LukeM_UK

Hey, I like the new avatar Hobojesus!!
Oooh, now that's scary......
Who's Ellen Rimbauer?

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Right, here goes....

Yes, I had to go - that's why I hadn't replyed earlier. Anyway, thanks for all your interest, and I hope you've not all given up, because I have a couple of true stories/personal experiences to tell you all. Please read all of this...

One of these true stories is:

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One of my friends was called Mervyn, and like me, he was interested in buses. He was a member of the museum where I restore and look after historic british buses, and did he.

The building in which the museum is based used to be the old St.Helens Corporation tram depot/bus depot, built in 1881. It closed in the early 1980's and reopened as the museum in 1986 (my birth year). It was then forced to close in 1994 following extreme deterioration of the roof. We have applied for lottery grants to have the roof repaired, and have been turned down, over and over again.

But now we have finally managed to get money from different organisations, and the building has been fully refurbished. We hope to re-open to the public very soon. It is a very historical building, and Mervyn and myself have had many great memories there. Mervyn has been visiting this building since it was a working depot (back in the 1940's, when he was a child).

I was very close to Mervyn, and when he died in early 2004, it was a very big shock. He died at the age of 66, of a heart attack. Ever since his death, weird things have been happening in the museum building.

One was when me and my other friend were in the building on our own. My friend was in another part of the building (the building is enormous), working on his own bus, and I was in another part of the building, on the top deck of another bus. All of a sudden, the bus rocked from side to side, as if someone had stepped on the platform downstairs. There was a piece of wood leaning against the bus when I got on, and now that was making a racket with the movement.

Startled, I ran downstairs to see who was playing tricks, but I could hear my friend still hammering a very long way away. As I looked to my right, at the office door, it was swinging on its own (it was on a spring), as if someone had just walked though it (someone hadn't, there was no-one else in the building apart from me and my friend).

So that was an unexplained incident that left me quite shook up, and very confused. I just couldn't comprehend what had just happened. I told my friend later what had happened and he (jokingly) said - "It must be Mervyn haunting the place", And I really think it might have been.

Another day in the building and I was having a root in one of the old rooms, seeing what secret stuff I could find. I was in the museum model railway room, where Mervyn spent hours on end playing with the trains.

There was a wooden wall/screen from one side of the room to the other, spitting the room into two halves. Behind the screen was the desk (where the station was), and the stool where Mervyn used to sit. Nothing had been touched since the railway room was last used properly (in about 1997) - it was 2004 now.

When you hear people talking about rooms which have cold corners, that room really did have one. The room was warm (with radiators), but one dark unlit corner really was as cold as a fridge. Very mysterious.

It isn't like that anymore since the refurbishment (I'm quite pissed off actually), but at least the building was saved from demolition, and is still very original.

The End.
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Has anyone else got more stories?

- I have more.....

(Meanwhile, you can visit the museum's website.)
http://www.hallstreetdepot.info/

Cheers,
Luke.

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