What the workers have seen and heard 2

They both heard a woman's voice call out in distress on the stairs. They turned the music down and listened before running in to check on Doreen. She was at her desk and had also heard the anguished voice. Ali, Doreen and Catherine went downstairs to the basement and looked around. The back stairs open into the basement. They walked up the back stairs and checked all four storeys but there was no one else in the building. The lift was sitting at the third floor. The lights were still switched off on the third and fourth floors. The desks tidy where work had been completed the day before. They went downstairs again using the front stairs and locked the front door so that no one could come into the building.

An hour later, when they had all settled back into working, Ali and Catherine heard the lift screeching as it ascended. It is a heavy, creaking lift, originally installed in 1912 to move flax and linen in the mill. Ali and Catherine went into the corridor and listened to the lift as it moved up the lift shaft. They heard the lift door being pulled across as it opened and closed.

Ali said: "When we heard the lift, we just looked at each other because we'd already checked every floor and we knew that there was no one upstairs. No one could get into the building because we had locked the door. We went to get Doreen to check again. We walked up the front stairs so that if anyone wanted to get out we would see them on the stairs. But we weren't worried because we were very certain that Paul or one of the warehouse boys must be in after all. We went on to the third floor and looked around, we called the names of the warehouse boys but they weren't there. The lift was still at the third floor, it hadn't moved at all. We went on up to the third and fourth floors but we didn't see anyone. We know that someone or something moved that lift".

Catherine and Ali believe that there was a third encounter that day with Helena.

Catherine said: "We were standing in the back corridor, at the lift, just going over all the work we had done that day. At this stage we knew we were finished for the day and we were beginning to laugh about how scared we had been. We knew that we had definitely heard a woman crying in distress and that someone had moved the lift. It didn't seem quite so frightening because we were about to go home. There is a sturdy fire door between the corridor and the back stairs. I was standing with my back to the door and I heard feet shuffling behind the door. I whispered to Ali just to check that she'd heard it and I opened the door. I really expected to see someone there because the footsteps had been audible, just a few inches away from where I was standing. But there was no one on the stairs. There wouldn't have been time for whoever it was to run upstairs or downstairs because I would have seen them. I closed the door, we didn't even try to explain it but we knew what we heard. We were very glad to be going home that day".

The sceptical will not be convinced by these events and will even offer reasonable explanations. Ali and Catherine will not be easily persuaded that the events can be rationally explained. They were awake and alert. They believe that it was Helena's anguish on the stairs they overheard and that she moved the lift to remind them that she remained in the mill. Ali and Catherine have their own explanation for the extreme cold in the studio and the warmth in the corridor; they are certain that the extreme temperatures indicate Helena's presence, that she was beside them while they worked.

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