Ever seen a ghost!

[NewBasfordlad 3,599]

First I don't believe in the hereafter so therefore do not believe in ghosts.

However I used to be a partner the Nottingham Shooting Centre based in the basement of the old Allen Solly factory on Byron Estate. During the build two builders decided to stay late one night to press on. One of them swore blind he had seen a woman in Victorian dress walk down a passage toward him, he ran and would not return unless accompanied ever again and he never volunteered to work late again either.

Later when we were open for business we had one or two members who on separate occasions again told us they had seen the ghostly figure of a woman in the same area walking from the rear workshops toward the main club area. As you can imagine due to the business we were in our security was state of the art for the time, late 80s so no one could possible access the rear areas except by going from the main area and this was always manned.

[colly0410 1,181]

I wonder if ghostly goings on can be explained by 'anti-Higgs bosons' ? These are a bit like other anti-matter stuff I.E. anti-protons, anti-electrons & other 'anti' stuff. An anti-Higgs boson at rest would have no mass & so would not emit any photons, but as it's velocity increases to near light speed it would then have mass & would start to emit photons (as Einstein predicted) which could be detected by the human eye. This could all then be interpreted by the human eyeball/brain interface as a ghost! It all makes sense in my brain!!

[PeverilPeril 3,271]

When we moved into out old house (17th C modernised in Victorian times) I felt the very strong 'presence' of a former owner. The lady died in 1936 aged 81. She ran a haberdashery from our shop front (now my gym). She was well respected by many generations of school children even to this day. She left everything to the community when she died and until recently every new pupil at our junior school was given a bible paid for from her trust fund.

To reach our bathroom I have to walk along an open landing from our bedroom. At first, when it was dark, that little walk gave me a strange tingly feeling of apprehension. She was there on the landing with me, although I could see nothing. I started to think that she was worried that we would not look after her historic old house, so I began to reassure her and promised that we would be good keepers of 'her' house. After that I imagined her to be a very kind lady who always smiled at me. I have kept my promise and we are both happy.

[Jill Sparrow 10,302]

As promised, the rest of my ghostly tale.

The 'flat' above the nursery consisted of four rooms. Originally, these would have been bedrooms, although the original Schoolmaster's house had been extended in the late 1890s, to provide an additional room on both floors. When I arrived, the 'flat' (as it was termed) had not been occupied for some years and was utilised mainly for storage (one room was crammed with old Victorian desks!), although there was a reasonably modern bathroom and toilet, together with a room which staff sometimes used at lunchtimes. Overall, the entire place was filthy and depressing: I rarely went up there.

Eventually, the flat was cleaned up and the new tenant moved in. He was a local chap whom we'll call Tom (although that it not his real name). Tom appeared quite intimidating (which was, I suppose, the intention in order to deter the vandals). Standing at 6' 6" without his shoes, Tom was ex-military and not easily frightened by anything. It was two or three months after he arrived that I got to know him and he began, tentatively, to share some of his experiences of life in the flat. As he confided, he had been reluctant to tell anyone what he had encountered for fear of being ridiculed. It is important to add that, prior to his arrival at the flat, he was a total and complete sceptic who had never even thought about anything connected with the "unexplained".

Tom might have been a total sceptic when he moved in but after a few days (or, more accurately, a few nights) in the flat, he seriously considered packing up and leaving because he just couldn't understand what was going on in the rooms he occupied.

He had woken in the early hours of the morning to see a face leaning over him: female, smiling and kindly but nonetheless terrifying. This was followed by his belongings being moved around and IT devices being intefered with. The enduring focus of this attention seemed to be his collection of historical model soldiers which were subject to interference and movement for the whole of his tenure.

tTom's parents had also experienced "presences" in the original building when they visited and a friend (also ex-military) who stayed overnight in a sleeping bag on the sitting room floor, berated Tom soundly the following morning for keeping him awake in the early hours by crashing around and running up and down the uncarpeted stairs. Bemused, Tom protested that he hadn't left his bed all night, nor had he heard a sound!

There were certain "cold" areas in the sitting room, where no one would perch for long but the female presence eventually formed a maternal "bond" with Tom, even though he never saw her again. However, he was always aware of her presence which, he said, seemed to emerge through a doorway which had long ago been blocked up.

Downstairs was a totally different story. As part of his tenancy, Tom was required to patrol the ground floor of the original building (which in the daytime served as a nursery) to ensure that the exterior doors were all locked and no one had tried to enter via the windows. He particularly disliked the area near the dining room and complained of feeling a cold and somewhat malevolent presence (very unlike the female presence in the flat) "rush past" him as he walked through the lobby. He felt that this was a child and, oddly, Tom's father had made precisely the same observation without being aware of Tom's experiences.

Frequently, Tom heard voices coming from empty rooms, although there was never anyone there when he checked.

During his early months in the flat, Tom did not have a television and would sometimes walk across to the 1900 building at night to watch the TV in the hall (this was prior to the installation of the computer terminals in this area). He often didn't stay there very long. One night, he sent me a text to say that there was a programme he really wanted to see but as he sat there watching it, the atmosphere in the hall changed to such an extent that he felt compelled to get out of the place at top speed. He was annoyed with himself for giving in but as he said to me: "It's ridiculous. You can't fight what you can't see!"

I recall one afternoon when I was sitting at the piano in the hall, rehearsing for an Easter concert with the children. Bright sunshine streamed in through the high windows and nothing was further from my mind than "ghosts".

My classroom door was partially open and I was sitting only 6 feet away from it when I saw, with my peripheral vision, a figure inside the room, crossing the open doorway. Literally leaping off the piano stool, I raced inside my own classroom to see who it was. In doing so, I collided with a colleague who had also seen the figure. There was, as ever, no one there. The windows were too high to see through without standing on a stool, so it could not have been a shadow of someone who was passing by outside.

Tom to his everlasting credit, remained in the flat for several years but probably the worst moment of his entire tenure occurred early one cold, dark February morning in 2004, after I had left the school. He sent me a text to say that he had been down to check on the ground floor security before leaving for work. It was very early and still pitch dark but, by this time, Tom knew the layout so well that he didn't bother with the lights.

As he approached the dreaded lobby area which opened onto the dining room (where so many staff and other people had felt uncomfortable), Tom was stopped in his tracks by what he described as "a glitterball", emerging slowly from the dining room through the CLOSED door and drifting steadily across the lobby. This phenomenon had the appearance of, and I quote: "a ball of plasma, with colours shifting and mixing constantly from white/silver/blue..." Tom watched it, totally transfixed but at the same time terrified. Eventually, he reached into his pocket to locate his mobile phone with which to try and obtain a photograph. In doing so, he fractionally diverted his gaze and when he looked again, the "glitterball" had gone having passed, presumably, through the solid brick wall which had once formed the exterior boundary of the original building. All that was left was the overpowering smell of ozone, typical of an electrical discharge.

Tom was badly shaken by this experience and was glad to leave the place when he got married shortly afterwards.

I am aware of all the theories from infrasound to paredolia. I am also aware that the original building was constructed of stone (silica?) with, as was later discovered, a watercourse or conduit running under the lobby area (found during further renovations) and which appeared to ante-date the school building. Some type of rudimentary armature?...a primitive version of videotape? I tried to research the history of the building and although it was easy enough to track the census returns, I never met with much success around what may have been on the site before the Victorian building was erected there.

In my opinion, there will be a scientific explanation for these experiences but we are still way off understanding what it is. Quantum physics would suggest that the dimension in which we exist is not the only "groove on the record" so to speak and others may run parallel to it, occasionally overlapping. Something like the idea of the multiverse.

However, I do know what I experienced and I have no reason to believe that others lied to me about what they heard/saw/experienced/sensed.

And for those who are still shaking their heads in derision, may I remind them firstly of Einstein's words: "The universe is not only stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think!" Secondly: "Minds are like parachutes. They function best when open!"

[colly0410 1,181]

The 'glitter-ball' sounds like ball lightning, but why in the middle of winter? I'm with you on the quantum physics theory. Super-string theory predicts other dimensions, I wonder if it IS right? It'd explain a lot if it was..

[Bilbraborn 1,594]

I don't care what happens. There are a lot of people I'm going to haunt when I die!!

[Smiffy49 590]

The ghost walked right through the door and saw his wife sat at the kitchen table.

Hello dear, he said, what's wrong with you, you look as if you've seen a human.....

Smiffy

[PeverilPeril 3,271]

She's back! I spoke to Mrs Shaw on our landing at 4am. Definately felt her presence and all is well.

There is so much that we don't understand about ourselves and our brain. Like all creatures our brains are hard wired for many things that we do not need to learn.

For example, take the life cycle of a dragonfly. It spends 2 or 3 years as a water insect. When it emerges from the water and unfolds its wings it immediately becomes an aerobatic genius. It's flying competence is something to behold. No training or learning required.

Well - we are far more intelligent than a dragonfly, So who is to say how much knowledge is hard wired in our brain? I strongly suspect that there are still senses and knowledge in our brains from pre history. The sixth sense. Our ancestors believed in ghosts, so even if we won't admit to it, maybe there is a place that remains in our minds for ghosts.

[Jill Sparrow 10,302]

I was chatting to my older sister recently and she reminded me of an incident that happened to a friend of hers when they were at Peveril School together in the 1960s.

The friend, we'll call her Mary, lived with her parents and older sister in a house on the Bells Lane Estate in Nottingham. They had occupied the place for some years and never had any problems.

One morning in the early 1960s, Mary's father got up for work as usual. The rest of the family was still in bed but his job required an early start. After going downstairs, he attempted to enter the living room only to discover that the door wouldn't open. The door wasn't locked but the harder he pushed it, the more obvious it became that there was an obstruction on the other side.

Puzzled, he opened the front door and went to look through the window. To his amazement, all the furniture in that room was piled up behind the door, preventing access.

The rest of the family was woken and no one could explain the rather odd situation. No one had heard any noise during the night and the family's dog hadn't detected any intruders. The window was securely fastened on the inside.

I believe Mary's father had to break a pane of glass in the window to gain entry to the room in question and between them, the family restored the heavy items of furniture to their accustomed places.

Not surprisingly, no one slept very well that night but the following morning, all was normal. They remained in the property for many years afterwards and nothing untoward occurred.

I recall going with my sister to the house not long after this occurred and, not surprisingly, the whole family was still very twitchy about events. No explanation was ever found and they were left wondering who could have moved heavy furniture, stacked it neatly in front of the door and then managed to get out of the room, leaving the window securely shut on the inside. Up the chimney perhaps?

[Guest]

Several times in the Camelot Club.

[radfordred 6,284]

Spotted QMC underpass.

 

Who you gonna call?