Letter: We never got to the bottom of apparition

Now if there's one thing that throws me it’s when historical truth is sacrificed for the sake of spurious ghost tales. I have never seen a ghost but I have told you of the one supernatural experience I have had that occurred in the vicinity of that mysterious earthwork known as Bailey Hill at High Bradfield, an experience shared by others as I subsequently found out.

Here's another one for you to ponder over as we approach All Hallows Eve and Cakin Night, (October 31 and 1st November 1, respectively), this tale concerns Steel City House that Portland Stone edifice which once towered over the bottom of West Street and is now being dwarfed by the process of West Street and Glossop Road being turned into a canyon of high rise apartments.

Some years ago when I was working in a government department in SCH our security staff reported they had come across a contractor on the top floor in a state of agitation, his workmates reported that he had encountered the apparition of a man and refused to be left on his own, at the end of the week the contractor left the building and refused to return. We kept the story quiet not wishing to alarm staff who had to secure the building at night but rumours reached me about cleaning equipment found left out after it had been put away, of a member of staff seeing a window open in a locked office after he had secured it, of someone running out of the building after being presumably 'spooked'. I joked with contractors about me hiding in a cupboard and jumping out on them for them to assure me that I would get a kick in me nether regions if I did so, another member of staff offered to get a vicar to exorcise the spirit, 'taking it for a walk up Trippet Lane'? I asked. We never did get to the bottom of it, SCH had been a telephone switchboard centre during the Blitz as well as a bank and Post Office but the origin of the occurence, well...

So there you go, the stories about Hillsborough Barracks will have to wait. As for the haunting of SCH, I've heard nothing further and it certainly doesn't haunt me as much as three decades as a Civil Servant.