Radio Songs #53: The Ghost (Part 7)

October 29th.

Not the 31st. Not Halloween, but two days earlier.

Over the years, October 29th became notorious as the night when the ghost was most likely to make its presence known and really weird / scary thing were likely to happen.

It was October 29th when the studio ceiling collapsed (as described in an earlier post). In the days leading up to October 29th, the temperature in the studios dropped significantly and there was an increase in machinery going wild, turning itself on or off, volume going up and down and lights flashing or dimming as though there'd been a power surge.

Here's my notebook entry for October 29th, 1992.

"The ghost has appeared to us again and the infamous October 29th was no disappointment."

(What a pompous writer I was back then.)

"Apart from the fact that the phone lines went crazy, with lights flashing when nobody was actually calling and ringing in long, continuous bursts rather than normal ring rings (having turned themselves on from underneath the switchboard!), the real excitement happened after P. and I left for the night.

When staff arrived the following morning, two sections of ceiling in the corridor near the Engineering Room [that's the Racks Room I've previously written about] had collapsed due to a radiator on the floor above exploding. Various explanations followed, but the plumber called out couldn't really put his finger on why it had happened.

A few days before, the engineer had been working alone in the building when he heard what sounded like chains being dragged down the corridor. We all had a good laugh at him... until P. too found himself alone in the building and heard the same thing.

The same night, at the end of the evening, we shut up the record library, turned off the stereo and switched off the lights, then went out to the courtyard to open the shutters and get our cars out. When we came back in to set the alarm, the door to the library was still closed but the light was back on and the stereo had been turned onto gram with the volume up to full. No record on the turntable, so just a loud static hum."

The weird thing was, nothing ever happened on Halloween itself. Then again, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, they established that "real" ghosts hated Halloween and generally kept well away from any spooky activity on that night...