SPIRIT LEVEL FOUND AT CARPENTER’S SHOP

When he bought the workshop eight months ago, carpenter Mick Walmsley expected to be making tables rather than tapping them. Yet that was exactly what 34-year-old Mick found himself doing one evening last week.

The workshop, in Cheetingham Road, Traubert’s Heath, had been unoccupied for a long period before Mick opened ‘Hearts of Oak’ in August last year. Said Mick:

“I was fed up with working for other people and had decided to be my own boss. I chose the workshop in Traubert’s Heath because the price was right and my family originally came from this area before they moved to London.”

And there the story might have ended, had it not been for a series of uncanny events that began soon after he set up shop.

“It was about six weeks after I’d opened,” remembered Mick, “I came in one morning to find that the place had been tidied up. All the tools I’d left out the night before had been put away and the floor had been swept clean. I just assumed it was my apprentice Aidan and thought nothing more of it.”

Things remained uneventful for another couple of weeks. Then Mick arrived at the workshop one morning to be confronted by something that really set him thinking.

“I’d been making a pair of bedside cabinets for a customer in Swansdike,” he explained, “and I was a bit behind with the job.

"Well, I came in this particular morning, and they were finished. Completely. Everything was done – even the varnish was dry, which would have been impossible in the space of just one night.

“I questioned Aidan about it when he came in, but he was just as surprised as I was. Realising that something was up, I began asking around.”

Mick’s enquiries soon turned up some chilling information.

The workshop, it transpired, had previously stood untenanted for over a quarter of a century. Local belief held that it was haunted and people gave the place a wide berth. The previous owner, Bill Sampson, had closed the shop suddenly and disappeared without explanation.

It was rumoured that he’d had drink problems and had spent time in The Firs, receiving treatment for a mental condition.

Before that, the workshop had belonged to Bill's father Tommy, who'd joined up and then been killed in the early days of World War 2.

Despite learning this macabre news, Mick continued going to work, and the eerie events continued to happen.

“Nothing regular,” said Mick, “just random stuff. Sometimes I’d arrive at work to find all the lights on. Sometimes it would seem very cold in the workshop, no matter how high I had the heating up. Sometimes things would go missing and then turn up in odd places.

"I tried to ignore it and just get on with my work.”

What finally spurred Mick to action was an incident which took place at the beginning of last week.

“I came in to find a scale model of an aircraft, made out of balsa, standing on my workbench. It was a real craftsman's job, perfect in every detail, and standing in a space that had been specially cleared for it. It was obviously intended as a message for me.

“So I got on the internet to check it out.”

The plane turned out to be a Ju-88, a fighter bomber used by the Luftwaffe at the beginning of the Second World War. Remembering what the stories had said about the death of the workshop’s original owner, Mick decided that it was time to get help.

So he went to local vicar Roger Smethurst for advice.

“This kind of thing is not really in my line,” commented Rev. Smethurst, “but I knew of someone who might have been able to help.”

So it was that last Thursday, Mick found himself seated in his own workshop, staring at a candle flame and holding hands with local medium Tamara Gravell.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” said Mick, “holding hands with a woman I'd never even met before. I remember thinking: ‘I hope the wife doesn’t find out!’ - I felt rather foolish, really.

“And I was also a bit frightened, if truth be told.

“Then the atmosphere changed and it went very cold. Tamara's eyes closed and she sank into a deep trance. Suddenly, she opened her mouth and a man’s voice came out. It seemed to come from a long way away and it echoed all around the shop. I was terrified.

“The voice said that it belonged to Tommy Sampson and that I wasn’t to worry. Through Tamara, I asked him if he was behind all the strange events that had been happening.

“He said yes, so I asked him why.

“The answer came that he was glad to know that someone had opened the shop again. I asked if he was happy that it was me and he said yes, but he wanted me to know that he was always there and felt it was still his shop.

“He went on to tell me how he’d been killed on HMS Gurkha in April 1940, when she was bombed and then sunk by Junkers Ju-88s off the coast of Norway.

“He’d come back years after to check on the shop, but his attempts to make contact with his son had proved unsuccessful. He’d proceeded like he had with me, clearing things up and finishing jobs, but Bill had taken fright and started to neglect his work.

"Then the drinking had started and the business had gone downhill from there.

“Before leaving, Tommy said he had one request to make of me. He said he didn’t like the name ‘Hearts of Oak’ and asked if I would change it back to ‘Sampson’s’.

“So I said yes, no problem, and had the signwriters in the very next day.

"When I came into work on Saturday morning, I found a beautifully engraved mahogany plaque fixed over the counter.

“It said: Thank You.”