checked that the windows were all locked - they were. No broken glass either. There was only one door in and out, and I even looked under the meeting table. Nothing. The thing that struck me was that the room was bitterly cold - like walking into a winters night.

I then went back into the corridor and checked all the smaller offices - all the doors were locked. This was not a surprise as the people who had their own offices would routinely lock them when they went home every night. As I was trying all the door handles, I realized that there was no way someone could have gotten out of the meeting room and ran to the end of the corridor to get to reception and outside - it only took me five seconds to get to the corridor from my desk, so I would have seen them - and there was a hard wood floor, so I would have heard their footsteps as well. If they had tried to go the other way to get to the fire door I would have walked into them as they would have had to come past my office door. The fire door was also closed and secure, and it makes a lot of noise when opened as well - so I would have heard it opening.

I was not frightened - I just felt baffled, as it didn't make sense. I knew from the sign in book that I was the only person in the building, and I had checked all possible hiding places as well. There did not seem to be anything else I could do, so I went back to my desk, pulled my USB key out of my work PC and got the hell out of there!

As a footnote, the people I work with were quite fun guys and I decided after the event to keep my story to myself, as I knew that they would find the whole thing hilarious and I would never hear the end of it. I kept quiet for a couple of years - until I left the company. On my last day the team took me to the pub for a farewell drink, and since I was leaving I told my boss my story. I entirely expected him to laugh at me but instead he went quiet for a few seconds, and then proceeded to ask me why I thought he used a laptop for his work instead of a more powerful desktop PC. When I told him I thought he just preferred a laptop, he told me that the actual reason was that he always makes a point of packing up and going home before it gets dark outside - and he had a laptop so he could keep on working from home during the autumn and winter when it got dark before our finishing time of 6PM. I asked him why this was, and he told me in all seriousness that on a number of occasions when he had been working late in his office, he had stopped what he was doing as he was getting in his words: "a strong sense of threat and menace" from the corridor outside his office. He added that on a few occasions he had gotten up from his desk to check the corridor, as he got a very strong feeling that someone was standing by his office door. He never saw anyone. The thing with my old boss was that he was a big ex-rugby player who was very no nonsense and was not scared of anything, so for him to tell me that some invisible force could unnerve him enough to make him leave the building was quite a shock to hear.

I know that when this story gets posted it might attract criticism or people trying to investigate further, so I have not mentioned any specific names or places. I am also still in contact with my old co-workers, so in order to protect their privacy (and my career!) I have not mentioned any names. Rest assured that all these events happened as stated.

In conclusion, I want to state that I don't believe in ghosts at all. I personally think that anyone who claims to have seen one is either mistaken, or a hoaxer. However, to this day I cannot come up with an explanation for the source of that sound. I was alone at the time, so there is nobody that can back my story up; but I know what I heard.

Brilliant! A good old-fashioned haunting.
Was this on the ground floor?

I notice that you heard the sound from the meeting room which is accessed from the corridor, whereas your former boss felt the bad vibes from the corridor itself.

Feelings of unease are sometimes tracked down to vibrations from machinery like faulty fans and the like. While some might put your former boss's sensation of an unseen person down to that, it doesn't cover chairs scraping on floors!

Was that the only time you were spooked there?

 

[Spookdaddy]

The sound of moving furniture seems to be one of the constants of the history of haunting. Not that it's a feature of every haunting, obviously - just that it seems to go way back in the narrative. The odd thing is that it is often described as being so, but with something 'off' about the sound - as if it's not precisely the thing being described, but that this is the closest thing the witness can think of. I think I'm right in recalling several historical accounts which describe a sound as if heavy boxes are being dragged across floors - some coming from areas which are actually bare loft spaces, with no floorboards to drag anything across.

I've often wondered - if it's not actually furniture being dragged, but just sounds like it, then what on earth is it that makes such a noise? Somehow, the unguessed at alternatives feel even more spooky than the idea of tables dragged by invisible hands.

 

[escargot]

The sound of moving furniture seems to be one of the constants of the history of haunting. Not that it's a feature of every haunting, obviously - just that it seems to go way back in the history. The odd thing is that it is often described as being so, but with something 'off' about the sound - as if it's not precisely the thing being described, but that this is the closest thing the witness can think of. I think I'm right in recalling several historical accounts which describe a sound as if heavy boxes are being dragged across floors - some coming from areas which are actually bare loft spaces, with no floorboards to drag anything across.

I've often wondered - if it's not actually furniture being dragged, but just sounds like it, then what on earth is it that makes such a sound? Somehow, the unguessed at alternatives feel even more spooky than the idea of tables dragged by invisible hands.

Yup, I've had the chair-scraping sound. During the back end of the Ouija board craze in the early '70s a group of us teenage girls made one and tried it at school, and asked for a 'sign' that Someone was really there.

We heard a chair behind us being dragged across the wooden floor.

We all turned to it, saw that it was out of place, and scarpered.

Nobody else was in there - no kids were actually allowed indoors at that time of the day - and the chairs had to be pushed neatly under the desks ready for the next lesson.

A year or two ago at (my heavily-haunted) work I heard my big heavy locker bang down on the hard floor, and found it positioned out of line as if it had indeed been tilted back and dropped.

This was after 10pm following a late shift. I called out 'Is that all you've got?' and laughed. Older and wiser, y'see.

 

[gavin burnett]

escargot:​

- The building is a single storey construction, so there is no ground floor / upstairs.​

- There is no machinery in the building such as extractor fans or lifts. I read a study many years ago (I forget the exact details), where a university academic suggested that feelings of unease people had reported in a certain lab were being caused by an old extractor fan producing high levels of infra-sound.
- This was my one and only unusual experience in the building. I have to admit that the experience unnerved me enough that I never made any further nocturnal visits!
- A few days later I popped into the meeting room and examined the chairs - they were the old steel legged variety, with rubber feet on the bottom of the legs. Some of the chairs had the rubber feet missing or worn away, so when I dragged one across the floor as an experiment - it sounded pretty close to what I had heard. The only difference was that the sound I heard the first time was much louder than my test - but I did not want to scratch the floor, so I did not scrape the chair very hard. I also put my hand on the radiator to confirm it was working - it was hot to the touch. The other thing I still don't get is why the room was noticeably colder that night.

 

[Nosmo King]

escargot:​

- The building is a single storey construction, so there is no ground floor / upstairs.​

- There is no machinery in the building such as extractor fans or lifts. I read a study many years ago (I forget the exact details), where a university academic suggested that feelings of unease people had reported in a certain lab were being caused by an old extractor fan producing high levels of infra-sound.
- This was my one and only unusual experience in the building. I have to admit that the experience unnerved me enough that I never made any further nocturnal visits!
- A few days later I popped into the meeting room and examined the chairs - they were the old steel legged variety, with rubber feet on the bottom of the legs. Some of the chairs had the rubber feet missing or worn away, so when I dragged one across the floor as an experiment - it sounded pretty close to what I had heard. The only difference was that the sound I heard the first time was much louder than my test - but I did not want to scratch the floor, so I did not scrape the chair very hard. I also put my hand on the radiator to confirm it was working - it was hot to the touch. The other thing I still don't get is why the room was noticeably colder that night.

Did the heating go off on a timer at night?

 

[gavin burnett]

Souleater:

I am afraid that I don’t know a huge amount about how the heating worked there.
What I do know is that it was an old building with big "double decker" radiators in each room, and it was nice and warm in the winter. The radiators did not have any thermostats on them, so they were always borderline burn your hand hot if you touched them.
The other points to note are that it was early October, so it was not a particularly cold night outside, and the rest of the building was warm when I got in. Indeed, I took my jumper off when I sat at my desk.

 

[escargot]

escargot:​

- The building is a single storey construction, so there is no ground floor / upstairs.​

- There is no machinery in the building such as extractor fans or lifts. I read a study many years ago (I forget the exact details), where a university academic suggested that feelings of unease people had reported in a certain lab were being caused by an old extractor fan producing high levels of infra-sound.
- This was my one and only unusual experience in the building. I have to admit that the experience unnerved me enough that I never made any further nocturnal visits!
- A few days later I popped into the meeting room and examined the chairs - they were the old steel legged variety, with rubber feet on the bottom of the legs. Some of the chairs had the rubber feet missing or worn away, so when I dragged one across the floor as an experiment - it sounded pretty close to what I had heard. The only difference was that the sound I heard the first time was much louder than my test - but I did not want to scratch the floor, so I did not scrape the chair very hard. I also put my hand on the radiator to confirm it was working - it was hot to the touch. The other thing I still don't get is why the room was noticeably colder that night.

Thank you! I asked if it was the ground floor as I'm wondering about what was there up to the '50s when the offices were built.

My last couple of workplaces were the first buildings on their sites and both are spooky, as described on our 'Haunted Workplaces' thread.
It's never bothered me but colleagues have been scared stiff!

However, in traditional ghosthunting terms a new building on the site of some previous human enterprise is certainly up for a haunting.
I bet @Swifty can expand on this.

Remember when Richard III's burial site was found by an archaeologist impulsively deciding to direct the digging to the letter R on a car park?
An ancient church and graveyard there had been obliterated and built over. There was no trace of the buildings or graves, including Richard's ornate tomb, yet his skeleton was found right away.

A person who believed in ghosts might say Richard himself had a hand in that.

 

[Yithian]

I know that when this story gets posted it might attract criticism or people trying to investigate further, so I have not mentioned any specific names or places. I am also still in contact with my old co-workers, so in order to protect their privacy (and my career!) I have not mentioned any names. Rest assured that all these events happened as stated.

A most atmospheric tale--well told.

I must say, as you've anticipated, the very first thing it has made me want to do is investigate (in the academic sense) the history of the building and its environs, but I do appreciate your reluctance to engage in the specifics.

For a very short period when I was younger, I helped install data-cabling for a friend's company, and, as a consequence, I spent some late evenings in large buildings such as schools and office blocks. I was never strictly alone, but I was often working several minutes' walk away or on a separate floor to a colleague on a frosty night.

I think one aspect that contributes to the heightened awareness and slight eeriness that these places engender is simply the contrast between either their former use and current dilapidation (in the case of abandoned hospitals, libraries and homes) or their bustling diurnal function and nocturnal quiescence (in the case of schools and offices). The contrast between the two states can be so marked that on a subconscious level it can be hard to really 'believe in' the silence and inactivity; one is inclined to pounce upon any sound or movement, however slight, and imagine a reawakening of some sort.

I did also, for another short period, work in an underground archive on the site of a former stately home. I was cataloguing and evaluating old architectural plans. Very often, I was the only person down there for most of the day, and although I have no sense of unease or unexpected experience to relate, the coolness, darkness and isolation does seem to make one hyper-aware, and 'corner-of-the-eye' mistakes occurred much more often than usual.

None of which is to say that such nebulous explanations would account for your own jarring experience.

 

[gavin burnett]

Yithian - A good post.

I did wonder afterwards if the noise had somehow been internally generated by myself; however I have not experienced anything like it before or since. My then girlfriend told me that I must have fallen asleep at my desk and dreamt the whole thing. I have discounted this as I had only been sat down for 5 or 6 minutes, it was not particularly late at night, and I had eaten an hour earlier - so at the time I was in good shape mentally and physically.

It was a mundane Friday night, so I was certainly not ghost hunting and hyped up expecting anything to happen. I decided to fix my home PC as I wanted to distract myself from the temptation to go the pub as I was a bit low on cash at the time, and I wanted to save some money and avoid a hangover the next day.

I did some work for a different company installing IT equipment into comprehensive schools. This work was always done out of term time so the "little darlings" did not get in the way. This meant spending days working in empty classrooms (or sometimes empty buildings - the caretaker would typically give me a big bunch of keys) setting up PCs. I agree entirely that there is something inherently spooky about places that should be full of people and activity being completely empty and still. Some schools were spread over multiple buildings and in exposed locations, so during the Christmas school holidays the wind would be howling outside. I did not experience anything unusual during my time with the company, and I worked in a lot of different schools - some in very old Victorian buildings.

 

[Fanari_Lloyd]

there is something inherently spooky about places that should be full of people and activity being completely empty and still.

They seem liminal at those times.

I’ve written about it elsewhere but I worked somewhere that very very odd. I never heard anything being moved, but others did, as well as footsteps thumping up the stairs and the door flinging open.

In the downstairs kitchen they kept this film processor for microfiche and it was incredibly heavy. The MD was the last there one night on his own and in the toilet which was a yard or so away and heard something heavy moving across the floor. He looked and it was that. There were scrape marks on the tiles.

 

[Mythopoeika]

- There is no machinery in the building such as extractor fans or lifts. I read a study many years ago (I forget the exact details), where a university academic suggested that feelings of unease people had reported in a certain lab were being caused by an old extractor fan producing high levels of infra-sound.
- This was my one and only unusual experience in the building. I have to admit that the experience unnerved me enough that I never made any further nocturnal visits!

Was there aircon in that room? Just wondering if the aircon had been working like mad and a fan started to make a noise? Or maybe a water drainage pump for the aircon?

 

[Mythopoeika]

Also another thought - a PC in the room may have had a fan that was in the early stages of failing?
I've heard PC fans making a dreadful graunching noise, a lot like a chair being dragged. It usually happens intermittently until the bearing finally fails.

 

[gavin burnett]

Mythopoeika:

The building is a 1950s red brick building, so there was no air conditioning of any kind. A frequent complaint during the summer was that the place got too hot, as the only ventilation available was to open all the windows up. The windows are old style metal framed ones with a number of small panes (think old red phone boxes) which hinged open and closed in its entirety - like a door with the bottom at waist height and the top close to the ceiling. A person could climb in and out of one easily - which is what I suspected at the time. Both windows were closed and latched shut in the meeting room during the night in question - I made sure of this as the windows were the only other way in or out.

The meeting room had a large table and chairs in it, with two other smaller tables against the wall. And nothing else - no electronic equipment of any kind - apart from the lightswitch and a few unused power sockets.

Apologies for shooting your theories down - I appreciate any attempts at a normal explanation!

 

[Trevp666]

the sound was so loud and piercing

Just checking if you had ruled out other sources for the noise? You mentioned checking around, and looking at the meeting room etc - is it possible that the noise was something else that you mis-identified? Something much nearer? Could your presence and movement have been responsible for dislodging something nearby that a minute or two later dropped to the floor (eg) making the noise? Could it have been one of the doors on a pneumatic 'closer' type of device that slowly closed and on it's very last bit of travel always made a grating sound against the frame, but that which was ignored during the daytime as not unusually distracting? etc etc.
Are you still in contact with people in the building? Are you able to do a little bit of considerate sleuthing to canvass people still there to see if anyone other the person you mentioned has also had any out-of-hours experiences? Or indeed, are you able to regain access for a bit of ghost-hunting even? Might be fun.

 

[gavin burnett]

Trevp666:

I had worked for the company for many years before the incident, so I knew the building quite well. I am quite confident that the sound came from the meeting room - I can’t remember anything in my shared office area that would have made such a noise. The office I was in had carpet tiles and the chairs were the newer “tilt and swivel” models with wheels on them. I did walk to my desk in the darkness, so it is a possibility that I could have brushed against something which then later slipped off a desk and hit the floor.

Very good point on the doors - I had not considered this. From what I can remember the double doors throughout the building swung freely and quite quickly open and closed; so I don't think they had the "brake arms" installed on the top of them. I have to admit I am not 100% sure of this though, as this all happened in the early 2000s.

I don’t think that any follow up investigation will be possible, as my co-workers would have long since retired or left for other jobs by now. I don’t fancy turning up there and saying: “Hello - I used to work here 20 years ago, and I think this building is haunted - would you mind if I brought my team in for an overnight vigil?”.

The only other out-of-hours strangeness thing I can think of is that during the autumn and winter the cleaners used to turn up and dust/clean the toilets/hoover the carpets quite early in the afternoon. This always struck me as a bit odd, as I would have thought that it would have made sense for them to wait for everyone to have left as they were getting in peoples way a lot as they were doing their rounds. I think my boss complained about the vacuum cleaner noise once (as he was on the phone at the time); and he later told me that the two women had (in his opinion) looked quite shifty and had mumbled a very weak excuse for coming in early - something about bus schedules.

Thinking about other peoples posts - it certainly possible that a combination of an intermittent fault on a PC in my office/a sticking door, and the acoustics of an empty office could have generated an unusual sound that could be hard to identify. I also suppose that the radiator in the meeting room could have had some short lived air blockage in it that would have stopped it working temporarily.

I was considering this explanation eating my tea, and the logical part of my brain is saying that this is it; but I can’t shake the feeling that the explanation does not quite cover all the bases.

Perhaps the psychological effect of being alone in an empty building on a dark, still autumns night should not be underestimated.

 

[SimonBurchell]

You are right not to leap to conclusions, and to investigate all angles. However, over the years, I have had enough run-ins with weirdness to know that a mundane explanation is not always the right explanation...

 

[Trevp666]

I don’t fancy turning up there and saying: “Hello - I used to work here 20 years ago, and I think this building is haunted - would you mind if I brought my team in for an overnight vigil?”

Good point.
Worth a try though, eh?
It might liven up an otherwise dull workplace for them!

 

[Peripart]

I also suppose that the radiator in the meeting room could have had some short lived air blockage in it that would have stopped it working temporarily

Well, that's a thought. At a stretch, could such an airlock have caused the pipework to hammer? When we had an airlock upstairs at home, the pipes would make an horrendous screech about 5 minutes after the bathroom taps were turned off.

 

[bugmum]

I think one aspect that contributes to the heightened awareness and slight eeriness that these places engender is simply the contrast between either their former use and current dilapidation (in the case of abandoned hospitals, libraries and homes) or their bustling diurnal function and nocturnal quiescence (in the case of schools and offices). The contrast between the two states can be so marked that on a subconscious level it can be hard to really 'believe in' the silence and inactivity; one is inclined to pounce upon any sound or movement, however slight, and imagine a reawakening of some sort.

Our lab is rather creepy when you know you're the only person around - I've done occasional late evenings, or dropped in on a weekend to put up a culture or feed cells. In that instance, there are lots of machines going click and whirr and hum, and an air handling system with a mind of its own, so when there's no radio and no people, all the numerous little noises seem to be amplified. The most spooked I ever felt in there, though, was on a brilliant summer's day - everyone else had gone fishing as a lab outing, but I couldn't guarantee being home in time for school pick-up so declined the invitation. My bench space was at the far end of the lab, facing the back wall, so I had my back to the entrance, and I was convinced I could hear the main door into the lab opening and shutting every now and again, but nobody appeared. Other people casually mentioned that they disliked working in there on their own because they were never quite sure if they were alone!

 

[Swifty]

Thank you! I asked if it was the ground floor as I'm wondering about what was there up to the '50s when the offices were built.

My last couple of workplaces were the first buildings on their sites and both are spooky, as described on our 'Haunted Workplaces' thread.
It's never bothered me but colleagues have been scared stiff!

However, in traditional ghosthunting terms a new building on the site of some previous human enterprise is certainly up for a haunting.
I bet @Swifty can expand on this.

Remember when Richard III's burial site was found by an archaeologist impulsively deciding to direct the digging to the letter R on a car park?
An ancient church and graveyard there had been obliterated and built over. There was no trace of the buildings or graves, including Richard's ornate tomb, yet his skeleton was found right away.

A person who believed in ghosts might say Richard himself had a hand in that.

All Saint's Church in Santon near Brandon on the Surrey border is by far the most active place we go to, the current church although very old is not the original and stands over the remains of a much older one. Phenomena we/I've experienced include but are not limited to faint live audible pipe music (not E.V.P), visible shadow figures, smelling flowers, being actually physically touched, the front door latch moving by itself, a camera battery flying down onto my foot from a pew although we can't rule out human error on that one, being made 'spirit drunk' (a sudden feeling of exhaustion that made me lie down then went as quickly as it had arrived), two of us having to run outside to vomit for no discernible reason as separate times on the same invest then again feeling perfectly fine afterwards, cold spots and mood drops ... That's not including the tech recorded evidence we've collected and documented.

 

[gavin burnett]

I have been thinking about the airlock idea - I think that I am going to have to put this in the "maybe" file, as the sound I heard was very specifically "chair dragged across floor". My own experiments days later confirmed this.
The other two things that bother me are my bosses story - he was the kind of hard working, straight talking person that did not make up stories or play jokes on people. For the record I believe him.
The other thing is the cleaners behavior. Now that I think about it, they always seemed miserable and in a rush to finish up and leave. We were always pleasant towards them - offering them cups of tea and so forth. I know that cleaning is a low paid, thankless and unpleasant job - so it could have just been low job satisfaction.

 

[pandacracker]

I think one aspect that contributes to the heightened awareness and slight eeriness that these places engender is simply the contrast between either their former use and current dilapidation (in the case of abandoned hospitals, libraries and homes) or their bustling diurnal function and nocturnal quiescence (in the case of schools and offices). The contrast between the two states can be so marked that on a subconscious level it can be hard to really 'believe in' the silence and inactivity; one is inclined to pounce upon any sound or movement, however slight, and imagine a reawakening of some sort.

Yes.

They seem liminal at those times.

Yes, yes!

 

[GNC]

Reading this thread, I was going to ask if there were any speakers in the room in question, but you say there was no electrical equipment there. However, could it have been a sound broadcast over speakers from elsewhere? I'm not thinking prank, more a burst of static from a stray fault?

 

[IbisNibs]

Thank you for joining and posting this, Gavin Burnett! Unexplained Late-Night Office Noises should be a classic thread!

I know that when this story gets posted it might attract criticism or people trying to investigate further

You've come to the right place—as you've seen, there are many courteous, open-minded people here who will pose questions in order to clarify the situation and to get to the bottom of it, instead of to insult and debunk.

The other thing is the cleaners behavior. Now that I think about it, they always seemed miserable and in a rush to finish up and leave.

What occurs to me is that, since they were on the ground floor in a building where it was possible for unlocked windows to allow entry, they may have felt vulnerable to intruders when cleaning at night. I don't feel safe spending nights on the ground floor myself.

It's so wonderful that your colleagues offered them tea! What a lovely group of people!

 

[Who me]

Morning swifty nice photo mate.
Can you see what looks like two faces in the boundary wall above what I think are tree stumps!!
Parathingymum stuff.brain trying to put a bit of order in the mix!

 

[Nosmo King]

Morning swifty nice photo mate.
Can you see what looks like two faces in the boundary wall above what I think are tree stumps!!
Parathingymum stuff.brain trying to put a bit of order in the mix!

I thought it was a dead camel

 

[escargot]

There is no machinery in the building such as extractor fans or lifts. I read a study many years ago (I forget the exact details), where a university academic suggested that feelings of unease people had reported in a certain lab were being caused by an old extractor fan producing high levels of infra-sound.

You're thinking of Vic Tandy and the 'Fear Frequency' -
(Guardian article)

The Fear Frequency

The key here is frequency: 19hz is in the range known as infrasound, below the range of human hearing, which begins at 20hz. Tandy learned that low frequencies in this region can affect humans and animals in several ways, causing discomfort, dizziness, blurred vision (by vibrating your eyeballs), hyperventilation and fear, possibly leading to panic attacks.

A more recent investigation took place in an allegedly haunted 14th-century pub cellar in Coventry, where people have reported terrifying experiences for many years, including seeing a spectral grey lady. Here Tandy also uncovered a 19hz standing wave, adding further evidential weight to his theory.

In an interesting parallel, researchers have recorded that, prior to an attack, a tiger's roar contains frequencies of about 18hz, which might disorientate and paralyse their intended victim. Is this the sound of fear itself?

We have threads on this.