The Unexpected Encounter

Once upon a time, I had an after school job at the local hotel, where my mother was the day chef. I was the night cook and enjoyed working in the old building that had been built before 900. The hotel had been an inn in the days when Richard the third had been in nearby Gloucester town. And it was considered old then!

I had heard tales of other girls from my year at school who had gone to work there and had fled screaming from the building because of "the ghosts". I was never a girly girl, and to this day it takes a lot to convince me of anything I haven't seen and felt myself. So... the evening shift held no great fear for me.

The kitchen was -and is- at the back of the building and the floor is made of cobblestones and flagstones, cool in summer and downright freezing in the winter. From the first kitchen, you have to go through four separate and windowless rooms to the far larder... And then turn round and come back out again because there is no other way out. This is important to know and to remember when you think you've seen the landlady go down to the far larder for the meat and you don't see her come back again! This happened more than once.

Some of the stuff that happened was quite funny. Ann -a girl who worked with me- was drying cutlery one night and I was preparing vegetables for the next day. We were called to the kitchen door (the only door remember), and when we turned back to the table... All my vegetables had gone. Carrots and leeks and onions and spuds. All the peelings were still on the table though. Ann and I searched the larders and the china store, but no vegetables I had to do it all again. Ann was crying with laughter as I was shouting to mid-air, "Thank you so very very much! Psychic onions is about all we need around here!"

For months over the Autumn and winter, Ann and I continued to work there without any great upsets, although a couple of the Saturday girls flew past us on the Christmas Eve when all the oven doors were opening and closing and the lights kept flashing on and off. In the Spring, though, things seemed to escalate a bit and all the new workers were having a lot of bother. The toilet light would go off and the flush would keep going and going.

The best sighting I personally had was when I worked on the day shift one day. They'd got a wedding on and I was to help in the kitchen and wait on if needed in the dining room.

We'd run out of Paprika and I got sent to buy some in the town. When I got back, I was told to go upstairs to the dining room. I'd still got the paprika in my hand and was climbing the stairs thinking what a glorious sunny day it was, with the sun coming through the big window and shining on the whole staircase. One of the barmaids called me when I was about halfway up and I turned back to answer her. While we were talking, a huge beautiful soft furred dog pushed past me on the staircase. "was I in your way there?", I asked it and Maureen and I laughed... That is, until it got to the foot of the stairs and disappeared, quite literally in front of our eyes. There was nowhere it could have gone. We were in bright sunlight. And, I had FELT it push me out of its way.

So there you go... Just one of the many sighting we had in the year or so I worked there.