The basic idea of mediumship and channelling has never really made any sense to me. If ghosts exist and can communicate in some form, why do they need someone on stage at the local village hall to do it for them? How do those mediums then switch that on and off — can they go to Tesco without a voice trying to speak to someone in the freezer aisle? A true conduit is one that is never shut after all.
What I might be able to understand a little more is the idea that some minds just work in a different way. That they can occasionally run on a higher or lower frequency without being able to say when. If there is what we’ll call in Errant Thought going forward ‘something else’, an explanation could be that certain people sometimes just see or hear things others don’t.
It was best described in Danny Robins’ Into The Uncanny as sometimes being tuned to a different radio station. That makes some sort of sense to me as I don’t think people can fiddle with the dial whenever they want. Ghost hunts, crystal balls, is there anybody there… It will disappoint some reading this that I just don’t think ghosts only appear when you’ve bought a ticket. Some people having multiple moments of weirdness that they did not ask for or want — that feels more tangible if that is what we are seeking in these paranormal stories.
Which brings us to Simon, a very good friend of mine sitting across from me in a pub as we have done many, many times before. We have known each other for well over a decade now, and our families have been on holiday together more than once. There are very few things we have not covered in discussion at some point or another, sober or otherwise. The common ground between us stretches as far as the eye can see. Perfect pub companionship.
Tonight we are relaxing and chatting in the side room of our local with a couple of cold pints on a balmy August evening. We would be outside but for the occasional and annoying summer shower. We have done this before too many times to count and indeed in these exact seats. This time I am recording it, the phone sitting in between us as we chat. We both laugh about all the things we are glad never got committed to any sort of tape anywhere. Thank the Lord camera phones did not exist when we were young.
We are here to talk about a room in York. I wasn’t expecting that story to take us there via Center Parcs. If people might occasionally wander into that different frequency, I knew Simon had something he could not explain thanks to a couple of conversations years before that had stuck in my mind. It now transpires that one story is actually three, each different, each unique, but all with one theme — a lack of any real explanation. We will end in an impossible room on a busy, touristy Saturday afternoon. We will start in a mill just outside Huddersfield, where we both still live.
“I was on a YTS scheme making conveyor belts at a mill in Longroyd Bridge,” he begins. The mention of the YTS roughly gives away both our ages and makes us chuckle. Youth Training Schemes were the Conservative government’s answer to youth employment in the 1980s — on the job training for low wages with no actual guarantee of work at the end. They were controversial but briefly ubiquitous.
The area Simon mentions is still a mass of industrial units and old textile mills. This particular building was by the canal bottom — an area of high activity for years before the roads outpaced the waterways. Mills in Huddersfield tend along similar lines; heavy red brickwork, four or five floors all practically designed to serve their purpose. Huge columns reach out to the ceiling in large open plan spaces, everything feels sturdy and deliberate. As is the way many have been converted for modern usage — apartments or offices. A few remain in service, some even serving the textile industry in a modified form. These buildings appear regularly across the town, concentrated together or alone dominating a streetscape designed to serve them. They are ghosts of the past.
“There were four floors in this mill and we had the top two, making all these belts and repairing them. There was this older bloke and woman in charge of it all — I say that, they were probably our age but I was seventeen, everyone was older!”
We pause and smile at this, sipping our San Miguel. Middle-age arrives without you noticing. He carries on and I lean in.
“We were usually on the second to top floor and you could go up and down, but the flight up to the very top bit, the attic, was bolted shut. I said to them what’s up there and they just said nowt, there’s nowt there.”
Simon’s Yorkshire accent is a thing of beauty. I wish you could hear him say the word ‘nowt’ for yourselves. “I said can I go up? They said yeah and unbolted the door there and then and stood at the bottom.”
For some of you this might seem slightly unusual — a YTS kid asking to go up into the attic — but Simon was an explorer then and remains so to this day. His father, now sadly missed, had all sorts of caretaker, handyman and fixer-type jobs in his youth. He did everything from fitting and repairing roof slates to selling pies at Huddersfield Town home games. As a result, Simon found himself no stranger to a church or mill roof, helping or playing as his dad worked. This had led him to become a prolific climber and wanderer. Locked doors were catnip to his imagination at that point. Knowing him as I do the idea of working somewhere with any sort of forbidden area would have fuelled his imagination to the point of distraction.
“I went through the door, up the staircase on my own into the blackness and I couldn’t breathe straight away. It was weird, I was running out of breath just walking up the first few steps really noticeably and I was a fit lad — footballer, all sorts, wasn’t a natural thing. It was like someone was gripping my neck. I got up to the top and there were lots of shafts of light into this room from holes in the roof, you could see quite a bit. I got my breath back as soon as I got to the top, but then I felt dizzy as I walked a couple of steps into the room. Like I was going to fall. I had to leave, couldn’t stay there, and I turned to go back down the stairs.”
As he talks Simon is moving his hands and involuntarily holding one to his upper chest. As an asthmatic myself I know this feeling — that tightness, the closing airway as you suddenly struggle with a thing you never normally notice yourself doing. Simon has never really smoked or suffered with his breathing, but I know he is remembering that alien sensation at the moment he talks about walking up the stairs. It is compelling to see a memory play out in front of you.
“I went back down and again as I’m taking the steps I can’t breathe, that feeling, I’m short of breath and my throat is tight — worse this time, it’s weird,” the switch to present tense another sign he is back there for a minute rather than sitting here talking to me.
“I got to the bottom and was glad of it, straight away I could breathe properly again, in and out. I turned and bolted the door myself.
“I told the woman what happened as she’d said before she had worked there thirty-odd year’ and I thought she might have had this with someone else — she went drip white and fucked off immediately!” Again, I wish you could hear the lack of the ‘s’ on years or the expression ‘drip white’ for yourselves. If this was a podcast, Simon’s voice would carry it to several awards on its own.
“I said to the bloke, have I said something wrong? I thought I might have offended her somehow and I was young and working there, was a bit worried about my job from the way she left like that. He was quiet but then told me; well, one of our old work colleagues about ten year ago fell down those steps and broke his neck. Dead straight away. I was like… Oh, I had just felt something like that. Not seen anything just had those definite feelings — the breath, the dizziness, was worse coming down. Weird.”
As he ends the story we both look at each other and laugh. It’s that slightly nervous laugh between friends when you talk about something awkward and want to reassure each other all is well. It brings him away from that mill and back into the pub at least. Feelings mean a lot to Simon, and he trusts them. We talk briefly about it and eventually we make our way to Center Parcs.
“I know when there’s something not right in a room. I’ve worked places, visited places, and I just know when something is off. Don’t say anything because it doesn’t feel right to, but when my mum was older we talked and she had the same thing. We talked about houses we’d lived in growing up — we had about fifteen — and every room she said didn’t feel right I had the same feeling, neither of us saying ‘owt about it until then. There was one bungalow… Weren’t there long, but I only spent two, maybe three nights there because it felt so off, and mum was the same but never said anything as I was just a kid. I’d do anything not to sleep there.”
Then he says something that throws me a bit, but I don’t want to show it. This is Simon’s story, stories to be exact, and he’s talking freely now. He asks me a question and weirdly I know exactly where this is leading. “Do you remember the house we stayed in up in Scotland?”
The house in question was on Loch Fyne, a stunning part of the world where we had taken our families on holiday together. It was a huge old place right on the loch side, big enough for our two tribes and another friend’s. The size, age and huge old rooms with mounted animals and various books and objects everywhere were the perfect setting for a ghost story. Yet nothing happened apart from us enjoying ourselves so much we all returned the following year.
Except.
Except for one thing I had never voiced and had forgotten about until that very moment. One room to be exact.
“Do you remember that room at the front upstairs; you walked down a step into it?”
I did, and I knew what he was going to say.
“That wasn’t right, there was something there. I kept shutting the cupboard doors and making sure the window was shut, locked in fact, no breeze. Then I’d go back in and all the doors would be open, all of them. Just wasn’t right.”
I don’t get feelings. I don’t really get anything. I have had a weird experience and maybe one day will write about it, but I feel quite strongly it was sleep related. As a natural sceptic I struggle to believe my own story and yet I remember that room. It did feel a bit off. All of our kids were young at the time, I remember after bath duties taking my daughter in there to dry her off and it felt odd. Cold. I can’t say it felt scary, I can’t say I felt watched. It just felt, well, a bit wrong. An uncomfortable place in a house that was designed to be the opposite.
“Then there was Center Parcs — remember when I told you about that?” Simon continues, not noticing I had mentally just had a bit of a moment. Something flickers and I do start to remember something of a story. I am not going to say which one this was as I don’t want to put anyone off, but those of you who have been to any of them will know what the lodges are like. Those of you yet to try are gloriously free from the pain of being charged £14 for a pancake.
“We went for the weekend, and it was just… It was just a really creepy experience. I can’t explain it but it was creepy.” The repetition was accompanied by an elongation of the word for emphasis. The ‘we’ in this story is Simon and his then wife who I won’t name here as these are his stories and they split amicably a few years ago. I have heard him talk about these things before with her present and not a word was disputed or questioned to my recollection. Multiple witnesses are rare, or do couples just not talk about this sort of thing to others?
“I can’t say it was anything other than feelings again but there was this mad sense of, well, evil, as soon as we got there, that something is dead wrong — it doesn’t want us there and we’re being watched. We were at the bottom end of the park, out of the way chosen deliberately, and we walk in and the whole lodge is freezing cold as the doors were wide open, the heating’s making all these clanking noises and there’s this big bastard swan flapping its wings at us in the room!”
This makes us both laugh, a little oasis in all the talk of something else. The thought of Simon fighting a swan is briefly discussed and now a couple of pints in we need a moment to compose ourselves again. “There were no kids on the scene at the time, just us, and we kind of just carried on being cold in there, the heating on, but there were all these weird noises around us… The heating but other stuff banging too, it felt really disturbing — especially not right in that front room.”
For clarity the lodges are nearly all front room. They are usually open plan with a kitchen and dining area, bedrooms off to the side.
“Then we have a blackout, two o’clock in the morning, we couldn’t see a thing, literally couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces. We’re awake and panicking, first thing I thought was get out of that place, so we did. We got on the bikes and rode up to reception and said everything was blacked out, they said, yeah, didn’t you get a letter? They had sent one to each lodge that would be affected but we hadn’t had anything like that.
“I rode back and…”, Simon shifts in his seat. He is visibly uncomfortable at this memory. His whole demeanour changes. He sits forward a little and continues, “…it just felt evil, like someone was actually coming to get us. Evil, not felt it before or since. This lodge where we were stopping, as soon as you got there it was just wrong, didn’t see anyone from anywhere else near — probably asleep at that time, but it was horrible. We were being watched by something.”
It’s quite uncomfortable to be sat at this table for a moment or two. As he had been right back there on those steps holding his chest, Simon is now scared in a lodge at a place where everyone else always has fun.
“It was pretty evil, we sat there for a bit in the main room together, the worst room, patio doors and front door locked just feeling scared. Then we went to bed and tried to go to sleep. We eventually managed to get a bit with all these noises going on all around us whilst everything is supposed to be off, horrible. Woke up in the morning and it felt cold again, walked out the bedroom and the patio doors were wide open — wide open! Locked, now open.
“We carried on and sort of didn’t talk about it deliberately, did stuff you do at a Center Parcs, swimming and that, then that night we’re eating our meal and she says to me… Well, she says I don’t feel right there, I don’t feel right in that front room. I said no I don’t either, playing it down a bit but happy I wasn’t the only one.
“I had tried not to say too much but we were being watched there all the time, and by something evil. I had this feeling as we talked now — get out of there while you can, honestly it was that bad, so we got the car and drove home at about 10 o’clock at night rather than spending any more time in there. It was awful, scary — didn’t see anything but I know there was something there, evil it was.”
We stop for a moment, that word — ‘evil’ — can’t help but set you on edge when you use it so many times. Simon is a very matter of fact person, as you might have gathered, so to see him live the stories as he talks gives me a moment to pause. We came here to talk about a weekend in York but the places we’ve been beforehand, the feelings, whilst you can’t explain them you want to put them in the box marked ‘trick of the mind’ or ‘imagination gone wild’. Not that easy when you’re hearing them first hand, when you can see the body language and the sense memories return.
Finally, we get to York and a different type of story. If Simon might be prone to tuning into another frequency every now and then he was about to have an experience that you can only define as a whole different channel.
“So we’re in York, just us two, on a Saturday afternoon wandering down the Shambles.” The ‘we’ is Simon and his then wife again and the Shambles for those yet to visit York are basically Diagon Alley from the Harry Potter film series (or so I’m told as I’ve never actually watched them). A medieval street filled with buildings tightly packed against each other, it is a postcard of a place. Shops feel like they were drawn rather than built, wooden beams reaching out like fingers wrapping themselves around the buildings. It feels beautiful, preserved from time. We’ll come back to that.
“We wander from shop to shop, walking it as you’re looking down from the top end and then we come to this place on the right-hand side, busy, selling joss sticks and nicknacks. One of them shops that sells trinkets, like it sells nothing but somehow the shelves are full of stuff. We looked round the bottom floor, just nosey-ing, and then we go up to the second floor which is busy again.
“People are looking at stuff and going up and down these two floors, it’s quite small, but there’s this staircase over by the far wall, quite big and grand. I can see there’s some heraldry on the wall, a tapestry by it, and I think I’ll go up and have a look.”
These things are not uncommon in York. Everywhere you go you seem to stumble across something that is 800 years old. The whole city feels at one with its history. After a brief stop to reload our glasses, Simon carries on, “I wandered up there whilst she’s looking round and it felt a bit weird. I was the only one up there for a start, and there were these rugs everywhere that made the place smell old and musty. There was very little colour, just these throws and rugs and there was dust in the air, a smell of something very different to downstairs where it’s all joss sticks and that. This is the roof space so the walls are actually the sides of that roof, quite a big area, there’s loads of old crap here, it felt like no one’s moved anything for ages.”
“This wasn’t shop stuff then — stock?” I ask.
“No, this was old, dusty, damp. It was like it had all been there for years — dust in the air catching the light like in films. It felt a bit strange in there, not scary, just not the same as everywhere else, and I’m looking round going there’s no one up here, why am I on my own? It’s this busy shop, the other two floors have people everywhere and you have to move right slow through it, but here I’m on my own. I thought about that and felt a bit funny, bit weird, so I headed back down the stairs.
“I said to her, go up there and have a look, tell me what you think, didn’t say ‘owt else, and she wandered up there for a couple of minutes and then back down. She says to me, it’s weird there’s no one up there, I said yeah and felt a bit funny again. When I’d been up there I’d looked out of this tiny window onto the Shambles and it’s really busy, people everywhere, this little square glass window — I can see it now. The shop’s really busy on the other two floors, but no one looking around this room with the rugs and tapestry. We thought nowt more of it at the time, walked out and carried on looking round everywhere.”
There is a lot to see in York in a small area. It is easy to get lost on a side street or avenue. The Shambles are an attraction though, a destination. You’ll see Harry Potter fans having their photos taken at either end, people sitting in the coffee places and cafes, just a constant swirl of visitors. The shops are distinct and unique. The whole place feels a bit like a fairytale.
Staying over they had a normal York Saturday night out — a few drinks and a nice meal before waking up Sunday morning in the mood for a blow-the-cobwebs-away stroll before heading home. We join Simon again just as they wandered back down the Shambles.
“I see the shop again and I thought that was weird up there yesterday, I’m going to have another look. We’d not talked about it but I wanted to see it again, don’t know why — it was like I want to investigate this but I don’t know why. We went in, wandered up to the second floor and then… I’m looking at this... Big wall? There’s no staircase there and there’s no way to get up to another floor at all, no locked door, nothing blocked off, just walls.
“I went outside straight away and I looked up. I saw the window I had looked out of, I could see it there, same shape — little square window sort of jutting out the roof — and it’s there, on the third floor, but there’s no way up there now. This shop is over two floors, there is no staircase, no alcove, no door, just walls. The wall where the stairs had been, it had clearly been there for a long time — stuff in front of it, stuff hanging on it, the staircase had just gone, vanished, gone! Same shop selling the same stuff, same sign outside, couple of the same staff, same layout on the two floors, just weird.
“Honestly, to this day I cannot tell you what the fuck went on. When I was up there on the Saturday I was looking out that window, saw normal people shopping and wandering up and down, now there is no way up there, this grand staircase and stuff on the wall… Gone. It felt eerie, there’s no explanation so you’re just standing there not knowing what to do or say.”
“Did you speak to the people working there?”
“I did but I just said do you have a third floor and they said no. I left it because I didn’t want to seem mad — you know you’ve seen it, been there, even remember the smell of the place, but you just feel a bit crazy. Not been drinking on the Saturday, not even hungover really on the Sunday, but we one-hundred percent went up there, one-hundred percent both of us. We looked round it and now it was gone! She couldn’t get her head round it either, but we felt mad, crazy.
“Thing is I don’t believe in seeing ghosts, there’s something there but I’ve never seen one, felt things but never actually seen one — whatever you see, that’s real to me, that’s real life, but I cannot explain… When I went back the next day it were like… What happened? I stepped out to check the window was there and it was, I looked out of that, and now I can’t even get to it? This attic space, this third floor, was there, we walked round, now you can’t get to it and it’s not even considered part of the shop?”
The questions hang in the air for a moment. I look at him and say the thing that neither of us has vocalised, but both are thinking; “It was like on the Saturday you were looking at — feels weird saying this — but a different time in that one part of the building?”
“Yeah, absolutely, cannot explain but I know we were both in there, I know we both looked round, smelt it, felt it, and I know those stairs were there. Here we are with them gone and I’m feeling like I’m going bloody mad.”
The night carries on and we swap a few stories about other people, dance around the stories Simon has told a few times, and just generally catch each other up on life. The words ‘time slip’ are never said but hang in the air. A time slip is an alleged moment where a window to another time is open briefly for people to look through and occasionally wander into. It’s a subject we’ll hopefully come back to on Errant Thought but if Simon can occasionally hear or feel something else, that was the moment he got to walk into it, and his wife too — another witness who I know does not dispute a word of this story. The thing he keeps coming back to is the window.
“I looked out that window, I saw people, it was there — square, very obvious, part of the roof. It’s just weird, and if it was me on my own I would say I was being stupid or had the wrong shop, but both of us experienced it, we both saw it and then didn’t see it. Gone.”
Three stories in one night, two with another witness, all difficult to explain. As we continue with Errant Thought the one thing we will always seek to do is keep an open mind. Simon felt something else in that mill, he felt the threat of something else at that lodge, and he walked into something else in that shop. Perhaps the single biggest shock to me of everything we talked about is that I think I believe him.
If you have a story you think could be a future Errant Thought, contact us via email at YourErrantThought@gmail.com