CHAPTER 9 TAI CHI and the PIANO TUNER.

 

The week before Christmas, the school was going to close for the holiday. The cleaners came in at 8am instead of 6am like all other holidays.  It was a very light hearted atmosphere, all things considered.  I was logging all the new bookings and lettings into the diary. Then, on the 20th December 1988, we got a phone call from the main office in Stratford to say the piano tuner would be arriving around 1pm the next day, the 21^st December. He would be tuning the grand piano in the hall of the new building, two upright pianos in the old building.

“Great, thanks very much for letting me know.” I said.

“Bollocks” I said slamming  the receiver.

“What?” John asked me, a surprised look on his face.

“The Bleedin’ piano tuner is coming at three o’clock tomorrow.” I told him.

Thankfully, John and I were due to go to the caretakers unofficial Christmas booze up at a pub in Stratford called Mooro’s, which was owned by the West Ham United and 1966 World Cup winning England Captain Bobby Moore on Thursday, the day after.  Even though this was only going to take an hour or so for him to come and go it could have been worse and scheduled for that day!

The next day at 2.45 John and I sat in the office looking at the clock.“

We could let him in and leave him to it while we pop over the pub for a pie and beans and a pint.” John had come up with a plan.

“One of us at least has to be here with him to show him around.” I said, blowing that idea out of the water. John nodded his head slowly.  Ruminating on another idea.  The distant look on his face told me it was about to break free. John suddenly snapped his fingers at his own brainwave. “

“He can park in the playground opposite the pub. That way, we will see him come out and leave.”

“Park in the playground?” I laughed. “The geezer’s blind!”

“How does he tune a piano then?”

“He uses his ears!” I told him.  “He uses tuning forks and other stuff.  Most piano tuners are blind.  Some have a dog, others don’t.”

Now I believe it is done by sound waves on a machine but it was a variety of tuning forks and harmonics in those ‘good old days’.

John thought a moment, “So what does the dog do?” he asked.

“Well if it knows what tune he’s playing it joins in on the chorus” I said, “What do you think he does?  He guides him, and before you ask, he guides him around and warns him of any danger.  He doesn’t help tune the piano.”

“No life is it?” was Johns reply after a few moments of thought.

I looked at the clock again.

“We could have a séance while we are waiting.” I suggested for a joke.

He opened his mouth to say something.

“Is there anybody there?”

The voice echoed around the front hall.

“Anyone there?”

John’s eyes stuck out on stalks.  I stood up and peered around the door of the office.

“Hello mate, I take it you are the Piano Tuner?” I asked.

“Oh yes, Clive Denham.  It’s freezing out there.” He seemed very relieved to be in the warmth of the school. I certainly was. I heard John breath out very slowly’

“I bet you are freezing,” I said looking out of the tall metal framed glass front doors, at least it isn’t snowing!  I’m Dave”

“I’m sorry I am late. I will be as quick as I can.  There are three pianos I believe:  A grand and two uprights? This is Bonzo”

 I looked down at the very obedient Golden retriever.  It ignored me, looking at Clive all the time.

“Do you have a list for the locations because it sounds like one is missing.”

“I was told the Hall grand piano new school, two uprights in two halls old school.”

“There’s another grand in the music teachers classroom.”

“Well, I can call my office and get it added if you like?  I can delay the other appointment this afternoon, it’s nearby at Rokeby.”

I went to Rokeby as a pupil. It was my secondary school in Pitchford Street less than ten minutes away.  The council eventually moved the school entirely to The Barking Road in Canning Town in the 2000’s

“No, just do what you are listed to do mate, that will be fine.” I didn’t want him here any longer than need be and if he was going to finish sooner than I thought then great.  I doubted whether anyone would notice.

“Hello, I’m John, I work here with Dave.”

Clive held his hand out and John shook it.

“Lovely dog?” he said.

“Had him 5 years. Couldn’t do without him.” Clive replied, then decided to move on.

“The grand piano is…..?

“In here,” I said, opening the doors to the hall.  The piano was ten feet away.  “Give me a shout and one of us will take you over to the old school when you have finished here.”

He reached the piano and sat down.  He started playing some classical piece and obviously had been playing for many years.  There was a sudden movement out the corner of my eye and there, framed in the little glass window of the door was John’s face.

“Give me a shout when you are ready Clive.  I will put some water in a bowl outside for Bonzo.” I said.

“Thank you. This is well out of tune; I will be about an hour.”

“OK, see you in a while.” I grimaced.  An Hour?  I left him to it and went back to the office.

 

 

45 minutes later, having read the newspaper, and getting nowhere with a cursory look at the crossword, I folded the Times and slid it into my leather bag.  John was sitting in the other armchair staring at the window at the top of the wall, waiting, like I was, for the noise that had been going nearly the whole time to stop.

“Plink, plink, plink, plink, plink,….. pause……….plonk, plonk, plonk, plonk,…….pause…..donk,donk,donk,pause, donk,donk,…..pause…..pause…….Pause…silence”

John and I looked at each other, both leaning forward to stand….

Plonk…plonk…donk!  Then a short excerpt from some classical piece, we sat back in our chairs….then the keyboard cover being closed.

One down two to go.

We got up and walked over to the hall door.  Clive was there about to bang on the door with his stick.

“OK Clive?” I asked .

“That one is all done. Clive smiled, “Nothing majorly wrong with it but it kept slipping out quite considerably.”

We waited while Bonzo attacked the bowl of water.

“Erm, Clive, the two uprights are next to the entry doors of the ground floor hall and the first floor hall.  John will take you over to the ground floor and he can wait for you and lead you up to the first floor or…”

John was shocked and started to mouth the word ‘Nooooo’ and waving his hands

“That’s ok Dave, if you can show me to the first piano I can make my own way up the stairs to the first floor.  I know the layout well as I have been here a few times. Just remind me how many flights of stairs to the first hall and how many stairs to each flight are there?”

“Four flights and eight steps on each and the hall door is directly in from of the top of the fourth flight, just to your right.”

“I will show you Clive, come with me, but I have to get back and carry on painting.” John said taking his arm.  I was wondering what painting John was doing?  Even Bonzo gave him a double take.

Clive pulled away laughing.

“No need for that, thank you.  I was born blind.  I am used to it by now, don’t worry.”

Off they walked together down the corridor to the linkway corridor that would take them to the ground floor of the old school.

“What kind of paint are you using?  I can’t smell anything.” Clive asked, I could not hear what rubbish John gave as a reason

John told me when he got back that Clive was tuning the piano in the ground floor hall first and would make his way up the eight flights of stairs to the first floor and tune that one, then make his way down the stairs and tap his stick on the floor at the bottom of the stairs for us to hear that he was ready to be brought back over here.”

“Well let’s hope he gets a move on.” I said as I nodded. “Oh, Where’s his dog?”

“Very funny”.John smiled.

Two cups of tea and a couple of phone calls later it was just over 75minutes after taking Clive over to the  old school we heard him banging his cane on the floor or the door of the linkway.

“I can hear the dog yapping. John suddenly said

“I hope that’s not the door frame he’s tapping, we are not getting the painters back here again.” I said to John who laughed and then thought better of it.

“Whats the matter with the dog, he’s going mental.” 

“Maybe the bloke is upside down at the bottom of the stairs for all we know!” John replied.

“Don’t say that for christ’s sake!” We both laughed and hurried towards the banging and John shouted out, “Coming Clive!”.

 The banging stopped as we got to the corridor and started walking down it.  I thought Clive was talking to himself or Bonzo but he was nodding and smiling then turned to his left facing the staircase and said,

“They’re here now, thank you very much.”  Bonzo was standing in front of Clive, ben down on his front legs as if about to pounce and growling at what I could only describe as a shadow, jet black, taller than 6ft, It was standing at the bottom of the first flight that I had stood at when I heard the sound of someone was coming down the stairs two at a time.

“Are you alright Clive?” I shouted

The shadow figure turned left to face us full on then turned left again and disappeared very quickly from view up the first flight of stairs.

“Yes, thank you, one of your people helped me down the stairs but couldn’t walk me through to the front.  They said they are not allowed.”

“Who was it, Clive?” I asked. 

“Quiet Bonzo, Settle down.” Clive laughed, “Sorry Dave , he didn’t seem to like him.   

John had his hands on his head slicking his hair back looking at the ceiling like he wanted to scream.

“He said he was the Boiler man. He was on the landing of the first floor.  I didn’t hear him, Bonzo started growling at something.  He asked me who I was.  He seemed to know I was blind but he nearly tripped me down the stairs, I thought he tried to steady me but he almost pushed me down further.  Then I couldn’t move my leg..  My fault probably, I lost my footing and held on to the rail.  He must have stood there just watching me.  Bonzo was panicking and barking. I thought it was one of you two!  He just said ‘come on then’.

We walked back to the new school and our office.  The dog seemed to be in a hurry.  His paws tapping on the stone painted floor of the new school corridor..

“How old would you say I am?” Clive randomly asked me when we were near the front doors.

My mind was still all over the place with the revelation from Clive who, quite frankly, knew no better or different and I was not going to make tell him otherwise.

Clive looked about 50, with a very white pallor, his skin made you think he never went out into the open air but he obviously did. 

“40?” I ventured.

“37” said Clive. “Not bad!”

I thought ‘Thirty seven?!’

“You look good on it” I said out loud.

“You’re not just saying that are you?

“No” I lied.

“The reason I ask is…well, that man asked me if I had been here during the war.  I thought he was joking but he wasn’t.”

“Probably meant the Falklands?”

“No, in the 40s.”  I just laughed it off.  You meet all sorts.  Better go.  Happy Christmas!” and he started a slow walk to the bus stop in the Romford road on his way to my old secondary school..

“Thanks,” I shouted, “You too!”

I locked the doors and walked over to the office wondering if I should have asked the poor sod if he wanted a lift but saw a note on the desk.  It was from John:

‘I am in the pub, I have ordered you a pint.’

I locked the office door and opened the front doors.  Stepping out onto the entrance platform at the top of the 6 steps that led up to the entrance, I resisted the urge to look back inside the giant glass doors, walked down the steps and padlocked the chain around the front gates.  I walked left to the end of the street, turned left on water lane and made for the pub on the next corner to the school, the Manbey Arms.  As I wa;led down the road past the school I stopped and looked up at the Victorian building.  I looked at the staircase that went deom the ground floor to the top.  I became aware of a dark shadow standing on the top landing.  No features, just a shape of a man.  I assumed it was a reflection from something unknown opposite the school but it moved and was gone.

John was sitting at a table with one and a half pints of bitter in front of him.

“You OK?” I asked him, after I had bought another pint.  He looked like he needed both of the ones on the table.

“No, I’m fxxxxxg not!” he replied.  “I can’t go back.  I’m thinking of not coming back at all.  Sorry Dave.”

I was startled.  He had given no indication of this.  He was always scared, but seemed to persevere with the whole thing, like I did. Taking each day and its events as it came.

“No need to apologise to me mate.” I took a sip of beer. “You have to do what you think best.  If I were you I would come to the party tomorrow, it’s all paid for by the council. Then think about it over Christmas before making a decision.  You should find another job before you chuck this one in.  Come back on the 4^th January.  The kids are not back until the 9^th but the teachers creep in before then.  There will be more people there and you can decide then. I am meeting the vicar there before then.”

John got very agitated, to such an extent he put his pint down.

“Don’t do it.  Don’t get the Vicar there.  It will make things worse, I know it will.”

“It might help” I replied “And we need all the professional help we can get.” I said, as if I knew what I was talking about.  I hoped I was right.

We sat there in silence for a while, listening to the Christmas songs on the juke box, and they didn’t make the atmosphere any happier.  Mariah Carey kept repeating ‘All I want for Christmas is you!”.

All I wanted was an end to this nightmare.

I had nothing to do that night so John and I had a pub meal and met up with my mates in the pub later that evening.  We told my friends what had happened in the school earlier and they were already aware of what had been going on over the previous years but they wanted to go over and take a look in the dark!

Slowly, we became more and more aware of the pub falling silent as people moved over to the TV which was above the bar near the saloon bar.  The music had stopped on the Juke Box, or had been turned off, and we could hear the news that Pan Am Flight 103 had exploded above a town called Lockerbie in Scotland.  All 243 passengers and 16 crew members had died on the plane and 11 residents of Lockerbie were killed when the wreckage of the plane landed on the town.  It had happened at 7pm but with no internet or social media, or no rolling news to boast of it only hit the TV at around 9pm.  The mood had changed in the pub and the evening was over.  People say they remember where they were when Kennedy was assassinated.  I don’t, I was 3.  But I know exactly where I was when I heard about Lockerbie.

Life seemed to resume to normal in the School over the following few weeks.  Even though we had to lock all the doors and make sure all windows were closed and lights were off each late afternoon we managed to do this without any incidents, and, to be honest, we did as much as we could before it started to think about getting dark.  That was until we took a booking for a Tai Chi class to be held from 6pm each Thursday evening.  I had tried to get them to use the hall in the new school but as they all arrived in cars it was logistically impossible so the ground floor hall in the old school it had to be, as the playground was outside the old school on both sides and was used as the car park for teachers and visitors.

A Tai Chi class were due to arrive on the Thursday evening and I was setting out the required 20 chairs in a semi-circle for everyone to sit in prior to doing whatever Tai Chi groups do. I think of Tai Chi as that slow moving kind of mobile yoga people do in Parks but this was different.  This was one of the elite versions of Combat/ Defence Tai Chi.  It formed part of Kung Fu and Karate (so I was told) and involves punching blocking and unbalancing your opponent. The way Gerry, the instructor, described it when he booked it I wondered if we needed an ambulance on standby.

There was a classroom unlocked to allow the female members to get changed in privacy.  It was decided to use the art room, a little away from where the men were changing in the hall as the bottom half of all of the windows were covered with drawings and A3 size paintings and posters which prevented anyone looking into the room from outside in the car park in the playground.

Any new ‘lettings’ like these always required the Caretaker to do the first one.  This was to establish rules and permissions.It could then be delegated, if need be.                        

A few months later I discovered that this practice of using the art room had continued with a twist. For £5, someone could stand in the playground and look in the window through a strategically bent corner of one of the posters, or through a whole cut in one of the posters at the girls getting changed!. It was the ‘Bird watching’ Club on Thursday evenings from the local pub, organised by John. A nice little sideline!!!!

The men in the Tai-Chi group would just get changed in the corner of the hall.  Having set everything up I unlocked the door that we used as an entry point in the mornings at the bottom of the staircase in the opposite diagonal corner to the ‘Haunted stairs’, as it had become known.  I had put 6 chairs out and checked my watch. Almost kick off time.  I went outside to the playground and unlocked the rear gates facing the pub to allow the cars in.  I then went back in to the hall to put more chairs out and to wait for the first arrivals.

There was still some semblance of light and I retraced my steps into the hall feeling a chill in the air for the first time.  As I reached the art room to get the other ten chairs to put with the ten I had already done I almost jumped out of my skin!

There was a crashing noise behind me as the hall door opened and the leader of the Tai Chi group stepped into the hall with another younger man. I recognised him as he had come to the school to hire the hall instead of going to the council office and I dealt with the booking for him. He hurried over and held out his hand.

“Dave, good to see you again”.

Reintroductions were made and timings agreed and I showed Gerry the classroom for the ladies to change in was quite safe, (at the moment!!) and as it was an art room I pointed out the paintings were over the exterior windows and the glass panels in the door to avert prying eyes. Gerry was very pleased  and I said that he would come back at 10pm to lock up as I would be nearby.  Gerry winked, “I saw the pub, don’t blame you!” he smiled as three people arrived. ‘This room is perfect for them to change in. We had some issues at a previous venue.  I am sure the ladies will be appreciative.”

We stepped out of the classroom, “as you can the posters are also covering the glass in and around the door.”

“Marvellous, thank you.” Gerry nodded.

“I’ll leave you to it Gerry,” I made my way to the exit door and was about to step out when the Gerry said,

‘Oh by the way Dave…shall we take the chairs out of that same classroom?’

I turned around.

‘Sorry, I’ll put some more chairs out, I was doing that when you arri….…….”

I stopped mid-sentence, amazed at what I was looking at.

Apart from us and the Tai Chi people arriving, the hall was empty!

CHAPTER 8 THE CALM BEFORE THE CHAOS.

The teachers and children were due to return to the school after the holidays.  There always seemed to be a holiday going on.  Fortunately, not as many as now.  Since we had decided to leave the corridor locked after seeing the handles turn of their own volition we had witnessed no further incidents.  The only time the corridor was unlocked was to allow the painter to, rather quickly, finish the painting and when the teachers arrived the day before the children did and we let them all make their own way through to the old school.  They were our unwitting canaries in the coalmine and I thought whatever happened was their lookout.

I bumped into the Head Mistress in the corridor as she was making her way out and suggested we meet to discuss an issue that was causing us concern.  She said she could meet with me in her office at 11am on the following Monday, the day before term started.

That Monday I went into the school office and told the secretary I was there for a meeting with the head and she replied, “I have it in the diary Dave, go through they are all waiting for you!”

As I crossed the room and reached the connecting door I thought “They? Who else is here”

I opened the door to see the Head sitting behind her desk, all three deputy heads and four heads of department sitting in armchairs and on chairs.  They all stopped talking immediately and looked up at me at once. “Thanks for meeting us.” The Head said, as I sat in an armchair  the facing everyone. 

I had the impression they’d think I was either drunk or off my head but I was wrong. 

I outlined in great detail my concerns.  I said reports had been made to me by various caretaking staff, cleaners and workmen about events that we have no rational explanation about

They asked me questions about what had happened and sought assurance that what I was saying was right and I told them what I thought about it. 

They in turn told me about doors opening and locking on their own, items disappearing and then being found somewhere else, odd noises and a smell of burning in isolated areas.  A couple of them had seen shadows on corridor walls. One of the Deputy Heads told me that she and one of the HOD’s sitting opposite were standing at the bottom of the large stone steps in the new school talking to another teacher during the lunch hour and she put her leather key pouch on the top of the stone stair post less than two feet away to get a file out of her bag.  After she handed it to the teacher she went to pick up her keys but they were gone, they were nowhere to be found.  After a few minutes of them checking around them she walked back to her office only to find them on the seat of her leather desk chair.

The Head Teacher looked at me, trying to guage what my thoughts were.

“As you can tell, Dave, we have had some strange experiences that none of us can explain.”

It was clear that they were uneasy and looking for answers but, to their horror, I went into great detail about the events we had experienced, with the shaking doors, the taps in the washroom, and the electrician on the ladder.  Each event making the faces staring at me go from interest to fear.  The Piano tuner event seemed to take it to a new level for them and then my staircase incident in the dark tipped them over the edge.

I looked around the room at the faces of 6 women and two men. Their faces were blank, in shock. There were shocked glances between them and the Head, who looked like she was about to pass out.  Her eyes bulging as she stared at her deask. If this was a game of Top Trumps, I was the unanimous winner!

Two common threads had appeared. A tall jet black shadow and a little girl in Victorian clothing.

“So,”I said to all of them but directing it to the Head, “When were you planning on sharing all of this with the caretaking staff?”

They all shifted a little with discomfort.

“I am sorry, we should have voiced all of this sooner but we did not know how to broach the subject with you. There have been things happening but we ignore them, especially in front of the children. We don’t want a panic on our hands.  All it takes is a wrong word to the wrong parent… they would be up here looking for trouble or a fight.   Things have gone missing, things seen and heard.  Have you noticed that no teachers stay in their classrooms after the school bell now.”

I hadn’t taken much notice but thinking about it I could tell she was right.  The room was silent.

One of the male teachers, Rob, raised his hand and gave a slight cough. 

“I teach PE and English, as you know.” He said in a booming voice scaring the life out of all of us. This nugget of information answered the question the caretaking staff had as to why he always seemed to be wearing shorts.  Even in winter.  Those ‘very very’ short shorts worn in the 80’s. The ones where, if you cross your legs quickly you didn’t only cut off your circulation.

“I was in the English class on the top floor of the old school after the bell had gone one afternoon.” Rob said, as he rubbed his hands together. “I was sitting at my desk; the classroom door was open on my left.  All the cleaners had gone and I remember seeing John and I told him I would let him know when I was leaving.  He went out the door and I heard him going down the stairs.  I only had ten books to mark and I could have taken them to the Staff room down this corridor from here but decided to plough through them.

It was total silence.  I heard a noise like something rolling on the floor.  I ignored it.  It suddenly stopped.  Then it started again.  I didn’t move.  I hate to admit it but I was a bit freaked out by it.  As I listened I looked to my left at the open door.  Nothing.  No sound or anything.  As soon as I looked back at my school book it happened again.  I got up and made a lot of noise with my chair and walked to the door as loud as I could making my footsteps audible.  I even shouted “Is that you Sue?”  I looked out into the hall both ways, and said, “Who is it?” but there was no one there.

I went back and sat down, marked the book with a BPlus and decided to leave.  I took my zip-up jacket off the back of the chair and put it on, picked up my keys and a book I was reading lunchtime and turned to the door and froze.  There was a basketball where I had been standing in the doorframe. I just stared at it for a few seconds.  Eventually I walked over and stepped over the ball and left through the stair door and ran down the stairs.”

“When was this exactly?” I asked him. 

“The week before end of term.  I saw you when I got over here.” He said,  “You asked me if I was OK, as I looked white as a sheet.”

I remembered.  I thought at the time ‘He looks like he’s seen a ghost!’

 “We need serious, professional help, maybe the religious kind, but, not amateur ghost hunters”.  The Head suddenly announced.

I raised a hand as everyone started to mumble.

“I know you’re concerned about publicity, and some parents looking for a fight, as if that will solve it but, involving the Church shouldn’t be a problem.  They would probably be discreet.  I don’t have much kop with the church myself but the risk of parents picketing outside while the pound signs cloud their eyes and getting the press involved, just so they can make a few quid, or involving a Pound stretcher version of Scooby Doo would be fatal!,  We don’t want the Mystery Machine pulling up outside.”

They laughed and the tension seemed to ease.  They raised the matter of the Board of Governors being told but it was agreed to do nothing in that regard.  We were dealing with something we had no idea about and that the Board should be involved if anything definite was proven.  At the moment it’s just the caretaking and cleaning staff that are aware of it, plus the occasional workman, and of course these 8 members of staff.

 She said she had put ‘the conversation’ off until I had raised the matter with her, as I was doing now.  She asked me to lead the way forward and would make an appointment with her friend, the local Vicar at the church the school choir sang at, for me to lay our cards on the table and determine what he could do, if anything.

The two Deputy Heads left and when we were alone the Headmistress asked me for the full story about the incident on the stairs and the sink taps in the linkway toilets.  I told her in very clear terms what had happened.  Every step, every noise, and every impossibility.  She looked visibly shocked. 

She pressed the button on the internal phone and asked for a jug of water to be brought through.  Within minutes her PA appeared with a tray.  She placed it on her desk as the Head poured a glass and drank it down. The PA looked at me with a quizzical look and left.

“That must have been terrifying!” she finally said, “My hands are shaking! I am meeting our Vicar on Thursday evening at a Parent Teachers meeting and I was going to raise the subject then, discreetly of course” she said, her voice a little shaky, “but I think I will call him now and arrange an appointment for you to meet him.” 

I left her to her phone call.  20 minutes later I was standing looking down the linkway corridor reliving the taps incident in my mind. I looked through the glass panels in the far end doors and stared at the point where I was rooted to the spot awaiting whatever it was that had come running down the staircases two steps at a time.  I suddenly felt like I was being watched, and not alone. I spun around only to be confronted by a very shocked headmistress wearing trainers.  My appointment was made for the following Wednesday, 11am, eight days away.  Eight days…’How busy were the church?’ I wondered.

CHAPTER 7 SHAKING

 

In 1987 it was decided that during the six week holiday from July through to the end of August that the corridors including the Link Corridor would be repainted by a firm of decorators under contract to Newham Council.  During this time the cleaning and caretaking staffs were on site to oversee the cleaning and repairs needed in the building and the hours worked were between 8am and 5pm.  The night cleaners were not required and were on a retainer for the period.

Three painters arrived the first day.  One was assigned the link Corridor which was over 50ft long and had a double wooden door with clear glass panels at each end. The two other corridors were in the new school and over 120ft in length each.  My first thought was that they were intent in making the job last. 

The cleaners very quickly covered their areas and all the offices in the new building as well as the old were pristine.  During the holiday period, the cleaners worked in a pack, all 10 of them so the chances of hearing or seeing anything untoward were minimised, though during term time they were separated into their own areas.  After a fortnight there was no need for them to keep coming in so they were allocated the remainder of the holiday period off.  It just left the caretaking staff and the painters.

It was really a case of being there in case of deliveries and to let the painters in and out.  Their vans were parked in the front of the school and the caretaker office was next to the entrance so, all exterior doors were closed.  There was only one way in and out.

Two days after the painters began I took two days off as I had secured a training session for a timeshare company in Gants Hill, around 5 miles away.

The original caretaker, Jim had, by this time, died and I had been assigned as the Caretaker but I had a deputy caretaker and he was in charge for the next three days.  After a full day of training on the final day in Gants Hill I got home around 8pm and found a message on my answering machine from John, the Deputy.  He had left the message at 4 pm asking me to call him as soon as I got in. This was 1987 so unless you wanted to carry a very expensive house brick around with you or a small briefcase that looked like a phone the army would use on manoeuvres, a land line was what we used if a phone box wasn’t available or had been smashed up..

I started to make a cup of tea when I called him.  John told me that the painter in the Link Corridor had seen something. 

‘Can you be a little more specific?’  I laughed.

‘A girl.’

I stopped what I was doing and sat down as the kettle clicked off.

I cannot remember the conversation in detail.  What I can remember is that the painter saw a girl, around twelve years old, standing on the other side of the locked link corridor door at the bottom of the stairs where my incident had been.  I remember John saying that he had left and wouldn’t be back.  One thing I do remember as clear as day is what he said next.

 ‘He didn’t even stay to put the lids on the paint or take his brushes or anything. Not even his flask and radio.  It’s all still there.’

This was the same as the Electrician who fell off the ladder before. Even with a fractured ankle, he had left immediately.

‘What time are they coming in tomorrow?’

John told me the two painters would come back at ten in the morning so I asked John to meet me there at 930 and we would take a look at the work in the Link Corridor.  The teaching staff were due back in ten days. 

John was already there when I got there next day.  We walked along the corridor to the Link corridor and looked down it.  I know he had some reticence like I did as we always expected to see something since my incident with all the taps. I don’t know what we expected to see but the mind plays tricks and all manner of horrible things can be conjured up in the imagination.   It was only natural.  It was overcast outside but we didn’t need to put the lights on.  One whole side of the corridor was clear windows from four feet height to ceiling. He had done an excellent job on the one side that had the door into the Washroom where the taps had been turned on, but the half height wall with windows hadn’t been touched, the ceiling had been painted first.

On the floor were sheets and down the corridor were four cans of paint, some paint trays and some rollers.  There was a flask, a radio, paint lids and a baseball cap.

I suddenly heard a noise behind us and there were voices getting nearer.  The two painters had arrived earlier than expected, and called out to us.  We shouted out to them telling them where we were and they stepped into the corridor with a quick ‘hello’ and a nervous glance around.  They told us that another painter would arrive tomorrow and that they wanted to get on with painting the two corridors in the new school.  This was what I expected.  I asked them what the painter had told them and they just said ‘not much’ or something like that.  They walked off and I could hear them making a noise setting up a short distance away but out of our site.  I got the feeling it wasn’t that they didn’t want to tell us what they knew, but more likely they didn’t know what to believe.

I asked John if he had ever had any weird experiences recently in the school and he said he had but nothing major.  He hadn’t mentioned them because he couldn’t say anything for definite.  He always thought he was being watched in the evenings when sitting there in the office waiting for some keep fit class or a meeting to finish so he could go home. He started to tell me about his wife who was really into the occult and how they had had a séance in their house and used a Ouija board but it was fun and nothing happened.

I think I heard it first.

It was he was talking to me but eventually he heard it too.  It was a rattling noise, like something being shaken.  Not all the time, just every few seconds or so.  Not too loud, just lust loud enough to be heard.  I stepped around the corner and looked at the two painters.  They were minding their own business and seemed to be miles away stirring paint.  I looked back at John who was watching me intently.  The rattling noise had stopped.  My mind went back to the night cleaners first night and how the doors had rattled.

John laughed and as he did so the shaking sound happened again.  This time there was no mistake.  John turned around and followed my gaze down the Link Corridor.  The locked double doors at the far end were being shaken as if to see if they would open.

This one event, in itself, easy to explain away at any other time with just the basic facts, could not be explained away easily to us, there in the moment.  For one thing there were no windows open anywhere and no doors unlocked anywhere so it wasn’t a draft or the wind.  It was evident to us that there was a major problem in this school and professional help was required.

Our conclusion was based simply on the fact that even if there was any wind, it wouldn’t normally make the handles of the doors turn downwards.

CHAPTER 6 A STUPID DECISION

 

We reached the end of term a few weeks later and the six week holiday period began.  This was when major cleaning, painting and decorating happened and any other remedial work was taking place. A team of contracted electricians came to rewire that old school.  After about a week there was an incident on the top (third) floor hall of the school where an electrician was on top of a tall ladder on his own checking live wiring against dead.  He felt his ladder shake and looked down to find no one there.  The metal ladder would make a loud cracking noise that echoed around the empty hall like it did when he climbed the steps to go up it.  This happened 2 or 3 times when he suddenly looked down and found himself staring at a child of around 12, in old style burnt and smouldering clothing and with burnt features standing at the base of the steps.  The ladder fell sideways and his right leg slipped between the rungs and his foot twisted as he hit the ground. He got up and staggered limping from the hall and down all the flights of stairs.  He never came back, refused to work there again and eventually had to go on one of the electrical companies other jobs in Newham.  
I went to visit him in hospital to find out what he actually saw but he wouldn’t speak about it. Eventually he did, that’s how we know about the burning girl. He looked terrified and had left the school and got one of the others to take him to Newham General.  He had suffered a Potts Fracture, quite a serious injury to the whole foot area.
And then it happened.
One night I had a booking for a football team to use the floodlit play area for training.  I had to be there from 6pm until 10pm to activate the floodlights from inside the school and to be there if anything was needed.  I stood in the corridor of the school that linked the old school to the new.  The doors were all locked in the school.  No one could get in or out without the keys I carried in my pocket.  At 630 the players arrived and looked over towards me and I waved.  I turned on the floodlights and would return at 10 to switch them off.  I went back to my office and watched the portable tv.  At 10pm I went and opened the door to get in the corridor and looked out at the floodlit area.  Empty.  I turned off the floodlights but became aware of water running.  I had stood here earlier for ten minutes in total silence. I walked over to the door of the toilet block, opened it and stepped in.  The noise was really loud.  In the block were about 30 toilet cubicles around the edge and at least 30 sinks in a centre reservation with a central wall with mirrors above the sinks.  EVERY sink had its taps turned on full. 
The room was filling up with steam as if it had just been done.  The taps were difficult to turn off as they had all been forced.  I turned them all off and the silence was deafening.  There was no way into this washroom other than the locked door I came through. 
 
Back in my office I considered waiting for the Night cleaners to tell them what had happened but I didn't think they would appreciate it.  I drove to the pub instead and met up with a couple of friends.
"Cheer up Dave, it might not happen!"  Darryl told me as he brought me out of my thoughts about the evenings activity.
"If I tell you something, do you promise not to laugh or tell me I am losing my marbles?" I asked him.
"No!" he replied.
I spent the next 30 minutes telling him about all the things that had happened since I started work at the School.  Every detail.
After I had finished he sat there for a few seconds staring at me.  
"Well? I asked.
“Fucking hell!” he blurted out, "I didn't laugh, and I know you haven't lost your marbles.  If I was you I would get out of there like a shot and never go back!"
I nodded.  It was the logical thing to do, but life isn't logical and we make stupid decisions sometimes. 

CHAPTER 5 NIGHT CLEANERS

 

The night cleaners would be working from 10pm till 6am and they would be polishing the floors of the new school and the Link corridor with big electric machines that were fitted with large round, disposable, polishing pads.

I got back to the school at 9:45pm and with a certain amount of trepidation I let myself into the front doors of the new school and opened the door of the office.  Thankfully, Andy had laid out all of the things they would need, cloths, cleaning fluids and sprays, the polishing machine and the floor pads.  Good Man! I decided to sit and wait for the cleaners as I hoped I would only be here for 20 minutes or so.

I had locked the front doors behind me so they would have to knock to get in.  I had a set of keys for each of them which they could use to open and lock the areas they were going to work and a key for the front doors so they could let themselves in each night.  

I looked at the newspaper that had been left on the desk from earlier in the day.  The crossword was half completed by Andy.  I started to look at the clues.  I thought I would see if I could finish it.

I studied the clue: ’12 down: Area of ground where soldiers drill, six letters.’ Parade! I was sure that was right but the answer Andy had given to 8 across crossed it.  There was an ‘R’ but it was in the wrong place.  Clue, ‘8 Across Supreme, 9 letters’. ‘That’s Paramount I thought.  Then I saw what Andy had written for supreme 9 letters!.

‘Diana Ross’! 

I threw the paper in the bin, laughing….then I heard a door rattle nearby.

I got up and stepped out into the school foyer and walked to the door with my keys but when I looked up I saw there was no one there.  I looked through the glass panels into the front entrance area but there was no sign of anyone.  I could see the cars parked in the street and to my left I could see the cars that had stopped at the traffic lights in Water Lane as it crossed the Romford Road.

I went back to the office and picked up the newspaper.  After a few seconds I heard the door being shaken again.  I stepped out of the office and looked at the doors.  Again, there was no one there.  As I turned to go back into the office I heard the doors rattle again.  I span around and could see that there was no one standing outside the front doors.  I walked towards the entrance and could see there was no one around outside.

Suddenly the doors rattled again but this time they rattled very hard but, from where I was standing, I could tell it was the doors to the corridor on the right of the Hall.  These were internal doors and I was alone in the building.  This wasn’t the wind making them rattle, everywhere was shut.  They rattled again as I tried to make sense of what was happening.

What the hell was causing this?  The doors were rattling every five seconds or so.  Someone was shaking them from the other side of the door.

I listened to the sound as it echoed around the building.  When the school was empty every single noise, no matter how slight, was magnified.  This was echoing like thunder.

Then it stopped.  I stood still and listened.  There was no sound, no rattling, no shaking, nothing.

I noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye and immediately there was a loud knocking sound behind me.  I spun around and saw the two night cleaners standing outside.  I unlocked the door and let them in.

“Thanks Dave,” Derek said as he stepped back allowing Jill, the other night cleaner, to step in first.

“What a Gentleman!” She laughed.

“Have you just got here? I asked, locking the door.

“Yeah, I picked Jill up and parked outside.  Will I be OK there?” He asked pointing to a Ford Sierra parked in the street right outside the front gate that hadn’t been there before.

“Yeah, no problem.” I told him.

They told me that they had both been to the school and spoken to Jim who, in a break with tradition, had given them a tour of the premises himself!

“It’s the corridor floors and surfaces mainly isn’t it” Jill asked, “Machine wash and polishing??”  I agreed.  Having the 8 cleaners arrive at 6am until 8am and 3.30 pm until 6pm every day seemed to make these night cleaners a waste of time and money but, it was not my problem.  The machine polishing was needed but I still couldn’t figure out what was going to take 8 hours five nights a week??

I was still thinking back to the door rattling.

I almost asked them if they had tried to get in through another entrance but it was pointless.  They had no keys and they had been told to come to the front doors.  Whatever it was that had shaken the internal corridor doors wasn’t trying to get in the building.  It was already in the building and I had the uneasy feeling that it had been here a long time: and it was going nowhere.

 

There were two parts to the school, the old Victorian part and a more modern part which was linked by a corridor that had a large toilet and washbasin block housed in it.

A month later I went in one morning at 6am to let the regular cleaners in and the night cleaners were still there about to leave.

Derek  said to me, ‘Dave was there some fancy dress party in the old school last night?’  the school was always being used for parties, wedding receptions etc.  I told him there was nothing going on and asked why.

It transpired that he had seen a child of about 12 in dirty smeared Victorian clothing that kept running around the corridors and looking around the corner at him, and he and Jill had searched all over the new school and the corridor linking to the old school but to no avail, they didn’t find her.  I couldn’t explain it.

CHAPTER 4 ANDY'S STORY

It was like one of those situations you see in the movies.  You only
find out about something a few weeks after you are there.  You spend a few weeks or months in total oblivion of something that happened and then, BANG, the starting pistol is fired and a catalogue of stories come flying out of the woodwork. 

It happens a lot in American horror movies.  They seem to portray Americans as people who are willing to buy a house without ever having seen it, and who know nothing about it.

Then you, as the new owner are told by someone something they thought you knew, but you didn’t and then it’s too late.  Like a realtor not telling you that someone had their throat cut in the kitchen by a burglar of the house you are thinking of buying and you move in, happy and blindly oblivious to the carnage and you have a welcome party or house warming party with your new neighbours only for a few of them to ask you, “What happened here doesn’t bother you then?” or “Have you seen the headless woman on the landing?”

After choking on your beer you shout. “WHAT?” and they say, “Oh sorry I thought you knew’ with some inane smile on their face. 

 

There had been rumours that the place was haunted because many years earlier one of the pupils and a boiler engineer had been killed in a fire in the old school. 

No one told me that.  They didn’t mention THAT! I overheard that when at the council picking up my wages, which we did every Friday morning in those days.  A little brown envelope with a payslip and cash in it.  I had heard a few of the assistant caretakers say they were asked to cover an absence at the school in the past but had decided to take time off through ill health.  I suppose it wouldn’t be good for morale if the story was widely known and in the few weeks I had been there I had heard of no issues until that morning..  It’s not something they would put on the job description, I suppose.  I could have been a sceptic, and it wouldn’t have bothered me.  I was, and am, an inquisitive person and I am open to anything.  I prefer fact to supposition but I trust my own judgement. Even though I never believe anything like this unless I experience it myself, I knew that I was sitting with someone who was absolutely terrified, and he really believed.

The Lady who ran the Library in the school knew the history of the school and told me a few months later that the fire had broken out in the Boiler Room at the foot of one of the two staircases in the old school. The staircases had acted like a chimney and very quickly the fire had reached the top floor.  It then started to burn through into the Hall on the top floor.  For some reason a few of the children had hidden from the fire on the landing of the top floor but they had become cut off from any hope of escape.

All in all, two people had been killed in the boiler room and three on the top floor before the fire had been brought under control.

It was a very sad day in the school’s history and it was quite a few months before the school opened again and it resulted in the new school building being added to the old Victorian one about 30 years ago.  This had enabled the school to take more pupils.

I didn’t believe the stories of seeing a girl or other girls all in burnt clothing that obviously dated from the Victorian era, yet, here I was sitting talking to someone who really believed he had seen this girl.

“What do you mean you have ‘seen her before’?” I asked.

Andy continued to stare into his mug of tea.  He looked up at me and appeared to be trying to decide if I was going to laugh, or worse, make fun of him.

“Come on, you may as well tell me everything.  You said ‘It was her’ and that you had ‘seen her before’.

Andy leant back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, exhaling a loud sigh .  He leant forward again

“A few months ago I saw her in the window of the ground floor hall when I was looking out of the window upstairs above here.  You know the corridor that faces the old school upstairs near the computer rooms?”

“What time was this?”

“During the summer holidays we were cleaning this side of the school and I was having a cigarette.  I went to the window and looked out at Stratford and the buses going past.  I opened the window to flick the ash out and I saw her.”

I stared at him.  He really believed it, I could tell.

“She was looking at me and not looking at me, if you know what I mean.”

I nodded in agreement, not having a clue what he meant.

“She was looking through me, like she was looking at something behind me.  I could hear Jim downstairs from me; he was banging and crashing around.  One minute she was there, I looked away when I heard a loud bang downstairs and when I looked back…she was gone.”

“Did you see her disappear?” I asked, trying to make it sound like an everyday, run of the mill, question.

“No, she just wasn’t there anymore.  I just couldn’t see her anymore.”

He said it in such a matter of fact way that it kind of made sense to me. 

We both sat there drinking tea for a minute, in
silence.  The rain was still hammering down but I decided that I had to leave.  

I had agreed to drop into the school at 9:45 that evening as I was passing through as the new night cleaners were starting and I was going to show them where everything was and ensure that they had everything they needed.  Another little job that Jim had delegated through ill health and, thanks to my conversation, it didn’t seem like a good idea to me now.

I felt a little disturbed by what I had heard.  Not so much the content, but the fact that he appeared to believe it with every fibre of his being.