From ‘Haunted Hertford’ video (Graham Wyley and Keith Morbey), 1996.
Sheffield Pharmacy, Fore Street, Hertford.
Strange sounds have been heard, and things have moved of their own accord. Graham Wyley asked Pat what she had experienced.
Pat: The first thing, the 12th of may, three years ago, I was stood in the shop with the pharmacist, and all of a sudden we were getting this knocking. The floorboards!
GW: By the counter was that? Is there anything underneath?
There is a cellar but I don’t think it’s accessible. I got this knocking, I was a bit worried, he thought it was me I thought it was him. From there, wherever the pharmacist went, the knocking followed, it was under his feet.
As if it were attracted to him. And his feelings on that?
I think he was worried by it.
Something unexplained I suppose. What else happened after that?
The following day, which was Friday the 13th(!), various things happened that day. A bottle of medicine went up the corridor by itself and broke. It was a medicine diabetics usually have because it’s sugar free.
As if whoever it was was trying to get rid of it!
And then later on in the day the shelf where the birth pills are kept, that crashed to the floor. So perhaps it didn’t agree with the birth pills!
So at this time what were your own feelings?
Nervous. A bit nervous. When you’ve never experienced anything like that before, it’s a worry. But as time went on we got used to it. In fact we used to talk to it in the end. And it used to respond by answering yes or no. One knock for yes, two knocks for no!
So you were taking control. So it was a friendly ghost!
I think it was, I think it was.
Any other medicine that disappeared or was tampered with?
No, just those.
One of the things you did say – about strichnine. That’s a poison. But it was a medicine years and years ago?
They used to make the recipes up and write all the recipes down.
So what happened to the strichnine?
Well we gave it to our employer, who gave it to the police to dispose of it.
What do you mean, it just appeared?
It just appeared. Through the wall. It just literally came out of thin air and dropped to the floor.
And you did say, that you had some very old prescription books here. A hundred years old. And you were looking through them?
Well one day we found one in a place where it shouldn’t have particularly been, and it was open at a particular page, with all different names, and Nurse Atkins was involved somewhere we think, we don’t konw where. And one day the prescription book disappeared. We couldn’t find it anywhere. It just disappeared into thin air.
Did you hunt for it?
We looked everywhere for it, it had just disappeared. And one day I said ‘Can we have our book back?’ And not long after that, about an hour or so later, it just literally came through the wall, plop onto the floor with a bang. Open at the same page as it was open at before. So it seemed like it was trying to tell us something. not quite sure what!
You haven’t found out any clues from that particular page?
We didn’t investigate it too deeply because it didn’t seem to want us to. We tried to investigate it, I did ring up the Psychical Research centre one day. And stamps disappeared, I couldn’t find the stamps anywhere. And the phone went dead. So it seemed like it was trying to prevent us doing anything about it. Perhaps it didn’t want to go. We were trying to make it go but it didn’t want to. It didn’t seem to want to shift from here.
When would you say was the last occurrence of something bizarre that happened here?
Months ago I suppose – really with the poison, that was the most bizarre.
Can you give any reason why it’s quietened down? Has anything different happened to the shop?
Yes, recently the pharmacist who worked with me when this all started is not here any longer. I feel perhaps it may have been linked to him in some way. I’m not sure. I did ask him once if he’d ever played with a ouija board, and he said he had when he was a student. So whether there’s any connection there or not I don’t know.
Thank you very much Pat!
Oh – there’s just one other thing I forgot. It did actually tap out a message to us. I asked it one day if it had a story to tell, and it tapped once for yes. Then it tapped out that it had been killed by his brother, in order to inherit the business!
So in this tapping each tap represented a letter, that’s how you got the message through. And what was the conclusion?
That the person who was doing the tapping had been killed by his brother in order that his brother could inherit the business.
Quite a macabre story! … I believe this is the original 200 year old prescription book. This is the one that disappeared?!
It is!
And what happened, through your instructions to the ghost – it came through the wall?
It DID!
Perhaps the secret lies in these pages. Information for us to digest which will solve the mystery of the disappearing medicine and the haunting ghost in the chemist shop.