It Happened to Me...

Haunted chemist

When I was 17 and studying for my A levels in 1973, I worked on Saturdays, some evenings and the school holidays at a chemist/pharmacist shop that was part of a famous national chain. The shop was located in a row of shops in central London, in a busy street market that operated three days a week. The market had a real community feel and the stall holders would use us as a first aid provider. There would be about two to nine members of staff working in the shop at any given time, Saturday being busiest. The shop was on the corner of the main street and an alleyway and although it was modernised, the buildings in the street were all Victorian or older. Behind and above the shop front was a series of stock rooms over three floors, and the top floor small stock room had a staff room next to it. These were attic rooms where staff could change and make tea. There was a very large landing or small mezzanine on the stairs leading to the top stock room and tea room. This landing was also used to store large unopened cartons or boxes containing disposable nappy rolls. The cartons were about 3ft (90cm) across, 2ft (60cm) deep and 2ft high; they were not heavy but sturdy and stable, stacked about three high and three across and two boxes deep against the wall, leaving plenty of space to go up and down the stairs and walk across the landing. The landing was brightly lit and had a window on the outside wall just below the roof about 10ft (3m) above the landing. It is important to note that shop security was generally quite tight, because the pharmacy issued methadone on prescription to a number of customers and kept controlled substances on the premises.

When locking up in the evening, the manager or senior staff member would start at the top by locking the door to the tea room and next-door stock room, working down to the door at the bottom of the staircase, and then worked back through the other stockrooms, which were effectively one long corridor with interlocking doors, until the shop and pharmacy were reached. These were locked last. All doors in the shop and stock rooms were large and heavy.

My first experience of the strange goings-on was on one of my first days working there. It was a quiet market day, and the manager gave me the keys to unlock the upstairs stock rooms and put the hot water tea urn on. As I reached the landing below the tea room, I noticed most of the large stacked cartons appeared to have been thrown down or up the stairs. I was a bit annoyed but restacked them and went downstairs and told one of the older female employees who had just come in. She said that it happened sometimes and just to restack them and ignore it. I later found out that the boxes would be found up and down the stairs, not just in the morning and not just by me, but also during the day by all staff. It was a bit of an unspoken thing; just something that happened. The younger staff would talk a bit about it and the older staff and manager would not really talk about it at all. The boxes would be restacked by whoever found them; strangely, it really was not considered a big deal.

It should be said the stock room next to the tea room was quite small and very unsettling. It had undecorated brown stained plaster walls and apart from cases of shampoo on shelves it had old leather-bound ledgers dating back 100 years stacked in the corner. It had been a pharmacy well before it became part of a high street chain. The other girls I worked with would not go in there alone, but I wasn’t bothered by the room. I went in there once on my own not long after I started working there and out of curiosity opened one of the ledgers. There was a thunderstorm, which may have increased the atmosphere, but as I was reading I suddenly felt very uneasy as if I were being watched, though no one else was in there. When something large fell off one of the top shelves at the other end of the room, I ran out. Older staff members never went in there at all and always made us younger ones deal with restocking.

The odd thing is, the longer I worked there the less strange it all became, and like everyone else I just accepted it. The landing didn’t feel anywhere near as unsettling as the top stock room anyway, and it was accepted that people only went in that room in pairs. The tea room at the top of the stairs also felt fine and we were happy to go for tea breaks alone if it was a non-market day and there were fewer staff. People would grumble in the mornings and going up to tea about the inconvenience of restacking the boxes to get past. I must have restacked the boxes many dozens of times just myself, sometimes twice a day. Sometimes someone might mention something about a busy day or a quiet day with regard to activity. No one ever thought it was someone who worked there playing tricks, and the older staff members who had been there years said it had always happened. The old pharmacist was the only one who occasionally mentioned it being haunted.

After I had been there a few months, a new manager took over. He was a lively, intelligent Azerbaijani. In the first week he started to get really angry with us over the kicked around boxes on the landing and decided it was the staff playing pranks and messing with him, and it became really quite difficult with him accusing us all of lying, the older staff found this quite upsetting. We said it was haunted but he was an atheist and non-believer and again said we were pranking. We all found his reaction shocking because, as I said, it was not considered a big deal, just a mild inconvenience.

A rather elderly long-term staff member mostly unlocked early in the morning to be there for receiving deliveries, and because of the controlled substances there were only two sets of keys. However, when she was away for a few days, the new manager

The old pharmacist was the only one who mentioned it being haunted

had locked up last thing after walking through, and he was also in first the next morning, and the boxes were as usual all over the stairs; he knew no one else had been on the premises because he had both sets of keys on him. He promptly called the police, thinking people were trying to break in to steal the methadone, and could not understand why the previous manager had not called them in before. We were just all a bit bemused by it. After he had gone through the locking up procedure with the police and we were all interviewed, the fire brigade was called in to check the landing and upstairs window and roof access. The police and fire brigade decided that no one could get in; in fact, it was all so secure it was considered a potential problem if there was a fire. The landing window was sealed up with years of paint and that would have been the only access to the landing when all the doors were locked. He actually called in the police a further three times. They eventually said that as nothing was ever missing and the landing access was sealed there was nothing they could do, so the new manager grudgingly became like the rest of us and just accepted it. There were some days when the activity on the stairs was relentless and someone would have to restack every time they wanted to get upstairs. Some days were quieter, with a few weeks going by with nothing happening. I worked there for nearly 18 months with staff changes, and the disturbances never stopped. It is strange how something that we should have been really making a fuss over became commonplace and unremarkable.

The shop is still a chemist and I would like to call them and ask if there is still activity, but I am not sure if I really want to know. Jay Glass

By email

Live Aid UFO

Jenny Randles’s ‘Cosmic rock’ UFO column [ FT397:31] resonated with me, featuring as it does events on Live Aid Day, 13 July 1985, as on this date I had my own UFO sighting. It was a fine sunny day and I had just returned from visiting my mother in hospital. During the short walk home, I was regaled by music from Live Aid emanating from many open windows along the way. I was feeling an odd mixture of sadness at my mother’s deteriorating condition and a profound calm, engendered by the music and sunshine. On reaching home

– in Locksway Road, Milton, Portsmouth – I went out into the back garden and at 2.52pm observed an object in the east, which I took to be an aircraft reflecting sunlight. However, as it steadily moved towards me, it took on a metallic, egg-shaped form. Travelling at the speed of a light aircraft at about 1,000ft (300m), it passed overhead before disappearing in the west.

While unremarkable as UFO sightings go, it was my most convincing daylight sighting. I feel certain the object wasn’t a balloon as there was no wind that day, and it moved in a steady, purposeful way, giving every indication of being under control. As far as I am aware, I was the only witness, and whatever the object was, I can’t help feeling that my unusual emotional state of mind primed me to see it. My mother died soon afterwards.

Nick Maloret

Milton, Hampshire

Low Flying UFO

One early winter evening in the late 1970s I was on my own at a crossroads on Leader Williams Road in Irlam (Greater Manchester), when I saw what I thought was a very low-flying aeroplane. The object was diamond-shaped and of dull grey metal, and was between 100 and 200ft (30-60m) above the ground. You could see pipes and lights, but I do not remember there being any sound. I watched it move across the sky towards Manchester airport.

Having lived under the flight paths for both Barton and Manchester airports, I was very familiar with how planes looked. Barton (now City Airport) was 2.5 miles (4km) away and had a grass runway, so it could not take a plane that size. Manchester airport was 11 miles (18km) away.

I had originally assumed it was a plane, because what else could it be? It was only on returning home I realised that a plane of that size and at that height – close to the height of an aircraft about to land, perhaps no more than 10 seconds away from the end of a runway – would have been in serious trouble, and while it could have pulled up I would have expected it to have hit the ground somewhere around Flixton. Because there hadn’t been a crash, I was left wondering what I actually could have seen.

Jim D

Warrington, Cheshire

Hot pocket watch

I had a lovely aunt who lived in Pontefract. One day when I visited her she related the following experience. I will try to tell it in her words. “In the 1950s I used to work in the mill. Because of the machinery we were not allowed to wear rings, bracelets or wristwatches, so when I went to work I always put my grandfather’s pocket watch in my skirt pocket. This particular day I had just finished my shift and was walking home with a work friend. It was a lovely summer’s afternoon. Suddenly something black came from the sky and covered us. I next recall people all around trying to revive us. When I was able to stand up I looked over to some waste ground and saw a bright flashing light at the far end. For some reason this frightened me. When I was able, I walked home. When I got home, I went to put the pocket watch on the shelf in the hall where it was usually kept. I put my hand in my pocket and was surprised because the watch felt really hot. I saw the hour and minute hands had become twisted under the glass. The watch never worked again.”

Stephen Roberts

Levens, Cumbria

Chilling events

On a Sunday afternoon at the end of April 2018, I walked to my local park with a friend. It was a cloudy day, but with some sunshine, yet on the way home we heard what sounded like snow falling off the roof of a house we were passing. As we could see nothing on the pavement, we crossed the road to obtain a better view of the roof. We could see nothing on the roof either, but then what seemed like a huge snowball hit me on the top of my thighs. We walked on for another 100 yards, when another snowball hit me on the side of the face, absolutely soaking my jacket and shirt. My friend said that it had seemed to come out of nowhere and looked like a flat snowball about six inches (15cm) in diameter travelling horizontally towards me. There was nobody around and the road was completely empty, but by now I was absolutely drenched and quite frightened. Luckily, my house was nearby. We ran inside and drank several cups of tea.

I can’t think of any explanation, and if I’d not had a friend with me it would have been difficult to believe, despite the wet clothes. I felt I’d been used as some kind of target, with snowballs appearing from nowhere, yet thrown with accuracy. Unfortunately, there were no other people around to witness these literally chilling events.

Anna O’Donoghue

Wellington, Somerset