By Tim Binnall
A construction crew refurbishing a purportedly haunted building in England believe that the site's resident ghost has been making her presence felt during the job. According to a local media report, the spooky paranormal activity has been unfolding at Kiora Hall in the township of Norton ever since work began on turning the 145-year-old location into a school. Having a rich history wherein it served as a residence, a hospital, a community center, and even a POW camp during World War II, the building has developed something of a reputation for being haunted and, it would seem, recent events have made believers out of the construction crew working on its latest incarnation.
Plasterers Ashley and Nathan Sellars say that they and their coworkers have experienced an array of unsettling activity since they began working on the project. "We've often felt a strange presence," Ashley revealed, "you suddenly see figures in your peripheral vision but then there's no-one there." Their suspicions were seemingly amplified following a chilling moment in which Nathan was cutting a wire and it was inexplicably pulled up through a hole in the ceiling despite no one working on the floor above them. "It made us tingle from head to toe," Ashley marveled.
While the duo say that they are not particularly scared of the potential spirit alongside, they indicated that the same might not be said for some of their colleagues. "We had the two plumbers, working on their own at one o'clock in the morning," Ashley recalled, "when they heard voices and footsteps and ran as fast as they could." According to the plasterer, the pair of frightened workers actually locked up the site, hid in their cars until help arrived, and refused to go back in the building.
Since the stories of strange happenings at the construction site have begun to spread throughout the community, local residents have attributed the potential haunting to a spirit know as the Grey Lady, who is long-thought to have been the building's resident ghost. Lest one think that the Sellars brothers are the only witnesses to the weirdness at the site, the director of the construction company, Mark Payne, appeared to echo their experience, musing "I was never a believer in things like this until this job, but I’ve definitely got an open mind about it now."