Tales of a London borough.

The Apparition Engineer

I used to run the vehicle preparation centre for the Old Oak Motor co Enfield from 1986 to 2000.
We were based at the bottom of Millmarsh Lane Brimsdown, on the old power station site. Early days, not many people or cars headed that way then, especially as it was a no through road and the place was pretty much derelict. We used to get bothered by salesmen coming in and trying to sell us one thing or another and it became very tiresome. We had only one site entrance and on one particularly gloomy day, during normal work, I looked out of the window and saw a man, dressed in a tan coloured boiler suit walking towards our workshop entrance.

The distance from the site entrance to our workshop was around 100 metres, so it would take some time to walk up to us. I suppose the man was around 45, quite tall, with black hair, almost like it was greased back. I was fed up with having to chat with visitors that stopped me from working, so I asked Lee, my work colleague, to go and see what this guy wanted. Lee also saw him out of the window and made his way to the end of the workshop to confront him. Lee came back, almost immediately, and I asked him what the guy wanted. Lee said, there was no one there. Our compound was completely surrounded by high chain link fencing, only one way in and out, but you could walk around the site, as the workshop and office were in the middle. I said to Lee, ok I think he may be walking around the buildings, so you go one way, I will go the other and we will see him.

We walked from either side and met each other with no sign of the man we saw. I said to Lee 'did we really see this man'? Lee confirmed we did. T here was no way he could have left without us seeing him leave as the distances could not have been covered in the timeframe. Just one other incident was, there were three of us technicians working at the site and all had large tool chests that were closed by lifting the cover up and over the whole chest and locking at the bottom. One morning we all turned up for work and my tool chest was open. I moaned to the other two, Lee and Steve, that one of them had been using my tools. They said they were going to say the same thing to me, as all three were now open and not one of us did this.