Ghost comes to basement to type.
Every night before he locks up his typewriter shop off Baker Street, Marylebone, Mr R. Leftwich goes downstairs to a darkened cellar and places a clean piece of paper in an ancient typewriter which stands alone on a table. When he returns next morning he inspects the sheet to see if anything is written on it. For Mr Leftwich says his shop is haunted… by a ghost which arrived with the typewriter.
The machine came to the shop a few weeks ago. Because it was very old – one of the first ever made, in fact – it was valued at only 10s. Now Mr Leftwich is wondering whether he has not bought himself 10s. worth of trouble. He maintains that the machine has moved around the shop on its own. Mysterious messages have been written on it in the middle of the night. What is more, Mr Leftwich says he has seen the keys moving of their own accord.
The young shop-owner told of the mysterious happenings to a Mercury reporter who called at his offices. Said he: “We accepted in part payment a very old and dusty typewriter from a country convent. Like most of these old machines which we are obliged to take, it was duly placed in our basement, and forgotten about until a week later when I noticed that it had been removed from its original position and placed in a typing position on a table. Upon making inquiries nobody appeared to know anything about the incident or could supply any kind of explanation. The typewriter was then placed back in its former position on a shelf. The following morning when I went downstairs I found that the incident had repeated itself. The typewriter had once more ‘put itself’ on the table. As on this occasion I had both keys to the room and knew that no one could have entered I was, to say the least, quite dumbfounded. What was more astounding was the fact that someone – or should I say ‘something’ – had placed a sheet of paper in the typewriter roller and typed on the paper, though badly ‘i am trying to make contact’. “
This, in Mr Leftwich’s words “Not only lifted my eyebrows but my hair as well.” Since then he has left the typewriter on the table. “On two occasions I have seen the keys to be moving without the aid of any human operation,” he said.
Who is the mystery typist? Mr Leftwich himself offers this explanation. “The typewriter is a very old one and perhaps his owner was too. Can it be that they had been together so long that they didn’t like to be parted? Whatever the sequel I can only assume that its former owner is needing it now and that is why I now leave the typewriter on the table every night with a clean sheet of paper in the roller ready to receive a message from somewhere or something i know not what.”
And there the typewriter will stay until the message is received. Eventually Mr Leftwich will break the machine up and use the parts – which may cause a further mystery. For what would happen if all the ghostly parts started their tricks in the other machines?
Marylebone Mercury, 28th August 1953.