Things That Go Bump In The Night - Part 1

As the nights draw in and the air cools, our minds turn away from summer and towards other things. It's time, I think, for me to tell some of my spooky tales.

Call it being psychic, call it being in tune with the universe, call it being spiritually sensitive, call it a sixth sense. Whatever you call it, not even the most powerful of anti-psychotic drugs have stopped me from seeing and feeling things. They've always been there, just on the edge of my vision, or tickling the lobes of my ears. What do I think they are? Beings from other dimensions? Good and evil? Things which are locked to this earth? I don't know and I refuse to try and categorise them.

We'll start by taking a trip in to my own past. Once upon a time, I worked in a wonderful little pub, with a fabulous group of people (some of who may be reading this. Hi guys!), in a small, sleepy city in the south of England. We knew that everything wasn't as it seemed in this 600 year old building. And, from that building, came a handful of tales...

The Voice

This tended to happen when the bar was empty, early morning normal. I'd be cleaning up the bar area and I'd hear someone, as clear as day, yell my name. I'd go looking and yell into the kitchen to see if the chef had called me. Nope, wasn't him. At this point the hackles on my neck would be raised. It tended to go both ways; some days the chef would stick his head out to see if I had called him when I hadn't. It didn't happen once or twice, it was a daily occurrence.

The Footsteps

"Can you hear footsteps?"
"Yeah..."
"SHUSH!"

The Pheasant was an old building, spread over several levels. Like a ship of the time, the ceilings got lower and lower the higher you went. We lived there, several of us who kept the place running. Late at night, once we'd kicked everyone out, we'd sit at the bar and chat quietly while having a couple of drinks. When a dignified silence fell, then the footsteps would start on the floor above the bar. Creaking footsteps that would walk to one end, pause and come back again. Once they stopped, we started talking again and, once we stopped talking the footsteps would start again.

The Fireplace

As an old pub, very old 600+ year old pub, we had several big fireplaces. One of them was a gas fire with a copper hod over it which channeled the gases outside. Anyway, in the summer, this was never on. Never. Because a summer in the south of England can get like France and Spain if it's in a good mood. Sometimes there would be sounds coming from the fire. They weren't normal sounds like the fire needed fixing. It was someone or something banging rhythmically on the hod of the gas fire. Some days it would be 1 or 2 bangs, some days it could go on for hours. Like I said, this wasn't the fire cooling down as people would have thought. Looking back on it, I wish I'd noted them down because I'm wondering if something was trying to to communicate in Morse code.