Hallowe'en

[loneraven]

Night drew in at half five: when I walked up the hill alone in the dark, the shadows and whispers of ghosts were deviated from somewhat by the entirely-earthly shrieks of the couple having a domestic dispute in the middle of the road, accompanied by the shouting, horn-blasting and general malevolence of the people in the six cars snarled up in

Comments

[greek_jester]

My mother had 2 ghosts at the warehouse where she used to work. She worked for a local charity, & donations to their shops came to her warehouse to be sorted & either dumped, sold to the rag man or sent out to the shops again.

The first ghost was the Grey Lady. She used to wander around every so often & was quite friendly - you'd see her walk into a room that turned out to be empty, or hear her talking from an empty room (usually in the evening after everyone else had gone home, just before mum locked up). She'd also try to be helpful by sorting some of the bags - every so often one of the black plastic sacks waiting to be sorted would gently throw itself from one of the collection cages over to the sorting area. You could tell the new volunteers - the oldies would just call out 'thank you!' while the new ones would turn white & need to be taken away for a cup of tea!

The second ghost was less friendly. Mum had quite a bit of trouble for a while, clothing rails suddenly being yanked across the walkway as people walked past, things leaning at an angle against the wall suddenly coming upright, then toppling over inches from people's feet, a wedding dress being picked up & draped carefully over a heater that was switched on & starting to smoulder, that sort of thing. Then suddenly, everything stopped - & the next day, mum got a rather disturbing report from one of the shops. The manager had put out the new stock, locked up, set the alarm, & gone home as normal. When she came in the next day, she unlocked the shutters, unlocked the door, switched off the alarm, & walked through the back room into the shop. The shop had been trashed - everything in the shop had been swept outwards away from a central point - which was a clock on the shelf that had arrived with the new stock the day before. It was the only item in the shop that hadn't been touched. Needless to say, that clock was promptly driven to the dump!

[loneraven]

Oh, I like those, especially the first one. Quasi-friendly ghosts make for the best stories, I find.

[greek_jester]

Sadly, the Grey Lady seems to have disappeared. The old warehouse burned down (an electrical fault in the charity's van that was always parked inside the warehouse overnight) & when it was rebuilt & the new owners took it over, there was no mention made of her turning up. Mum did ask the new warehouse's manager, as she'd become quite fond of GL & didn't want anyone trying to exorcise her, or something.