2nd Hallowe'en Post - The Face
During October, the month of Hallowe’en, I am telling short, but true (perhaps with a little poetic licence), stories of some spooky things I have experienced. Today’s story is about a place where I used to work and is called ‘The Face’.
I am going back to the 1970’s when I was an apprentice technician working in a telephone exchange, an old building in Liverpool’s inner city, almost in the centre. There were about seven staff who worked there over two floors filled with racks of switches hammering away all day, automatically setting up and carrying calls.
There must have been hundreds of thousands of miles of wiring throughout the building connecting all of the equipment. For those with any knowledge of the telecoms systems of those days, the equipment was known as Strowger, but it has no real relevance to this story.
Every hour or so, the technicians would stop for a smoking break which took place on the staircase. I have never smoked in my life, but I always joined those who did, just for the break. Although the equipment was on two floors, there was also a basement which held the cable chamber. The staircase we congregated on was the ground floor where you could see to the upper floor or down into the basement.
I had only worked there a matter of days when, during one of the smoking breaks, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, a man standing at the bottom of the stairs looking up at me. I turned to look quickly, but he’d gone. One of the smokers noticed me look and quickly said, “you just saw the ghost.” He was laughing, but at the same time I sensed he was being serious. The others agreed with him. I didn’t believe any of them and thought they were messing around with the new kid.
This continued to happen over the weeks that followed, and I began to realise, most of the technicians really did believe it, they all saw the ‘ghost’ standing in the same place. Apparently, the exchange had been built on the site of an old brewery, and when its closure had been ordered, one of the old men, who had worked there all his life, was found hanged.
Apparently, this was a true story, but more was to come of the appearances for me. One Saturday morning I was working alone threading wires across a huge frame known as the Main Distribution Frame. You start on one side, pull the wire from a reel and push it through a ring. You then go around to the other side, reach through and pull it across a bed of other wires to its new designated connection point. You then terminate both ends.
I was entirely alone in the building when I pushed a wire through the ring. I went around to the other side, reached through, and right in the centre of the frame, the blank face of an old man stared me straight in the eye. I can remember that face clearly, it was neither happy or sad, it just looked at me and I reacted by falling backwards against a radiator attached to the wall. By the time I’d picked myself up, the face had gone.
I never mentioned it to the others I worked with, even though they believed there was something in the exchange, I decided that was too risky a tale to tell, so I kept it to myself.
I am going back to the 1970’s when I was an apprentice technician working in a telephone exchange, an old building in Liverpool’s inner city, almost in the centre. There were about seven staff who worked there over two floors filled with racks of switches hammering away all day, automatically setting up and carrying calls.
There must have been hundreds of thousands of miles of wiring throughout the building connecting all of the equipment. For those with any knowledge of the telecoms systems of those days, the equipment was known as Strowger, but it has no real relevance to this story.
Every hour or so, the technicians would stop for a smoking break which took place on the staircase. I have never smoked in my life, but I always joined those who did, just for the break. Although the equipment was on two floors, there was also a basement which held the cable chamber. The staircase we congregated on was the ground floor where you could see to the upper floor or down into the basement.
I had only worked there a matter of days when, during one of the smoking breaks, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, a man standing at the bottom of the stairs looking up at me. I turned to look quickly, but he’d gone. One of the smokers noticed me look and quickly said, “you just saw the ghost.” He was laughing, but at the same time I sensed he was being serious. The others agreed with him. I didn’t believe any of them and thought they were messing around with the new kid.
This continued to happen over the weeks that followed, and I began to realise, most of the technicians really did believe it, they all saw the ‘ghost’ standing in the same place. Apparently, the exchange had been built on the site of an old brewery, and when its closure had been ordered, one of the old men, who had worked there all his life, was found hanged.
Apparently, this was a true story, but more was to come of the appearances for me. One Saturday morning I was working alone threading wires across a huge frame known as the Main Distribution Frame. You start on one side, pull the wire from a reel and push it through a ring. You then go around to the other side, reach through and pull it across a bed of other wires to its new designated connection point. You then terminate both ends.
I was entirely alone in the building when I pushed a wire through the ring. I went around to the other side, reached through, and right in the centre of the frame, the blank face of an old man stared me straight in the eye. I can remember that face clearly, it was neither happy or sad, it just looked at me and I reacted by falling backwards against a radiator attached to the wall. By the time I’d picked myself up, the face had gone.
I never mentioned it to the others I worked with, even though they believed there was something in the exchange, I decided that was too risky a tale to tell, so I kept it to myself.
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