In the 17 years I worked at Ponders end youth centre, I witnessed two events that I cannot explain. The first happened early on in my career, I was joking around with a small group of young people that I worked with after performing the usual suspect of ghost stories to entertain them. I suggested we set up some microphones and place them in different parts of the studio room overnight to see what they pick up. The layout of the building is important here, the studio was at the very back of the centre. At that point, it had side entrance that was obsured by a broken gate, closed off and over grown. Basically a health and safety violation with no access either way and the door to the outside was broken anyway. The access came via the motor project at the front of the building through two locked doors. We positioned two mics, one by the entrance and further into the room and recorded them as a studio pair, as in door side to the left and room side to the right. I locked up the room and the centre for the night after the leaving the multitrack recorder on and went home.
When I returned the following day to check the recording, I found the recorder had finished as it was meant to, so I set about playing back file to see what was on it. I expected to find some noises on the door side mic, South street is not a busy road and even less so after dark. There wasn’t much but for a couple of car doors slams and occasional lorry noises. The inside mic on the other hand was a different story. At just after 1am, there was a scratching sound on the mic, that ran for about 10 minutes in short intervals. The mic itself was set on a mic stand and raised to height of 3 metres, well above human reach, on purpose. There weren’t any ledges or shelves near by for rats to enter the room at height, just flat walls up to the ceiling. The noise was inside the room and close to the mic. It was faintly picked up by the door side mic, but no footsteps, or keys, jangling or locked doors opening. Just, out of nowhere, a clear scratching sound on the mic and nothing to interfere with it.
The second story occurred about 10 years later, I was packing up a group of young people to perform at a local school around 4pm. The centre was closed for it’s usual operation and empty a part from us a myself and 7 young people. We all had congregated around the reception area in the entrance of the centre. The group asked if they had time to pop to the shop before we left and I said yes, I was unaware of who was where when some of them left and I continued to carry the small amount of kit from our store room to the entrance for loading. The Boys toilets were situated further into the centre of the building and the entrance was separated by them by a ramp with a small incline. The girl’s toilets were directly by the entrance of the centre, an immediate left as you walk in. Once I had set all of the kit down, I sat down and waited for them to come back. I heard a noise in the girl’s toilets, so I assumed one of them hadn’t gone. So I called out ‘Who’s in the toilets?’ I heard Alex’s voice call be back to and her voice is quite distinctive ‘it’s me, I am’ also a phrasing not unlike her. So reassured, I thought no more of it. 3 minutes later all 7 young people arrived at the entrance door, including Alex towering over the others as she is quite tall. I opened the door and asked her how she did that, everyone confirmed that she had been wit the group the whole time. So I said ‘I think there is some else in the toilets’, two of the girls went in to look and confirmed they were empty. There was only one way in and out and I am sure I had not confused the timings during the afternoon, I had only started moving the equipment once the young people had left the building.
Contribution from the Author.