Flattened by a phantom!
Working in a haunted boozer seemed fun, until one spook decided to ‘roll out the barrel’ – right at me!
Taking in the stained-glass windows, ornate box pews, wooden pulpits and organ pipes I turned to my colleague, Mark. ‘This place has got to be haunted,’ I said. It was 2004 and I’d started working at The Samuel Peto pub, a converted Baptist church, in Folkestone, Kent.
‘Oh yeah,’ Mark replied. ‘There are loads of ghosts here. There’s one who haunts the kitchen, the choirboy upstairs… They’re all friendly, apart from Bob in the cellar, he likes to play tricks.’
Was Mark being serious, or just winding up the new girl? But another colleague, Simon, confirmed it all.
Apparently, just before I’d joined the staff, there had been a séance in the cellar, and ‘Bob’, the spirit of a former church minister, had prodded one female attendee on the shoulder so hard she’d cried.
Before long, I started feeling unseen presences at the pub. I felt whoever haunted the kitchen was intrigued, but not threatening. But I tried to avoid changing the barrels in the cellar alone, because the atmosphere down there felt malevolent.
One day I was doing a stocktake of the kitchen fridge, in a bit of a bad mood, when I felt someone over my shoulder. When I turned, there was no one there.
‘If you’re going to stand over me, at least do something,’ I said grumpily. I soon regretted it, when a box of onions and a box of tomatoes flew off the shelf.
But as time went by, I got used to my ghostly work colleagues.
One day I went to help unload a beer delivery. The 18-gallon barrels took a bit of a kick to get going across the courtyard, so normally two of us helped the drayman.
I was waiting for the next barrel when all of a sudden one came flying at me so quickly I had to vault over it.
‘Seriously,’ I shouted crossly at my colleague. ‘You almost took my legs out with that one.’
‘What?’ she replied. ‘I haven’t sent you a barrel in the last two minutes.’
A shiver ran through me. Had Bob rolled the barrel at me?
Up until then working in a haunted pub had felt fun, but the heavy barrel coming at me had felt quite threatening.
Not long after, I transferred to another pub, though I still had to visit The Samuel Peto to cover the odd shift. But I always made sure to avoid the cellar – and Bob.