And Now I'm Nervous and I Shouldn't Be

This is Oswald Hall, the scene of my second Ghost Story.

In 2003 I worked here, not in this main part of the building, but in the lower right hand side - which in it's original incarnation would have been the servants quarters.

It was a beautifully light and bright office, and the front door overlooked the River Ayr flowing quickly past, and the side windows offered a beautiful vista, overlooking a playing field, where on warm days, families would play together, and sometimes local footballers would train whilst their pitches were being tended.

In the middle of our office space, was a stairway which led up to the main house, and although open during the day for us to access the main offices of the "Big House", was locked at night to retain our office security. There was also a lower passage way to the rear of our office space, which led to Student's study labs, and laundry rooms.

One afternoon, as I left the kitchen and walked round the staircase I caught sight of someone out the corner of my eye heading down the lower passage way. I was chatting to Annie as I left the kitchen and as she headed into an office, which was on the same side of the corridor as the kitchen, I realised she had caught sight too. It wouldn't be the first time a Student (for they lodged in the attic rooms of the Big House), had wandered into our offices in the mistaken search for their study room.

As I came around the bottom of the stair I looked up towards the rear and watched the figure walk up the rear passage way. I looked back to Annie, and realised she was staring firstly, down the corridor, and then at me.

I walked under the stair again so that I could look along the passage way, and took in the cape, which the figure was wearing, and the fact that he looked like he was wearing a darth vader helmet on.... But as I looked down the corridor, he just disappeared pft... into space.

I turned round to Annie, and I said "You saw, didn't you?" She nodded, and the two of us walked up towards the corridor. We didn't really venture down the corridor - it wasn't "our space", and there was nothing down there for us. It was a part of the building that hadn't been renovated and it was still old stone walls and slabbed floors. You expect a chill, but what we didn't expect was the breeze that suddenly twisted past us, around us, and the out to the door. Banging it shut on the way.

The two of us turned and ran back out of the corridor, and Paula came out of her office to see what the noise was. She laughed at our hysteria, and said it would have been a student and we were imagining things. She wandered down the corridor, and said, it felt colder, but nothing sinister.

Annie and I stood and giggled nervously, and headed into the toilet. Annie went into the loo and said "don't leave I don't feel happy being in her myself". I laughed and said "it was okay I would stay". As I stood there, and we chatted back and forth about whether we had seen it or not, the bathroom door, opened, back in off it's hinge and banged shut again.

Annie left the toilet, pants round her ankles and ran, pulling them up towards the front of the building and away from whatever was scaring us.

After a few days, we settled down and we able once more to visit the loo individually. Laughing at what we figured was us mis-understanding what we saw and panicking ourselves into a state.

Later on that day, Annie was upstairs talking to the Hall's administrator and had been telling her about our "visitor". Annie shouted me from up the stairs to come and describe exactly what I had seen. Annie figured my description, (despite it sounding like Darth Vadar had been parading through our office), was clearer than her gabbled version. Sally, who was the administrator invited us to have a look round the upper levels of the floors, where the Students had reported "sightings".

The Students were vague in their descriptions of what they had seen but it sounded in the main like serving staff walking into rooms and leaving again. As we wandered round the ornate balcony we wandered into one of the rooms - and we looked out the window on to the front lawns. Trying to imaging what it was like when this was the family house.

As we turned to leave the room, I gasped as I caught sight of the portrait hanging on the wall beside the door.

This was Richard Oswald. Original owner of the building, resplendent in the picture wearing his "outdoor cape", of black, which swept around his back and down to the floor, and his very distinguished grey wig, which was triangluar in shape - and for sure - if caught from the back, in dim light could surely be mistaken for Darth Vadar!

This was who went down the corridor.... 200 years late.