GhostWatch at Irelandseye.com

GhostWatch - The Staffs' Experiences

Paul McAvoy, Production Controller at the print shop, is more concerned with booking cargo shipping and liaising with foreign customers than telling ghost stories. His week day begins at 8 am and ends at 6 pm. At weekends he's usually in from 10 am until 2 pm. He organises and supervises the dispatch of books from the basement and oversees the warehouse and printing press. At weekends and late in the evenings, he is often the only person in the building.

The printing company moved into Pure Flax House in 1991. After only a few months in the building, Paul became aware of inexplicable noises: heavy thumps and movement of boxes, doors opening and no one entering, footsteps on stairs and along the wooden corridors. Unfazed, he initially interpreted the noises as the sounds of an old, creaking building.

Paul changed his mind only when the ghost touched him. He described his first physical encounter with the ghost. "One Saturday morning I was in the warehouse running the press. I was worried that the press was going to trip so I was very occupied. I was expecting a colleague in, I heard him come in and sensed him coming up beside me. I didn't take my eyes off the press to greet him but I knew he was there. I felt him tap me on right shoulder four times and I looked around to greet him. There was no one beside me. When he eventually came in, I asked him if he had been in earlier but he said that he hadn't".

When Paul began to mention the strange sounds and eerie sensations, his colleagues cajoled him with jibes about over work and falling asleep at his desk.

Paul is certain that it is a woman who walks the floors of the building. He believes he has heard her voice: "One day the three of us were down in the basement, and we all heard a woman's voice calling my name, 'Paul'. We looked around to see who was in but there was definitely no one there. Yet it was a voice within the basement, it wasn't someone outside".

The sound of light footsteps are often heard. A woman's footsteps ascending the stairs and walking along the corridors into the design studio or on the upper floor. Before staff leave at night, radios and lights are always switched off. Yet it is not unusual for the first person in the next morning to find the radio and lights already on.

Paul is certain that there is an unseen inhabitant in the warehouse, but he is not frightened by her presence. "Many's a time I get the sensation that there is someone else here. Just three weeks ago, I heard Tony working in the light room, I called him a few times but I got no answer. I heard other noises from the room so I knew he was in there. A while later, Tony came up from downstairs and I said 'I called you, why didn't you answer?' But he said he'd been downstairs for the last 20 minutes. I said 'Well, there's been somebody in there moving around, I heard them' ".