Garage hands reckon friendly phantom’s on the night shift.
A modern-day Elves and Shoemakers tale is unfolding at the garage in Fort Road, Margate. Staff at the Thanet Test Centre have been mystified by the activities of an apparently friendly phantom, who gets their machinery working ready for when they arrive at work in the mornings.
Test-worker John Pyman (49) locked up the garage for the weekend. He followed all the usual procedures such as switching off all the electrical equipment and turning on the centre’s comprehensive alarm system. “No one could have got in or out without someone hearing,” he said.
But when John arrived for work on Monday, he found the garage’s new electronic testing machine had been switched on. Nothing else had been touched, so John assumed that he had failed to turn the machine off properly and the switch had flicked back on over night.
But two days later his suspicions that supernatural forces were at work seemed confirmed when he again arrived at work to find the machine up and running. Only this time he had a witness. John’s nephew, Youth Opportunities trainee Richard Calder (16), had started work at the garage that week and on Tuesday evening his uncle showed him the routine for shutting up shop.
Richard washed up some dirty mugs and then watched John go through the process of turning off all the machinery at the mains and priming the alarms. When the two men opened the garage on Wednesday the testing machine had not only been switched on, but adjusted to the right setting for the first job of the day. The mugs Richard had left neatly on the sink had been moved and filled with water.
“I’ve just got no explanation for it,” said John. “To get the machine ready for work you need to follow a complicated sequence on a keypad. You can’t just switch it on.” However, as long as he keeps being so helpful, both men are quite happy with their garage ghost.
“If he does it every morning it’s wonderful,” said John. “He’s a recession buster – a worker we don’t have to pay. But just remember there are no phantom MOTs at this garage!”
Bewildered testers Richard Calder (left) and John Pyman with the ghost’s favourite machine.
Thanet Times, 23rd March 1993.