In 2006, I managed an arts based youth project in Ponders End, on the east side of the borough. The project was well attended and had a membership of 16 regulars. Out of the members, I had formed a band and they had become quite popular in the area and had performed at a few different local events. It was late Autumn and the group through two of the project’s members been asked to perform at a soiree held by a local school. There were a number of acts on the bill and we had a set of songs and rehearsed a couple for a week with a different arrangement. None of this is relevant to the story but gives some background why we were at an empty youth centre on an evening it wasn’t open.
The night of the event came and we met at the centre on South street (now demolished) at 4:30pm for a quick run through and to gather up the equipment we would need to take with us. Once we had finished, we carried our kit to the reception area, ready to lock up the building to head off to soundcheck. As they were young people, all of them apart from a few wanted to head to the sweet shop before we left. I was still ferrying the last of the kit from the rehearsal room to the reception and had noticed how quiet the building had become despite not all of them wanting to go the shop. There was a guitarist in the band who was very tall, we will call her Anna (not her name). The front red doors of the centre opened to the left as you saw them. The entrance area was a medium sized open plan space, with an office to the right and the female toilets to the left. The doors themselves had large glass panels in the top half of all the doors, making visibility extremely easy and offered a good view of the large car park. I wanted to check I wasn’t alone, so I called out ‘Who’s in the toilets?’ I heard Anna’s voice say ‘Me’. So I thought I’d leave her to her privacy and sit back down away from the door. Two minutes later, the group arrived back from the shop as the noise increased towards the door, I pressed the door release to let them in and to my surprise I saw Anna and the back of the group towering over the her friends. I told them what happened and wanted to know who was still in the toilets because I had clearly mistaken them for Anna. One of the girls went in and looked calling out hello as she entered. I had at this point noticed that no one was missing and all members were accounted for. The toilets were empty and the windows were far too small for anyone to climb out of.
Mark Riley February 2026