Back in the mid 1970’s I lived for a couple of years with my great uncle Marvin and aunt Elsie down to Susie Kentucky to help them with their tobacco farm. When uncle Marv pased and aunt Elsie sold the farm and moved to town I needed another way to support myself. I had already worked in a sawmill and had seen too many men with missing fingers and no hearing left to want that to be my life’s work. I had been into photography since I had been in high school, so when I saw an ad for a local newspaper that needed someone to develop film I applied for the job. I had learned to develop film in high school.
The building that this newspaper was in had originally been a casket factory, and there was still a casket in a storeroom on the first floor just off the press room where the big web-fed newspaper press was. The building had a creepy atmosphere to it, especially at night. I worked upstairs where the camera department was located. There was a long hallway that led though the area where the newspaper would be prepared and ended up in the camera department. At the back of the area where I worked was an old set of wooden stairs that led down to the press room.
As I developed all the film that had been shot during the day, I often worked late into the night, and usually alone. It was spooky, but it didn’t bother me all that much. The only other person that worked at night was a woman from Hazard Kentucky named Peggy who cleaned the office areas at night. Normally Peggy brought her son in to help her. She was a very superstitious mountain woman, and it didn’t take much to spook her. That night she was working alone.
I was wrapping up to leave, I heard a noise downstairs in the press room so I opened the door and went down a couple of stairs and I could see Peggy at the front of the building getting her cleaning supplies out. It was totally dark where I was and I knew that she couldn’t see me. I thought it would be funny to play a joke on her.
While I watched Peggy, I began to make a moaning sound … Kind of low, at first, and when I did it I saw Peggy stop and look to the darkened back of the room. So I stepped it up a notch and a little louder I went ” Oooooooo” in as spooky a manner as I could. Peggy took off out of there like her britches were on fire. I hurried back up the stairs and went over to a light table and began looking at some negatives with a magnifying glass.
I heard the doors bang open and I innocently turned to look at Peggy standing there clutching her chest and breathing hard … She had run up the front stairs and all the way down the hallway to where I was. As she stood there she said … “Did you hear that?” Again, looking innocent I asked … “Heard what?”
She went on to ask if I hadn’t heard that moaning noise downstairs, and barely able to suppress a laugh I lied to her and said that I hadn’t heard a thing. Then she let out a long breath and said … “Well, at least you’re here and I ain’t in here alone” He look turned to pure horror when I replied … “Actually I was about to head out”
“Oh Lord, what am I goin’ to do?” she said. I brushed it off and told her that she’d be all right. Then in one last act of meanness I told her that if something took out after her that she could hide in that casket down stairs. With that I left poor Peggy alone in the building.
It wasn’t long before I regretted playing that mean joke on Peggy.
One night I was working alone as usual and I began to hear voices … It sounded like a lot of people all talking at once. You couldn’t make out what they were saying, but you could definitely hear a lot of voices. I would go and look through the entire building and there would be nobody in the building but me. I began to get spooked.
Next, I began to have the feeling that I was constantly being watched, and worse than that I felt like I was being followed everywhere I went in the building. Not just being followed, but I felt a presence right up against my back, like something was walking with me step by step. Then I began to see movement out of the corner of my eye …Not just shadows, but a side glance of someone being in the room with me.
This all came to a head one night when I was getting ready to leave, and after turning off the lights in my department I started down the hallway to the head of the front stairs … I stopped in my tracks! At the end of the hall at the head of the stairs, I saw a woman with long gray hair wearing a black floor length dress staring down the hall at me. I reached and turned the light back on and when I looked again she was not there. I wasn’t sure if I had seen a ghost or if someone was playing a prank on me!
I began to leave the lights on when I left which didn’t make the owner happy … There was no way I was walking that hallway and down those stairs in the dark. After a while, with the haunting not stopping I left working there and supported myself for a while doing light hauling, garage and barn cleaning and trapping. Eventually I was offered the opportunity to go to the law enforcement academy and began my career in law enforcement.
What did I come away with from the experience? First, I learned to NEVER prank someone … It’ll come back on you ten fold. I learned to treat people as I wanted to be treated. Lastly, I learned that scaring someone was just mean. I did apologize to Peggy and confessed that it was me making those noises that night. I never told her about what happened to me … I kept it to myself.
