Weirdness at work

storker

Browsing some of the threads here is making me recall events I'd completely forgotten about...

At a previous workplace, we used to get "footsteps in the lobby". The office was an old Georgian (or Edwardian, I can't tell the difference) house near Merrion Square. My section was on the second floor, and we frequently worked late. So did some people in the basement, and making sure that nobody set the alarm while you were still there was usually a concern.

On many occasions, footsteps would be heard in the lobby and the person who heard them would go to the stairs and call down to tell whoever it was not to set the alarm, and receive no answer. On further investigation the lobby would be found to be empty. But if whoever it was had already left the building, the front door would have been heard closing. This happened to a number of people, myself included, on several occasions.

Another strange occurrence in the same building happened to me when working there alone one Saturday morning. I was working in a different area, again on the 2nd floor, when I heard a woman's voice behind me. I couldn't make out what was said, and I turned around fully expecting to see somewhere there, but I was alone. I finished what I was doing and got out of there as quickly as I could.

I also frequently saw, from the corner of my eye, dark shapes darting past the door that led to my section. But this would happen at night when working alone so I used to put it down to a combination of tiredness and imagination especially since I never saw them when looking directly at the doorway. All the same, I never experienced anything like that before or since.

We tended to view the footsteps as something that was unexplained, but was more annoying than frightening, and even joked that it was the ghost of competence pacing up and down in frustration.

Stork

faceman

When I was in college I worked in a big screen cinema chain. The old schoolers who worked there full time had plenty of stories about the cinema being haunted and most could recount the 'infamous' story about the builder who was trapped under the cinema during construction due to a nasty accident.

In particular screen 4 and screen 2 were considered the hotspots, especially screen 4. Some staff were afraid to go into screen 4 alone (it was the only screen were you could raise the light level up high) One staff member remembers walking into a darkened screen 2 one night to find a 'ghost' staring at him from across the auditoriom, before the ghost moved and vanished.

Most of these stories came out during a busy Sunday night. As we were being filled in, the fire alarm went off in the cinema. We had to follow the drill for switching off inscreen alarms. It turned out that the fire alarm had been triggered in the canteen when no one was there. But obviously there was no fire. This kinda spooked everyone as we had been talking cinema ghost stories all day. Couple that with people swearing they could hear voices etc. We were genuinely freaked.

The next day one of the old schoolers told us that all the ghost stories were made up. The cinema wasnt haunted. The fire alarm was just a random coincidental fault.

Goes to show the power of suggestion.

lisatiffany

@storker

I know they are quite distanced from each other but this reminds me a lot of a poltergeist case that occurred in a residential building near Stephens Green, it was mostly sounds and poltergeist activity with objects being moved around/etc but a few times there was a manifestation of the entity causing it, he was an old man. he drove the owners and staff of the place crazy but in a playful way, in the end he stopped after the place was bought by an old woman. of course this was quite a long time ago so even if things did start up again i'm not sure if it was reported or investigated. a lot of what you said happened in that house but its fairly common in a typical enough haunting or semi-active location.