#161 DAY 19 - 31 NIGHTS OF FRIGHT! 🎃 The Man Who Never Clocked Out

From the autumn of 1990 until the spring of 1997.

It wasn't a job I'd imagined doing.

I'd trained as a mechanic but after a shoulder injury I couldn't manage the heavier work and a friend told me the post office needed temporary staff for the Christmas rush.

The temporary job became permanent.

and before long I was one of the people who knew the building well enough to be trusted with the awkward shifts.

The building was older than most of the staff realised.

The public counter had been modernised, but the sorting floor behind it was a patchwork of additions.

low-ceilinged rooms, narrow passages, a loading bay with a draught that came through the doors even when the doors were shut, and a long corridor where the paint never seemed to dry properly in winter.

The place smelled of damp wool, paper dust, oil from the conveyor motors and the tea we drank from the thick white mugs.

I wasn't frightened of working at night.

There were usually a dozen of us on the main floor, sometimes more in December, and we were busy enough that you rarely had time to think about the building.

The work was repetitive but satisfying.

Letters came down the belt, we read the addresses, sorted them into pigeonholes and trays, and passed on anything that needed special handling.

You learned to recognise handwriting, districts and postcodes without really trying.

The strange part began after a change in the layout.

In February 1994, a section of the old dispatch room was closed off while contractors repaired a leak and replaced some of the electrical fittings.

The room had been used for bulky parcels and sacks that were waiting to be sent out, but most of the work had moved to a newer depot.

A metal grill was fitted across the doorway and a notice went up saying the area was out of bounds until the work was complete.

The repairs dragged on.

The contractors came and went during the day and sometimes we heard drilling from the other side of the wall.

At night, the corridor outside the grill was quiet.

We were told not to store anything there, so the space became a sort of dead end.

A few stacked empty trays, a fire extinguisher and the locked metal grill with its square mesh.

Beyond it, the dispatch room was usually dark.

I first noticed the man, on a Thursday I think, not long after one in the morning.