Monday, January 3, 2011

Return to Sender


From http://historickent.com/haunt06.html

The staff at the new Post Office Counters Distribution Centre, built at Aylesford in 1994, seemed from the very earliest days to have more than an unfair share of ill-luck. In fact, in many cases, it was too slight a term to call it ill-luck; it was very serious personal misfortune which in some instances was deeply damaging to those involved. In the first three years of the building's existence each one of the twenty three employees experience alarming personal disturbances. There was a variety of tragic domestic and work-related problems. There were illnesses, breakdowns, marital problems, the unexpected deaths of relatives, broken hearts and a whole range of other dramatically upsetting matters.

There seemed to be no accounting for such adversity. No one had ever before experienced such a run of troubles, spread as it was, right across the workforce. It was certainly beyond any reasonable expectation, far beyond coincidence. And not unnatuarally the men and women working there began to talk among themselves, speculating about what might be the cause of so many unhappy afflictions. As one of them said at the time: 'You try every rational explanation but it's been three years now and everyone in regular contact with this place suffers from it.'

What the employees had begun to feel was that there was something extraordinary about their workplace. It was new, a modern industrial unit which ought to have been a pleasure to work in, but it was somehow depressing. There were even some who believed that they had seen apparitions in the building. It was almost, some staff dared to think, as if it was cursed. There were suggestions that these worries ought to be addressed to senior officials but there was some fear about how such concerns might be received. What were people at head office going to think if they received a letter from staff at Aylesford saying that they thought the building was cursed? It is likely to be dismissed as silly, hysterical nonsense.

And it was at that point, in the summer of 1997, that someone proposed calling in Kevin Carlyon. Some of them had read about him in the newspapers; others had seem his at times on Meridian News or heard him on the radio. Why not ask him if he could help? It would be unofficial, of course. No one at head office would likely to sanction calling in a witch. But it was worth a try and so they contacted him at his home in St Leonards, near Hastings, East Sussex.

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