Now this ghost story, if that is what it is, is really an indoor story, but it has a touch of Peter's up above, and it is, like his, quite true.

I went to an all-girls school in the South of England, and part of it was housed in a turn of the century building built as a private school, a bit like a hotel in some of its design. It had a large dining room, with a balcony running along one side connecting the sides of the upper floor. Naturally, the school had a ghost story, and this one concerned a woman called Matilda, who had been there with a soldier, billetted in the building during WW1. Escaping from his brutality, she had fallen to her death over the balcony (onto this very table, said those who told the tale at lunch time.)

It wasn't Matilda who I met. We didn't use the whole building, but, during some renovations, we once were put in a different room, above our usual classroom. It was almost the same shape, but with a small recess in one corner, about a foot wide, and a little deeper. We were there waiting for the teacher, when some of the class decided to indulge in a little horse play - push Penny into the recess. I objected, but with little success, and found myself being squashed into the corner. Suddenly, I found that the space deeper in was full of something which resisted me. There was nothing to be seen, and the corner was high enough for there to be no possibility of air pressure accounting for it. At the same moment, I felt a feeling of repulsion, that I wanted to be out of that corner, and I found the strength to push through those girls and get to the other side of the room. The horse-play was not repeated. I never went back into that room as a pupil. I couldn't bring myself to, though at the same time, I wanted to confirm that something had happened.

Years later, I had the chance. the building was then being used as a teachers' inservice training centre, and I went on several courses. After having slept there on several occasions, with nothing worse than the feeling that the person who shared the room was standing by the window, when they weren't, and having totally failed to find the room again, there came a night of a power cut, and in the darkness, I told this story. One of the men there was able to tell me that, when the building was used as an emergency training college after WW2, the principal had been found hanged in the building. he couldn't tell me where. I did not sleep well that night. But I was able to find the room after that. I had, of course, been looking for that small recess. It had been boarded over, and the wallpaper covered it, but when I tapped the wall, I could hear the hollow space.

I think, now, that whoever, or whatever it was, was doing what they could to help, and I would thank them, If I had the chance. But the building is now offices, and nothing to do with teaching.

Penny