We have a new answer to that long established question “Who ya gonna call?”
Pembrokeshire County Council it seems!
Pembrokeshire County Council to investigate ghostly events at Wintern Day Centre, Fishguard
3:04pm Wednesday 5th May 2010
Mischievous ghosts are said to be spooking staff at a Pembrokeshire day centre.
Strange activity has been experienced at the Wintern Day Centre, in Fishguard, run by Pembrokeshire County Council. The problem has got so bad staff are believed to be afraid of working there after hours.
Firstly, I can see why PCC are concerned. This is a staffing issue, and they have to take it seriously. Secondly, I’m mildly curious as to what they find!
Unexplained events include printers printing when not plugged in, keyboards turning upside down overnight, furniture being moved, items flying off walls and a haunting smell of bluebells wafting through the rooms.
OK, when a printer prints and it IS plugged in I regard that as a minor miracle. However, my issues with IT aside, that is an odd phenomena, but I can imagine a printer retaining charge after it is unplugged. There must be ways this could occur – I’m not sure by “Not plugged in” if it means not plugged in to the mains (like Cath’s hairdresser in the Cheltenham case) or not plugged in to the pc, which would be much less mysterious I think. I suspect many printers possess some kind of “buffer”, and after receiving a command to print can continue to do so, at some later point when powered up again. Mine does it when I turn my pc back on (or simply remember to put some paper in it) and interrupted print jobs I had forgotten about come shooting out throwing paper all over the floor. However without more details as to the precise nature of the issue it is probably fruitless to speculate further. The problem may however be uncanny — a brief Google search for “printer working while not plugged in” provides no hits on Google. However “haunted printer” returns 515 hits —
— and i do not have time this morning to check them all to see if any are similar problems. 🙂
“keyboards turning upside down overnight” again does not sound all that mysterious to me, if by this it means that workers enter the building in the morning to find that their pc keyboards are upside down. It seems to baffle many office workers to realise that things move overnight — because they are so used to being the sole occupants of their workspace they forget that while they are at home, or safely in bed, a team of cleaners come in and clean the office? As they never see these people, or very rarely, they may well fail to consider the option a cleaner has simply sprayed and wiped the desk, then forgotten to flip the keyboard back properly. I can’t prove that was what was happening here, but I would start my enquiries with the office cleaners. “Was it Henry the mild-manner Janitor? — could be!”
“furniture being moved” is something every reader of this blog must be familiar with as a recurring phenomena by now. The problem however is the frustrating lack of details — if again, it simply comes down to workers coming in in the morning and finding furniture is not where it should be, then late working staff, people using the building unofficially after close to access the net, or most likely of all those ‘invisible’ cleaners are my prime suspects.
“items flying off walls” — interesting, but incredibly vague. I suspect the author of this piece, Anwen Humfrey would have given more details if possible — so either this happened a while ago, or the witnesses are not speaking, or its simply a very common occurrence. “Flying off” is intriguing, but “items falling off walls” may be closer to the truth – while I desperately want to know distances, trajectories etc, sadly no details are available (though I will email Anwen of course, just in case!)
More intriguing is “and a haunting smell of bluebells wafting through the rooms.” The Coates case saw me searching the house and handbag and clothing (and let’s face it I’d probably have gone for a full body cavity search if decency permitted) of a mediumistic claimant after a strong floral smell pervaded the property after she did her “clearing”. We could all smell it, it was not a delicate scent, and I never did locate the source. I’d be useless here though – I live near a very beautiful bluebell wood, but I can not bring to mind the smell of bluebells. Of course I could invent hundreds of reasons for a phantom smell, but just for once I’ll resist the temptation. So why bluebells?
Rumour suggests the building is haunted by the spirits of two maids who lived in the attic. It is understood the girls hanged themselves after both became pregnant. The tragedy is said to have happened when the bluebells bloomed, and the building now smells eerily of the flowers.
I’m pretty sure this romantic tale has grown up recently (perhaps from a psychic claimants utterances) in response to the smell, not vice versa. I could of course be totally wrong, I usually am. I would love to know if there is any written record, or indeed older resident of the area, who can recall hearing the story in the past. “Wronged pregnant maidservants” are a staple of Victorian scandal and modern psychic’s claims, but whenever I hear of a “ruined” girl and these tragedies, I am reminded of Thomas Hardy’s wonderful poem The Ruined Maid. Do have a look, it’s not what you might expect from Hardy! 🙂
One source who has been researching the building, said: “It’s quite true, it’s a very scary situation, staff are not willing to work there at night at all. “It’s worse now than ever. Over the years when they used to light fires there, they would go out with a bang for no reason. It must be especially frightening for someone new starting work there.”
An anonymous source? Presumably someone connected with the workplace, but OK, they tell us a couple of very interesting facts. I don’t know if the fires are gas, coal or electric, so I can’t speculate in that — but I’d get a fire safety officer round, or a GasSafe plumber, or an electrician as appropriate. However this has been going on for years at a low level? Yet only recently have the other phenomena started based on this – but I am speculating beyond the facts, and would need t know much more before I could be confident in that assertion, it’s just a possibility based on what I infer from this…
Shaun Sable, of paranormal investigation team Pembrokeshire Beyond, said: “It would be quite exciting to go down there and see what’s happening.” The Western Telegraph understands that Pembrokeshire County Council is investigating, and despite calls for an exorcist, is looking for other explanations before considering that course of action.A Pembrokeshire County Council spokesman said: “Members of staff at the centre have reported some strange activity and unusual noises. Although there have been no further reports in the past month, the council has arranged for the building to be inspected in order to reassure the staff working there.”
It’s interesting the phenomena apparently ceased quite quickly. Again I wish I knew more…
Anyway part 2 to follow.
cj x
baldrick69
Chris Jensen Romer
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Polterwotsit: Spooks, Poltergeists, and the People Who Study Them 