Ghost stories to take into retirement.
Mysterious circles etched on the floor of a Sherborne cottage are just one of the memories builder Harold Wisdom will take into his second retirement. Mr Wisdom was gutting the building in Abbey Close in readiness for refurbishment when all sorts of weird things started to happen. “I did not believe in ghosts then and I do not believe in them now, but I can only say what I saw with my own eyes,” declares one of the towns great adopted characters.
There were kettle switches which turned off and on when nobody was near them, a tap which turned itself on and poured a quarter of a bucket of water before turning off again and a pelmet strip which released itself from the wall and bashed Mr Wisdom’s son John around the ear.
On another occasion workmen were eating their lunch when a lunch tin and a pair of gloves flew across the room and an electrician refused to return to the cottage after being scared off by flying objects.
The workmen were laughing about the peculiar happenings and scoffing at the idea of a ghost as they worked in the bathroom. The next thing the ceiling fell about their ears.
Nothing, however, was as mystifying as the circles which appeared etched in floors of wood and concrete so deeply that Mr Wisdom could insert his thumb nail in them. After a while they disappeared but not before Mr Wisdom had arranged to have a rubbing taken of one. One circle was drawn under a pile of heavy paint containers and it included a cross pointing towards the Abbey. It was after this discovery that Mr Wisdom found out about a tragic death which occurred in the cottage years before.
He talked about his experiences to neighbours in Abbey Close only to find they too could report similar happenings. One told him that she had two ghosts in residence and one had disappeared.
The most chilling of Mr Wisdom’s experiences occurred when he was cutting a keystone for a fireplace. The room went suddenly hot and cold and he felt someone touch his shoulder with enough force to make him lose his concentration and cut his hand with a chisel.
This all happened within the last 10 years and it is just one of a library of tales which Mr Wisdom can relate from a career dating back to 1927 in which he has worked at Buckingham Palace, the Dorchester Hotel, St Thomas’s hospital as well as the Moscow tube railway. Mr Wisdom and his wife Hilda are moving across town from McCreery Road to Napier Court in the West End. Mr Wisdom last retired eight years ago on his 65th birthday but found retirement drove him “scatty” and he was back in business within five months.
Western Gazette, 30th October 1987.