Phantoms In The Service Department And Uni Ghosts

It's been quite a while since I've last posted, as life has gotten in the way. I've moved away from my house out in the country, and started working as a mechanic for one of the big automakers in Brisbane.

Because I'm an apprentice I often arrive at work earliest to prep the workshop before the tradesmen arrive for the day and leave last. The dealership I work at is located less than 20 meters from the largest cemetery in Queensland, and has a bit of a reputation for odd happenings. I myself didn't notice anything strange happening for the first month or so after I started. One night before knocking off I laid out all the tools I'd need to do the recall repairs the next day so I could get into them earlier. The next morning however, the tools were spread across the floor of my bay. I wrote it off as one of the other apprentices pulling a prank on me, despite being the last one out of the building the night before. Over the next few weeks, I started noticing that tools would vanish within minutes of me using them, only to turn up hours later in a completely different place than where they'd been put down. Often I'd glimpse a shadowy figure dart across the empty shop in the early morning, or see a silver grey mist out of the corner of my eye. One morning I arrived to find every single radio in the workshop on, even though they'd all been switched off the night before. Now this wasn't really new to me, as the old place my folks live in has it's troublesome old ghost, but what surprised me was the frequency that things would happen. The most off putting experience was when I heard very distinct footsteps on the floor behind me. I initially thought it was my boss as the footsteps sounded distinctly like shoes rather than the heavy, rubber-soled boots the other guys wear. I turned around, and was surprised to find that there wasn't even anyone on my side of the shop. But I felt like there was someone standing just a few centimeters in front of me. I eventually asked my boss what the deal was with the place, and he told me that stuff had been going on since he'd started working at the dealership 20 years ago. We go through quite a few workers who dislike working so close to the cemetery.

Unrelated to the workshop is a recent experience I had whilst checking out a nearby former mental institution turned university. My Dad did some electrical work while the institute was being refitted, and said that the entire time he worked there he felt uncharacteristically sad, especially in the old laundry & furnace room. A family friend who studied there said she often had the same feeling. A friend and I were hanging out in the campus bar while my mum was taking photos, and decided to have a bit of a look around, as it was the first time we'd been there at night. We walked past the boarded up criminally insane building (Dad told me that the workers had walked out of that builing and refused to go back in). Despite it's imposing exterior, it was quiet. We moved on to the former TB wards, and again were dissapointed to find that nothing was going on. Heading back to the bar, we were walking between the Laundry building and one of the former ward buildings (now a computer lab) when I was hit by a wave of sadness. It got to the point where I was on the verge of tears, for no apparent reason. We went to leave when I noticed a sombre looking man in a suit and hat walking towards us quite slowly. He appeared to be completely solid, and was about 25 metres away when he turned, removed his hat and promptly stepped through a bricked up doorway. That was enough for me, and I went back to the CI building to find my mother. Apparently when she saw me I was sheet-white and sweating, despite it being a chilly autumn night. A few days later I mentioned all this to my dad, who wasn't surprised. He said all the contractors had felt the same thing, and a few had seen a man in a suit (presumably a doctor who was killed by a patient suffering from PTSD shortly after WWII) wandering amongst the buildings. Weird stuff...