Enough to give you goosebumps
Back when I was fresh out of school I started working in this pub down the road from me in Dover. The owners actually lived upstairs from the bar and would often regale us with after-hours stories about the resident spirit (the pub was apparently one of the oldest in the country) known to previous owners as 'George'. Over the first few weeks working there many mundane occurances were attributed to this phantom such as glasses randomly falling off shelves, strange creeking noises (the type you aren't surprised to hear in such an old building) and other easily explained phenomena. Little was I to know how malevolent the bastard really was!

So for some reason I've forgotten the owners were going to be away for the night so they asked me to open up the pub in the morning and suggested that I spend the night in the guest room to facilitate this. This was the very night that our chef had finally come good on his promise to roll me a massive fuck-off spliff for me to take home. So after closing time we set about preparing the pub for the morning then I waited for the owners to leave before venturing on to the patio to get well and truly munted.

Once blazed I climbed the stairs to the very top of the building and promptly prepared to pass out in one of the spare beds. Then the noises started. The general background creaking had already set my still spinning head on edge. This soon transformed into abject terror as the loud crashing of what sounded like objects being thrown around downstairs began. Occasionally it sounded like breaking glass. Then it was gone. I put on my headphones and tried to forget about it and get some sleep. But ten minutes later it started up again. I looked across the room and an eery red light shone up the stairs between the iron railings at the top and the noise appeared to be getting louder. And then it was gone. This continued every 10 to 15 minutes for what must have been two hours before I could bear it no more. Tired, petrified and still pretty baked, I summoned the courage to leave my pillowy sanctuary and confront whatever it was...

Grabbing a screwdriver from the nearby chest of drawers I held it above my head as I decended the stairs in the silence. In the dim red light of the smoke alarm I entered the kitchen when from behind me louder than ever came a crash. I jumped round and found myself face-to-face with... the ice machine. It was refilling itself by dropping the icecubes it had just made into its container. So I took a moment to reflect on how stupid I was and went to bed. The ice machine was subsequently named George.

I apologise for nothing.
( Raindance Work is inversely proportional to post-count, Tue 8 Jul 2008, 14:39, Reply)