A camera was at the centre of a fascinating incident at Snob Boutique in Chatham High Street five years ago. The boutique is fitted with closed circuit television cameras to check on customers movements. One of the assistants was watching the monitor set in the basement when she saw someone brushing her hair by the dresses. The sales area was on the ground floor, so she went upstairs to serve the woman who appeared to be dressed in a crinoline style gown. When she reached the top of the stairs, she found that the customer had gone, so she returned to the basement – and discovered that the woman was still showing on the monitor.
Confused, she asked five others in the shop to check the television screen, and the sales floor. She was releived to find that they could all see the figure on the set, but not on the shop floor. The system was checked, and was working properly. Did that monitoring set pick up signals from another transmitter, perhaps due to atmospherics, to produce “ghosting” on the screen; or is it possible that a light frequency outside the visible spectrum can be photographed?
There were some strange incidents in the shop which stands over an old tunnel, said to be used by smugglers. One day, a drink in a glass simply disappeared from a table. There were four witnesses. A woman’s face was seen at the window of an empty room. Lights were switched on and off and footsteps were heard.
The manageress at the time was Marion Horne, who has since married and left. Present manageress Jennifer Westcott said that when Marion left, most of this unexplained activity ceased. “We are sure she was psychic” Jennifer said. “When I worked with her, mirrors broke, clocks were moved, and at one time there was a terrible smell of gas in the boutique. It made us feel dizzy and faint, but it could not be traced.”
Customers had complained of feeling an intense coldness in fitting rooms when it was warm outside. She is convinced the shop is haunted.
If it seems strange that the camera should pick things up that we apparently cannot see, what about instances when we have to wonder whether our own eyes have lied to us.
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Kentish Express, 30th August 1974.