An East London Haunting

   

AN EAST LONDON

HAUNTING

BY

DAVID MOORE

 

I didn’t believe in the supernatural.  I loved a horror movie as much as the next person, maybe more.  Now, as I look back at the events that led to me going from a total sceptic, to a believer I cannot understand where the years went . My experiences and what I saw others go through, terrifying as they were, have never and will never leave me.  They were totally unexpected.

How I went back every day, for over five years, amazes me to this day.  How I walked the corridors, faced the terror that appeared again and again only to go back for more seems like the behaviour of a madman, a fear junkie…or a lunatic.  I was defiant.  I would not give in, nor would I back down.  There was no way that I would walk away, until I eventually did.  I walked away from all of this because of another opportunity, not because of what I suffered over five years at the school.

Back in 1984 I started a job as the assistant caretaker at one of those old three floored Victorian schools in East London.   It was called The Sarah Bonnell School for Girls.   I had been the youngest store Manager in the history of HMV, the record shop, having been asked to run the large store on the high street of Stratford when I was a 17 year old Saturday boy in 1976.  I eventually left there after I had turned 22 and travelled quite a bit through Europe.  When I got back after a few months I decided to start my own Management and Sales Training Company.  I was holding the occasional sales training workshop teaching salespeople to sell better in car showrooms, door to door and publishing companies, but getting the bookings was becoming difficult.  It was pre-internet and Social Media.  I needed to earn more money while I did that and I knew  I needed to do something to supplement my income.  A friend of mine, Colin, was a school caretaker and he suggested to me over a few drinks one evening  in the Spread Eagle pub around the corner from my home in West Ham that I should consider a vacancy that had arisen.

 

Colin was an ex-boxer, but had spent more time on the canvas than Leonardo Da Vinci.  He had a very badly broken nose to prove it too.  I think it had been broken three times and was almost flat to the point it was wider than it was long.  It seemed that whatever position he sat in, from whatever direction you looked at him,  he was always in profile.  He was a very kind hearted guy and was already, at the age of 32, married to his childhood girlfriend and had four kids.  He was very conscientious at his job and had made a lot of friends in the council in the last six years as a caretaker.  Caretakers get a house as part of the deal.    He had a lovely three bedroom Victorian house a short walking distance from the school he worked in. Colin, as they say, knew what side his bread was buttered.

“It’s not like you need to do anything, Dave, it’s easy.  Unless you are a Caretaker like me when it’s a lot of responsibility” he told me.  Somehow I found it hard to believe.

“So what does it involve?” I asked.

“You go in at six in the morning and unlock, you let the cleaners in, they clean the offices and classrooms, and anything they need, you get for them.”

I was still getting over the 6am start!  I sometimes got home at 6am…I didn’t fancy going straight to work  

“They leave at eight thirty and you leave when the Head Caretaker and the day assistant get there.  Then you come back at four o’clock and wait until the cleaners have done their dusting and emptied the bins , you lock up and leave at six o’clock.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“That’s’ it.” He told me.

I took a sip of my beer.

“AND!” he said, “You can make additional money doing lettings.” 

I nodded, sipping my beer.  I didn’t ask what lettings  were but it fitted my time frame, it didn’t sound like hard work, I could make extra money on top and it fitted all my requirements…it seemed too good to be true.  It was.

“Do I need to fill in an application and be interviewed?”

Colin winked.

“I know the guy that’s recruiting.  You will need to be interviewed but if you want the job it’s yours.  I play golf with him.  He trusts me.”

I turned it over in my mind for a while but realised I had already made my decision.

“OK, let’s do it.  Thanks”

“Don’t thank me, it’s your round!”

I picked up the two glasses and walked to the bar.  I was pleased that the next stage was sorted.  I had money coming in and the freedom to pursue my goal of putting a band together.  What more could I want for now?

"What can I get you?" the barman asked.

I asked for two pints of bitter and looked around.  There were a couple of guys next to me talking.

"I told you," the older one said, "It's not the dead that can hurt you, it's the living!"

They laughed.  It was a phrase I had heard many times growing up and I believed it. 

My belief would be shattered soon when I discovered it was completely wrong.

 

The interview was merely a couple of questions about whether or not I would find the hours difficult and could I read as there were a lot of instructions on some of the cleaning fluids I would be handing out.

These days one needs a criminal check and a variety of tests that just fall short of a blood sample, DNA, inside leg measurement and an ancestry check into your family four generations ago.

I was asked to go to the school at 10am the following Monday and there would be an orientation meeting, a form of walk through introduction  with the caretaking staff.  It was all very convivial, not like a job interview that I had known or would carry out in the future that’s for sure.  I assumed the induction was going to be a process going over different chemicals and staff management but actually, it consisted of lots of tea and biscuits and pointing at brooms and offices.

 

 

It was a cold and windy day when I first climbed the entrance steps to the school.  The sky was leaden  and it looked like the heavens would open at any moment.  The main entrance doors to the new school were in Deanery Road and the entire reception hall was visible from outside.  Ten foot tall metal framed doors opened into the entrance hall with the school hall directly behind the showcase in front of it. Looking to the right there was a corridor that contained the offices for the Head and the Deputy Teachers.  Next to them was a reception office, a store room/ strong room containing a safe and some staff toilets.  At the bottom of the corridor there was a large staff room. Just to the left of the entrance as you walk in was the Caretakers office and next to that was the Schools Library.  It all looked like a large maze of long corridors to me.

“Hello mate,” said a guy about the same age as me.  He was dressed completely in Denim and was wearing trainers.  He put his hand out.

“My names Andy, and this is Jim the caretaker. Fancy a cuppa?”

“Thanks, I could do with it, cold out there!” I replied shaking his hand.

I stepped into the office and looked at the man he had motioned to. 

“Alright mate? Jim Price,” Said the older man, coughing like a 90 the day roll-up smoker he was. He rarely moved out of his chair. We shook hands and he motioned me to a chair in the corner which was surrounded by brooms, buckets and mops, next to a very large stained butler sink with a dripping tap..

Andy was busy making the tea and I looked at Jim.  He didn’t look healthy to me at all, making me wonder if he had been cold in the ground that morning.  He looked so ill it was as if he had died and no one had told him.  He was around five foot six and couldn’t have been more than eight stone.  He had gaunt, drawn features and piercing eyes.  His hair was straight, jet black and slicked back off his forehead. He reminded me of Dracula, if Dracula had been extremely ill for a year and on 2 packs of cigarettes a day since he was 12.  He carried a strange expression, as if he was only breathing in.  His cheekbones stood out further than any I had seen before.  You could’ve hung your coat on them.

Jim gave me the official talk about times and hours and I filled out a form listing all my contact details and signed it.  That was it, induction was over.

I drank my tea while Jim and Andy discussed some issue regarding a night cleaner which I didn’t understand and then the time came for the grand tour. Jim asked Andy to show me around.  I thought he was busy but it became apparent that Jim didn’t do much walking as his lungs were not functioning properly. Andy told me that Jim was suffering from breathing problems,  Emphysema,  and that he had not been a well man for quite some time. Unknown to us then, Jim would be dead within two years and Andy would have left suddenly vowing never to return.

 

“The corridors and the stairs work the same as the roads.”  Andy told me, “Keep on the left, especially when the bell goes.  You will be killed in the crush. Press yourself against the left wall and hold onto the stair rail. Don’t look at them and don’t talk to the little fuckers.”

  Andy and I walked down the corridor directly in front of our office door which ran along the side of the school hall.  I was starting to think that I was in a St Trinians film. We got to the end of the corridor and a T-Junction.

“This corridor” Andy said, pointing vaguely to the left, “runs the width of the new school. If you turn right here and follow it down there it turns right at the bottom of those stairs, back down to the corridor with the admin offices on the left and the right is the front entrance and our office. (He pointed back the way we had come, I could see Jim struggling with his blue park that looked 4 sizes too big)  Down here on the left are the science labs and offices either side.  The lab technicians have offices and store rooms down there.”

“Where do these stairs lead to?” I asked, pointing to the staircase to our left.

“They lead up to the next floor which is where the English and foreign language classes are and…the computer rooms!”

Computers were very new in those days and mostly if not all were using DOS programs.  A few more years had to pass before colour graphics and Windows made an appearance.  Computers held no interest to me in those days.

“We have to walk through here to get to the old school.”

I followed Andy into a long corridor, modern and very bright with windows on the left side of us, as we walked to the Victorian old school, from halfway up the wall to the ceiling. There we two sets of double doors locked open into latches on the walls.  On the right of this corridor were two doors 12 feet apart.  They were the in and out doors a toilet block of 20 sinks and 20 cubicles.

“This is the only way to get to the old school from here and back without going outside. It’s called the Linkway.”

Andy picked up pace a little and we reached the end of the corridor.

On the right at the end of the corridor as we stepped into the red painted floor of the old school was a door. The floor paint was the same as my Nan used on the front step of her house in West Ham where I had been born and lived. The door was unlocked by Andy and it opened immediately onto a steep flight of stairs down.  At the bottom I could see it was the Boiler room for the old school.  We walked down a flight of steps and along a 20ft corridor when the space opened out and there were two enormous iron boilers, each over 8 foot tall and 6 foot wide.  The heat and power they were generating was unbelievable.  I worked out in my head that these were under the playground outside the building and that the chimney next to the waste bins near the steps down into the playground from the stairs was the one from the Boilers.

We went back up the stairs and locked the door behind us.  Next to this, on the left, was a flight of 8 steps with small square rubber blocks running the entire width of each step. 

Facing us at the top of these 8 steps there was that door leading out into the playground.  There were 12 of these 8 step flights to the very top of the building in this corner and again at the other corner across the hall diagonally.  The only difference being there was no boiler room over that corner, just a cupboard.

That was the tour over with.

In the far corner of the playground was another building but I didn’t ask.  Time would tell.

We walked back over to the office where we found a note from Jim saying he had gone home and would be back for the letting that evening.  That reminded me…

“And a letting is?” I asked Andy.

Andy explained that a letting was a booking from an outside source or from a member of teaching staff or council for a meeting to be held in the school after school time.  Sometimes the lettings would be a meeting of Governors or a Karate or Yoga club in the hall. On the playground at the reat of the school towards Stratford there was some volleyball and football pitchese parked ot that sports clubs used and the Letteing only required the floodlights to be turned on.  

Dance classes and Keep Fit were all the rage.  Aerobics was the buzz word. Sports lettings and Parties would take place in the old school on the ground floor.  Jim was staying late to oversee the local Women’s Institute holding their quarterly meeting to discuss fundraising.

It sounded to me like Jim was having a quite night of it tonight.  

If this was the level of excitement to be had in this place then working here was going to be very boring unless I kept myself occupied? I hoped that something would enliven the working days or evenings in the future, but this was what I needed, a lot of free time during the day and a regular wage.  What could go wrong? I could never have guessed.

The weeks passed.  It was quite a mundane job.  You opened up the school and you shut the school.  Anything that happened in-between varied, but not by much.  There was the occasional fight between pupils, which lightened the mood, and the occasional problem that had to be dealt with but whoever was on duty during the school time hours had more work to do than the one opening and closing.  I started to feel inert. I always opted for the unlock and lock as it afforded me time during the day to do what I needed.  Occasionally I had to swap shifts one week but ideally, the early and late was mine.

I had been there for about a month when I arrived one morning at nine thirty to relieve Andy, who had opened up earlier.  I heard him talking to Jim in the Caretakers office.

“I saw it!” he said.

“Saw what?  Nothing!” Jim replied between coughs, “you saw nothing.  It’s your imagination.”

“You weren’t there!”

“It sounds like you weren’t there either, mate,” Jim replied, “you sound like you were half asleep.

“I wasn’t asleep, I know what I saw.”

“Excuse me?”

I turned around and saw one of the teachers walking towards me.

“Can I borrow a broom please? We have a bit of a problem in the art room.”

“Sure!” I said and walked into the office where we kept the brooms, dustpans and brushes and looked at Andy and Jim.

“Morning, ladies!” I said, trying to sound as jolly as I could.  I got the obligatory “Back later” response as Jim put his Parka coat on and walked off down the corridor as I picked out a soft bristle broom.

I turned to the teacher.

“I can come down and deal with it.” I said.

“I don’t want to put you out.  One of the girls has knocked over a jar of powder paint.  There’s powder paint and broken glass on the floor” She replied.

“Oh no!” I said to her, thinking “Little bastard!” to myself.

I continued. “Why don’t I go down and deal with it in the morning break?”

She was staring at Andy, who appeared to be in a world of his own, rubbing his hands together slowly as he concentrated on the floor. I didn’t let on that this was his normal ‘look’.

“Are you OK?” she asked him.  He either didn’t hear her, ignored her, hadn’t seen her or was in a semi-conscious state.  He could have been in any one or all four of those conditions but he very quickly put his coat on with a mumbled “Gotta get outta here.” and walked out quickly, then out the front doors of the school just to the right of the Office.

The teacher watched him leave and then looked back at me as if I had all the answers.

It didn’t take her long to realise I had none.  I only had questions.  No answers.

“That would be very kind.” the Teacher smiled.

“I will be down there in a minute, Miss….?”

“Johnson” she replied, “Karen to you.” but my mind started wandering, I couldn’t stop wondering what the hell Andy and Jim were talking about earlier.  

“I’m Dave” I told her.

“I know”, she laughed.  “Thanks Dave” she said and turned to walk off.   I was so engrossed in what it could be that was causing so much cloak and dagger between Andy and Jim I stood there, in a daze, watching Karen walk away.  I didn’t get the chance to hide or look away before Karen turned and looked back and saw me staring at her.  She stopped before turning the corner, laughed and waved at me. I was just lost in thought.

 

I went into the office and started work, which amounted to drinking tea and reading the paper.  I had a book with me too, Christine by Stephen King.  I had queued up the previous Saturday with a mate named Dave Ambrose to meet Stephen King in a science fiction horror shop called Forbidden  Planet.  It was relatively new, situated in Denmark Street. We had always frequented a shop in St Anne’s Court off Wardour Street in Soho called Dark They Were And Golden  Eyed.. A chap that worked there eventually started Forbidden  Planet. Stephen King was a really nice man and took time to speak to everyone that had lined up from his desk, out the door, down the street and over the road.   

 

A caretakers life was reactionary.  Kid does something, breaks something, smashes something, injures themselves, spills something, breaks something else or any other permutation we either seal off the problem or deal with it asap.  Kid gets into a fight the teachers try to separate them and if there’s bloodshed we are concerned with the school property only and have no interest in the kids.  They can put each other in hospital for all we are meant to care, as long as they don’t cause us unnecessary work.  The day dragged towards 4pm when I was due to leave after Andy had arrived.  Whoever had been there during the day would detail all that had happened if it was needed and what was needed to be done if it couldn’t have been done earlier but I had done it so, there was nothing..

 

That particular afternoon I waited for Andy to come back into work.  All day the conversation he'd had with Jim that morning had played on my mind.

I was reading my book when he arrived at ten past four..  I had no reason to be there past 4pm but I needed an excuse to find out what was going on and thankfully it was raining heavily and I could blame it on that.  I heard the big front door of the School open and an umbrella being shaken and opened and closed very quickly.  The footsteps got louder and nearer.

“Still here?” he asked as he stepped into the office.

“No!” I replied.  “This is a recording!”

He put his umbrella in the stand and tried to take off his soaked anorak but couldn’t.  The hood was still up and not allowing him to remove the coat.  I watched as he jumped up and down in the corridor, bending over and shaking.  Eventually. something triggered in his head and he pulled the hood back  I almost clapped.

I looked at Andy, and pointed at the little window 9 foot up the wall..

“I’m in no rush to get soaked to the skin.” I told him.

He took his parka coat off and hung it up.

“The kettle has just boiled.”  I said.

“Oh great!” He replied cheerfully, “Lifesaver!”

He started to make a cup of tea.  I folded The Times up and slipped it into my bag.

“I had a weird experience today.” I told him.  He had been spooning sugar into his mug and stopped suddenly at  the fifth spoonful..

“What do you mean?”  He asked, in a voice that sounded like it dreaded the answer to come.

“I thought someone was in the corridor outside here but there was no one there.” I said.

Andy turned and looked at me.  “Really?” he asked.

I nodded.

“I would have put money on there being someone in the corridor out there.  Three times I heard it.  Three times I looked.  Nothing!”  I told him.

He went back to making the tea as the kettle clicked off.

“I saw something this morning.” He said quietly, “when I opened up the hall over in the old school.”

“It was a Pigeon!” I told him.

“What?”

“A pigeon.” I lied, “It came in the front door I suppose when the teachers took three classes to the Big Library over the road.  God knows why they bother? There’s a perfectly good library there!” I said  pointing at the door of the school library to the left of our door, which even for those days was quite extensive.  “Bloody thing started walking around on the mat out there but it flapped its wings a couple of times.  Freaked me out, mate.  All the other kids and the teachers are over the old school so I knew there was no one else over here.”

Andy stirred his tea slowly and I waited.  After a minute I asked him, “What do you mean you saw something this morning?”

Andy stared at his tea.

I watched him as he looked at the mug,

“Saw…what?” I asked again.

He told me what happened.

That morning he had started to open the school up.  He had entered the old school from the exterior door at the base of the staircase.  He opened up the cupboard in the far corner and turned on the staircase lights.  This cupboard is in the exact mirror position of the cupboard in the opposite corner at the other end of the hall except it doesn’t have a staircase to a boiler room like that one.  He opened the hall door, turned the lights on and stepped into the hall.  He crossed the hall and opened the hall door to get to the Boiler room at the top of the link corridor and under the staircase to turn on the stair lights.  After they came on he closed and locked the boiler room.  As he turned he saw the face of a girl looking at him through the glass of the hall door. 

He was startled but wondered why the girl was there.

“I thought she had been dropped off early by her parents but now I realise that was stupid, it was 6am and I had to open the outer door to get in.”

She had stepped back from the door and her face faded from view.  Andy walked over to the hall door and opened it, saying something like, “You’re early!” but there was no one there.

“She was there mate!” he said, “I wasn’t seeing things, it was her.  She was there.”

“It must have been the light or just your imagination.”

Andy shook his head.  “It wasn’t my imagination.”

“Well the light plays tricks,” I told him, like I knew what I was talking about, “and we can see things that are not there.  These places are creepy when you are alone in them.  Every noise can scare the life out of you and the early mornings and late nights are the worse.”

“I know, but I know what I saw. No one can tell me otherwise, or make me think otherwise.”

“OK,” I said, as I drank my tea.  We sat in silence for a few moments.  He was a little shaken by it I could tell.  Even telling me about it had made him nervous.

It all sounded strange to me.  Andy was sitting there silently thinking about what happened as he drank his tea and I was thinking about what he had described.  I listened to the rain as it hit the window and heard the distant rumble of thunder.  I looked at him and he suddenly looked up, staring back at me.

“What?” he asked me. “I didn’t hear you.”

“’It was her?’” I repeated.

Andy looked at me surprised.

“You said ‘it was her’.  I explained, “You told me, ’It was her’. Who her?”

Andy bit his bottom lip for a second before telling me.

“I’ve seen her before.  She’s the dead girl!”

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 in the 1950’s.  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. 

 

*

 

 

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 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,” Dennis 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.

Dennis  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.

 

___________________________________________________________

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. 

____________________________________________________

 

 

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 as 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.

THE VICAR AND THE ORIGINAL GHOSTBUSTER

I tried to clear my mind of the Ghosts and the ghostly noises at the school. A lot was depending upon this meeting. If we were to be rid of these spirits this could be the way. I walked through the churchyard, with its haphazard arrangement of graves, the umbrella I held faring badly against the heavy rain which, for the time of year, was quite unexpected.

I had an appointment with the Vicar of the local church in West Ham Lane. It is a Norman church from the 12th century and was built out of large white stones, with Turrets and tunnels underneath it that disappear in all directions and come out in various old buildings or open spaces in the borough. One of the tunnels ran to a Convent only two streets from where I lived. I had decided that this was the vicar I needed after attending one of his services after the schools choir had sung at the harvest festival celebrations the week before.

He was an old grey bushy bearded Vicar whose black suit was covered in dandruff, a real fire and brimstone speaker who I thought would be more than a match for whatever was in the school. He had put the fear of God into most of the childrens choir AND the music teacher and I wondered if there were a few more undead kids back in the Old School his magic would work on.

“This church has been listed since 1181 and the clock in the tower was made in 1857 to Lord Grimthorpe's design. Did you know it is the prototype of Big Ben.” The Vicar told me as I sat down in the office of West Ham Church. “The headmistress of the school said you wanted to tell me about something I may be able to help you with. What can I do for you?

“It’s a beautiful church, Vicar”, I said, as a very sprightly older women came in pushing a trolley with tea and muffins,“and I would love to know more but my reason for meeting with you is very important and, to be honest, a little strange.”

“Mrs Goodwin (name changed) gave me a few details, things that have happened there over the past few years and I have to admit I am a lover of all things weird and wonderful. I find it fascinating, I do, I do. Ghosties and goulies and…well, you know the rest.”

“Things that make you scream in the daylight?” I suggested, “I may need to bring you up to speed.” And reality, I thought.

I went on to tell him that the school was haunted and we needed a blessing of some sort. He’s expression was blank throughout. He didn’t appear to be averse to getting involved or even doing an Exorcism either, though the actual term ‘Exorcism’ was never mentioned.

“What have you seen? You….what have YOU seen?” he asked me.

I told him about my ghost experiences and then Johns paranormal experiences and the fact that the teaching staff were also aware and had seen things and had reports of activity. As I went on and detailed everything that had happened including the workmens experiences, I could see him becoming more and more uncomfortable. His muffins had become cold.

He raised his hand.

“I think it best if I make arrangements to visit the School when the children have gone.” He said suddenly to my amazement.

“OK that would be great.” I replied, not knowing if it would be..

“I may bring a friend with me; Gerald, he works in the church, very keen photographer. Who knows, he might catch something?”

“I hope you understand the seriousness of this Vicar? It’s not a Jolly Boys Outing!”

“Oh I assure you I do.” He said, raising his hands. You are experiencing things in the school and you want me to verify it.”

What the….?

“NO! As I said we, the collective we, the teaching staff and the caretaking staff, the workmen, the Den ivery men, the cleaners, some of the kids…..WE are experiencing ‘things’ and we want it got rid of. That’s where you come in!”

“Me?”

“Specifically, the church. The school is haunted, I have seen and heard something paranormal.”

Oh, erm, I see….well. shall we say January 2nd?”

“January 2nd?” I repeated, saying it, for some reason. “what about January 2nd?”

“I think the sooner the better, but its Christmas.” He replied. “I can come then, have a look and see what needs to be done.”

I nodded. I put the date in my Filofax.

“The teaching staff will be there but the kids won’t be. There’s a few more days before St Trinians comes crashing back.”

“1pm?”

“Whatever suits you, I said, “It’s the same day or night.”

“Oh, I see.” He muttered.

I was a little surprised at how he had taken the news about a haunting in the school and his urgency in booking the first available time gave me some concern. It was almost as if he hadn’t yet understood the gravity of the situation.

If he hadn’t: he soon would.

“You do understand Vicar, that I believe, well, we believe that help may be found through the church to rid the property of any evil spirits in there, it’s not a photo opportunity or a bit of a laugh. We are deadly serious. I can get the Head to call you later and reiterate our concerns. It won’t be long before the local paper, Newham Recorder, get a whiff of something happening. The last thing you want is to be seen as someone who thought we were all imagining it.”

“Oh no, heaven forbid.” He replied, shaking my hand like it was going out of fashion.

As I shook hands with the vicar he looked quite startled and I left, making my way back up Vicarage Lane to the School. The head was standing in the foyer of the new school when I got there.

“It’s all arranged,”

“When is he coming” She asked, looking relieved.

“January 2nd. 1pm. Do you know him well, you said he’s a friend?”

“Only met him twice, Governors meetings. Seems like a nice man”

“I got the impression he is coming in here thinking we are all mad and seeing things. Didn’t matter what I told him.”

“Oh dear!”

“Judging by his demeanour, I think he is on a collision course.”

The look on the Heads face confirmed she thought the same.

I heard the phone in our office ring once and then it stopped.

John poked his head around the door frame.

“Dave, Peter is on the phone!”

“Let’s speak later”, the Head said as she walked out the main doors.

“Peter who?” I asked John, “I don’t know a ‘Peter’.”

I took the handset from John.

“Hello, this is Dave.”

A voice at the other end said,

“Ah, David, I got your letter. This is Peter Underwood.”…..

 

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 sudddenly 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.

 

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. 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 as the clocks had not gone back yet, 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!

 

I tried to clear my mind of the Ghosts and the ghostly noises at the school.  A lot was depending upon this meeting.  If we were to be rid of these spirits this could be the way.  I walked through the churchyard, with its haphazard arrangement of graves, the umbrella I held faring badly against the heavy rain which, for the time of year, was quite unexpected.

I had an appointment with the Vicar of the local church in West Ham Lane.  It is a Norman church from the 12^th century and was built out of large white stones, with Turrets and tunnels underneath it that disappear in all directions and come out in various old buildings or open spaces in the borough.  One of the tunnels ran to a Convent only two streets from where I lived.  I had decided that this was the vicar I needed after attending one of his services after the schools choir had sung at the harvest festival celebrations the week before.  

He was an old grey bushy bearded Vicar whose black suit was covered in dandruff, a real fire and brimstone speaker who I thought would be more than a match for whatever was in the school.  He had put the fear of God into most of the childrens choir AND the music teacher and I wondered if there were a few more undead kids back in the Old School his magic would work on.

 “This church has been listed since 1181 and the clock in the tower was made in 1857 to Lord Grimthorpe's design.  Did you know it is the prototype of Big Ben.” The Vicar told me as I sat down in the office of West Ham Church.  “The headmistress of the school said you wanted to tell me about something I may be able to help you with.  What can I do for you?

“It’s a beautiful church, Vicar”, I said, as a very sprightly older women came in pushing a trolley with tea and muffins,“and I would love to know more but my reason for meeting with you is very important and, to be honest, a little strange.”

“Mrs Goodwin (name changed) gave me a few details, things that have happened there over the past few years and I have to admit I am a lover of all things weird and wonderful. I find it fascinating, I do, I do. Ghosties and goulies and…well, you know the rest.”

“Things that make you scream in the daylight?” I suggested, “I may need to bring you up to speed.” And reality, I thought.

I went on to tell him that the school was haunted and we needed a blessing of some sort.  He’s expression was blank throughout.  He didn’t appear to be averse to getting involved or even doing an Exorcism either, though the actual term ‘Exorcism’ was never mentioned.

“What have you seen?  You….what have YOU seen?” he asked me.

I told him about my ghost experiences and then Johns paranormal experiences and the fact that the teaching staff were also aware and had seen things and had reports of activity. As I went on and detailed everything that had happened including the workmens experiences, I could see him becoming more and more uncomfortable. His muffins had become cold.

He raised his hand.

“I think it best if I make arrangements to visit the School when the children have gone.” He said to my amazement.

 “OK that would be great.” I replied, not knowing if it would be.

“I may bring a friend with me; Gerald, he works in the church, very keen photographer.  Who knows, he might catch something?”

“I hope you understand the seriousness of this Vicar?  It’s not a Jolly Boys Outing!”

“Oh I assure you I do.” He said, raising his hands.  You are experiencing things in the school and you want me to verify it.”

What the….?

“NO! As I said we, the collective we, the teaching staff and the caretaking staff, the workmen, the Delivery men, the cleaners, some of the kids…..WE are experiencing ‘things’ and we want it got rid of.  That’s where you come in!”

“Me?”

“Specifically, the church. The school is haunted, I have seen and heard something paranormal.”

Oh, erm, I see….well. shall we say January 2nd?”

“January 2nd?” I repeated, saying it, for some reason. “what about January 2^nd?”

“I think the sooner the better, but its Christmas.” He replied. “I can come then, have a look and see what needs to be done.”

I nodded.  I put the date in my Filofax. Ever the Yuppy.

“The teaching staff will be there but the kids won’t be.  There’s a few more days before St Trinians comes crashing back.”

“1pm?”

“Whatever suits you, I said, “It’s the same day or night.”

“Oh, I see.” He muttered.

I was a little surprised at how he had taken the news about a haunting in the school and his urgency in booking the first available time gave me some concern.  It was almost as if he hadn’t yet understood the gravity of the situation.

If he hadn’t: he soon would.

“You do understand Vicar, that I believe, well, we believe that help may be found through the church to rid the property of any evil spirits in there, it’s not a photo opportunity or a bit of a laugh.  We are deadly serious.  I can get the Head to call you later and reiterate our concerns.  It won’t be long before the local paper, The Newham Recorder, get a whiff of something happening.  The last thing you want is to be seen as someone who thought we were all imagining it.”

“Oh no, heaven forbid.” He replied, shaking my hand like it was going out of fashion.

As I shook hands with the vicar he looked quite startled and I left, making my way back up Vicarage Lane to the School.  The head was standing in the foyer of the new school when I got there.

“It’s all arranged,”

“When is he coming” She asked, looking relieved.

“January 2^nd.  1pm. Do you know him well, you said he’s a friend?”

“Only met him twice, Governors meetings. Seems like a nice man”

“I got the impression he is coming in here thinking we are all mad and seeing things.  Didn’t matter what I told him.”

“Oh dear!”

“Judging by his demeanour, I think he is on a collision course.”

The look on the Heads face confirmed she thought the same.

I heard the phone in our office ring once and then it stopped.

John poked his head around the door frame.

“Dave, Peter is on the phone!”

“Let’s speak later”, the Head said as she walked out the main doors.

“Peter who?” I asked John, “I don’t know a ‘Peter’.”

I took the handset from John.

“Hello, this is Dave.”

A voice at the other end said,

“Ah, David, I got your letter.  This is Peter Underwood.”…..

 

 

I was amazed.  I had written to Peter Underwood using an address in the back of one of his books I’d bought..  It was simply, Peter Underwood, c/o The Savage Club, London.  It was so much simpler in those days.

I had given him a brief overview of what supernatural challenges we had, and how scared we and the staff were.  He asked me for more in depth information about the staircase and the little girl who made the Electrician fall from his ladder.

I then told him about the Piano Tuner and the shadow man he was talking to.

The phone went silent.

“Peter?” I said, “are you there?”

“A shadow man?”

“Yes, is that significant?”

“Fully formed?  Clear to the eye.”

“Just a matt black figure.  Around 6ft.”

“How far away were you?”

“Around 20ft away!”

“How can you be sure of the height?”

“It was next to the piano tuner. I’m six foot one and he only came up to my shoulders when I met him when he arrived.”

“My goodness,” Peter replied, “This is most disturbing.  This sounds like a fully formed spirit, an entity that can interact with the natural world.  There must be something on that staircase that is a gateway through which all manner of spirits can come through.”

“You lost me a little there Peter.  Have you come across something like this before?”

“Not for a while, but yes.  Devilish buggers, difficult to deal with.”

“We have a priest coming here on the 2^nd of January and…”

“I strongly advise against it.”  Peter sounded agitated. “On no account should you bring anyone into the school at present from the priesthood.  This entity is very strong.  Controlling even.  Everything that is happening is happening because of it.”

“Well he’s booked,” I said, “And the head teachers want this dealt with.”

“Listen, David.  It’s up to you but, I can only advise you that you must not bring a priest into the situation at present.  This entity will not like it.  It will target him!  We have no real idea of its power but I am sure it is what you heard on the stairs coming after you that night.”

“Well, what do you suggest?  I wrote to you in the hope you may give me some advice.”

“David, listen.  I spend this time of year in Scotland, have done for the last couple of years.  I can get someone to your school, a colleague, before the priest arrives to investigate and assess the situation.  I have to tell you that this is a very interesting case and one that we would be interested in investigating thoroughly.  Can I get someone over to you the week after Christmas?”

A swift calculation told me that the Vicar needed rescheduling to the following week, and an evening.

“He will call you tomorrow around 2pm to make the arrangements.  Is that OK?”

“OK, thanks.  I didn’t expect you to do anything, just a little advice, so thank you.”

“Thank you David, and please.  Do not let the vicar into the building.  It will not be safe for him.”

“Ok, I won’t.  I promise.”

“We will speak again soon, Bye bye”.  The line went dead.

I stared at the wall, phone in hand.

John stared at me, brain doing somersaults

Now to break the news to the Head.

 

The head teacher took the news very well.  Even though she believed, like me, that the sooner we face the problem with some solid action the quicker these ghostly and paranormal experiences would be over.  Seeing as how the presence of a member of the church might exacerbate the situation I think she thought the longer we put the Vicar off the better.  Rather strange considering it was basically her idea.  He was now coming during term time in the evening at the start of the New Year term, and not Friday 2^nd January.  I suggested that she and a couple of staff she chose (or who were brave enough) should be in attendance that evening.  Just to make up the numbers and to observe whatever the Vicar did and any outcome.  Prior to that, during the holiday a member of the Institute for Psychical Research was visiting to carry out tests and take readings (I prayed that she didn’t ask me what tests or readings as I didn’t have a clue what he was going to do) and when Giles Draper, the investigator Peter had allocated as our help, had called me the day after I spoke to Peter, he told me of all of the tests he would be doing.  Looking back they were quite mundane compared to the technology available now but in those days they were state of the art!  I still had no idea what it would be like.  His parting shot on the call was “It’s so exciting, I’m looking forward to it” and that didn’t fill me with confidence.  Quite the opposite in fact.

The school closed, Christmas came and went to the strains of Cliff Richard and Mistletoe and Wine….

I spoke to John over Christmas.  He was still seriously toying with the idea of leaving.  I had no right or reason to talk him out of it but the last experience with the Piano Tuner had given him a big shake up and though he livened up in the pub afterwards he had expressed his reservations about staying.  He had thought of getting a transfer but he lived fairly near to the school so finding an adequate reason for leaving and working further away was going to look odd. I had suggested he tell them I was making life difficult for him, cracking the whip etc, but the fact that we regularly saw three of the main guys from the council and caretakers association in the Manby Arms next to the school wasn’t really a believable one.  Wanting a transfer because of ghosts wouldn’t work either.  He would more likely be classed as not fit for work, and/or sacked.  He seemed very pleased that the Vicar had been postponed.  I didn’t know why, nor did I ask.  I assumed he thought, like me, there was a chance of things escalating, especially as Peter Underwood had suggested it might.  He agreed to come back and actively make moves to find another position within the system.

“Great!” I said, “Kids are back on the 8th Jan.  I’ll see you on the 5th, when the Ghost Hunter’s there doing his investigations.”  I hung up quickly as John started asking a question.  I shot out the front door. I heard the phone ringing as I locked it.

A few days into January a green Morris Traveller  pulled up outside the front entrance in Deanery Road.  It was in immaculate condition and the wooden  frame on the rear was highly polished.  A tall lanky man in his mid to late forties jumped out of the driver’s seat, slammed the door and bounded up the four steps to the front entrance where I was standing inside the tall metal framed glass doors.  I opened them and he stepped in with his hand outstretched.

“You must be Giles Draper?” I said as he shook my hand frantically.

“Dave Moore I take it.”

“If I’m not, this is a very odd coincidence!” I said and we both laughed, while he continued shaking my hand like it was going out of fashion.

“That’s a lovely car.  You don’t see many on the road around here.”

“I have had Bertha for 8 years.” He replied. “ She’s a Lovely car and very reliable.  My wife hates her. Too clunky for her.”

“I take it your gear is in the back?”

“Oh yes.  I wanted to survey the scene of the apparitions first.  Is that OK?”

“Whatever you want Giles.” Let’s walk”.

“Super!” Giles replied

We both walked up the entrance steps to the school.

John was looking around the corner of the office door and made a ‘cup of tea’ sign.

“This is John, he works with me here, he’ll make us all a cup of tea while we look around”

“Super” Giles replied.

I walked down one of the corridors toward the linkway corridor. Giles had this gangly gait walk, He reminded me of my old Chemistry teacher, oversized stone colour cable woollen sweater, massive black plastic framed glasses, brown corduroy jeans and slip on shoes.  The archetypal ‘Blue Peter Presenter’ from the 70’s.   He was extremely knowledgeable about his job.  My God did he know his stuff.  

I pointed in all different directions and pointed down the linkway corridor towards the old achool.

He started listing all of the experiments he had the equipment for, how spirits react, why they don’t react, what can make them do this, do that…..the list was not only long but it went over my head.

“How did you get into all this Ghost Hunting?” I asked him.

As we walked back to the office he told me that his parents had won £80,000 on the Football pools and then, tragically, they both died within the year through ill health.  They had left a house and all their money to him.  He and his wife ran a small antiques shop in Marlow, not far from Windsor.  The influx of the funds left to him allowed his wife to continue running the shop with no problems and he could go off and make his hobby a full time job, doing the investigation for ‘The Ghost Club’.

“Sounds ideal,” I replied, “Are you ever scared?”

“Regularly!” He took a sip from his tea, John had given him a saucer too with a biscuit.  Where he had got that from I had no idea. “But the trick is to question, question. question.  See it for what it really is, not for what you THINK it is.”

He asked me for more details about the ‘happenings’.  

I gave him the full history of the events, from the washbasins, to the stairs, to the Piano tuner.  John explained about the Tai Chi class and the chairs and the workman falling off his ladder because of the little girl.  He was very interested in the stairs and the door handles turning and made some very small notes in a flip notebook.

“My goodness, I now understand why Peter asked me to come.  This is wonderful, so exciting.”

“Are you fuckin’ joking mate?” John suddenly blurted out.

“I’m sorry,” Giles muttered as John stood up shaking.

“It’s not wonderful to me pal, safe in your antique shop, it’s bloody terrifying to me.  Every day coming in here is a nightmare.  I feel like I am being watched all the time.  I walk somewhere and look around the corner before I go further.  Every single sound puts me on edge.  It’s not wonderful mate, it’s a living hell.  I am trapped here, I can’t find another job.  I can’t get away.  I have a family to feed, rent to pay, and I don’t know what to do next!  And you think this is wonderful?  Exciting?”

John stood up and threw his cup into the sink where it shattered.  He ran both his hands through his hair and closed his eyes, facing up to the ceiling. He turned and faced the wall.

Giles looked terrified and his mouth was trembling.  I smiled at him.

“Let me show you around,” I said, as if nothing had just happened, “so you get a feel for the place,” and led him out the door to where his bag of tricks sat on the floor.

“Erm,” he said, but I put my finger to my lips and smiled while motioning through the double doors in front of the office.

“Just down this corridor is the linkway corridor, let me show you that.”

We walked down the corridor in silence leaving John in the office.

At the end of the corridor I started to speak to Giles again.  The doors we had come through were back down the corridor on my right.

“There’s no need to say anything.  I can only apologise for John, the strain of all this is wearing us both down.  The cleaners walk around in pairs and the teaching staff leave as soon as the kids do, they don’t hang around anymore.  I have two night cleaners here starting at 10pm.  I don’t know how they work here.  People don’t want to be here unless they have to be.  Not because of what happens, but because of what might”.

Giles nodded ,“Goodness me, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.  I didn’t mean to upset him.”

“I know, I know.  It’s a volatile situation.  People are on edge more than they let on.”

Giles looked at his mini tape recorder and started to record.

“I think I should record as we look around.  You don’t mind being recorded I hope?”

I had no issue with that.  All I wanted was him to find something and let me know what they could do.

The door at the end of the corridor near the entrance opened and John stepped through.  He told me he was going home.  I had no issue with that.

 “I’m, sorry Giles.” He said, his voice echoing down the corridor.

Giles waved and muttered,’No problem!’

John nodded and waved.

I looked to my right back at the door John had stepped through.  I had no idea he was so bothered by what had been going on.  I knew he was looking to leave but he had kept this pent up fear under wraps.

“Is he another one of yours?” Giles asked, looking and nodding over my shoulder, down towards the science labs.

My blood run cold and I didn’t move.  

Giles continued to stare over my shoulder down the corridor behind me.  He nodded and waved.

“Can’t make him out.” He said.  “Not moving. Just watching us.”

“There is only you and me in the building Giles.  His face went through a few changes from confused to realisation and terror.

I spun around, there it was.  The same shadow as we saw with the piano tuner.

“That’s it!” I whispered.

Giles suddenlyunderstood that he was looking at the same shadow that we saw with the Piano Tuner too.

Giles continued to stare down the corridor while rummaging in his shoulder bag.  I looked at the bag as he found his Pentax camera and took a photo without realising the figure had gone.

“I will be here before 11 tomorrow.  Can you show me around then and I will start the investigation, I will bring a friend if that’s OK?”

“The more the merrier” I told him.  Let me show you out.”  I turned and looked to where the shadow man had been. There was nothing there at all.

I locked the office and walked out the front entrance with Giles locking the doors behind me.  For some reason it was all I could do to stop myself looking back through the glass doors at the corridor doors.

“So, see you tomorrow Giles.” I said,   “Thanks for taking this on.”

“I will start tomorrow, I need another person to cover the area.  If the children are not back until Monday we have time.  This is extremely interesting but it’s dangerous.  This is obviously a spirit, an entity that isn’t bothered about being seen.  It has to be very powerful and it will have been here for years, it builds up its power over time until it can appear at will.  I have only seen this once before on an investigation.”

Giles put his bag on the passenger seat as he got into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

“How did it go?…”

Giles was lost in thought

“I beg your pardon?” he asked breaking his trance.

“How did it go on that investigation?”

He frowned and replied, “Let’s just say I hope this one turns out better!”

He nodded and smiled, a smile that seemed to me to convey hope.  Maybe!

 

The next day, I let John go early at 2pm. The Kids were back on the Monday and there was nothing to do.  Giles was back sometime in the afternoon, with someone else, so nothing was really required.  John had said earlier that he had a call at home from Darren Mendez, about a cleaning supervisor job at the Technical College in East Ham and he was going to ask me if he could leave earlier. This Darren wanted to speak to him in person.  I knew it wouldn’t be as cushy as working here but hopefully, a less terrifying experience!  I wished him well and never told him I had arranged it with the caretaker of the College saying he needed a change, having seen how stressed he really was yesterday, and gave him a glowing reference and he went for the job after speaking to Darren, the caretaker, on the phone that morning.  Darren had called and gave some story of hearing that he needed a change from working here and said he should come over that afternoon and have a chat.  Darren was well aware of what was happening at this school as I used to see him in the Boleyn Pub at West Ham home games as well as at ‘the Pyramid, the council offices in Stratford at the end of the road this school sat in.  He was so interested in what was happening he should have worked here himself.  Darren understood that he needed a change of scene and he was becoming withdrawn, so I waved John off, and wished him luck.  He left and walked over to his old banger of a car and drove off not knowing that he already had the job at the College in the bag.  I had done my bit.  John was, and still is, a great guy and a real family man.  These events really turned his mind though.

I would get a new assistant arriving on Monday from a pool of ‘floating’ assistants who went to any school they were needed at.  John would also be there for a while that day to show him his routine.  He was Dennis, a man in his early 60’s who always brought his Jack Russell with him on a late shift. He also had a revolting habit of making his own Jellied Eels and eating them for breakfast in the office at 7am.   He knew about the issues at the school but had declared them a ‘load of old rubbish’ saying he wasn’t bothered.  I knew it was going to be interesting, especially for him.

No sooner had I sat back in my chair in my office when I heard a noise out in the hallway and waited.  I couldn’t hear a thing.  Then, another noise, like a rustle of clothing.  I put the newspaper down as quietly as I could and, stood up and took a step to the door and peered around the frame.  Giles had arrived with another man who turned out to be a chap called Mark.  He was carrying all the paraphernalia in.  

“Sorry we’re late,” Giles apologised.

“I didn’t know you were late?” I told him, “I just expected you sometime.”

“Mark, this is Dave, Dave Moore.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said shaking his hand.  He went for the one quick shake and done. “Just the one ‘Dave’ will do Mark,” we all laughed.  

I stepped back into the office and boiled the kettle as Giles and Mark immediately grabbed the comfy chairs.  Tea made and handed out, we discussed a plan.

“It will start getting dark in a couple of hours, I wondered if you would permit a night vigil?” Giles asked, making Mark nod frantically to emphasize the point.

“Do you want me in attendance?” I asked horrified he would say yes.

“Yes,” they both nodded, “It would be best for verification if anything happens.  Not overnight, just a vigil in various areas of the school. The hot spots, as it where.”

“I can stay until 8 if that’s all right?  I have other plans that I can’t get out of.  Council business”

“Can I suggest we work until 8 and then call it quits?  We could come back next week for an all nighter?” Giles suggested and we all agreed.

“Excellent.” Giles replied.  “It’ll be good if we get a feel of the atmosphere and see if we can make any contact.”

“Giles told me about yesterday and the shadow figure you both saw.” Mark said.

“Yes,” I nodded.

I confirmed Giles description and also the events with John who they seemed to be happy had now left.  He was an ‘easy target’ they thought and was suffering mentally from the events.  He would be better elsewhere away from this.  I knew that to be true.

“Is anyone else here Dave?” Mark asked.  

I shook my head, “No, there was supposed to be a Delivery but they are coming on Monday.”

Mark looked to his left again.

“I keep seeing something on my left out of the corner of my eye at the bottom of the corridor.”

“That’s where we were standing yesterday!” Giles whispered.

“I know,” I whispered, “Why are we whispering?”

Mark was concentrating on the far end of the corridor.

“There’s a noise, like something being dragged on the floor.  It’s in the distance.” Mark said tilting his head.

I could hear it but it suddenly stopped.

We got up and walked slowly down the corridor, trying to make no sound as we got nearer to the end where a corridor crossed it.  Nothing.  The sound had stopped.

Giles suggested that it could have been the entity making its presence known.

“This could turn out to be a very fruitful endeavour!” he said sounding like he relished the challenge.  Mark had a puzzled look on his face.  I looked at my watch. It was 4pm and the sky was darkening.  A storm started to rumble as the rain began.

“It’s 4 o’clock!” I said loudly.  I was a little shocked. “I didn’t realise it was so late.”

“May I suggest that we convene at an appropriate place, say the base of the old school stairs and see what we can pick up?

“Great idea” I said, not liking that bloody idea one bit.

“We could stay here as we saw the shadow Man down there to our left yesterday but as you said the Piano Tuner was at the base of those stairs down there.” He pointed down the linkway corridor, “And you waited for something that was chasing you down the stairs in the same place as that, it could be a real hotspot.  Mark, get the equipment please. Is every external door closed and locked?

I nodded, “Yes, I locked them all earlier and the one you came through at the front.”

“Then let’s begin.”

When Mark returned with the bag and the small suitcase, Giles suggested we go down the corridor, locking the doors behind us and sit on the bottom flight of stairs.  Mark started to unpack the bag.  There were a couple of expensive looking Pentax cameras and a folding tripod.  There was also a large wooden box with dials and a meter on it that Giles called a portable  voice scanner, and quite revolutionary for 1988.  It didn’t look all that portable to me but all I had to keep remembering was that these guys knew their stuff, and they were here to help.

Giles had set up the cameras on small tripods and they faced all directions.  Mark had set up the recorder and had a switch in his hand that went from the microphones on his and Giles’ collar and the main microphone on the box.  There were wires all over the place.  If we panicked and had to run, we would probably still be tied up here in the morning from the confusion!

“We need to sit here in silence, listening to the thunder and the rain and for ANYTHING we hear that may come from any angle.  Any direction.  We can call out to try to   If we talk we must immediately stop if another noise becomes apparent. We have a tape recorder going and the cameras will take a photograph should we need to. I can trigger them remotely. But they do have a sensor of sort that picks up motion hence they are all facing away from us.  Hopefully we will make some form of contact or experience something unusual.  We may be very lucky.  The Shadowman may manifest himself!”

“He won’t be the only one” I thought!

“Lets open our minds and wait.” Giles stared at the small monitor that was showing sound waves.  We waited. But not for long.

 

Ten minutes into the vigil the power went out.  Not in the school, just the equipment.  None of the camera shutter remotes worked.  Giles and Mark frantically checked the connections using the light from the scanner, but nothing. They were positioned in such a way that no ambient light from the corridor through the glass panelled doors helped.  Then the lights went out on the scanner.  There were no lights on the box and the small screen was blank, the green swirly line that jumped every time a noise was made had gone out.  They were concerned that a fuse had blown on the multi power socket.  They started unplugging and plugging everything to just check but nothing worked.

Here we were sitting in the near dark, at the bottom of a flight of stairs that went up to the top floor of the old school.  Stairs that I had come down hearing something coming after me only for nothing to reach the steps at the bottom.  This was, to me, madness, but I went along with it. Maybe I was the mad one? Now the equipment wasn’t working, it was dark out, wind was blowing and thunder was rumbling.

I could wait no longer.“Lads, are we out of our fucking minds, sitting here in the dark?  This isn’t a great plan.”  

The voice recorder lit up.  A little light in the darkness.  

“It may be atmospherics.” Giles said making Mark nod his head.

I pointed at the Voice Recorder.

“Why is that on and nothing else?”

The Cameras flashed scaring the life out of us. The Cameras were lying down and flashed the stone floor and illuminated the area for a second.

“This isn’t right.” Giles muttered under his breath. “This shouldn’t be happening.”

“You’re telling me!” I told him.

Mark and Giles did their best in the dark to get all the cameras and equipment together.  The remaining ambient light came from the fluorescents in the Linkway corridor which were still lit, as were all the other lights that I could see through the windows.

There was a deafening, CRASH!

The double doors this end of the Linkway corridor, that were locked, by a key in the door and the right hand door by a bolt at the top and bottom were being hit from the other side, from within the airlock between these doors this end and the other set of doors at the other end. Giles looked around the corner of the wall down the Linkway and dropped the Pentax camera, its lens bouncing off and hitting me on the leg.

“My God!” he said, then repeating it again.  He raised his arm and pointed down the corridor. Both Mark and I moved to stand alongside him, and to be honest, further back.  It took a second or two for what we were seeing to register in our minds.  It was impossible.

There, in front of the double doors, outside the two doors of the toilet block, was a child.  A girl, standing with her back to the doors. looking in our direction.  She was wearing burnt black clothing and I could see smoke swirling around. Giles stepped forward slightly, looking on the floor for a camera that was still intact, still looking up now and then.  

Then we noticed the shadow man standing behind her on the other side of the glass panelled doors.  The girl backed away as Giles rummaged on the floor for the only camera with a lens.  As he reached for it both Mark and I saw the girl blend into and through the door to where the Shadow man was and they both faded from view.  Mark and I stood staring, as if they were still there.  Giles stood with the camera poised but the back was open, the film was destroyed and useless.  Giles cursed under his breath.  

Mark looked at me for answers but I had none.  I became aware that we were still in the dark with equipment on the floor and after a while we started to move in slow motion, and then speeding up as our location and situation came back to the forefront of our minds.  

“Hold it!” I whispered. “We need to get out.  I don’t suggest we go that way!” I said pointing down the corridor.

“How do we get out Dave?” Giles asked.  I could hear the nerves in his voice for the first time.  I thought these ghost hunters were used to it but they still got the jitters, which was reassuring, or maybe not.

“There’s another way.”

Without knowing what it was they both said “Let’s go!”

I asked Giles if he had all the equipment in his bag but he said he would come back and collect it next day.  He wanted out and so did Mark.  I wanted out too.  This was enough for one evening.

I opened the ground floor hall door and we stepped in to the darkness.  I flicked one of the switches on and a couple of lights came on.  I locked the door behind me and led the two guys over to the diagonal corner door, opened that into the pitch darkness of the ground floor landing, the exact mirror image of where we had been on the other side. I turned the hall lights off and then, shutting the door, opened the exterior door and led them out into the rear playground. I locked the door and led them around a corner to the school gates in Manbey Street and unlocked the padlock on the chain holding the gates shut, locking it behind us.  We all breathed a collective sigh of relief.  We walked towards Water Lane and turned right.  We hurried along in the rain and then turned right into Deanery road to the front entrance of the school. They followed me up the steps.

“Are your coats in the office?”  I asked.

They both nodded.  

“Wait here”

I unlocked the front door and stepped into the hall, Giles held the door open.  I hurried to the office and grabbed my coat from behind the door, and their coats off the chairs, shut the door behind me and hurried back to the front door. Locking it behind me.  They would be back in the morning at 10am.  I thought it best to sit in my car until they arrived.

I got to the Phoenix Apollo to meet my girlfriend.  She was sitting at a table on her own, holding a glass of something.  She waved madly at me.  I went over and sat down.

“I got here 10 minutes ago.  A bit early but it’s a quiet evening.”

She looked at me as I sat there thinking.

“Had a hard day?” she asked.

“You wouldn’t believe it.” I told her.

“Try me!” she replied.

I did, every detail.

She was astounded, then she went quiet, then she said,

“I want to have a look around?”

I looked out the window, realising I was going out with a girl madder than me!

 

Wanda and I spoke about all the ‘happenings’ in the school over the last few months.  She was fascinated, even to the point of taking her Filofax out of her bag and making notes!  She was up to speed on the initial stuff but after a while I stopped updating her about the heightened level of experiences.  She was livid about being kept in the dark about the latest Ghost Club involvement.  I was still training people at different companies in sales techniques in my downtime from the school and Wanda had her company D.I.S.C. which was getting busier.  I had helped her start that up and had trained the 5 girls that worked for her on customer persuasion techniques and closing skills so they can upserve their clients from one filing cabinet of records transferred to floppy disk (yes! A Floppy disk) allowing Wanda to come in and upgrade the contract from one department to the whole company.

By 10pm we were ready to leave so we headed to the usual wine bar, the Charleston near Maryland Point.  We had decided that I was going to leave the Council and join her as her partner in D.I.S.C.  We celebrated with a bottle of champagne and then got a taxi back to her flat in Harold Road in Leytonstone.  The future looked bright, and it was for a few years.

Giles called my Gordon Gecko Mobile phone.  I think it was a Motorola DynaTac but I could be wrong.  It was a real housebrick. Giles changed his arrival to the Monday at around 10am.  I spent the time thinking about how to leave the Council.  A new assistant was coming on Monday and I needed to get him up to speed. My car was still parked outside the school in Deanery Road so I got a cab and went and picked it up.  I looked it over in case there had been any tampering and looked up at the front entrance.  I could see that the hall doors were open.  I knew they were shut when we left.  Whatever it was, it would wait until Monday.  I would deal with that fresh hell then.

On Monday I did exactly as I had decided to do.  I waited in my car for any signs of life.  It would be John, Giles or Dennis.  My money was on Dennis.  I heard a car coming down Deanery Rd behind me. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw Bertha, Giles’ ‘half-timbered’ car, getting nearer and nearer, and then slowing down to park behind me.  

I looked to my left at the school entrance and noticed the hall doors were closed.  I felt a chill go through me.  They were open Saturday morning, and I hadn’t closed them.

I opened my car door and said hello to Giles who was pulling out a reel to reel tape recorder from the back of the car.

I looked across at the school and pointed.

“Giles, I left my car here on Friday night, when I came to pick it up Saturday Morning the doors either side of the hall were open.  They’re not now.”

“Can they shut on their own?  Wind or anything?

“No, like all the doors around the hall the hinges have a point where, if you open it past that point the door has to be pulled shut.”  I became aware of someone approaching fast from my right.

“Dave, I’m Dennis.”

“Hello Mate,“ I said, shaking his hand.

“And who are you?  A teacher?” he asked, looking up at Giles.

“I am just working here for a couple of days.” Giles answered diplomatically.

“Not the Ghosthunter then?” Dennis sounded disappointed.

“Yes!” Giles told him, confusing Dennis a little.  

I reached into my jeans pocket.

“Dennis, take this key, let yourself in, turn left and our office is on the left.” I told him as I unlocked the padlock and chain on the front gate, “Bung the kettle on and get settled in.  John will be here to show you the ropes in about ten minutes.”

“Great, thanks.” Dennis trotted off.

Giles and I formed a plan for him making his recordings.  He would go and wander around and see what happened.  I took that as meaning he was going to agitate it into life if he could.

John whistled as he came around the corner at the junction of Water Lane with Deanery Road and waved.

We spoke a while and I had to admit that I had got him the new job.  Darren had told him anyway.  Typical! John shook my hand and thanked me for doing that and said he would be glad to finally leave the place.  He wanted to rush through the induction of Dennis but wouldn’t.

I followed John up the steps and in, and a few minutes later Giles came in, Nodded to me after I gave him a master key and he walked off down the corridor and turned left in the direction of where we had both seen the shadowman.

I looked in the hall and everything seemed to be just as it had been left.  Strange.  Why were the doors open and then shut?

John was over in the Old School with Dennis taking him through all the cleaning machinery that we had in the store cupboard.  

The phone on the desk rang, it was Wanda, asking if I had told the council I was leaving?

“Not yet,” I told her, “Give me a chance!”

“Are you having second thoughts?”

“Hmm, let’s think, work in a haunted school or help you with world domination?  Tough choice.”

“I have to go, Jackie is here, she’s off to start work at Virgin”.

“When did they come in as a client?”

“It’s only a small office of theirs near Paddington.”

CRASH!

A door must have slammed shut in a corridor in the new school, so loudly it sounded like a gunshot.  Even Wanda heard it down the phone.

“What was that?”

“I have no idea, it was a door slamming.  It must have been the wind.” I told her.

“OK, be careful.  I will see you later!”

She hung up and I stood up to put the phone back on its cradle.  I heard a noise, a shuffling sound in the distance, at the bottom of the corridor in front of me.  I leaned left and looked down there but couldn’t see anything.  Then it happened again.  And again.  It went silent for a while, then a door closed.  SudDen ly, Giles turned the corner and started to walk purposely and speedily towards me.

He told me that he had recorded some amazing things, some responses, in the science department where we had seen the Shadow man standing previously.  He was going to take the recordings back to the Institute for Psychical Research and see if he can clean up the recording and isolate the voice.  I didn’t have a clue what he meant in those days but I do now. He wanted to call me if, or more probably, when he found clear evidence on the recordings and hurried off to do his magic, whatever that was. He seemed very intense when he left, I didn’t even get the chance to see if he needed any help with his bag. It seemed that whatever was in the school had given him a real sense of..

CRASH

..concern!

This time the noise was even louder.  It suddenly occurred to me that John and Dennis were in the old school going over the contents of the storeroom and I had no idea if they were OK.  It may have been them.  I stood looking down the corridor.  There was no more sound…apart from…no nothing. I was sick to death with this situation.  The sound had stopped.

Then I heard the footsteps. Slow footsteps, clear as day.  The sound of a shoe hitting the floor, then another, then another.  Then they started to speed up and get louder.  They were coming from the science lab area and were getting louder as they got to the corner then they sped up again.  I could tell the footsteps were now in the corridor that I was looking down but there was no one there.  They were right at the other end but coming at me.  They were getting louder and louder as they got nearer and nearer.  I stood my ground, I’d had enough. Whatever it was that was walking faster and faster, the steps getting heavier and heavier, was directly coming my way.  I wasn’t scared.  I was angry, livid, at my wits end, and I’d had enough.  I decided to run towards it to meet it head on…

 

 

 

As mad as my decision was, I didn’t have a better idea.  It was impulsive, intuitive, and every other adjective instead of Sane.

I ran, my face creased with anger, at something I couldn’t see but was certain was there, coming towards me.  Fists clenched, arms wide and roaring my head off, at something I could only hear coming my way.  I had no idea where whatever was walking towards me was, but I remember the freezing patch of air I hit.  I passed through what felt like ice and stopped. I felt like I had just stepped out of a freezer.  Looking behind me I could see what appeared to be a distortion in the air.  Then, slowly, it faded. Everything I saw through the haze, the doors, the office, was bent out of shape.  It was like looking through a prism, and then it was gone.  Everything was back to normal.

I just stood there, waiting. Nothing. No response, no noise, no reaction, nothing.  I walked back, retracing my steps to the office and sat down in a chair next to the radiator.  I was slowly warming up again when I heard John and Dennis coming back down the corridor I had just run down. As if I needed confirmation, I stared at their feet.  They were both wearing trainers, not shoes.  Their feet made no sound.  I wasn’t insane.

John made his goodbyes after Dennis reassured me that he was ready take over from him.  It wasn’t a difficult job, as I said before, it was ‘reactionary’.  You dealt with what happened on a daily bases.  I knew a lot about that.  Anything could happen at a moment’s notice.  I knew a lot about that too.

I shook hands with John and wished him good luck in his new role in East Ham as I walked him to the front door for the last time.

“I filled Dennis in on what’s happened here Dave.” He said, “He had heard a lot from others in the council.  It’s quite common knowledge it seems.”

I nodded, as I had been asked by at least 8 other caretakers and assistants about it so it was no surprise.

 Every time we went to the Pyramid Building in Stratford to pick up our wages quite a few people I did not know nodded to me and the occasional whispering happened.  Some even gave that pitying big grin that people use at funerals as if it conveys a message of ‘I understand what you are going through’.

I waved John off and he got to the end of Deanery road, turned around and looked back, waving.

As I waved back I noticed he looked to the right at the windows in the offices and staffroom on the ground floor of the school.  Something had caught his eye.  He backed away, around the corner of Water Lane towards the Romford road and he was gone.  I never saw him take his eyes off the school.

I stepped back into the large Foyer and thought about locking the front door but thought better of it.

I walked back to the office and found Dennis had made a cup of tea for us.  We sat there in silence for a while.  I kept thinking about John staring at the windows in the offices.

“I’ve got a dog.  Only a little one.  A Jack Russell.  Would it be OK if I brought him in with me if I am doing a letting?  He’s no trouble.  If I give him a ball he amuses himself for hours.”

I was still miles away but had heard him.  I knew dogs were very intuitive and picked up on all sorts of things.

“I think that’s an excellent idea, Dennis.  An excellent idea!”

“Thanks, Cheers!” he said clinking our mugs.

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“Bruce!” He said with pride.

“Well, here’s to Bruce!” I said. “Cheers!”

Yes.  This was an excellent idea!

 

 

Dennis opened the school up next day.  I met him outside and we went into the front doors.  The cleaners, who congregated at the front gate every morning came in with us. I’d decided it was best to open the school from the front entrance doors rather than from opening the gates in Manbey Street and then the rear door of the school and make your way through an empty school in the dark, turning on lights as you went.  

It was a break from decades of routine but it made sense to me.  I should have made the change before.  It was strange to think that walking in with 14 old ladies of retirement age was any form of protection, but I saw it as a deterrent to anything that might happen.  There were now too many witnesses.

One of the cleaners, Flo, started moaning to me at the top of her voice about doors not being unlocked in time for her to get into them to dust the surfaces, which was all they really did in the mornings, unless they were cleaning up after a meeting the night before in one of the rooms on their area. It was almost impossible to understand what Flo was saying sometimes so you just smiled, nodded and agreed.  

Dennis was making his way around unlocking doors and being directed by the cleaners which was a fatal thing to do.  They knew the routine but were taking advantage of the ‘new guy”.

Flo was shouting at him which was standard procedure as she had been born stone deaf.  She could lip read, which was good sometimes but bad other times, like when John had been subjected to a deafening torrent of abuse from her before she stormed off, only to turn back and stare at him just as he whispered, “Bugger off you old cow!” under his breath resulting in her throwing a mop at him.  He got his own back by sitting in an armchair watching her vacuum the staff room carpet.  He flicked the plug socket off and the vacuum died.  Flo spent the next ten minutes cleaning the pipe, emptying the bag, replacing the bag, shaking the hoover and then, at the moment when she took the head off the metal pipe and stared down it under the light, he got up and flicked the switch on and shot out door and up the first staircase.  No one knew until that moment that Flo wore a wig. It was never the same once it was retrieved from the hoover bag.

This was a day when the pupils came in to discover who their new form teacher was going to be and to discuss what they wanted to achieve at the end of the school year.  It was a new way of planning and a little confusing for them. It confused me, but it was nothing to do with us. The cleaners finished and left.  Dennis went home and I stayed.  

I’d written my resignation letter over the weekend.  Well, Wanda had.  She was determined to get me working with her. I had thanked the people at the council; I’d cited a new job offer away from the council as my reason for leaving and gave the required 2 week notice.  I read it sitting at a table in the Library next door to our office.  I put it in an envelope.  I would place it in the internal mail bag that was picked up every morning at 9am by a council worker in a van.  There were no emails in those days.  As I read it I was aware that three books had fallen off of the shelves.  There was no reason for it.  I picked them up one by one.  One book was called ‘D.O.S. computing.’ And the two others were Den is Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out and Anthony D Hippisley Coxe’s Haunted Britain.  ‘Who the hell picks the library books?’ I thought.

I smiled as I looked at them and put them on a shelf.  I told myself that I was soon out of here.

A few things happened with the staff and kids that involved me but apart from those it was a very quiet day until 4pm when Dennis arrived.  Just before he put his head around the door I heard a little bit of movement outside and some strange footsteps.  Quick and light footed they came nearer to the door and then..

A dark Brown and white Jack Russell sat in the doorway staring at me expectantly.

“Good afternoon”. Dennis said in a rough fake dog voice from behind the doorframe.

“Hello Bruce!” I said to the dog.  He walked nearer and sat between my feet, leaning into my right leg just below the knee.  I reached down to stoke him and he immediately lay on his back with his legs in the air.

He was a very friendly, lively, fast dog. Full of energy and very alert.

Dennis set off to check parts of the school and lock them up. Bruce was following behind, his tail wagging furiously, looking for adventure.  Nearly all the kids and most of the teachers had gone.  I should have too, but Wanda was picking me up at 5:30 so I waited for her. The cleaners had emptied their bins and dusted down and were leaving.  Next day was a normal routine.  

SuddenlyI heard Bruce barking and growling. Then some doors closing and being locked.  They were being locked frantically and noisily.  I got up, threw my newspaper on the desk and took off running down the corridor, (again, at what I didn’t know) just as Dennis and Bruce got to the corner.  Bruce was staring at the locked corridor doors, barking madly, giving it his best and directing his rage at what was there on the other side.  Dennis bent over with his hands on his knees looking like he was having a game of leap frog, catching his breath.

Bruce was barking so hard his paws were coming off the ground.

I looked down the corridor to where the doors were and we followed him as he walked towards them. Each blue door was solid apart from each one having, at head height, an eight inch by five inch glass window in them.  I looked through one of them at the point where both Giles and I had seen the shadow figure.  There was nothing but an empty space of corridor with the science lab doors on either side.

I turned back to Dennis.

“What happened?”

He took a moment to catch his breath.  Bruce had calmed down and was sitting at his feet.

“He started barking in there and when I looked I saw someone in there near the cupboard where all the chemicals are kept.  I couldn’t make out who it was.  It was in the shadows, a figure, big, it was dark and it just disappeared.  Bruce kept on barking and I grabbed him and we got out into the corridor but it felt like it was coming for us.  I had to pull Bruce down the corridor and I locked the doors.  He wanted to get it!”

“You keep saying ‘it’” I told him.  “What do you mean?”

“That thing you were telling me about, what you and John saw.”

“Right?” I replied,  

“I heard a voice saying, GET OUT!”

I was amazed and obviously looked it.

““Seriously Dave.  It was a horrible voice!  Over and over again.”

I had been standing with my back to the doors and I leaned back on them to think, now aware that our problems were getting more regular.  I slowly became aware of the doors being slowly pushed from the other side, making me stand up straight, they moved about an inch.  I looked back through the glass but there was nothing.

We walked back to the front entrance.

 

Dennis had to ready the Library for the Women’s Institute meeting.  I knew he was glad it was next door to the office, I would have been too.  Wanda beeped the hooter of her car outside having seen me in the hall.

Tomorrow Giles was calling with his findings…

Bruce lay down on the mat in the office.

Till tomorrow…

“See you tomorrow Den!” I had said, waving at Bruce, who was waiting with Dennis for the Women’s Institute to arrive for a booking until 8pm.

According to Dennis it started as a mostly uneventful evening.

The Womens’ Institute had their meeting and he and Bruce sat in our office next door to the library.  He said they only came out to ask where the toilets were once.  He directed them to the toilet in the office on the other side of the entrance hall.  When they returned he started reading the Daily Mirror.  Bruce, who had been lying on the floor quite contentedly, now sat up, staring down the corridor, ears bolt upright, back rigid, lifting his paws one by one.

Dennis said he watched closely.  Bruce was watching someone…or something down the hall corridor!  He looked like he was trying to make sense of something.

Dennis said it took a great deal of nerve to bend to the left and look down there but when he did, he saw nothing.  He put his hand out to stroke Bruce but the dog ducked his head, not wanting to lose sight of what it was looking at.

Dennis said he heard a noise, quiet at first but then it continued and increased in volume, a constant noise like a marble or something rolling across the floor.  

He looked at Bruce who was staring even harder at something, moving from paw to paw faster.

Then, it happened.

A netball slowly rolled into the room stopping between Bruce’s front legs.  Dennis said he nearly passed out, he could feel the blood drain from his face but he watched as Bruce rested his head on the top of the ball and then stood up and nudged the ball out of the room and into the foyer.

Dennis had told me that Bruce was an expert dribbler with a ball and had kept 12 men at bay in the car park of the working mans club next to West Hams ground which was then in Upton Park.  For over 20 minutes they could not get the ball off him.

Out in the foyer Dennis watched Bruce run around with the ball, serving left and right, spinning around, heading the ball when it bounced in the air after hitting a chair for around ten minutes.  Dennis started to smile, his love for watching Bruce having fun overrode his first question: where did the ball come from?  It didn’t take long for him to realise something else.

Bruce was ducking, swerving, spinning around and nudging a ball, but Dennis suddenlyunderstood that he was playing against someone or something that only he could see!

To Dennis, there was only Bruce. Why did he keep stopping, defying someone else to try and take the ball away from him?

After a further few minutes, Bruce nudged the ball back into the office and lay down next to it, looking down the corridor.

Dennis left with the Womens Institute and had put a lead on Bruce and walked him home.  His mind was all over the place.  He didn’t like it.  Not one bit.

 

 

 

 

I sat in the office waiting for Giles to arrive.  The kids were back and they were all excitedly talking about their individual Christmas’s. The noise was deafening. Excited screams and squeals and sharing memories of what happened over Christmas at the top of their voices with raucous laughter and pushing and shouting. I kicked the door shut with a loud bang.  I couldn’t hear myself think.

Giles had called and said he would pop in and go over the tape recordings with us.  He was on his way into Essex to investigate a house in Dunmow that afternoon but he had some interesting things that he wanted to share.

Dennis was with me, minus Bruce, who did not come into the school when the kids were there during schooltime.

Dennis thought he would be ok as he was very tame and lovable but I explained the risk. Even if he was ok we had no idea about the kids. They all seemed like St Trinians to me and it only took one of the little drama queens to say they had been nipped by him, just to gain attention, and he would be in trouble, and so would Dennis.  Plus the parents would be complaining.  There were only so many fat tattooed women with men’s haircuts you could put up with storming the school.  You can’t trust some people, especially if they get compensation pound signs in their eyes.

Dennis knew I was talking sense so he only brought Bruce in during the evening.

There was a knock on the door.  We looked at each other, wondering if we could get away with not opening the door but it opened and Giles leant in.

“Hi, it’s only me.”

“Come in, sit down and have a cup of tea.”

He was holding a cassette tape recorder.

“I have some startling evidence to play to you,” he said excitedly as he took a sip from the tea Dennis had offered him.

He placed it on the desk as I reached over and locked the office door.  The noises of excited kids were getting quieter as they were being put under control.

Giles opened the tape case, popped the cassette in the machine and, with his finger poised on the play button, said “What you will hear is quite shocking.  I only heard some of it at the time as it was quite faint.”

I saw Dennis look at me out of the corner of my eye as Giles pressed the button. The recording was clear as crystal.

“Tell me your name!” Giles’ voice was as clear as a bell..

What followed was a few minutes of silence, nothing for a few seconds, then the sound of a chair scraping on the floor.  

“I didn’t do that” Giles whispered, as Dennis and I leaned in nearer.

“Who are you?” Giles asked, on the tape. “I can’t help you if I don’t know who you are and what you want.”

“Rebecca”

“Who is Rebecca?” Giles asks,

“What do (Unintelligable) care?”  

The words sounded like ‘What do people here care?’

“Is Rebecca here”

“Dead! Yes! Fire.”

“Was it you we saw before, out in the corridor?”

“Yes”

“Did you chase someone on the staircase and talk to the blind man?”

“My place!”

“I can help you.” Giles said on the tape, “Tell me your name!”

Silence.

More silence.

I was about to say something but Giles waved a finger and pointed at the tape machine

“GET OUT!”

Dennis nearly fell off his chair.  I knew he recognised that dark heavy gruff voice from before.

Judging from the noise of things being dropped and picked up again and the scraping noise from the microphone I knew that Giles had beat a hasty retreat.  He pressed the stop button.  We all sat there in silence, staring at each other in turn, we made an uneasy silence that one of us needed to break.  

Just as I was about to say “Well,” the handle of the office door was pulled down a couple of times and someone bumped into the door expecting it to open.

I am ashamed to say we all shouted “Aaargh!” in unison.

I unlocked the door to see Karen, the art teacher, standing there.

“Happy New Year!” she smiled and then leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially “What are you boys doing in here? Are you hiding?” she laughed.

“Having a séance!” I told her.

“Rather you than me,” she said, “Especially in this place!”

Giles looked up, opened his mouth but then thought better of it.  I thought “Would you like to hear a tape?” but I thought better of that too.

She needed a dustpan and brush so I handed her one, enquired about her Christmas, Which she said was just her and her brother at her parents house falling asleep watching Only Fools and Horses.  She eventually walked off after promising to bring the pan and brush back.

I pushed the door closed but didn’t lock it.

“This is just what I thought,” said Giles, a dangerous malevolent spirit.  There is an opening, or gateway, in this school.”

(These were the days before ‘portals’ and ‘orbs’. We didn’t have them.)

“This is a spirit trapped here and one that can bring others through the gateway.  It’s confident, aware, and dangerous.”

Silence.  We considered our options.  I was on a countdown to leaving but wanted to know just who or what it was.

Suddenly Dennis snapped his fingers, “Let’s organize a Séance!.”

“Fuck that!” I blurted out.

“I was going to suggest it” Giles said. “Oh I have to go.  Keep in touch and let me know when.  I would love to be there.  I will be back soon.”  He put his cassette machine in his bag and left, waving goodbye.

“So what do you think of a séance?  Tomorrow night? Good idea?” Dennis asked.

“We have a visitor tomorrow evening.” A letting I booked.  “I had to cancel it during the holidays because of the Ghost Club involvement.”

“Are you doing it?” Dennis asked,

“I thought we would both do it,” I said, “plus the head teacher and two of her deputy teachers.”

“Really” Dennis said, amazed.

“The Vicar is coming!”

 

 

We got the call confirming the Vicar would be attending at 5:30pm that afternoon.  I didn’t find it a bit comforting to think that the vicar was going to be there but it was arranged.  His attitude bothered me.  He seemed to think he was going to have no problems and I hoped he wouldn’t have, but he seemed to think this was just an evening out, no matter what I did to impress upon him the gravity of the situation.

The Head, a deputy Head and the head of religious studies were going to be there as well as me and Dennis.  The Deputy Head, Pat Marino, was a real laugh.  She looked and acted 100% professional but when she came into the school during the holidays she arrived on her Harley Davison, in full leathers.  It was a massive transition but we got on really well from the moment we met.  There was an end of term party for staff the previous year held at Charlie Chans, a nightclub beneath Walthamstow Dog Track near the Crooked Billet roundabout on the North Circular.  She took me there on the back of her Harley, got changed in the ladies and hit the dance floor non-stop for an hour.  She didn’t even spill her drink, which looked like a Gin and Tonic but was actually only lemonade.  What a character she was/ is!  What an evening that was!  Now, we were about to have an evening at the other end of the scale.

Bang on 5:30 the Vicar arrived.

“Stephen, how lovely to see you again.  Welcome to XXXXX XXXXXXX School for girls!  We are so proud to have you grace us with your presence at our home of education and Excellence” They shook hands for over ten seconds.

“Thank you, thank you!”  The vicar was repeating.

Dennis nudged my arm, “Who is this, the fuckin’ Pope?”

The Head Teacher, Mrs Goodwin (name changed), was a little over effusive with her welcome and a few of us exchanged glances. I looked at Pat and she put her finger in her mouth pretending to be sick.

The rest of us looked at each other uneasily while Stephen was shaking hands with all of us.

“Let’s use the library and talk about our issue.” The Head continued, leading the way like Joyce Grenfell.

We all sat around the two tables that had been put together.  There was a water jug, some crisps and some penguin biscuits.  Someone had pushed the boat out.

“Stephen,” the Head continued, “As you will be aware, we have concerns about some issues in the school.  I wonder what your thoughts were after your conversation with David a few weeks ago.”

Stephen took his glasses off to clean them, as if that made a difference to his opinion.

“Ah David, well, well. Well, I listened to David very carefully and I came to the conclusion that what he told me he believed and that it was believed by the people who experience these situations.  I have read the notes that were sent to me regarding other instances, and they are quite troublesome and extreme in nature, but, I am a man of God.  And as such it is a very difficult position for me, and the church, to agree that these inciDen ts are the work of a negative spirit.  I mean, what do you expect me to do about that to help you?”

I could see that he was not on board with us.  All the info, all the time, all the effort, for nothing.  He was too scared.  He was a busted flush. He had made his mind up not to do anything but distance himself from this before I had left his office.

“I know that you all believe that supernatural things have happened here but I have to say that we, the church, take a dim view of this sort of thing.  Could this not all be Chinese whispers?  One thing said and passed on to another gets things altered and added to and…well. This could all be circumstance and imagination.  It is wrong for us, the church, to be seen getting involved in this kind of thing.”

I heard my voice say, “And you couldn’t have told us all that on the phone?”

“Stephen, I thought it was made clear,” the Head jumped in, ”we want you to perform some kind of cleansing ritual.”

“Oh my,” he said looking flustered, “I had no idea that was what you wanted.”

“Don’t give me all that, mate!” I told him. “You didn’t grasp what you were being told when I saw you, that’s why I made it absolutely clear to you, even overstating the issues, so you got a grip on reality. You were left in no doubt about it. Don’t come over with all the ‘I had no idea’ rubbish now.  Why do you think you are here?  You know EXACTLY why we have asked you here.  Just say if you haven’t got the bottle!”

(A little direct but, what did I care?  I was leaving anyway.)

“It is not about ‘bottle’ as you call it.  I do not think it wise that I get involved in this.  I can only advise, discuss and look at options.”

We sat in silence for a while and then Pat broke it by saying,

“So…what do you advise?”

“I think it would be a very good idea to have some record of events that I could….”

I put the diary on the table, with all of the notes and handwritten messages we had left for each other detailing and warning each other of incidents.

The vicar looked at the book, turning the pages as we sat in silence.  My mobile rang in the office next door breaking the silence.  It stopped after four rings.  Then the landline rang and rang.  Dennis was nearest the Library door so jumped up and answered the phone.  A minute or two later he came back and handed me a packet of Rothmans cigarettes!

I stared at them confused, bewildered, then noticed his handwriting.

‘John called.  Call him a sap’.

Confused further I looked at Dennis.  He whispered,

‘Call john as soon as possible.’

‘Aaaah!’ I thought.  I had called John a number of times to find out about his weird behaviour when he left the other day.  He had finally heard my message.

“These notes could all be nothing.” The Vicar suddenly said, “Imagination, ordinary noises, this is a big building. Now if you had clear evidence to prove that…”

I placed a box of cassette tapes on the table.  These were the copies from the night vigil and the other encounters and I explained that these were from Giles of the Society of psychical research.  Not recorded by us but by the two men from the Ghost Club.  Proof that something was going on here.

“What are these?” the Vicar asked, picking up a cassette.

“These are the recordings made by members of the Institute.  The ghost club.  They are live recordings of a vigil we undertook one evening.  Also there is some recordings a man called Giles made alone.  Giles sat in one of the laboratories here and made contact with something, or someone and the tape recording contains the voice.”

The Vicar dropped the cassette like he had had an electric shock.

Everyone looked at the cassette on the desk.

No one said a thing for a few seconds.  The teaching staff had no idea a cassette recording existed.

It was marked “Investigation, Laboratory of school, Property of Giles Draper, Institute of Psychical research. Copy 1.”

I put the cassette into a tape machine and pressed play.  Giles’ voice came out of the speaker, confirming the details on the label. Then,

“Tell me your name!” Giles’ voice was as clear as a bell..

Silence, nothing for a few seconds, then the sound of a chair scraping on the floor.  

 “Who are you?” Giles asked, on the tape. “I can’t help you if I don’t know who you are and what you want.”

Weird voice: “Rebecca”

Giles: “Who is Rebecca?”

Weird voice, distant: “What do (Unintelligable) care?”  

The words sounded like ‘What do people here care?’

Giles: “Is Rebecca here”

Voice: “Dead! Yes! Fire.”

Giles: “Was it you we saw before, out in the corridor?”

Voice: “Yes”

Giles: “Did you chase someone on the staircase and talk to the blind man?”

Voice, nearer: “My place!”

Giles: “I can help you.  Tell me your name!”

Silence.

More silence.

Everyone around the tables took a quick look at others.  The Vicar was staring at the cassette player horrified.

Voice: “GET OUT!”

Everyone apart from Dennis and I recoiled mainly because we knew what was coming and had heard it before.

Giles: “I am going nowhere. Speak to me and tell me why you are here.”

Everyone around the table was leaning forward, including the Vicar.

Giles: “Tell me what you want here. (Giles was shouting.)

Then silence.  No sound for ages, then a strange low growl.

Suddenly there was a lot of noise, Giles was obviously clearing the tape recorder and microphone into his bag and we heard the sound of him walking to the door.

As we heard the door being pushed open there was a voice.

Voice: GO!

I clicked the tape off.  I expected the Vicar to claim it was a set-up, us joking around.

The staff were shocked and leaning back in their chairs.  One had lit a cigarette and was puffing away madly.  The Head of R,E. was drinking water like it was going out of fashion.

“Well, Stephen?” I asked.

He looked at the tape recorder, then at the Head, then at me.

“I am going to contact the Ministry and suggest that someone comes over to see if they can assist you. We have a group that can ‘deal’ with these things.  They know how these things should be dealt with. Is that OK?”

“You can’t do anything now?” The Head asked.

“I am not the correct representative for this.  Having heard the evidence and seen the documentation in that box this is something that…”

“What?”

“It calls for experience beyond mine, and beyond my capabilities.”

“Could you not bless the school? Not all of it, just the areas where all this is happening.”

“I think you need someone who can do more than that.”

He started to put his Bible and a folder into his bag and stood up.

“I am sorry but, there is nothing I personally can do.  I will raise your issue to a higher office that can help you.  I must go.  Thank you for your hospitality.”

He pushed his chair under the table but it sprang back hitting him in the legs.  He stepped back and stared at the chair for a few moments with his handkerchief at his mouth.  The Head and a couple of others stood up staring at the chair as it slowly slid back under the table again.  The look on his face was of a man fit to burst.

“I have to go.” The Vicar said, opening the Library door and running to the front entrance Door.

“I will be in touch tomorrow Mrs Goodwin.”

He tried opening the doors but I had locked them, he turned but I was already there reaching past him to turn the key.  He looked visibly shocked from what he had heard.

Someone, I do not know who, was sitting in his car waiting for him and they drove off.

“Maybe someone from the ministry will get in touch.  Soon I hope.” Said the Head as everyone came out of the Library.

“Considering he knew exactly what we were expecting, we have wasted our time tonight, the old duffer.” Said Pat, looking like she wanted to chin him.

“HE wasted it, if you ask me” Said Shiela, the Head of Religious studies.

Well, if she thought so, it must be true.

I was about to let everyone out of the front door when Dennis remembered the Library.  It was still open and the lights were on.

“I’ll lock it up” he said, “Leave it to…F**k?”

We all looked.  All the chairs we had sat on were now on the tables, neatly arranged with a pile of books on each.  Nothing else was disturbed. Dennis stood looking into the Library.  I walked over and reached for the light to turn it off.  I felt a hand touch the back of mine as I flicked the switch throwing the room into darkness.  I recoiled at the touch and almost slapped Dennis in the face doing so.

I had to jump back as Dennis slammed the door shut and locked it.

I told the others I had felt a hand on mine.

“Good God, save us” Shiela whispered.

“I think it’s a bit late for that now!”  I told her.

I locked the Front door behind us and we all descended the steps.

A flurry of “see you tomorrows” were said, followed by a few “Yeah, can’t wait!’s.” I padlocked the gates and got into my car.  Dennis was already halfway down the road, he only lived two streets away.  The cars pulled away leaving me there alone.  I had to call John when I got home. I resisted the urge to look at the school, started the car and roared away.

 

JOHN

I drove over to Wanda and told her what had gone on at the Vicars meeting.  Her response was, ”I knew I should have been there.”

I explained about his reticence to get involved and how he had seemed disturbed by the amount of evidencewe had, including the cassette tape.  

“Play the tape let me hear it!”

This went on for ten minutes, she wouldn’t let it go.

“Some of the staff were scared when they heard the voice.” I told her.

“Play the tape let me hear it!”

“I need to call John and speak to him.”

“Play the tape let me hear it!”

I reached into my leather jacket pocket and pulled out Denniss cigarette pack.

“I’ll put it on and we can lis…”

Wanda grabbed the cigarette packet and stared at it, confused.

“What the hell is this?”

“It’s got John’s Home number on it.  I never updated the address book in the office.  Can I use your phone?”

“Play the tape let me hear it!”

“It’s in my case over there.”

Wanda was busy with the combination locks while I was dialling the number.  It rang three times and then I heard John.

“Yeah?”

“It’s me.  I missed your call earlier.”

“Dave!  Thanks for calling me back.  Listen,”

I heard a door shut at his end and the sound of a barking dog and a screaming kid subsided.

“I’m all ears, how’s the new school, the job and everything.”

“It’s Good thanks, listen.  The other day when I left you at the school.”

“Yeah what was the matter, you looked like death warmed up!”

“I waved at you.  Then I kind of looked at the school.  As I looked along the row of offices towards the Staff Room there was the girl standing in the window of the small room next to the main office.”

Wanda turned and shouted “YESSSS!” waving the cassette tape.  I waved my hand at her as she ran to the cassette player and loaded it.

I involuntarily pressed the phone to my ear.

“A girl”. I asked him to repeat it.

“No,” he replied “THE girl! “She looked like she was screaming. She was on fire!”

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as I am of anything.  It was real.  She just faded away.  I am never coming back there Dave.”

“I can understand that, Mate.  I am glad your new place is good.  You never know until you get there.”

“Dave, I don’t know what your plans are, but get out of that school.”

“I have a week left!”

“Leave now Dave, make out you’re ill.”

“Thanks! Don’t put the mockers on me!”

I looked at Wanda, she was oblivious, sitting on the Sofa with the headphones on, enjoying every minute of the tape.

A few more moments with John and I hung up.  I was a little disconcerted by what he said.  We knew about the girl but it must have been John she was appearing to, as no one else saw her.

Wanda screamed and frightened the life out of me, breaking my concentration.

I knew as soon as she took the headphones off that she had reached the part where the other voice speaks to Giles.

All I kept thinking was, ‘one week, one week, one week!’

 

CLOSURE

I sat in the office.  I began looking through the notes and files that were in the scrapbook I’d shown the vicar.  I began thinking of all of the things that had happened:  

Being followed down the staircase,

The vigil we’d had,

The toilet block taps,

Sightings and sounds of someone or something walking around,

The doors shaking and handles turning.  

Lights dimming,

Things going missing,

Bruce with his football game,  

Books falling off the shelves in the Library,

The chair stacking,

The burning girl,

Workmen running away and never coming back,

The broken ankle,

The Piano tuner,

The Tai Chi class chairs,

The basketball

The individual sightings, like the night cleaners chasing a girl in Victorian clothing.

The list was endless.  Not to mention the tiny, niggly little things that made a part of and became part of a regular day.

Now there was going to be a visit from the church’s specialist group of investigators.  Now they are called a ‘Den iverance Ministry but we were just told, ‘another department from the church’ were coming to assist.  I wasn’t sure if I was thankful or disappointed that they were going to come to the school after I had left but, having read the information they sent, it seemed to me to focus on prayer and listening, to calm the anxiety felt by the people affected by what they ‘believe to be happening’.  ‘The Ministry will listen to try to ascertain what is going on, or rather what we ‘believe’ is going on.’  

It had all the makings of a whitewash to me.  I assumed they were going to make it seem that we were all imagining it.

We didn’t just believe it; we had seen it and heard it. John had left because of it.  Even Bruce knew it existed.

 I needed: closure.  

I suppose I needed an end to it all.

Dennis arrived with Bruce.  Bruce had twisted a paw and his left nearside paw was bandaged.  He must have suffered a bad tackle. He came into the office, sat down at my feet and lifted his paw to show me.  I almost expected him to say “Look at this!”  I touched his paw and he licked my hand.

Dennis was looking after the Women’s Institute again.  I was going to leave him to it but the rain was lashing down outside.

I sat there quietly with Bruce at my feet as Dennis made ready the Library for the letting.  The week had been uneventful, in so much as, things rolled along quite normally.

Tomorrow was Friday, my last day.  The Head had kept asking me all week to change my mind but the opportunity to build a business with Wanda was too great.  I was asked to come back when the ministry was there and agreed that if I could, I would.

I would take all my belongings tomorrow when I would slip out the door unnoticed.

Dennis came back from inside the Library, everything was set up.  He had a newspaper and Bruce was going to sit in the office with him.  No football training tonight.  Was it time to go and come back tomorrow?  I thought of all that had happened, I thought of how it had made me feel, I wasn’t finished…yet!

“Back in a while, Dennis.”

I patted Bruce on the head as Dennis put the kettle on and I walked off down the corridor in front of me.  It was 630pm

 

I walked a normal pace down the corridor with minimal sound from my trainers on the polished floor.  I stood at the bottom and looked to my right to the stone stairs where two of the staff had been talking one day and the Deputy Heads keys had disappeared only to be found on her office chair. The nightlights were on and it was semi darkness as I turned left and headed for the science labs where Giles had recorded a conversation with an entity that eventually told him to ‘Get Out’.

I pushed the swing doors open and let them close behind me before turning right into the Chemistry lab, the scene of the recording.  I stood there and waited for about ten seconds and then walked out and back down the corridor, finally turning left into the linkway corridor, unlocking the first doors and leaving them unlocked to open the Toilet block where I had found all the taps jammed on full.  As I entered I noticed how silent and still the room was.  You would have heard a pin drop.

I stepped out back into the corridor and turned and walked to the next set of doors, unlocked them and entered the area where we had held the vigil.  It was also the area that was at the foot of the flights of stairs where I was rooted to the spot listening to someone coming down the stairs two at a time after me.  It was also the exact spot where the Piano tuner was talking to a Shadowman figure that he said had tried to trip him up down the stairs.

This time I had my full set of keys with me and opened the Boiler room door and turned on the stair lights. I waited but there was no sound at all. I turned back to the Boiler room door to close it and climb the stairs to the top on my own.

I noticed in the half dark, at the bottom of the steps that led down to the boilers, a girl.  Like a hazy semi-transparent photo projected in the air.  She stared directly at me.  I was unable to move, I was frozen as an icy blast ran all over me. I closed my eyes, blinking in the freezing air and when I opened my eyes, she was gone.

I wasn’t sure that I had seen her, but I did, I must have.  She had looked at me. I closed the door and locked it.

It was now or never.  I climbed the eight flights of stairs that led up to the top floor hall. The remaining few flights led up to a mezzanine floor of store rooms. Those flights were gated off.

Slowly, taking them step by step, I reached the top floor hall.  I opened the door and stepped into the dark.  I put the lights on which slowly dinked as they came to life and looked around.  Nothing.  I got to the classroom and could see quite clearly the light under the cupboard door.  The Teacher had left it on again.

I retraced my steps and took the stairs two at a time down to the ground just as I did on that terrible night.

Boom

Boom

Boom

Bang

Turn to the next flight,

Boom

Boom

Boom

Bang

Turn

Until I reached the ground., I waited and waited, but nothing.  I opened the Boiler room door again and turned off the lights.  I tried not to look at where the girl was standing ten minutes ago but I I had to.  There was nothing there. I closed the door, locked it and retraced my steps back to the office locking the doors behind me.

I locked the second set of double doors at the entrance to the linkway and got a feeling that I should look up back down the corridor towards the boiler room.

There was the figure of a man staring at me.

I could see him clearly.  Grubby collarless shirt, flat cap, handkerchief tied around his neck, dark trousers and boots that came up to his knees.  Face covered in black grime.  His expression was neutral, like he was not angry, calm or confused.

It was a look of mild recognition, peaceful recognition.

I took it all in for a few seconds and then spun around as I heard Bruce bark in the office.

I looked back, the man was gone.

I walked back to the office and Dennis said, “Cup of tea there!” and pointed at my West Ham United mug on my desk.  The Ladies from the Institute had arrived and they were making a fuss of Bruce.  That’s why he had barked.

“You alright Mate?” Dennis asked.

I thought for a moment.

“Never better, cheers!”

I sat there for another ten minutes playing with Bruce.  I thought about my leaving the next day and realised of course, that all my stuff, like books and notebooks, umbrella and all manner of odds and sods were in my locker.  I emptied it all into my bag and gave Dennis the locker keys.  I went over to Wandas

The next day Dennis opened the school up and I got there around 9.30am.  Dennis went home and came back at 4pm.  I was still there, nothing had happened all day.  I went over the Manbey Arms with 8 of the teachers, Pat, Karen and a few more, even the Head and her secretary. Of course Dennis turned up, having escaped the cleaners, and John came over too, which meant a lot to me.  He was like a different person, his old self.

For some reason a couple of the teachers were upset that I was leaving but I said I would pop back to see how things were.  We all left the pub together and walked the perimeter of the old and new schools down Water Lane and then first right, the same route I had taken after the vigil with Giles.  

Inside the foyer I handed my keys to Dennis.  Even though I had recommended Dennis to take over as Caretaker they appointed a new one and Dennis would need to show him around.  Dennis didn’t want the job, and had told them ‘no thanks’.

I waved to some of the staff that were still talking and after a few kisses, phone numbers on slips of paper with ‘keep in touch’ written on them from Karen and a couple of others, and a few hugs I was gone, down the steps, and into my car.  I started the engine and drove down Deanery Road to a new life.

 

AFTERWORD

 

I had done my time, and I have my memories.

I had been confused and scared, worried and annoyed, angry and sad. Sometimes all at the same time!

I was now free to build a business with Wanda, which is what I did, and concentrate on the future rather than what the next day’s horror was going to be.

I had made peace with what was there at the school, I now knew that we can NEVER really understand why some things like this happen.  They just do.  It’s not because of us, it’s because of something in the past.

I kept in touch with a few teachers and discovered that things were still happening for another ten years or so but then contact tailed off.  They moved on and/or retired or quit.  The Den iverance ministry were a waste of time it seems, they wanted to discover if there was a natural reason and if any of the staff were anxious or overworked as it may have been hallucinations…yadda yadda yadda. They gave a blessing and promised to keep in touch but…they never did.

I carried on building up a lucrative business throughout Europe with Wanda, which we sold for more money than it was worth and after splitting the proceeds, we split up.  I have never seen her again; she dropped off the radar and is not on social media.  I tried to find her, even hiring a private eye, but to no avail.  I hope she is happy.  I moved away to St Paul de Vence near Nice in the south of France but come back to a property in East Sussex now and then.

Did I ever go back to the School?  No!  Nor did I want to.  I had my closure.

Since the new school was partly demolished and completely rebuilt a few years after I left…I don’t see the point.  All in all, I am done with it.

Do I think about it?   Do I wonder? You bet I do.

 

This has been A True East London Haunting!  The Ghosts of Sarah Bonnell School, 1984/1989.  

Thank you.  

Dave Moore,

I am not an author, I was just The Caretaker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.  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.

“Bxxxxxks” I said replacing 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 suddenlysnapped 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 Den ham.  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 Den ay 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 suddenlysaid

“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 walked 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.  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 resiDen ts 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.

 

 

Christmas came and went just as quickly.  It was a great time.  The 80’s was my decade. I loved it.  Everything felt new, shiny and bright. The clothes were well made and the music was great.  I was the only caretaker with a Filofax but I didn’t care. Thankfully the music hadn’t slipped into the dirge of drum and bass and techno, that was years away.  The 80’s was a time of songs, with hook lines and decent lyrics and tunes.  

Having said that, Cliff Richard was at number one with Mistletoe and Wine, so not everything was perfect!

I had met a girl through a friend a few months earlier and we were seeing quite a lot of each other.  She was English but her family came from Poland.  Her name is Wanda Izycki (pronounced: Ezshitski!) and we ended up seeing each other for three years.  In fact she was the reason I left the council the following year in 1989.

At the time of 1988/1989 computers were the new, new thing.  It was said that the world was going to be run by computers in the very near future.  No one believed that, why would they?  How could they?  Wanda had completed a computer course and got her qualifications in computer studies and at the age of 28 and now, at 33, she had a small company called D.I.S.C. which stood for Data Input Specialist Company.  She had three other girls who she had trained and she hired out their services to visit companies and take all their customer and client records and details out of filing cabinets and transfer them onto disc or a server, thus computerizing their company.  D.I.S.C. was in high demand and I eventually became a Director and helped her take it into Jersey, Europe and beyond.

We were due back at the school on the 2nd of January at around midday and I had called John on between Christmas and New Year to see what he was going to do.  He informed me that he would be back but was actively looking for a new job.  I couldn’t and wouldn’t attempt to talk him out of it.

No one else was going to be there as the cleaners would not be back until next day, the 5th. We were only going to be there until 4pm in case the painters arrived to continue their work but I thought they would take a long while to come back.  

I told John that Wanda had bought theatre tickets for the next day and that I wouldn’t be there.  There was no real need for him to be there either until the 2^nd and I explained my decision to rearrange the Vicar’s appointment and he seemed relieved.

I had noticed, the previous evening, that the lights were on in the front entrance area near our office in the new school.  I didn’t go in as I had no keys with me. I decided to go there the next morning and around midday on January 4^th I went there with Wanda as we were going to see Les Miserables that afternoon in the West End and we were making a day of it in the sales.  When we got to the school I discovered that there had been some mad activity in the main hall of the new school next to our office.  The hall doors were all open wide.  The piano had been moved from its usual place next to the stage to between the doors at the rear of the hall.  Wanda was with me, we had only popped in to turn off the front interior lights that were on.  She could see that something was bothering me.  I had already told her all about what had happened at the school and she was intrigued by the events but concerned for my safety but now, she was completely uneasy being in the school.  She looked at the disarray in the hall and asked me “Did it do this?”

I looked back at her. “Well, we didn’t!”

“Let’s go Dave,” she whispered, “I don’t feel safe here, we need to go”  

She clutched my arm to pull me towards the door when the huge drape curtains on the stage flew open and fell to the ground.  The piano lid started to open and close violently making a deafening crashing sound.

Wanda screamed and tugged at my sleeve and we got out of the hall.  We went to the front doors, stepped out and I locked them.  As I looked back in the foyer I could see two shadows in the open doorway of the hall.  Two jet black shadows, at least adult size, maybe 6ft in height, not moving or trying to hide.  I was transfixed.  This was daytime and bright enough for me to discern any features, but they had none.  None at all.  They were just two black masses.  

“Look!” I said to Wanda, “Look there, can you see them?”

When I got no answer I looked around but she wasn’t there.  She had run down the steps and was trying to open the car door but the keys were in my hand.

“Dave! She shouted in panic, “come on, and get in.”

I followed her quickly and opened her car door for her and then got into the bright metallic blue Ford Escort XR3i myself, a real symbol of the 1980’s in the UK and roared away down Deanery Road so fast that when I hit the brakes and came to a stop I thought we would be in 1983!  We drove to the multi storey car park at Stratford, parked up, hurried to the tube station and went into London.  It was noisy as the Central Line tube train cluttered at high speed through the tunnels and we never spoke until we reached Tottenham Court Road station and stepped into the Charing Cross Road.

“What the hell happened back there?” She asked.

“I’ve no idea!” was all I could say as we walked down the Charing Cross Road to cut through Soho and on to Regent Street.

“I can’t believe it…..I just can’t believe it….” She repeated again and again.

We eventually reached Regent Street and turned to our left, crossing the road at the lights and walked towards Piccadilly Circus.  On the right of Regent St is a little alleyway called Heddon Street and an Italian restaurant, The Cabin, was there on the right, now sadly gone due to development of the area.

After a big friendly greeting from Aldo, the owner and his wife, Benita we sat at a corner table and a bottle of Chianti with a wicker bottom appeared out of nowhere.  I didn’t know how Aldo so smoothly went from a handshake or a hug to having a bottle appear out of nowhere, I could only assume he carried them in his trouser pockets!

We ordered and sat there in silence for a while until collectively; we both started talking again and laughed.  

“Four doors along from here is the shop doorway where David Bowie had his photo taken for the Ziggy Stardust album.  The one where he’s holding a guitar and has his foot up on the dustbin.”

Wanda told me one of her brothers, Henrick, a psychiatric nurse training to be a Psychologist, had spent two days in a room with Peter Sutcliff, the Yorkshire Ripper. Henrick was terrified, she told me.  “He was the most evil man he had met.  He had assessed a lot of dangerous people, murderers, but Sutcliffe was the one that gave him nightmares. Waves of hatred were coming off of him.”  Henrick was a really nice guy and lived in the NHS quarters during the week and went home to his wife and family in Leicester at the weekend.

I was thinking ‘I have a few nightmares if he wants to swap them’   The school would keep a conference going for months.

How stupid were we being?  It all seemed so safe and normal.  It was as if nothing unusual had happened.  What had happened, and what we had experienced, seemed so at odds with us sitting there, eating pasta and drinking wine as two men walked around singing Italian songs while playing an acoustic guitar and an accordion was surreal.  I felt like we should be standing there screaming and yelling about what had happened to us earlier but, we kept up the pretence that all was fine and dandy. Even today I cannot understand these extremes of thought and emotion.  I know what happened.  I was there. We both were.

My 2lb brick sized Motorola 8000x, just like Gordon Gekko’s, gave a deafening shrill as I was counting out cash to pay the bill.  It scared me when it went off.  It didn’t do much for the old couple on the next table either.  Wanda was asking Aldo about Pasta shapes.  I had been going out with her for two years.  She had never cooked anything but beans on toast.  We always ate out.

“Yes?”  I said into the phone.

“Dave!” and then the line went dead.  

The reception was never great at the best of times but I thought it sounded like John.  We left the Cabin with a bottle of my favourite Amarone.

I noticed Wanda was holding a full carrier bag.

“Wanda, I need to find a phone box.  There’s one in Regent Street nearer to Piccadilly.  Have a look in the clothes shop here. You like this place.  I will be at the phone box.”

I ran to the phone box and dialled the office.

“John, it’s Dave.  Did you ring me?”

John told me he had gone into the school, expecting me to be there.  He had left a letter on the desk.  He was leaving and the letter was his resignation.  He was adamant.  There was no use in trying to reason with him, he was doing the right thing, for him.  His mind was made up.

“What’s all that noise?”

I could hear a lot of banging and crashing like doors slamming.  Suddenlythe phone sounded like it hit the desk and I heard John screaming, “SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UUUUUUUUPPP!!!”

It all went quiet and then John picked up the phone.  He was crying.

“I’m going Dave, I can’t do this any more.  I’ll put my keys through the letter box.”

“No, if someone breaks in and they use them it will bugger the insurance and you’ll be in trouble. I’ll pick them up from you in the Manbey Arms.  Call me after the term starts, take the next week off sick.”

“OK, but I ain’t coming back Dave……”

Silence…..

“John?” I shouted into the phone. “John!” I said.

“I have to leave Dave…..They are watching me.”

“Who is?”

“Two of them.  In the corridor.  Watching me.  They want me to leave….all right all right…”  

The line went dead.   

I stood there with the phone in my hand…

Two of them?  Two what?

 

A very happy looking Wanda stood outside the phone box as I stepped out. She turned to me.

“I got two free packs of pasta!!” she laughed, holding up the plastic bag from the Cabin.

“Great” I replied, laughing “Next time talk about wine!”

She poked her tongue out at me as we walked off deep in thought.

 I related the conversation to her as we strolled up Regent Street.  She stopped, visibly shocked.

“Don’t go back there Dave.  We obviously angered it, whatever it is.”

“We’ll see.”

 “Forget it all!” she told me,  “Let’s go and see the show, OK?

“OK.” I smiled. “Where to?”

“Les Miserables!!  You remember!!” She laughed. “It’ll be fun!”

“Fun?  A bloke steals a loaf of bread, and it all comes on top!”

“Oh ha, ha!” She laughed. “That’s terrible about John.”

We continued to walk and ended up in a bar and spent the rest of the evening laughing and making plans for a holiday.  It all seemed so normal again.  It was like nothing had happened earlier.  We wiped it from our minds and just enjoyed the ‘now’.  I had no idea what the ‘when’ would be like, thankfully, Although I knew that soon, I would be back in the school again, with or without John.  The council would replace him immediately and then I would see what Den ights were in store in the corridors and landings of the school.  

 

____________________________________________________________

 

Three weeks later the most sinister and frightening thing happened.

One evening in the second week of term, a teacher had left a light on in a cupboard on the top floor of the old school.  The caretaker was off sick and was diagnosed with Emphysema but in those days the police were very hot on lights being left on in public buildings as they assumed that it could be a burglar.  Now, they don’t take any notice of these things but, in this instance they took the caretaker to the school and went to the top floor with him.  It took ages for Jim, the caretaker, to climb the three floors with four flights of stairs, 8 steps to each, between each floor. The steps were covered in small rubber squares and when you climbed the first flight, you could see the third flight of steps above you.  They discovered that the store room in the class had windows facing out onto the street but had a lock we did not have a key for.  They took him home.

I had a Teachers and Governors meeting in the new school the next night that finished at 10pm. Jim called me at around 9pm and asked me to check the light in the cupboard to see if it was on or not.  He didn’t want another call out at 1am.  Just as I was about to set off the Library doors opened and the Teachers & Governors meeting was over and they all left abruptly saying ‘goodnight’ to anyone who heard it.  I locked the front doors behind them sealing off the entire school from anyone just walking in.  I had decided to check the cupboard anyway now I was alone.  I could go outside and do that by looking up at the school but I would not be able to tell if the light, if it was on, was something I could turn off or it was the same one as before, in the locked cupboard.  I didn’t have a full set of keys with me as the other assistant had locked up the entire school before leaving.  My key, though a master key, would not open cupboards or the boiler room at the base of the stairs so I could switch on the stair lights.  I took my torch, unlocked and locked behind me my way over to the old school. I opened and locked the linkway corridor doors behind me.  There were only three old ladies attending the meeting but I didn’t want them roaming around so they were locked in an area at the front of the school next to my office with the only other open doors being the toilet and the front door that could only be opened from within.

Once I locked the second door behind me in the Linkway I climbed all twelve staircases and reached the top floor.  The total silence was always unnerving.  The stillness always made for apprehension, especially in the torchlight.  I unlocked the door into the hall, reached into the darkness and fumbled on the wall for the hall light switch. Finding it eventually I turned on the hall lights.  After checking that the cupboard light was on behind a locked door I turned off the hall lights and locked the stair doors behind me and I started to descend the stair by torchlight slowly.

Finally I reached the ground and, as I was about to unlock the door to the corridor I heard a distant noise, like a series of thuds.  I froze.  I listened as I heard a series of thuds from above, up on the staircases.  I realised it was the sound of someone coming down the 12 flights of stairs above and behind me, two at a time.  

Boom Boom Boom BOOM!

Boom Boom Boom BOOM!

We never really know what we would do if we find ourselves in certain situations.  Fight or flight.  Run and hide.  It seems quite bizarre now but I chose to stand there.  I stood frozen to the spot.  I looked at the underneath of the stairs that lay above the first flight.

The sound got louder as it got nearer,

Boom Boom Boom BOOM!

Boom Boom Boom BOOM!

Boom Boom Boom BOOM!

Boom Boom Boom BOOM!

Boom Boom Boom BOOM!

Boom Boom Boom BOOM!

Boom Boom Boom BOOM!

Boom Boom Boom BOOM!

I saw the underneath of the steps above me as something came powering  down the steps two at a time. They did not move slightly like normal.

Then another

Boom Boom Boom BOOM!...

but….nothing turned at the top of the first flight to come down 8 more steps to the ground, to me.  There was no way in, and no way out unless you had the key that was in my hand.

I waited….but nothing.  No noise.  Not a sound.  Then, I heard car noises and police or ambulance sirens from outside in the distance.  I could faintly hear that life was going on outside but, in here?  I had no idea what had happened.  I was terrified and exhilarated at the same time.  Whatever was there was powerful, strong, fully formed.  It was as if it was something other than a spirit that replays a moment in time over and over again.  It was capable of interaction; it was taking the lead and not just responding to a situation.  It was creating situations. I was certain.

Should I climb the 8 steps and look around the corner to see what was at the bottom of the penultimate flight?

I unlocked the corridor as silently as I could, locked it behind me and, I admit, I ran like a madman back to my office, unlocking and locking doors quickly behind me.  The ladies had gone and I ran to the front door.  15 minutes after the experience on the stairs I called Jim and told him about the light in the cupboard.

“Oh well mate,” he said, “thanks. At least if plod do knock on my door about it I can tell them. Thanks again.  Get yourself home safely.”

No point in telling him that I was already at home drinking a second whiskey.  I had left immediately.  I had driven the mile and a half long journey home in just over 1 minute.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS

 

THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS.

 

I spoke to John over Christmas. He was still seriously toying with the idea of leaving. I had no right or reason to talk him out of it but the last experience with the Piano Tuner had given him a big shake up and though he livened up in the pub afterwards he had expressed his reservations about staying. He had thought of getting a transfer but he lived fairly near to the school so finding an adequate reason for leaving and working further away was going to look odd. I had suggested he tell them I was making life difficult for him, cracking the whip etc, but the fact that we regularly saw three of the main guys from the council and caretakers association in the Manby Arms next to the school wasn’t really a believable one. Wanting a transfer because of ghosts wouldn’t work either. He would more likely be classed as not fit for work, and/or sacked.

 

He seemed very pleased that the Vicar had been postponed. I didn’t know why, nor did I ask. I assumed he thought, like me, there was a chance of things escalating, especially as Peter Underwood had suggested it might. He agreed to come back and actively make moves to find another position within the system.

 

“Great!” I said, “Kids are back on the 8th Jan. I’ll see you on the 5th, when the Ghost Hunter’s there doing his investigations.”

 

I hung up quickly as John started asking a question. I shot out the front door. I heard the phone ringing as I locked it.

 

A few days into January a green Morris Traveller pulled up outside the front entrance in Deanery Road. It was in immaculate condition and the wooden  frame on the rear was highly polished. A tall lanky man in his mid to late forties jumped out of the driver’s seat, slammed the door and bounded up the four steps to the front entrance where I was standing inside the tall metal framed glass doors. I opened them and he stepped in with his hand outstretched.

“You must be Giles Draper?” I said as he shook my hand frantically.

“Dave Moore I take it.”

“If I’m not, this is a very odd coincidence!” I said and we both laughed, while he continued shaking my hand like it was going out of fashion.

“That’s a lovely car. You don’t see many on the road around here.”

“I have had Bertha for 8 years.” He replied. “She’s a Lovely car and very reliable. My wife hates her. Too clunky for her.”

“I take it your gear is in the back?”

“Oh yes. I wanted to survey the scene of the apparitions first. Is that OK?”

“Whatever you want Giles.” Let’s walk”.

“Super!” Giles replied

We both walked up the entrance steps to the school.

John was looking around the corner of the office door and made a ‘cup of tea’ sign.

“This is John, he works with me here, and he’ll make us all a cup of tea while we look around”

“Super” Giles replied.

 

I walked down one of the corridors toward the linkway corridor. Giles had this gangly gait walk, He reminded me of my old Chemistry teacher, oversized stone colour cable woollen sweater, massive black plastic framed glasses, brown corduroy jeans and slip on shoes. The archetypal ‘Blue Peter Presenter’ from the 70’s. He was extremely knowledgeable about his job. My God did he know his stuff.

 

I pointed in all different directions and pointed down the linkway corridor towards the old achool.

 

He started listing all of the experiments he had the equipment for, how spirits react, why they don’t react, what can make them do this, do that…..the list was not only long but it went over my head.

“How did you get into all this Ghost Hunting?” I asked him.

 

As we walked back to the office he told me that his parents had won £80,000 on the Football pools and then, tragically, they both died within the year through ill health. They had left a house and all their money to him. He and his wife ran a small antiques shop in Marlow, not far from Windsor. The influx of the funds left to him allowed his wife to continue running the shop with no problems and he could go off and make his hobby a full time job, doing the investigation for ‘The Ghost Club’.

 

“Sounds ideal,” I replied, “Are you ever scared?”

 

“Regularly!” He took a sip from his tea, John had given him a saucer too with a biscuit.  Where he had got that from I had no idea!  He was a bit of a dark horse!

 

“But the trick is to question, question. question. See it for what it really is, not for what you THINK it is.”

He asked me for more details about the ‘happenings’.

I gave him the full history of the events, from the washbasins, to the stairs, to the Piano tuner. John explained about the Tai Chi class and the chairs and the workman falling off his ladder because of the little girl. He was very interested in the stairs and the door handles turning and made some very small notes in a flip notebook.

“My goodness, I now understand why Peter asked me to come. This is wonderful, so exciting.”

“Are you fuckin’ joking mate?” John suddenlyblurted out.

“I’m sorry,” Giles muttered as John stood up shaking.

“It’s not wonderful to me pal, safe in your antique shop, it’s bloody terrifying to me. Every day coming in here is a nightmare. I feel like I am being watched all the time. I walk somewhere and look around the corner before I go further. Every single sound puts me on edge. It’s not wonderful mate, it’s a living hell. I am trapped here, I can’t find another job. I can’t get away. I have a family to feed, rent to pay, and I don’t know what to do next! And you think this is wonderful? Exciting?”

John stood up and threw his cup into the sink where it shattered. He ran both his hands through his hair and closed his eyes, facing up to the ceiling. He turned and faced the wall.

Giles looked terrified and his mouth was trembling. I smiled at him.

“Let me show you around,” I said, as if nothing had just happened, “so you get a feel for the place,” and led him out the door to where his bag of tricks sat on the floor.

“Erm,” he said, but I put my finger to my lips and smiled while motioning through the double doors in front of the office.

“Just down this corridor is the linkway corridor, let me show you that.”

We walked down the corridor in silence leaving John in the office.

At the end of the corridor I started to speak to Giles again. The doors we had come through were back down the corridor on my right.

“There’s no need to say anything. I can only apologise for John, the strain of all this is wearing us both down. The cleaners walk around in pairs and the teaching staff leave as soon as the kids do, they don’t hang around anymore. I have two night cleaners here starting at 10pm. I don’t know how they work here. People don’t want to be here unless they have to be. Not because of what happens, but because of what might”.

Giles nodded ,“Goodness me, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it. I didn’t mean to upset him.”

“I know, I know. It’s a volatile situation. People are on edge more than they let on.”

Giles looked at his mini tape recorder and started to record.

“I think I should record as we look around. You don’t mind being recorded I hope?”

I had no issue with that. All I wanted was him to find something and let me know what they could do.

The door at the end of the corridor near the entrance opened and John stepped through. He told me he was going home. I had no issue with that.

“I’m, sorry Giles.” He said, his voice echoing down the corridor.

Giles waved and muttered,’No problem!’

John nodded and waved.

I looked to my right at the door John had stepped through. I had no idea he was so bothered by what had been going on. I knew he was looking to leave but he had kept this pent up fear and aggression under wraps.

“Is he another one of yours?” Giles asked, looking over my shoulder and nodding down towards the science labs.

My blood run cold and I didn’t move.

Giles continued to stare over my shoulder down the corridor behind me. He nodded and waved.

“Can’t make him out.” He said. “Not moving. Just watching us.”

“There is only you and me in the building Giles. His face changed to one of ‘WTF?’

I spun around, there it was. The same shadow as we saw with the piano tuner.

“That’s it!” I whispered.

Giles suddenlyunderstood that he was looking at the same shadow that we saw with the Piano Tuner too.

Giles continued to stare down the corridor while rummaging in his shoulder bag. I looked at the bag as he found his Pentax camera and took a photo without realising the figure had gone.

“I will be here before 11 tomorrow. Can you show me around then and I will start the investigation, I will bring a friend if that’s OK?”

“The more the merrier” I told him. Let me show you out.” I turned and looked to where the shadow man had been. There was nothing there at all.

I locked the office and walked out the front entrance with Giles locking the doors behind me. For some reason it was all I could do to stop myself looking back through the glass doors at the corridor doors.

“So, see you tomorrow Giles.” I said, “Thanks for taking this on.”

“I will start tomorrow, I need another person to cover the area. If the children are not back until Monday we have time. This is extremely interesting but it’s dangerous. This is obviously a spirit, an entity that isn’t bothered about being seen. It has to be very powerful and it will have been here for years, it builds up its power over time until it can appear at will. I have only seen this once before on an investigation.”

Giles put his bag on the passenger seat as he got into the drivers seat and started the engine.

“How did it go?…”

Giles was lost in thought

“I beg your pardon?” he asked breaking his trance.

“How did it go on that investigation?”

He frowned and replied, “Let’s just say I hope this one turns out better!”

He nodded and smiled, a smile that seemed to me to convey hope. Maybe!

 

 

THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS.

 

I spoke to John over Christmas. He was still seriously toying with the idea of leaving. I had no right or reason to talk him out of it but the last experience with the Piano Tuner had given him a big shake up and though he livened up in the pub afterwards he had expressed his reservations about staying. He had thought of getting a transfer but he lived fairly near to the school so finding an adequate reason for leaving and working further away was going to look odd. I had suggested he tell them I was making life difficult for him, cracking the whip etc, but the fact that we regularly saw three of the main guys from the council and caretakers association in the Manby Arms next to the school wasn’t really a believable one. Wanting a transfer because of ghosts wouldn’t work either. He would more likely be classed as not fit for work, and/or sacked.

 

He seemed very pleased that the Vicar had been postponed. I didn’t know why, nor did I ask. I assumed he thought, like me, there was a chance of things escalating, especially as Peter Underwood had suggested it might. He agreed to come back and actively make moves to find another position within the system.

 

“Great!” I said, “Kids are back on the 8th Jan. I’ll see you on the 5th, when the Ghost Hunter’s there doing his investigations.”

 

I hung up quickly as John started asking a question. I shot out the front door. I heard the phone ringing as I locked it.

 

A few days into January a green Morris Traveller pulled up outside the front entrance in Deanery Road. It was in immaculate condition and the wooden  frame on the rear was highly polished. A tall lanky man in his mid to late forties jumped out of the driver’s seat, slammed the door and bounded up the four steps to the front entrance where I was standing inside the tall metal framed glass doors. I opened them and he stepped in with his hand outstretched.

“You must be Giles Draper?” I said as he shook my hand frantically.

“Dave Moore I take it.”

“If I’m not, this is a very odd coinciDen ce!” I said and we both laughed, while he continued shaking my hand like it was going out of fashion.

“That’s a lovely car. You don’t see many on the road around here.”

“I have had Bertha for 8 years.” He replied. “ She’s a Lovely car and very reliable. My wife hates her. Too clunky for her.”

“I take it your gear is in the back?”

“Oh yes. I wanted to survey the scene of the apparitions first. Is that OK?”

“Whatever you want Giles.” Let’s walk”.

“Super!” Giles replied

We both walked up the entrance steps to the school.

John was looking around the corner of the office door and made a ‘cup of tea’ sign.

“This is John, he works with me here, he’ll make us all a cup of tea while we look around”

“Super” Giles replied.

 

I walked down one of the corridors toward the linkway corridor. Giles had this gangly gait walk, He reminded me of my old Chemistry teacher, oversized stone colour cable woollen sweater, massive black plastic framed glasses, brown corduroy jeans and slip on shoes. The archetypal ‘Blue Peter Presenter’ from the 70’s. He was extremely knowledgeable about his job. My God did he know his stuff.

 

I pointed in all different directions and pointed down the linkway corridor towards the old achool.

 

He started listing all of the experiments he had the equipment for, how spirits react, why they don’t react, what can make them do this, do that…..the list was not only long but it went over my head.

“How did you get into all this Ghost Hunting?” I asked him.

 

As we walked back to the office he told me that his parents had won £80,000 on the Football pools and then, tragically, they both died within the year through ill health. They had left a house and all their money to him. He and his wife ran a small antiques shop in Marlow, not far from Windsor. The influx of the funds left to him allowed his wife to continue running the shop with no problems and he could go off and make his hobby a full time job, doing the investigation for ‘The Ghost Club’.

 

“Sounds ideal,” I replied, “Are you ever scared?”

 

“Regularly!” He took a sip from his tea, John had given him a saucer too with a biscuit.  Where he had got that from I had no idea!  He was a bit of a dark horse!

 

“But the trick is to question, question. question. See it for what it really is, not for what you THINK it is.”

He asked me for more details about the ‘happenings’.

I gave him the full history of the events, from the washbasins, to the stairs, to the Piano tuner. John explained about the Tai Chi class and the chairs and the workman falling off his ladder because of the little girl. He was very interested in the stairs and the door handles turning and made some very small notes in a flip notebook.

“My goodness, I now understand why Peter asked me to come. This is wonderful, so exciting.”

“Are you fuckin’ joking mate?” John suddenlyblurted out.

“I’m sorry,” Giles muttered as John stood up shaking.

“It’s not wonderful to me pal, safe in your antique shop, it’s bloody terrifying to me. Every day coming in here is a nightmare. I feel like I am being watched all the time. I walk somewhere and look around the corner before I go further. Every single sound puts me on edge. It’s not wonderful mate, it’s a living hell. I am trapped here, I can’t find another job. I can’t get away. I have a family to feed, rent to pay, and I don’t know what to do next! And you think this is wonderful? Exciting?”

John stood up and threw his cup into the sink where it shattered. He ran both his hands through his hair and closed his eyes, facing up to the ceiling. He turned and faced the wall.

Giles looked terrified and his mouth was trembling. I smiled at him.

“Let me show you around,” I said, as if nothing had just happened, “so you get a feel for the place,” and led him out the door to where his bag of tricks sat on the floor.

“Erm,” he said, but I put my finger to my lips and smiled while motioning through the double doors in front of the office.

“Just down this corridor is the linkway corridor, let me show you that.”

We walked down the corridor in silence leaving John in the office.

At the end of the corridor I started to speak to Giles again. The doors we had come through were back down the corridor on my right.

“There’s no need to say anything. I can only apologise for John, the strain of all this is wearing us both down. The cleaners walk around in pairs and the teaching staff leave as soon as the kids do, they don’t hang around anymore. I have two night cleaners here starting at 10pm. I don’t know how they work here. People don’t want to be here unless they have to be. Not because of what happens, but because of what might”.

Giles nodded ,“Goodness me, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it. I didn’t mean to upset him.”

“I know, I know. It’s a volatile situation. People are on edge more than they let on.”

Giles looked at his mini tape recorder and started to record.

“I think I should record as we look around. You don’t mind being recorded I hope?”

I had no issue with that. All I wanted was him to find something and let me know what they could do.

The door at the end of the corridor near the entrance opened and John stepped through. He told me he was going home. I had no issue with that.

“I’m, sorry Giles.” He said, his voice echoing down the corridor.

Giles waved and muttered,’No problem!’

John nodded and waved.

I looked to my right at the door John had stepped through. I had no idea he was so bothered by what had been going on. I knew he was looking to leave but he had kept this pent up fear and aggression under wraps.

“Is he another one of yours?” Giles asked, looking over my shoulder and nodding down towards the science labs.

My blood run cold and I didn’t move.

Giles continued to stare over my shoulder down the corridor behind me. He nodded and waved.

“Can’t make him out.” He said. “Not moving. Just watching us.”

“There is only you and me in the building Giles. His face changed to one of ‘WTF?’

I spun around, there it was. The same shadow as we saw with the piano tuner.

“That’s it!” I whispered.

Giles suddenlyunderstood that he was looking at the same shadow that we saw with the Piano Tuner too.

Giles continued to stare down the corridor while rummaging in his shoulder bag. I looked at the bag as he found his Pentax camera and took a photo without realising the figure had gone.

“I will be here before 11 tomorrow. Can you show me around then and I will start the investigation, I will bring a friend if that’s OK?”

“The more the merrier” I told him. Let me show you out.” I turned and looked to where the shadow man had been. There was nothing there at all.

I locked the office and walked out the front entrance with Giles locking the doors behind me. For some reason it was all I could do to stop myself looking back through the glass doors at the corridor doors.

“So, see you tomorrow Giles.” I said, “Thanks for taking this on.”

“I will start tomorrow, I need another person to cover the area. If the children are not back until Monday we have time. This is extremely interesting but it’s dangerous. This is obviously a spirit, an entity that isn’t bothered about being seen. It has to be very powerful and it will have been here for years, it builds up its power over time until it can appear at will. I have only seen this once before on an investigation.”

Giles put his bag on the passenger seat as he got into the drivers seat and started the engine.

“How did it go?…”

Giles was lost in thought

“I beg your pardon?” he asked breaking his trance.

“How did it go on that investigation?”

He frowned and replied, “Let’s just say I hope this one turns out better!”

He nodded and smiled, a smile that seemed to me to convey hope. Maybe!

 

 

I spoke to John over Christmas. He was still seriously toying with the idea of leaving. I had no right or reason to talk him out of it but the last experience with the Piano Tuner had given him a big shake up and though he livened up in the pub afterwards he had expressed his reservations about staying. He had thought of getting a transfer but he lived fairly near to the school so finding an adequate reason for leaving and working further away was going to look odd. I had suggested he tell them I was making life difficult for him, cracking the whip etc, but the fact that we regularly saw three of the main guys from the council and caretakers association in the Manby Arms next to the school wasn’t really a believable one. Wanting a transfer because of ghosts wouldn’t work either. He would more likely be classed as not fit for work, and/or sacked.

 

He seemed very pleased that the Vicar had been postponed. I didn’t know why, nor did I ask. I assumed he thought, like me, there was a chance of things escalating, especially as Peter Underwood had suggested it might. He agreed to come back and actively make moves to find another position within the system.

 

“Great!” I said, “Kids are back on the 8th Jan. I’ll see you on the 5th, when the Ghost Hunter’s there doing his investigations.”

 

I hung up quickly as John started asking a question. I shot out the front door. I heard the phone ringing as I locked it.

 

A few days into January a green Morris Traveller pulled up outside the front entrance in Deanery Road. It was in immaculate condition and the wooDen  frame on the rear was highly polished. A tall lanky man in his mid to late forties jumped out of the driver’s seat, slammed the door and bounded up the four steps to the front entrance where I was standing inside the tall metal framed glass doors. I opened them and he stepped in with his hand outstretched.

“You must be Giles Draper?” I said as he shook my hand frantically.

“Dave Moore I take it.”

“If I’m not, this is a very odd coinciDen ce!” I said and we both laughed, while he continued shaking my hand like it was going out of fashion.

“That’s a lovely car. You don’t see many on the road around here.”

“I have had Bertha for 8 years.” He replied. “ She’s a Lovely car and very reliable. My wife hates her. Too clunky for her.”

“I take it your gear is in the back?”

“Oh yes. I wanted to survey the scene of the apparitions first. Is that OK?”

“Whatever you want Giles.” Let’s walk”.

“Super!” Giles replied

We both walked up the entrance steps to the school.

John was looking around the corner of the office door and made a ‘cup of tea’ sign.

“This is John, he works with me here, he’ll make us all a cup of tea while we look around”

“Super” Giles replied.

 

I walked down one of the corridors toward the linkway corridor. Giles had this gangly gait walk, He reminded me of my old Chemistry teacher, oversized stone colour cable woollen sweater, massive black plastic framed glasses, brown corduroy jeans and slip on shoes. The archetypal ‘Blue Peter Presenter’ from the 70’s. He was extremely knowledgeable about his job. My God did he know his stuff.

 

I pointed in all different directions and pointed down the linkway corridor towards the old achool.

 

He started listing all of the experiments he had the equipment for, how spirits react, why they don’t react, what can make them do this, do that…..the list was not only long but it went over my head.

“How did you get into all this Ghost Hunting?” I asked him.

 

As we walked back to the office he told me that his parents had won £80,000 on the Football pools and then, tragically, they both died within the year through ill health. They had left a house and all their money to him. He and his wife ran a small antiques shop in Marlow, not far from Windsor. The influx of the funds left to him allowed his wife to continue running the shop with no problems and he could go off and make his hobby a full time job, doing the investigation for ‘The Ghost Club’.

 

“Sounds ideal,” I replied, “Are you ever scared?”

 

“Regularly!” He took a sip from his tea, John had given him a saucer too with a biscuit.  Where he had got that from I had no idea!  He was a bit of a dark horse!

 

“But the trick is to question, question. question. See it for what it really is, not for what you THINK it is.”

He asked me for more details about the ‘happenings’.

I gave him the full history of the events, from the washbasins, to the stairs, to the Piano tuner. John explained about the Tai Chi class and the chairs and the workman falling off his ladder because of the little girl. He was very interested in the stairs and the door handles turning and made some very small notes in a flip notebook.

“My goodness, I now understand why Peter asked me to come. This is wonderful, so exciting.”

“Are you fuckin’ joking mate?” John suddenlyblurted out.

“I’m sorry,” Giles muttered as John stood up shaking.

“It’s not wonderful to me pal, safe in your antique shop, it’s bloody terrifying to me. Every day coming in here is a nightmare. I feel like I am being watched all the time. I walk somewhere and look around the corner before I go further. Every single sound puts me on edge. It’s not wonderful mate, it’s a living hell. I am trapped here, I can’t find another job. I can’t get away. I have a family to feed, rent to pay, and I don’t know what to do next! And you think this is wonderful? Exciting?”

John stood up and threw his cup into the sink where it shattered. He ran both his hands through his hair and closed his eyes, facing up to the ceiling. He turned and faced the wall.

Giles looked terrified and his mouth was trembling. I smiled at him.

“Let me show you around,” I said, as if nothing had just happened, “so you get a feel for the place,” and led him out the door to where his bag of tricks sat on the floor.

“Erm,” he said, but I put my finger to my lips and smiled while motioning through the double doors in front of the office.

“Just down this corridor is the linkway corridor, let me show you that.”

We walked down the corridor in silence leaving John in the office.

At the end of the corridor I started to speak to Giles again. The doors we had come through were back down the corridor on my right.

“There’s no need to say anything. I can only apologise for John, the strain of all this is wearing us both down. The cleaners walk around in pairs and the teaching staff leave as soon as the kids do, they don’t hang around anymore. I have two night cleaners here starting at 10pm. I don’t know how they work here. People don’t want to be here unless they have to be. Not because of what happens, but because of what might”.

Giles nodded ,“Goodness me, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it. I didn’t mean to upset him.”

“I know, I know. It’s a volatile situation. People are on edge more than they let on.”

Giles looked at his mini tape recorder and started to record.

“I think I should record as we look around. You don’t mind being recorded I hope?”

I had no issue with that. All I wanted was him to find something and let me know what they could do.

The door at the end of the corridor near the entrance opened and John stepped through. He told me he was going home. I had no issue with that.

“I’m, sorry Giles.” He said, his voice echoing down the corridor.

Giles waved and muttered,’No problem!’

John nodded and waved.

I looked to my right at the door John had stepped through. I had no idea he was so bothered by what had been going on. I knew he was looking to leave but he had kept this pent up fear and aggression under wraps.

“Is he another one of yours?” Giles asked, looking over my shoulder and nodding down towards the science labs.

My blood run cold and I didn’t move.

Giles continued to stare over my shoulder down the corridor behind me. He nodded and waved.

“Can’t make him out.” He said. “Not moving. Just watching us.”

“There is only you and me in the building Giles. His face changed to one of ‘WTF?’

I spun around, there it was. The same shadow as we saw with the piano tuner.

“That’s it!” I whispered.

Giles suddenlyunderstood that he was looking at the same shadow that we saw with the Piano Tuner too.

Giles continued to stare down the corridor while rummaging in his shoulder bag. I looked at the bag as he found his Pentax camera and took a photo without realising the figure had gone.

“I will be here before 11 tomorrow. Can you show me around then and I will start the investigation, I will bring a friend if that’s OK?”

“The more the merrier” I told him. Let me show you out.” I turned and looked to where the shadow man had been. There was nothing there at all.

I locked the office and walked out the front entrance with Giles locking the doors behind me. For some reason it was all I could do to stop myself looking back through the glass doors at the corridor doors.

“So, see you tomorrow Giles.” I said, “Thanks for taking this on.”

“I will start tomorrow, I need another person to cover the area. If the children are not back until Monday we have time. This is extremely interesting but it’s dangerous. This is obviously a spirit, an entity that isn’t bothered about being seen. It has to be very powerful and it will have been here for years, it builds up its power over time until it can appear at will. I have only seen this once before on an investigation.”

Giles put his bag on the passenger seat as he got into the drivers seat and started the engine.

“How did it go?…”

Giles was lost in thought

“I beg your pardon?” he asked breaking his trance.

“How did it go on that investigation?”

He frowned and replied, “Let’s just say I hope this one turns out better!”

He nodded and smiled, a smile that seemed to me to convey hope. Maybe!

 

VIGIL

The next day, I let John go early at 2pm. The Kids were back on the Monday and there was nothing to do. Giles was back sometime in the afternoon, with someone else, so nothing was really required. John had said earlier that he had a call at home from Darren Mendez, about a cleaning supervisor job at the Technical College in East Ham and he was going to ask me if he could leave earlier. This Darren wanted to speak to him in person. I knew it wouldn’t be as cushy as working here but hopefully, a less terrifying experience! I wished him well and never told him I had arranged it with the caretaker of the College saying he needed a change, having seen how stressed he really was yesterday, and gave him a glowing reference and he went for the job after speaking to Darren, the caretaker, on the phone that morning. Darren had called and gave some story of hearing that he needed a change from working here and said he should come over that afternoon and have a chat. Darren was well aware of what was happening at this school as I used to see him in the Boleyn Pub at West Ham home games as well as at ‘the Pyramid, the council offices in Stratford at the end of the road this school sat in. He was so interested in what was happening he should have worked here himself. Darren understood that he needed a change of scene and he was becoming withdrawn, so I waved John off, and wished him luck. He left and walked over to his old banger of a car and drove off not knowing that he already had the job at the College in the bag. I had done my bit. John was, and still is, a great guy and a real family man. These events really turned his mind though.

I would get a new assistant arriving on Monday from a pool of ‘floating’ assistants who went to any school they were needed at. John would also be there for a while that day to show him his routine. He was Dennis, a man in his early 60’s who always brought his Jack Russell with him on a late shift. He also had a revolting habit of making his own Jellied Eels and eating them for breakfast in the office at 7am. He knew about the issues at the school but had declared them a ‘load of old rubbish’ saying he wasn’t bothered. I knew it was going to be interesting, especially for him.

No sooner had I sat back in my chair in my office when I heard a noise out in the hallway and waited. I couldn’t hear a thing. Then, another noise, like a rustle of clothing. I put the newspaper down as quietly as I could and, stood up and took a step to the door and peered around the frame. Giles had arrived with another man who turned out to be a chap called Mark. He was carrying all the paraphernalia in.

“Sorry we’re late,” Giles apologised.

“I didn’t know you were late?” I told him, “I just expected you sometime.”

“Mark, this is Dave, Dave Moore.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said shaking his hand. He went for the one quick shake and done. “Just the one ‘Dave’ will do Mark,” we all laughed.

I stepped back into the office and boiled the kettle as Giles and Mark immediately grabbed the comfy chairs. Tea made and handed out, we discussed a plan.

“It will start getting dark in a couple of hours, I wondered if you would permit a night vigil?” Giles asked, making Mark nod frantically to emphasize the point.

“Do you want me in attendance?” I asked horrified he would say yes.

“Yes,” they both nodded, “It would be best for verification if anything happens. Not overnight, just a vigil in various areas of the school. The hot spots, as it where.”

“I can stay until 8 if that’s all right? I have other plans that I can’t get out of. Council business”

I was actually meeting my Girlfiend and having a meal at the Phoenix Apollo Steak House in Stratford.

“Can I suggest we work until 8 and then call it quits? We could come back next week for an all nighter?” Giles suggested and we all agreed.

“Excellent.” Giles replied. “It’ll be good if we get a feel of the atmosphere and see if we can make any contact.”

“Giles told me about yesterday and the shadow figure you both saw.” Mark said.

“Yes,” I nodded.

I confirmed Giles description and also the events with John who they seemed to be happy had now left. He was an ‘easy target’ they thought and was suffering mentally from the events. He would be better elsewhere away from this. I knew that to be true.

“Is anyone else here Dave?” Mark asked.

I shook my head, “No, there was supposed to be a Den ivery but they are coming on Monday.”

Mark looked to his left again.

“I keep seeing something on my left out of the corner of my eye at the bottom of the corridor.”

“That’s where we were standing yesterday!” Giles whispered.

“I know,” I whispered, “Why are we whispering?”

Mark was concentrating on the far end of the corridor.

“There’s a noise, like something being dragged on the floor. It’s in the distance.” Mark said tilting his head.

I could hear it but it suddenlystopped.

We got up and walked slowly down the corridor, trying to make no sound as we got nearer to the end where a corridor crossed it. Nothing. The sound had stopped.

Giles suggested that it could have been the entity making its presence known.

“This could turn out to be a very fruitful endeavour!” he said sounding like he relished the challenge. Mark had a puzzled look on his face. I looked at my watch. It was 4pm and the sky was darkening. A storm started to rumble as the rain began.

“It’s 4 o’clock!” I said loudly. I was a little shocked. “I didn’t realise it was so late.”

“May I suggest that we convene at an appropriate place, say the base of the old school stairs and see what we can pick up?

“Great idea” I said, not liking that bloody idea one bit.

“We could stay here as we saw the shadow Man down there to our left yesterday but as you said the Piano Tuner was at the base of those stairs down there.” He pointed down the linkway corridor, “And you waited for something that was chasing you down the stairs in the same place as that, it could be a real hotspot. Mark, get the equipment please. Is every external door closed and locked?

I nodded, “Yes, I locked them all earlier and the one you came through at the front.”

“Then let’s begin.”

When Mark returned with the bag and the small suitcase, Giles suggested we go down the corridor, locking the doors behind us and sit on the bottom flight of stairs. Mark started to unpack the bag. There were a couple of expensive looking Pentax cameras and a folding tripod. There was also a large wooDen  box with dials and a meter on it that Giles called a portable voice scanner, and quite revolutionary for 1988. It didn’t look all that portable to me but all I had to keep remembering was that these guys knew their stuff, and they were here to help.

Giles had set up the cameras on small tripods and they faced all directions. Mark had set up the recorder and had a switch in his hand that went from the microphones on his and Giles’ collar and the main microphone on the box. There were wires all over the place. If we panicked and had to run, we would probably still be tied up here in the morning from the confusion!

“We need to sit here in silence, listening to the thunder and the rain and for ANYTHING we hear that may come from any angle. Any direction. We can call out to try to If we talk we must immediately stop if another noise becomes apparent. We have a tape recorder going and the cameras will take photographs should we need to. I can trigger them remotely. But they do have a sensor of sort that picks up motion hence they are all facing away from us. Hopefully we will make some form of contact or experience something unusual. We may be very lucky. The Shadowman may manifest himself!”

“He won’t be the only one” I thought!

“Lets open our minds and wait.” Giles stared at the small monitor that was showing sound waves. We waited. We didn't wait long.....

 

VIGIL PART 2

Twenty minutes into the vigil we were still sitting there listening for any noise. There was the constant pitter patter of the rain and the occasional roll of thunder but nothing serious. SudDen ly, the power went out.

Not in the school, just the equipment. None of the camera shutter remotes worked. Giles and Mark frantically checked the connections using the light from the scanner, but nothing. They were positioned in such a way that no ambient light from the corridor through the glass panelled doors helped. Then the lights went out on the scanner. There were no lights on the box and the small screen was blank, the green swirly line that jumped every time a noise was made had gone out. They were concerned that a fuse had blown on the multi power socket. They started unplugging and plugging everything to just check but nothing worked.

My limited electrical ability told me this was unusual.

"If there's a problem with the multi power socket it would knock out everything, not just some things." My common sense statement made them stare at each other for a second, and then attack the connections again.

Here we were sitting in the near dark, at the bottom of a flight of stairs that went up to the top floor of the old school. Stairs that I had come down hearing something coming after me only for nothing to reach the steps at the bottom. This was, to me, madness, but I went along with it. Maybe I was the mad one?

Now the equipment wasn’t working, it was dark here and out, wind was blowing and thunder was rumbling.

I could wait no longer.

“Lads, are we out of our minds, sitting here in the dark? This isn’t a great plan.”

The voice recorder lit up. A little light in the darkness.

“It may be atmospherics.” Giles said making Mark nod his head.

I pointed at the Voice Recorder.

“Why is that on and nothing else?”

All three Cameras flashed scaring the life out of us. The Cameras were lying down and flashed the stone floor and illuminated the area for a second.

“This isn’t right.” Giles muttered under his breath. “This shouldn’t be happening.”

“You’re telling me!” I told him.

Mark and Giles did their best in the dark to get all the cameras and equipment together. The remaining ambient light came from the fluorescents in the Linkway corridor which were still lit, as were all the other lights that I could see through the windows.

There was a deafening, CRASH! Then another....and another.

The double doors this end of the Linkway corridor, that were locked, by a key in the door and the right hand door by a bolt at the top and bottom were being hit from the other side, from within the airlock between these doors this end and the other set of doors at the other end. Giles looked around the corner of the wall down the Linkway and dropped the Pentax camera, its lens bouncing off and hitting me on the leg.

“My God!” he said, then repeating it again. He raised his arm and pointed down the corridor. Both Mark and I moved to stand alongside him, and to be honest, further back. It took a second or two for what we were seeing to register in our minds. It was impossible.

There, in front of the double doors at the other end of the corridor, outside the two doors of the toilet block, was a child. A girl, standing with her back to the doors. looking in our direction. She was wearing a below the knee dress, with a frill. A long dress that was burnt black and I could see smoke swirling around as clear as I see this laptop I 'm typing on.

Giles stepped forward slightly, looking on the floor for a camera that was still intact, still looking up now and then. He started staring, lifting his glasses and lowering them as if he thought it was a trick of the light.

Then we noticed the shadow man standing behind her on the other side of the glass panelled doors. The girl backed away as Giles rummaged on the floor for the only camera with a lens. As he reached for it both Mark and I saw the girl blend into and through the door to where the Shadow man was and they both faded from view. Mark and I stood staring, as if they were still there. Giles stood with the camera poised but the back was open, the film was destroyed and useless. Giles cursed under his breath.

Mark looked at me for answers but I had none. They were the professionals, what do I know?

I became aware that we were still in the dark with equipment on the floor and a staircase open to the top floor. Then, after a while we started to move again in slow motion, like a dreamlike state. and then speeding up as our location and situation came back to the forefront of our minds.

“Hold it!” I whispered. “we need to get out, right. I don’t suggest we go that way!” I said pointing down the corridor.

“How do we get out then, Dave?” Giles asked. I could hear the nerves beneath the calmness of his voice.

“There’s another way.”

Without knowing what it was they both said “Let’s go!”

If I had said, "Let's jump out the window and run" they would have been with me.

I asked Giles if he had all the equipment in his bag but he said he would come back and collect it next day. He wanted out and so did Mark. I wanted out too. This was enough for one evening.

I opened the ground floor hall door and we stepped in to the darkness. I flicked one of the switches on and a couple of lights came on. I locked the door behind me and led the two guys quickly over to the diagonal corner door, opened that into the pitch darkness of the ground floor landing, the exact mirror image of where we had been on the other side. I turned the light on and then turned the hall lights off and shutt door, opened the exterior door and led them out into the rear playground. I locked the door and led them around a corner to the school gates in Manbey Street and unlocked the padlock on the chain holding the gates shut, locking it behind us. We all breathed a collective sigh of relief. We walked towards Water Lane with the Manbey Arms on our left and turned right. We hurried along down Water Lane in the light rain and then turned right into Deanery road to the front entrance of the school. They followed me up the steps.

“Are your coats in the office?” I asked.

They both nodded.

“Wait here”

I unlocked the front door and stepped into the hall, Giles held the door open. I hurried to the office and grabbed my coat from behind the door, and their coats off the chairs, shut the door behind me and hurried back to the front door. Locking it behind me. They would be back in the morning at 10am. I thought it best to sit in my car until they arrived instead of going in on my own in the morning..

I got to the Phoenix Apollo to meet my girlfriend, Wanda. She was sitting at a table on her own, holding a glass of something. She waved madly at me. I went over and sat down.

“I got here 10 minutes ago. A bit early but it’s a quiet evening. Wow, what a day I have had.”

She looked at me as I sat there thinking.

“Had a hard day too?” she asked.

“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”.

“Try me!” she replied.

I did, every detail.

"What?" She was astounded, shocked and amazed and downed the remains of her glass of white wine in one. She was reaching for the Wine bottle but I grabbed it quickly and refilled her glass.

"That tops my Staff issues", she said, then she went quiet. I looked around as the place started to fill up. My friend, the boxer Nigel Benn arrived with his girlfriend and some others.. He waved, I waved back then Wanda snapped out of her dream and said,

“I want to have a look around that school? Can I, take me there over the weekend.”

I smiled and looked at the menu but we both knew that off by heart.

I stared at the specials board instead, realising I was going out with a girl madder than me!

But I was not so mad as to stare ahead on the way down Water Lane with the school on my right. If Giles and Mark had looked at the school like I did, instead of mumbling to each other and comparing notes they would have seen the large shadow figure in the corridor window like I did. Irrespective of what Peter Underwood had said to me, or what Giles and Mark thought, I needed to be rid of these ghosts as soon as possible.

 

Wanda and I spoke about all the ‘happenings’ in the school over the last few months. She was fascinated, even to the point of taking her Filofax out of her bag and making notes! She was up to speed on the initial stuff but after a while I stopped updating her about the heightened level of experiences. She was livid about being kept in the dark about the latest Ghost Club involvement. I was still training people at different companies in sales techniques in my downtime from the school and Wanda had her company D.I.S.C. which was getting busier. I had helped her start that up and had trained the 5 girls that worked for her on customer persuasion techniques and closing skills so they can upserve their clients from one filing cabinet of records transferred to floppy disk (yes! A Floppy disk) allowing Wanda to come in and upgrade the contract from one department to the whole company.

By 10pm we were ready to leave so we headed to the usual wine bar, the Charleston near Maryland Point. We had decided that I was going to leave the Council and join her as her partner in D.I.S.C. We celebrated with a bottle of champagne and then got a taxi back to her flat in Harold Road in Leytonstone. The future looked bright, and it was for a few years.

Giles called my Gordon Gecko Mobile phone. I think it was a Motorola DynaTac but I could be wrong. It was a real housebrick. Giles changed his arrival to the Monday at around 10am. I spent the time thinking about how to leave the Council. A new assistant was coming on Monday and I needed to get him up to speed. My car was still parked outside the school in Deanery Road so I got a cab and went and picked it up. I looked it over in case there had been any tampering and looked up at the front entrance. I could see that the hall doors were open. I knew they were shut when we left. Whatever it was, it would wait until Monday. I would deal with that fresh hell then.

On Monday I did exactly as I had decided to do. I waited in my car for any signs of life. It would be John, Giles or Dennis. My money was on Dennis. I heard a car coming down Deanery Rd behind me. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw Bertha, Giles’ ‘half-timbered’ car, getting nearer and nearer, and then slowing down to park behind me.

I looked to my left at the school entrance and noticed the hall doors were closed. I felt a chill go through me. They were open Saturday morning, and I hadn’t closed them.

I opened my car door and said hello to Giles who was pulling out a reel to reel tape recorder from the back of the car.

I looked across at the school and pointed.

“Giles, I left my car here on Friday night, when I came to pick it up Saturday Morning the doors either side of the hall were open. They’re not now.”

“Can they shut on their own? Wind or anything?

“No, like all the doors around the hall the hinges have a point where, if you open it past that point the door has to be pulled shut.” I became aware of someone approaching fast from my right.

“Dave, I’m Dennis.”

“Hello Mate,“ I said, shaking his hand.

“And who are you? A teacher?” he asked, looking up at Giles.

“I am just working here for a couple of days.” Giles answered diplomatically.

“Not the Ghosthunter then?” Dennis sounded disappointed.

“Yes!” Giles told him, confusing Dennis a little.

I reached into my jeans pocket.

“Dennis, take this key, let yourself in, turn left and our office is on the left.” I told him as I unlocked the padlock and chain on the front gate, “Bung the kettle on and get settled in. John will be here to show you the ropes in about ten minutes.”

“Great, thanks.” Dennis trotted off.

Giles and I formed a plan for him making his recordings. He would go and wander around and see what happened. I took that as meaning he was going to agitate it into life if he could.

John whistled as he came around the corner at the junction of Water Lane with Deanery Road and waved.

We spoke a while and I had to admit that I had got him the new job. Darren had told him anyway. Typical! John shook my hand and thanked me for doing that and said he would be glad to finally leave the place. He wanted to rush through the induction of Dennis but wouldn’t.

I followed John up the steps and in, and a few minutes later Giles came in, Nodded to me after I gave him a master key and he walked off down the corridor and turned left in the direction of where we had both seen the shadowman.

I looked in the hall and everything seemed to be just as it had been left. Strange. Why were the doors open and then shut?

John was over in the Old School with Dennis taking him through all the cleaning machinery that we had in the store cupboard.

The phone on the desk rang, it was Wanda, asking if I had told the council I was leaving?

“Not yet,” I told her, “Give me a chance!”

“Are you having second thoughts?”

“Hmm, let’s think, work in a haunted school or help you with world domination? Tough choice.”

“I have to go, Jackie is here, she’s off to start work at Virgin”.

“When did they come in as a client?”

“It’s only a small office of theirs near Paddington.”

CRASH!

A door must have slammed shut in a corridor in the new school, so loudly it sounded like a gunshot. Even Wanda heard it down the phone.

“What was that?”

“I have no idea, it was a door slamming. It must have been the wind.” I told her.

“OK, be careful. I will see you later!”

She hung up and I stood up to put the phone back on its cradle. I heard a noise, a shuffling sound in the distance, at the bottom of the corridor in front of me. I looked down there but couldn’t see anything. Then it happened again. And again. It went silent for a while, then a door closed. SudDen ly, Giles turned the corner and started to walk purposely and speedily towards me.

He told me that he had recorded some amazing things, some responses, in the science department where we had seen the Shadow man standing previously. He was going to take the recordings back to the Institute for Psychical Research and see if he can clean up the recording and isolate the voice. I didn’t have a clue what he meant in those days but I do now. He wanted to call me if, or more probably, when he found clear evidenceon the recordings and hurried off to do his magic, whatever that was. He seemed very intense when he left, I didn’t even get the chance to see if he needed any help with his bag. It seemed that whatever was in the school had given him a real sense of....

CRASH

..concern! This time the noise was even louder. It suddenlyoccurred to me that John and Dennis were in the old school going over the contents of the storeroom and I had no idea if they were OK. It may have been them. I stood looking down the corridor. There was no more sound…apart from…no nothing. I was sick to death with this situation. The sound had stopped.

Then I heard the footsteps. Slow footsteps, clear as day. The sound of a shoe hitting the floor, then another, then another. Then they started to speed up and get louder. They were coming from the science lab area and were getting louder as they got to the corner then they sped up again. I could tell the footsteps were now in the corridor that I was looking down but there was no one there.

They were right at the other end but coming at me. They were getting louder and louder as they got nearer and nearer. I stood my ground, I’d had enough. Whatever it was that was walking faster and faster, the steps getting heavier and heavier, was directly coming my way. I wasn’t scared. I was angry, livid, at my wits end, and I’d had enough.

I decided to run towards it to meet it head on…

 

Wanda and I spoke about all the ‘happenings’ in the school over the last few months. She was fascinated, even to the point of taking her Filofax out of her bag and making notes! She was up to speed on the initial stuff but after a while I stopped updating her about the heightened level of experiences. She was livid about being kept in the dark about the latest Ghost Club involvement. I was still training people at different companies in sales techniques in my downtime from the school and Wanda had her company D.I.S.C. which was getting busier. I had helped her start that up and had trained the 5 girls that worked for her on customer persuasion techniques and closing skills so they can upserve their clients from one filing cabinet of records transferred to floppy disk (yes! A Floppy disk) allowing Wanda to come in and upgrade the contract from one department to the whole company.

By 10pm we were ready to leave so we headed to the usual wine bar, the Charleston near Maryland Point. We had decided that I was going to leave the Council and join her as her partner in D.I.S.C. We celebrated with a bottle of champagne and then got a taxi back to her flat in Harold Road in Leytonstone. The future looked bright, and it was for a few years.

Giles called my Gordon Gecko Mobile phone. I think it was a Motorola DynaTac but I could be wrong. It was a real housebrick. Giles changed his arrival to the Monday at around 10am. I spent the time thinking about how to leave the Council. A new assistant was coming on Monday and I needed to get him up to speed. My car was still parked outside the school in Deanery Road so I got a cab and went and picked it up. I looked it over in case there had been any tampering and looked up at the front entrance. I could see that the hall doors were open. I knew they were shut when we left. Whatever it was, it would wait until Monday. I would deal with that fresh hell then.

On Monday I did exactly as I had decided to do. I waited in my car for any signs of life. It would be John, Giles or Dennis. My money was on Dennis. I heard a car coming down Deanery Rd behind me. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw Bertha, Giles’ ‘half-timbered’ car, getting nearer and nearer, and then slowing down to park behind me.

I looked to my left at the school entrance and noticed the hall doors were closed. I felt a chill go through me. They were open Saturday morning, and I hadn’t closed them.

I opened my car door and said hello to Giles who was pulling out a reel to reel tape recorder from the back of the car.

I looked across at the school and pointed.

“Giles, I left my car here on Friday night, when I came to pick it up Saturday Morning the doors either side of the hall were open. They’re not now.”

“Can they shut on their own? Wind or anything?

“No, like all the doors around the hall the hinges have a point where, if you open it past that point the door has to be pulled shut.” I became aware of someone approaching fast from my right.

“Dave, I’m Dennis.”

“Hello Mate,“ I said, shaking his hand.

“And who are you? A teacher?” he asked, looking up at Giles.

“I am just working here for a couple of days.” Giles answered diplomatically.

“Not the Ghosthunter then?” Dennis sounded disappointed.

“Yes!” Giles told him, confusing Dennis a little.

I reached into my jeans pocket.

“Dennis, take this key, let yourself in, turn left and our office is on the left.” I told him as I unlocked the padlock and chain on the front gate, “Bung the kettle on and get settled in. John will be here to show you the ropes in about ten minutes.”

“Great, thanks.” Dennis trotted off.

Giles and I formed a plan for him making his recordings. He would go and wander around and see what happened. I took that as meaning he was going to agitate it into life if he could.

John whistled as he came around the corner at the junction of Water Lane with Deanery Road and waved.

We spoke a while and I had to admit that I had got him the new job. Darren had told him anyway. Typical! John shook my hand and thanked me for doing that and said he would be glad to finally leave the place. He wanted to rush through the induction of Dennis but wouldn’t.

I followed John up the steps and in, and a few minutes later Giles came in, Nodded to me after I gave him a master key and he walked off down the corridor and turned left in the direction of where we had both seen the shadowman.

I looked in the hall and everything seemed to be just as it had been left. Strange. Why were the doors open and then shut?

John was over in the Old School with Dennis taking him through all the cleaning machinery that we had in the store cupboard.

The phone on the desk rang, it was Wanda, asking if I had told the council I was leaving?

“Not yet,” I told her, “Give me a chance!”

“Are you having second thoughts?”

“Hmm, let’s think, work in a haunted school or help you with world domination? Tough choice.”

“I have to go, Jackie is here, she’s off to start work at Virgin”.

“When did they come in as a client?”

“It’s only a small office of theirs near Paddington.”

CRASH!

A door must have slammed shut in a corridor in the new school, so loudly it sounded like a gunshot. Even Wanda heard it down the phone.

“What was that?”

“I have no idea, it was a door slamming. It must have been the wind.” I told her.

“OK, be careful. I will see you later!”

She hung up and I stood up to put the phone back on its cradle. I heard a noise, a shuffling sound in the distance, at the bottom of the corridor in front of me. I looked down there but couldn’t see anything. Then it happened again. And again. It went silent for a while, then a door closed. SudDen ly, Giles turned the corner and started to walk purposely and speedily towards me.

He told me that he had recorded some amazing things, some responses, in the science department where we had seen the Shadow man standing previously. He was going to take the recordings back to the Institute for Psychical Research and see if he can clean up the recording and isolate the voice. I didn’t have a clue what he meant in those days but I do now. He wanted to call me if, or more probably, when he found clear evidenceon the recordings and hurried off to do his magic, whatever that was. He seemed very intense when he left, I didn’t even get the chance to see if he needed any help with his bag. It seemed that whatever was in the school had given him a real sense of....

CRASH

..concern! This time the noise was even louder. It suddenlyoccurred to me that John and Dennis were in the old school going over the contents of the storeroom and I had no idea if they were OK. It may have been them. I stood looking down the corridor. There was no more sound…apart from…no nothing. I was sick to death with this situation. The sound had stopped.

Then I heard the footsteps. Slow footsteps, clear as day. The sound of a shoe hitting the floor, then another, then another. Then they started to speed up and get louder. They were coming from the science lab area and were getting louder as they got to the corner then they sped up again. I could tell the footsteps were now in the corridor that I was looking down but there was no one there.

They were right at the other end but coming at me. They were getting louder and louder as they got nearer and nearer. I stood my ground, I’d had enough. Whatever it was that was walking faster and faster, the steps getting heavier and heavier, was directly coming my way. I wasn’t scared. I was angry, livid, at my wits end, and I’d had enough.

I decided to run towards it to meet it head on…

WALKING AND RUNNING!

As mad as my decision was, I didn’t have a better idea. It was impulsive, intuitive, and every other adjective instead of Sane.

I ran towards the noise, my face creased with anger, at something I couldn’t see but was certain was there, coming towards me. Fists clenched, arms wide and roaring my head off, at something I could only hear coming my way. I had no idea where what was walking towards me was, but I remember the freezing patch of air I hit. I passed through what felt like ice and stopped. I felt like I had just stepped out of a freezer. Looking behind me I could see what appeared to be a distortion in the air. Then, slowly, it faded. Everything I saw through the haze, the doors, the office, was bent a little out of shape. It was like looking through a prism, and then it was gone. Everything was back to normal.

I just stood there, waiting. Nothing. No response, no noise, no reaction, nothing. I walked back, retracing my steps to the office and sat down in a chair next to the radiator. I was slowly warming up again when I heard John and Dennis coming back down the corridor I had just run down. As if I needed confirmation, I stared at their feet. They were both wearing trainers, not shoes. Their feet made no sound. I wasn’t insane.

John made his goodbyes after Dennis reassured me that he was ready take over from him. It wasn’t a difficult job, as I said before, it was ‘reactionary’. You dealt with what happened on a daily bases. I knew a lot about that. Anything could happen at a moment’s notice. I knew a lot about that too.

I shook hands with John and wished him good luck in his new role in East Ham as I walked him to the front door for the last time.

“I filled Dennis in on what’s happened here Dave.” He said, “He had heard a lot from others in the council. It’s quite common knowledge it seems.”

I nodded, as I had been asked by at least 8 other caretakers and assistants about it so it was no surprise.

Every time we went to the Pyramid Building in Stratford to pick up our wages quite a few people I did not know nodded to me and the occasional whispering happened. Some even gave that pitying big grin that people use at funerals as if it conveys a message of ‘I understand what you are going through’.

I waved John off and he got to the end of Deanery road, turned around and looked back, waving. and giving me a double thumbs up.

As I waved back I noticed he looked to the right at the windows in the offices and staffroom on the ground floor of the school. Something had caught his eye. He backed away, around the corner of Water Lane towards the Romford road and he was gone. I never once saw him take his eyes off the school. He was staring at something.

I stepped back into the large Foyer and thought about locking the front door but thought better of it.

I walked back to the office and found Dennis had made a cup of tea for us. We sat there in silence for a while. I kept thinking about John staring at the windows in the offices.

“I’ve got a dog. Only a little one. A Jack Russell. Would it be OK if I brought him in with me if I am doing a letting? He’s no trouble. If I give him a ball he amuses himself for hours.”

I was still miles away but had heard him. I knew dogs were very intuitive and picked up on all sorts of things.

“I think that’s an excellent idea, Dennis. An excellent idea!”

“Thanks, Cheers!” he said clinking our mugs.

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“Bruce!” He said with pride.

“Well, here’s to Bruce!” I said. “Cheers!”

Yes. This was an excellent idea!

 

 

FOOTBALL SKILLS

“See you tomorrow Den !” I had said waving at Bruce, who was waiting with Dennis for the Women’s Institute to arrive for a booking until 8pm.

According to Dennis it started as a mostly uneventful evening.

The Womens’ Institute had their meeting and he and Bruce sat in our office next door to the library. He said they only came out to ask where the toilets were once. He directed them to the toilet in the office on the other side of the entrance hall. When they returned he started reading the Daily Mirror.

Bruce, who had been lying on the floor quite contentedly, now sat up, staring down the corridor, ears bolt upright, back rigid, lifting his paws one by one.

Dennis said he watched him closely. Bruce was watching someone…or something down the hall corridor! He looked like he was trying to make sense of something.

Dennis said it took a great deal of nerve to bend to the left and look down there but when he did, he saw nothing. He put his hand out to stroke Bruce but the dog ducked his head, not wanting to lose sight of what it was looking at.

Dennis said he heard a noise, quiet at first but then it continued and increased in volume, a constant noise like a marble or something rolling across the floor.

He looked at Bruce who was staring even harder at something, moving from paw to paw faster.

Then, it happened.

A netball slowly rolled into the room stopping between Bruce’s front legs. Dennis said he nearly passed out, he could feel the blood drain from his face but he watched as Bruce rested his head on the top of the ball and then stood up and nudged the ball out of the room and into the foyer.

Dennis had told me that Bruce was an expert dribbler with a ball and had kept 12 men at bay in the car park of the working mans club next to West Hams ground which was then in Upton Park. For over 20 minutes they could not get the ball off him.

Out in the foyer Dennis watched Bruce run around with the ball, serving left and right, spinning around, heading the ball when it bounced in the air after hitting a chair for around ten minutes. Dennis started to smile, his love for watching Bruce having fun took the place of his first question: where did the ball come from? It didn’t take long for him to realise something else.

Bruce was ducking, swerving, spinning around and nudging a ball, but Dennis suddenlyunderstood that he was playing against someone or something that only he could see!

To Dennis, there was only Bruce. Why did he keep stopping, defying someone else to try and take the ball away from him?

After a further few minutes, Bruce nudged the ball back into the office and lay down next to it, looking down the corridor. Dennis left with the Womens Institute and put a lead on Bruce and walked him home. His mind was all over the place. He didn’t like it. Not one bit.

 

 

BRUCE MEETS EVERYONE, LITERALLY.

Dennis opened the school up next day. I met him outside and we went into the front doors. The cleaners, who congregated at the front gate every morning came in with us. I’d decided it was best to open the school from the front entrance doors rather than from opening the gates in Manbey Street and then the rear door of the school and make your way through an empty school in the dark, turning on lights as you went.

It was a break from decades of routine but it made sense to me. I should have made the change before. It was strange to think that walking in with 14 old ladies of retirement age was any form of protection, but I saw it as a deterrent to anything that might happen. There were now too many witnesses. Less chance of a Ghostly interruption, or so I thought!

One of the cleaners, Flo, started moaning to me at the top of her voice about doors not being unlocked in time for her to get into them to dust the surfaces, which was all they really did in the mornings, unless they were cleaning up after a meeting the night before in one of the rooms on their area. It was almost impossible to understand what Flo was saying sometimes so you just smiled, nodded and agreed.

Dennis was making his way around unlocking doors and being directed by the cleaners which was a fatal thing to do. They knew the routine but were taking advantage of the ‘new guy”.

Flo was shouting at him which was standard procedure as she had been born stone deaf. She could lip read, which was good sometimes but bad other times, like when John had been subjected to a deafening torrent of abuse from her before she stormed off, only to turn back and stare at him just as he whispered, “Bugger off you old cow!” under his breath resulting in her throwing a mop at him. He got his own back by sitting in an armchair watching her vacuum the staff room carpet. He flicked the plug socket off and the vacuum died. Flo spent the next ten minutes cleaning the pipe, emptying the bag, replacing the bag, shaking the hoover and then, at the moment when she took the head off the metal pipe and stared down it under the light, he got up and flicked the switch on and shot out door and up the first staircase. No one knew until that moment that Flo wore a wig. It was never the same once it was retrieved from the hoover bag.

This was a day when the pupils came in to discover who their new form teacher was going to be and to discuss what they wanted to achieve at the end of the school year. It was a new way of planning and a little confusing for them. It confused me, but it was nothing to do with us. The cleaners finished and left. Dennis went home and I stayed.

I’d written my resignation letter over the weekend. Well, Wanda had. She was determined to get me working with her. I had thanked the people at the council; I’d cited a new job offer away from the council as my reason for leaving and gave the required 2 week notice. I read it sitting at a table in the Library next door to our office. I put it in an envelope. I would place it in the internal mail bag that was picked up every morning at 9am by a council worker in a van. There were no emails in those days.

As I'd read it I was aware that three books had fallen off of the shelves. There was no reason for it. I picked them up one by one. One book was called ‘D.O.S. computing.’ And the two others were Den is Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out and Anthony D Hippisley Coxe’s Haunted Britain. ‘Who the hell picks the library books?’ I thought.

I smiled as I looked at them and put them on a shelf. I told myself that I was soon out of here.

A few things happened with the staff and kids that involved me but apart from those it was a very quiet day until 4pm when Dennis arrived. Just before he put his head around the door I heard a little bit of movement outside and some strange footsteps. Quick and light footed they came nearer to the door and then..

A dark Brown and white Jack Russell sat in the doorway staring at me expectantly.

“Good afternoon”. Dennis said in a rough fake dog voice from behind the doorframe.

“Hello Bruce!” I said to the dog. He walked nearer and sat between my feet, leaning into my right leg just below the knee. I reached down to stoke him and he immediately lay on his back with his legs in the air.

He was a very friendly, lively, fast dog. Full of energy and very alert.

Dennis set off to check parts of the school and lock them up. Bruce was following behind, his tail wagging furiously, looking for adventure. Nearly all the kids and most of the teachers had gone. I should have too, but Wanda was picking me up at 5:30 so I waited for her. The cleaners had emptied their bins and dusted down and were leaving. Next day was a normal routine.

SuddenlyI heard Bruce barking and growling. Then some doors closing and being locked. They were being locked frantically and noisily. I got up, threw my newspaper on the desk and took off running down the corridor, (again, at what I didn’t know) just as Dennis and Bruce got to the corner. Bruce was staring at the locked corridor doors, barking madly, giving it his best and directing his rage at what was there on the other side. Dennis bent over with his hands on his knees looking like he was having a game of leap frog, catching his breath.

Bruce was barking so hard his paws were coming off the ground.

I looked down the corridor to where the doors were and we followed him as he walked towards them. Each blue door was solid apart from each one having, at head height, an eight inch by five inch glass window in them. I looked through one of them at the point where both Giles and I had seen the shadow figure. There was nothing but an empty space of corridor with the science lab doors on either side.

I turned back to Dennis.

“What happened?”

He took a moment to catch his breath. Bruce had calmed down and was sitting at his feet.

“He started barking in there and when I looked I saw someone in there near the cupboard where all the chemicals are kept. I couldn’t make out who it was. It was in the shadows, a figure, big, it was dark and it just disappeared. Bruce kept on barking and I grabbed him and we got out into the corridor but it felt like it was coming for us. I had to pull Bruce down the corridor and I locked the doors. He wanted to get it!”

“You keep saying ‘it’” I told him. “What do you mean?”

“That thing you were telling me about, what you and John saw.”

“Right?” I replied,

“I heard a voice saying, GET OUT!”

I was amazed and obviously looked it.

““Seriously Dave. It was a horrible voice! Over and over again.”

I had been standing with my back to the doors and I leaned back on them to think, now aware that our problems were getting more regular. I slowly became aware of the doors being slowly pushed from the other side, making me stand up straight, they moved about an inch. I looked back through the glass but there was nothing.

We walked back to the front entrance.

Dennis had to ready the Library for the Womens Institute meeting. I knew he was glad it was next door to the office, I would have been too. Wanda beeped the hooter of her car outside having seen me in the hall.

Tomorrow Giles was calling with his findings…

Bruce lay down on the mat in the office.

Till tomorrow…

“See you tomorrow Den !” I said waving at Bruce.

 

A Voice from the Past...

I sat in the office waiting for Giles to arrive. The kids were back and they were all excitedly talking about their individual Christmas’s. The noise was deafening. Excited screams and squeals and sharing memories of what happened over Christmas at the top of their voices with raucous laughter and pushing and shouting. I kicked the door shut with a loud bang. I couldn’t hear myself think.

Giles had called and said he would pop in and go over the tape recordings with us. He was on his way into Essex to investigate a house in Dunmow that afternoon but he had some interesting things that he wanted to share.

Dennis was with me, minus Bruce, who did not come into the school when the kids were there during schooltime.

Dennis thought he would be ok as he was very tame and lovable but I explained the risk. Even if he was ok we had no idea about the kids. They all seemed like St Trinians to me and it only took one of the little drama queens to say they had been nipped by him, just to gain attention, and he would be in trouble, and so would Dennis. Plus the parents would be complaining. There were only so many fat tattoed women with mens haircuts you could put up with storming the school. You can’t trust some people, especially if they get compensation pound signs in their eyes.

Dennis knew I was talking sense so he only brought Bruce in during the evening.

There was a knock on the door. We looked at each other, wondering if we could get away with not opening the door but it opened and Giles leant in.

“Hi, it’s only me.”

“Come in, sit down and have a cup of tea.”

He was holding a cassette tape recorder.

“I have some startling evidenceto play you,” he said excitedly as he took a sip from the tea Dennis had offered him.

He placed it on the desk as I reached over and locked the office door. The noises of excited kids were getting quieter as they were herded up and being put under control.

Giles opened the tape case, popped the cassette in the machine and, with his finger poised on the play button, said “What you will hear is quite shocking. I only heard some of it at the time as it was quite faint.”

I saw Dennis look at me out of the corner of my eye as Giles pressed the button. The recording was very clear.

“Tell me your name!” Giles’ voice was as clear as a bell..

Silence, nothing for a few seconds, then the sound of a chair scraping on the floor.

“I didn’t do that” Giles whispered, as Dennis and I leaned in nearer.

“Who are you?” Giles asked, on the tape. “I can’t help you if I don’t know who you are and what you want.”

“Rebecca”

“Who is Rebecca?” Giles asks,

“What do (Unintelligable) care?”

The words sounded like ‘What do people here care?’

“Is Rebecca here”

“Dead! Yes! Fire.”

“Was it you we saw before, out in the corridor?”

“Yes”

“Did you chase someone on the staircase and talk to the blind man?”

“My place!”

“I can help you.” Giles said on the tape, “Tell me your name!”

Silence.

More silence.

I was about to say something but Giles waved a finger and pointed at the tape machine

“GET OUT!”

Dennis nearly fell off his chair. I knew he recognised that dark heavy gruff voice from before.

Judging from the noise of things being dropped and picked up again and the scraping noise from the microphone I knew that Giles had beat a hasty retreat. He pressed the stop button. We all sat there in silence, staring at each other in turn, we made an uneasy silence that one of us needed to break.

Just as I was about to say “Well,” the handle of the office door was pulled down a couple of times and someone bumped into the door expecting it to open.

I am ashamed to say we all shouted “Aaargh!” in unison.

I unlocked the door to see Karen, the art teacher, standing there.

“Happy New Year!” she smile and then leaned forward conspiratorially “What are you boys doing in here? Are you hiding?” she laughed.

“Having a séance!” I told her.

“Rather you than me,” she said, “Especially in this place!”

Giles looked up, opened his mouth but then thought better of it.

I thought of saying, “Would you like to hear a tape?” but thought better of it.

She needed a dustpan and brush so I handed her one, enquired about her Christmas, Which she said was just her and her brother at her parents house falling asleep watching Only Fools and Horses. She eventually walked off after promising to bring the pan and brush back.

I said "just come in if the door is shut." and pushed the door closed but didn’t lock it.

“This is just what I thought,” said Giles, a dangerous malevolent spirit. There is an opening, or gateway, in this school.”

(These were the days before ‘portals’ and ‘orbs’. We didn’t have them.)

“This is a spirit trapped here and one that can bring others through the gateway. It’s confiDen t, aware, and dangerous.”

Silence. We considered our options. I was on a countdown to leaving but wanted to know just who or what it was.

“Let’s do it!” Dennis offered. “Let’s organize a Séance!.”

“I would advise against that!! Giles said. “I was going to advise against it”

We thought about it. Giles looked at his watch.

“Oh I have to go. Keep in touch and let me know when. I would love to be there. I will be back soon.” He put his cassette machine in his bag and left, waving goodbye.

“So what do you think, a séance? Good idea?” Dennis asked.

“We have a visitor tomorrow evening.” A letting I booked. “I had to cancel it during the holidays because of the Ghost Club involvement.”

“Are you doing it?” Dennis asked, “I thought we would both do it,” I said, “plus the head teacher and two of her deputy teachers.”

“Really” Dennis said, amazed.

“The Vicar is coming!”

 

 

 

The Vicar Part 2

Everyone looked at the cassette on the desk.

No one said a thing for a few seconds. The teaching staff had no idea a cassette recording existed.

It was marked “Investigation, Laboratory of school, Property of Giles Draper, Institute of Psychical research. Copy 1.”

I put the cassette into a tape machine and pressed play. Giles’ voice came out of the speaker, confirming the details on the label. Then,

“Tell me your name!” Giles’ voice was as clear as a bell..

Silence, nothing for a few seconds, then the sound of a chair scraping on the floor.

“Who are you?” Giles asked, on the tape. “I can’t help you if I don’t know who you are and what you want.”

Weird voice: “Rebecca”

Giles: “Who is Rebecca?”

Weird voice, distant: “What do (Unintelligable) care?”

The words sounded like ‘What do people here care?’

Giles: “Is Rebecca here”

Voice: “Dead! Yes! Fire.”

Giles: “Was it you we saw before, out in the corridor?”

Voice: “Yes”

Giles: “Did you chase someone on the staircase and talk to the blind man?”

Voice, nearer: “My place!”

Giles: “I can help you. Tell me your name!”

Silence.

More silence.

Everyone around the tables took a quick look at others. The Vicar was staring at the cassette player horrified.

Voice: “GET OUT!”

Everyone apart from Dennis and I recoiled mainly because we knew what was coming.

Giles: “I am going nowhere. Speak to me and tell me why you are here.”

Everyone around the table was leaning forward, including the Vicar.

Giles: “Tell me what you want here. (Giles was shouting.)

Then silence. No sound for ages, then a strange low growl.

Suddenlythere was a lot of noise, Giles was obviously clearing the tape recorder and microphone into his bag and we heard the sound of him walking to the door.

As we heard the door being pushed open there was a voice.

Voice: GO!

I clicked the tape off. I expected the Vicar to claim it was a set-up, us joking around.

The staff were shocked and leaning back in their chairs. One had lit a cigarette and was puffing away madly. The Head of R,E. was drinking water like it was going out of fashion.

“Well, Stephen?” I asked.

He looked at the tape recorder, then at the Head, then at me.

“I am going to contact the Ministry and suggest that someone comes over to see if they can assist you. We have a group that can ‘deal’ with these things. They know how these things should be dealt with. Is that OK?”

“You can’t do anything now?” The Head asked.

“I am not the correct representative for this. Having heard the evidenceand seen the documentation in that box this is something that…”

“What?”

“It calls for experience beyond mine, and beyond my capabilities.”

“Could you not bless the school? Not all of it, just the areas where all this is happening.”

“I think we need someone who can do more than that.”

He started to put his Bible and a folder into his bag and stood up.

“I am sorry but, there is nothing I personally can do. I will raise your issue to a higher office that can help you. I must go. Thank you for your hospitality.”

He pushed his chair under the table but it sprang back hitting him in the legs.

He stepped back and stared at the chair for a few moments with his handkerchief at his mouth. The Head and a couple of others stood up staring at the chair as it slowly slid back under the table again.

The look on his face was of a man fit to burst.

“I have to go.” The Vicar said, opening the Library door and running to the front entrance Door.

“I will be in touch tomorrow Mrs Goodwin.”

He tried opening the doors but I had locked them, he turned but I was already there reaching past him to turn the key. He looked visibly shocked from what he had heard.

Someone, I do not know who, was sitting in his car waiting for him and they drove off.

“Maybe someone from the ministry will get in touch. Soon I hope.” Said the Head as everyone came out of the Library.

“Considering he knew exactly what we were expecting, we have wasted our time tonight, the old duffer.” Said Pat, looking like she wanted to chin him.

“HE wasted it, if you ask me” Said Shiela, the Head of Religious studies.

Well, if she thought so, it must be true.

I was about to let everyone out of the front door when Dennis remembered the Library. It was still open and the lights were on.

“I’ll lock it up” he said, “Leave it to…F**k?”

We all looked. All the chairs we had sat on were now on the tables, neatly arranged with a pile of books on each. Nothing else was disturbed. Dennis stood looking into the Library. I walked over and reached for the light to turn it off. I felt a hand touch the back of mine as I flicked the switch throwing the room into darkness. I recoiled at the touch and almost slapped Dennis in the face doing so.

I had to jump back as Dennis slammed the door shut and locked it.

I told the others I had felt a hand on mine.

“Good God, save us” Shiela whispered.

“I think it’s a bit late for that now!” I told her.

I locked the Front door behind us and we all descended the steps.

A flurry of “see you tomorrows” were said, followed by a few “Yeah, can’t wait!’s.” I padlocked the gates and got into my car.

Dennis was already halfway down the road, he only lived two streets away. The cars pulled away leaving me there alone. I had to call John when I got home. I resisted the urge to look at the school, started the car and roared away.

 

I spoke to Dennis after taking a trip back to West Ham in 2023 and got his take on the Vicars meeting and what happened.  I’d tracked him down on Instagram.  He is happy and living in Beckton not far from the London City Airport, keeping himself occupied by Plane Spotting.  Now 78 he still remembers the events clearly and was happy to be included in this account, giving me details that pieced together memories of mine that I had dropped from my mind long ago.

_____

We got the call confirming the Vicar would be attending at 5:30pm that afternoon.  I didn’t find it a bit comforting to think that the vicar was going to be there but it was arranged.  His attitude bothered me.  He seemed to think he was going to have no problems and I hoped he wouldn’t have, but he seemed to think this was just an evening out, no matter what I did to impress upon him the gravity of the situation.

The Head, a deputy Head and the head of religious studies were going to be there as well as me and Dennis.  The Deputy head, Pat Marino, was a real laugh.  She looked and acted 100% professional but when she came into the school during the holidays she arrived on her Harley Davison, in full leathers.  It was a massive transition but we got on really well from the moment we met.  There was an end of term party for staff the previous year held at Charlie Chans, a nightclub beneath Walthamstow Dog Track near the Crooked Billet roundabout on the North Circular.  She took me there on the back of her Harley, got changed in the ladies and hit the dance floor non-stop for an hour.  She didn’t even spill her drink, which looked like a Gin and Tonic but was actually only lemonade.  What a character she was/ is!  What an evening that was!  Now, we were about to have an evening at the other end of the scale.

Bang on 5:30 the Vicar arrived.

“Stephen, how lovely to see you again.  Welcome to XXXXX XXXXXXX School for girls!  We are so proud to have you grace us with your presence at our home of education and Excellence” They shook hands for over ten seconds.

“Thank you, thank you!”  The vicar was repeating.

Dennis nudged my arm, “Who is this, the fuckin’ Pope?”

The Head Teacher, Mrs Goodwin (name changed), was a little over effusive with her welcome and a few of us exchanged glances. I looked at Pat, she was putting her finger in her mouth pretending to be sick.

The rest of us looked at each other uneasily while Stephen was shaking hands with all of us.

“Let’s use the library and talk about our issue.” The Head continued, leading the way like Joyce Grenfell.

We all sat around the two tables that had been put together.  There was a water jug, some crisps and some penguin biscuits.  Someone had pushed the boat out.

“Stephen,” the Head continued, “As you will be aware, we have concerns about some issues in the school.  I wonder what your thoughts were after your conversation with David a few weeks ago.”

Stephen took his glasses off to clean them, as if that made a difference to his opinion.

“Ah David, well, well. Well, I listened to David very carefully and I came to the conclusion that what he told me he believed and that it was believed by the people who experience these situations.  I have read the notes that were sent to me regarding other instances, and they are quite troublesome and extreme in nature, but, I am a man of God.  And as such it is a very difficult position for me, and the church, to agree that these inciDen ts are the work of a negative spirit.  I mean, what do you expect me to do about that to help you?”

I could see that he was not on board with us.  All the info, all the time, all the effort, for nothing.  He was too scared.  He was a busted flush. He had made his mind up not to do anything but distance himself from this before I had left his office.

“I know that you all believe that supernatural things have happened here but I have to say that we, the church, take a dim view of this sort of thing.  Could this not all be Chinese whispers?  One thing said and passed on to another gets things altered and added to and…well. This could all be circumstance and imagination.  It is wrong for us, the church, to be seen getting involved in this kind of thing.”

I heard my voice say, “And you couldn’t have told us all that on the phone?”

“Stephen, I thought it was made clear,” the Head jumped in, ”we want you to perform some kind of cleansing ritual.”

“Oh my,” he said looking flustered, “I had no idea that was what you wanted.”

“Don’t give me all that, mate!” I told him. “You didn’t grasp what you were being told when I saw you, that’s why I made it absolutely clear to you, even overstating the issues, so you got a grip on reality. You were left in no doubt about it. Don’t come over with all the ‘I had no idea’ rubbish now.  Why do you think you are here?  You know EXACTLY why we have asked you here.  Just say if you haven’t got the bottle!”

(A little direct but, what did I care?  I was leaving anyway.)

“It is not about ‘bottle’ as you call it.  I do not think it wise that I get involved in this.  I can only advise, discuss and look at options.”

We sat in silence for a while and then Pat broke it by saying,

“So…what do you advise?”

“I think it would be a very good idea to have some record of events that I could….”

I put the diary on the table, with all of the notes and handwritten messages we had left for each other detailing and warning each other of inciDen ts.

The vicar looked at the book, turning the pages as we sat in silence.  My mobile rang in the office next door breaking the silence.  It stopped after four rings.  Then the landline rang and rang.  Dennis was nearest the Library door so jumped up and answered the phone.  A minute or two later he came back and handed me a packet of Rothmans cigarettes!

I stared at them confused, bewildered, then noticed his handwriting.

‘John called.  Call him a sap’.

Confused further I looked at Dennis.  He whispered,

‘Call john as soon as possible.’

‘Aaaah!’ I thought.  I had called John a number of times to find out about his weird behaviour when he left the other day.  He had finally heard my message.

“These notes could all be nothing.” The Vicar suddenlysaid, “Imagination, ordinary noises, this is a big building. Now if you had clear evidenceto prove that…”

I placed a box of cassette tapes on the table.  This were the copies from the night vigil and the other encounters and I explained that these were from Giles of the Society of psychical research.  Not recorded by us but by the two men from the Ghost Club.  Proof that something was going on here.

“What are these?” the Vicar asked, picking up a cassette.

“These are the recordings made by members of the Institute.  The ghost club.  They are live recordings of a vigil we undertook one evening.  Also there is some recordings a man called Giles made.  Giles sat in one of the laboratories here and made contact with something, or someone and the tape recording contains the voice.”

The Vicar dropped the cassette like he had had an electric shock.

Everyone looked at the cassette on the desk.

No one said a thing for a few seconds.  The teaching staff had no idea a cassette recording existed.

It was marked “Investigation, Laboratory of school, Property of Giles Draper, Institute of Psychical research. Copy 1.”

I put the cassette into a tape machine and pressed play.  Giles’ voice came out of the speaker, confirming the details on the label. Then,

“Tell me your name!” Giles’ voice was as clear as a bell..

Silence, nothing for a few seconds, then the sound of a chair scraping on the floor.  

 “Who are you?” Giles asked, on the tape. “I can’t help you if I don’t know who you are and what you want.”

Weird voice: “Rebecca”

Giles: “Who is Rebecca?”

Weird voice, distant: “What do (Unintelligable) care?”  

The words sounded like ‘What do people here care?’

Giles: “Is Rebecca here”

Voice: “Dead! Yes! Fire.”

Giles: “Was it you we saw before, out in the corridor?”

Voice: “Yes”

Giles: “Did you chase someone on the staircase and talk to the blind man?”

Voice, nearer: “My place!”

Giles: “I can help you.  Tell me your name!”

Silence.

More silence.

Everyone around the tables took a quick look at others.  The Vicar was staring at the cassette player horrified.

Voice: “GET OUT!”

Everyone apart from Dennis and I recoiled mainly because we knew what was coming.

Giles: “I am going nowhere. Speak to me and tell me why you are here.”

Everyone around the table was leaning forward, including the Vicar.

Giles: “Tell me what you want here. (Giles was shouting.)

Then silence.  No sound for ages, then a strange low growl.

Suddenlythere was a lot of noise, Giles was obviously clearing the tape recorder and microphone into his bag and we heard the sound of him walking to the door.

As we heard the door being pushed open there was a voice.

Voice: GO!

I clicked the tape off.  I expected the Vicar to claim it was a set-up, us joking around.

The staff were shocked and leaning back in their chairs.  One had lit a cigarette and was puffing away madly.  The Head of R,E. was drinking water like it was going out of fashion.

“Well, Stephen?” I asked.

He looked at the tape recorder, then at the Head, then at me.

“I am going to contact the Ministry and suggest that someone comes over to see if they can assist you. We have a group that can ‘deal’ with these things.  They know how these things should be dealt with. Is that OK?”

“You can’t do anything now?” The Head asked.

“I am not the correct representative for this.  Having heard the evidenceand seen the documentation in that box this is something that…”

“What?”

“It calls for experience beyond mine, and beyond my capabilities.”

“Could you not bless the school?  Not all of it, just the areas where all this is happening.”

“I think we need someone who can do more than that.”

He started to put his Bible and a folder into his bag and stood up.

“I am sorry but, there is nothing I personally can do.  I will raise your issue to a higher office that can help you.  I must go.  Thank you for your hospitality.”

He pushed his chair under the table but it sprang back hitting him in the legs.  He stepped back and stared at the chair for a few moments with his handkerchief at his mouth.  The Head and a couple of others stood up staring at the chair as it slowly slid back under the table again.  The look on his face was of a man fit to burst.

“I have to go.” The Vicar said, opening the Library door and running to the front entrance Door.

“I will be in touch tomorrow Mrs Goodwin.”

He tried opening the doors but I had locked them, he turned but I was already there reaching past him to turn the key.  He looked visibly shocked from what he had heard.

Someone, I do not know who, was sitting in his car waiting for him and they drove off.

“Maybe someone from the ministry will get in touch.  Soon I hope.” Said the Head as everyone came out of the Library.

“Considering he knew exactly what we were expecting, we have wasted our time tonight, the old duffer.” Said Pat, looking like she wanted to chin him.

“HE wasted it, if you ask me” Said Shiela, the Head of Religious studies.

Well, if she thought so, it must be true.

I was about to let everyone out of the front door when Dennis remembered the Library.  It was still open and the lights were on.

“I’ll lock it up” he said, “Leave it to…F**k?”

We all looked.  All the chairs we had sat on were now on the tables, neatly arranged with a pile of books on each.  Nothing else was disturbed. Dennis stood looking into the Library.  I walked over and reached for the light to turn it off.  I felt a hand touch the back of mine as I flicked the switch throwing the room into darkness.  I recoiled at the touch and almost slapped Dennis in the face doing so.

I had to jump back as Dennis slammed the door shut and locked it.

I told the others I had felt a hand on mine.

“Good God, save us” Shiela whispered.

“I think it’s a bit late for that now!”  I told her.

I locked the Front door behind us and we all descended the steps.

A flurry of “see you tomorrows” were said, followed by a few “Yeah, can’t wait!’s.” I padlocked the gates and got into my car.  Dennis was already halfway down the road, he only lived two streets away.  The cars pulled away leaving me there alone.  I had to call John when I got home. I resisted the urge to look at the school, started the car and roared away.

 

JOHN

I drove over to Wanda and told her what had gone on at the Vicars meeting.  Her response was,”I knew I should have been there.”

I explained about his reticence to get involved and how he had seemed disturbed by the amount of evidencewe had, including the cassette tape.  

“Play the tape let me hear it!”

This went on for ten minutes, she wouldn’t let it go.

“Some of the staff were scared when they heard the voice.” I told her.

“Play the tape let me hear it!”

“I need to call John and speak to him.”

“Play the tape let me hear it!”

I reached into my leather jacket pocket and pulled out Denniss cigarette pack.

“I’ll put it on and we can lis…”

Wanda grabbed the cigarette packet and stared at it, confused.

“What the hell is this?”

“It’s got John’s Home number on it.  I never updated the address book in the office.  Can I use your phone?”

“Play the tape let me hear it!”

“It’s in my case over there.”

Wanda was busy with the combination locks while I was dialling the number.  It rang three times and then I heard John.

“Yeah?”

“It’s me.  I missed your call earlier.”

“Dave!  Thanks for calling me back.  Listen,”

I heard a door shut at his end and the sound of a barking dog and a screaming kid subsided.

“I’m all ears, how’s the new school, the job and everything.”

“It’s Good thanks, listen.  The other day when I left you at the school.”

“Yeah what was the matter, you looked like death warmed up!”

“I waved at you.  Then I kind of looked at the school.  As I looked along the row of offices towards the Staff Room there was the girl standing in the window of the small room next to the main office.”

Wanda turned and shouted “YESSSS!” waving the cassette tape.  I waved my hand at her as she ran to the cassette player and loaded it.

I involuntarily pressed the phone to my ear.

“A girl”. I asked him to repeat it.

“No,” he replied “THE girl! “She looked like she was screaming. She was on fire!”

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as I am of anything.  It was real.  She just faded away.  I am never coming back there Dave.”

“I can understand that, Mate.  I am glad your new place is good.  You never know until you get there.”

“Dave, I don’t know what your plans are, but get out of that school.”

“I have a week left!”

“Leave now Dave, make out you’re ill.”

“Thanks! Don’t put the mockers on me!”

I looked at Wanda, she was oblivious, sitting on the Sofa with the headphones on, enjoying every minute of the tape.

A few more moments with John and I hung up.  I was a little disconcerted by what he said.  We knew about the girl but it must have been John she was appearing to, as no one else saw her.

Wanda screamed and frightened the life out of me, breaking my concentration.

I knew as soon as she took the headphones off that she had reached the part where the other voice spoke to Giles.

All I kept thinking was, ‘one week, one week, one week!’

 

CLOSURE

I sat in the office.

I began looking through the notes and files that were in the scrapbook I’d shown the vicar.

 

Some of it was unbelievable stuff. I started thinking of all of the things that had happened:

Being followed down the staircase,

The vigil we’d had,

The toilet block taps,

Sightings and sounds of someone or something walking around,

The doors shaking and handles turning.

Lights dimming,

Things going missing,

Bruce with his football game,

Books falling off the shelves in the Library,

The chair stacking,

The burning girl,

Workmen running away and never coming back,

The broken ankle,

The Piano tuner,

The Tai Chi class chairs,

The basketball

The individual sightings, like the night cleaners chasing a girl in Victorian clothing.

The list was endless. Not to mention the tiny, niggly little things that made a part of and became part of a regular day.

Now there was going to be a visit from the church’s specialist group of investigators. Now they are called a ‘Deliverance Ministry' but we were just told, ‘another department from the church’ were coming to assist. I wasn’t sure if I was thankful or disappointed that they were going to come to the school after I had left but, having read the information they sent, it seemed to me to focus on prayer and listening, to calm the anxiety felt by the people affected by what they ‘believe to be happening’. ‘The Ministry will listen to try to ascertain what is going on, or rather what we ‘believe’ is going on.’

It had all the makings of a whitewash to me. I assumed they were going to make it seem that we were all imagining it.

We didn’t just believe it; we had seen it and heard it. John had left because of it. Even Bruce knew it existed and he was a dog!!

I needed: closure.

I suppose I needed an end to it all.

Dennis arrived with Bruce. Bruce had twisted a paw and his front nearside paw was bandaged. He must have suffered a bad tackle. He came into the office, sat down at my feet and lifted his paw to show me. I almost expected him to say “Look at this!” I touched his paw and he licked my hand.

Dennis was looking after the Women’s Institute again. I was going to leave him to it but the rain was lashing down outside.

I sat there quietly with Bruce at my feet as Dennis made ready the Library for the letting. The week had been uneventful, in so much as, things rolled along quite normally. No apparitions. No noises.

Tomorrow was Friday, my last day. The Head had kept asking me all week to change my mind but the opportunity to build a business with Wanda was too great. I was asked to come back when the ministry was there and agreed that if I could, I would.

I would take all my belongings tomorrow when I would slip out the door unnoticed. That was the plan.

Dennis came back from inside the Library, everything was set up. He had a newspaper and Bruce was going to sit in the office with him. No football training tonight. Was it time to go and come back tomorrow? I thought of all that had happened, I thought of how it had made me feel, I wasn’t finished…yet!

“Back in a while, Dennis.”

I patted Bruce on the head as Dennis put the kettle on and I walked off down the corridor in front of me. It was 630pm

I walked a normal pace down the corridor with minimal sound from my trainers on the polished floor. I stood at the bottom and looked to my right to the stone stairs where two of the staff had been talking one day and the Deputy Heads keys had disappeared only to be found on her office chair. The nightlights were on and it was semi darkness as I turned left and headed for the science labs where Giles had recorded a conversation with an entity that eventually told him to ‘Get Out’.

I pushed the swing doors open and let them close behind me before turning right into the Chemistry lab, the scene of the recording. I stood there and waited for about ten seconds and then walked out and back down the corridor, finally turning left into the linkway corridor, unlocking the first doors and leaving them unlocked to open the Toilet block where I had found all the taps jammed on full. As I entered I noticed how silent and still the room was. You would have heard a pin drop.

I stepped out back into the corridor and turned and walked to the next set of doors, unlocked them and entered the area where we had held the vigil. It was also the area that was at the foot of the flights of stairs where I was rooted to the spot listening to someone coming down the stairs two at a time after me. It was also the exact spot where the Piano tuner was talking to a Shadowfigure that he said had tried to trip him down the stairs.

This time I had my full set of keys with me and opened the Boiler room door and turned on the stair lights. I waited but there was no sound at all. I turned back to the Boiler room door to close it and climb the stairs to the top on my own.

I noticed in the half dark, at the bottom of the steps that led down to the boilers, there was a girl. Like a hazy semi-transparent photo projected in the air. She stared directly at me. I was unable to move, I was frozen as an icy blast ran all over me. I closed my eyes, blinking in the freezing air and when I opened my eyes, she was gone.

I wasn’t sure that I had seen her, but I did, definitely. If it was my imagination, it would have been something far more scary than a girl of around 12 years old. She had looked at me. I closed the door and locked it.

It was now or never. I climbed the eight flights of stairs that led up to the top floor hall. The remaining few flights led up to a mezzanine floor of store rooms. Those flights were gated off.

Slowly, taking them step by step, I reached the top floor hall. I opened the door and stepped into the dark. I put the lights on which slowly dink-dink'ed as they came to life and I looked around. Nothing.

I retraced my steps and took the stairs two at a time down to the ground just as I did on that terrible night.

Boom

Boom

Boom

Bang

Turn to the next flight,

Boom

Boom

Boom

Bang

Turn

Until I reached the ground.  I waited and waited, but nothing. I opened the Boiler room door again and turned off the lights. I tried not to look at where the girl was standing ten minutes ago but I I had to. There was nothing there. I closed the door, locked it and retraced my steps back to the office locking the doors behind me.

I locked the second set of double doors at the entrance to the linkway and got a feeling that I should look up back down the corridor towards the boiler room.

There was the figure of a man standing there, staring at me.

I could see him clearly. Grubby collarless shirt, flat cap, red handkerchief tied around his neck, dark trousers and boots that came up to his knees. Face covered in black grime. His expression was neutral, he was not angry, but calm or confused.

It was a look of mild recognition, a peaceful kind of recognition. It was as if we acknowledged each other.

I took it all in for a few seconds and then spun around as I heard Bruce bark in the office.

I looked back, typically, the vision of the man was gone.

I walked back to the office and Dennis said, “Cup of tea there Dave!” and pointed at my West Ham United mug on my desk. The Ladies from the Institute had arrived and they were making a fuss of Bruce. That’s why he had barked.

“You alright Mate?” Dennis asked.

I thought for a moment. Should I tell him?

“Never better, cheers!”

I sat there for another ten minutes playing with Bruce. I thought about my leaving the next day and realised of course, that all my stuff, like books and notebooks, umbrella and all manner of odds and sods were in my locker. I emptied it all into my bag with the freshly washed up mug and gave Dennis the locker keys and went over to Wandas.

The next day Dennis opened the school up and I got there around 9.30am. Dennis went home and came back at 4pm. I was still there, nothing had happened all day. I went over the Manbey Arms with 8 of the teachers, Pat, Karen and a few more, even the Head and her secretary. Of course Dennis came, having escaped the cleaners demands, and John came over too, which meant a lot to me. He was like a different person, his old self. Happy, cheerful. It was good to see.

For some reason a couple of the teachers were upset that I was leaving but I said I would pop back to see how things were. We all left the pub together and walked the perimeter of the old and new schools down Water Lane and then first right, the same route I had taken after the vigil with Giles.

Inside the foyer I handed my keys to Dennis. Even though I had recommended Dennis to take over as Caretaker they appointed a new one and Dennis would need to show him around. Dennis didn’t want the job, and had told them ‘no thanks’.

I waved to some of the staff that were still talking and after a few kisses, phone numbers on slips of paper with ‘keep in touch’ written on them from Karen and a couple of others, and a few hugs I was gone, down the steps, and into my car. I started the engine and drove down Deanery Road to a new life.

 

AFTERWORD

I had done my time, and I have my memories.

I had been confused and scared, worried and annoyed, angry and sad. Sometimes all at the same time!

I was now free to build a business with Wanda, which is what I did, and concentrate on the future rather than what the next day’s horror was going to be.

I had made peace with what was there at the school, I now knew that we can NEVER really understand why some things like this happen. They just do. It’s not because of us, it’s because of something in the past.

I kept in touch with a few teachers and discovered that things were still happening for another ten years or so but then contact tailed off. They moved on and/or retired or quit. On a couple of message boards I have had messages from people telling me they went to school there and were aware of these events, also some told me that their daughters went to school therein the 90’s and even more recently and they claimed that evens still occur there.  The Deliverance ministry were a waste of time it seems, they wanted to discover if there was a natural reason and if any of the staff were anxious or overworked as it may have been hallucinations, which in turn may be caused by contaminated water in the pipes or…yadda yadda yadda. They gave a blessing and promised to keep in touch but…they never did.

I carried on building up a lucrative business throughout Europe with Wanda, which we sold for more money than it was worth and after splitting the proceeds, we split up too. I have never seen or heard from her again; she dropped off the radar and is not on social media. She became uncontactable.  She appears in no searches. I can only hope she is happy.

I moved away from the area into Essex and got married, and then to East Sussex near to Tunbridge Wells in Kent and then to St Paul de Vence near Nice in the south of France but I come back to a property in East Sussex now and then.  I meet old neighbours and friends in West Ham and have a much missed visit to a Pie and Mash shop for a two and two.

Did I ever go back to the School? No! Nor did I really want or need to. I had my closure.

Since the new school was partly demolished and completely rebuilt a few years after I left…I didn’t see the point. All in all, I am done with it.

Do I think about it? Do I wonder? You bet I do.

 

This has been A True East London Haunting!

The Haunted School, 1984/1989.

Thank you for reading.

Dave Moore PhD

By the way…if you are wondering, I'm not an author, I was just The Caretaker.

 

 

 

 

 

Epilogue.

Two weeks prior to the Vicar visiting the school and my leaving, there was an occurrence that I had not been made aware of.

One of the lettings was for the Womens Institute, as mentioned in the previous pages but on this particular night, the Ladies ventured into a very dark sideline.  They had invited a ‘speaker’ to their evening meeting, a lady in her sixties, well known in the spiritual and psychic world, as Essine.  She was the head of a group of ‘like minded’ individuals who met on a Thursday evening in a School hall in Walthamstow and were called ‘the Thelema circle of light’.

Each week Essine spent an hour expanding the consciousness’s of her followers and leading Séances comprising of the core group and any interested parties that came in and joined, having seen the poster outside or the advertisement in the local paper.