Ghost's presence creeps out the office
By Peter Duffy

OUR whole building is buzzing.
There's been a ghost sighting! At the Herald!
Brrr! How deliciously creepy, even for a disbeliever like me.

Yes, I'd heard rumours over the years but I have never given them much
credence. After all, this place is 95 years old, so you'd expect some
creaks and groans, right? Doors swinging open, sudden drafts, that kind
of thing.
But how to explain what happened to longtime employee Marg Benoit and
Holly, her daughter?
The other Friday, the two women came to work in the accounts department
at 6:30 a.m. as usual.
Always the first ones here, they flicked on the lights of the
first-floor office and went to their respective desks. Holly's is about
six metres from the door to the Herald lobby; her mother's is farther
back.
Holly switched on her computer and waited for it to boot up. As she
waited, the 20-year-old leaned forward, her forehead cradled in her left
hand.

"I wasn't sleepy," she tells me later. "I was wide awake. I'd been up
since 4:30."
And that's when "it" appeared.
"I saw a woman in a white dress walk by," says Holly. "I didn't see her
face, just her from the waist down, because my head was in my hand."
The dress reached the floor and was trimmed with ruffles. Holly had an
impression of the apparition taking long strides, even though she
couldn't see the feet.
The thing kept going, she adds, and disappeared behind a partition.
"There was no noise," she adds, then pauses. "At least, not at first . .
."
Holly was so startled that she yelled for her mother, who came running.
Thinking an intruder had somehow got past the security guard in the
lobby, Marg hurried in the direction her ashen-faced daughter was
pointing.

"I went to the door but I didn't get that far," says the mother. "I had
a feeling someone was definitely there. I couldn't go any farther. I had
to go back, there was such a (pause) a presence!"
Shaken, the two women headed for the small kitchen area nearby to make
coffee.
Holly delayed returning. When eventually she did, she was met by the
sound of paper being moved around, somewhere in the room. At first she
thought it was her mother, or even a colleague who'd come in early.
She was wrong. She was alone.
"Then I heard a big bang," she remembers. "I heard a noise like someone
dropped something on a table."

She fled the room, looking for her mother.
Unnerved, the pair went looking for security guard Peggy Kerr, who was
at her desk in the adjacent hall. Peggy came and made several sweeps of
the accounts department but found nothing unusual.
Before she left, however, she lectured the ghost. "You're scaring the
ladies," she said sternly. "Please leave!"
(Coincidentally, I arrived for work while all this was happening. I was
vaguely aware of some kind of commotion and raised female voices in the
accounts department, but didn't look in. Wish I had now.)
It turns out this isn't the first time Holly has had a weird experience
in the office.
She tells me something happened shortly after she started work here last
summer.

"I was sitting at a desk, looking straight ahead," she describes. "I
saw, out of the corner of my eye, a man in a navy blue suit walk by."
He was passing a low partition so she could only see him from the waist
up, she says; he seemed to be middle-aged and walking really fast. No
one on staff matched his description.
Marg says she's never actually seen anything in her 18 years at the
Herald. She has, however, felt "presences." (So have a surprising number
of other Herald staffers, as I'm soon to learn.)
Despite my skepticism, I'm getting goose bumps listening to the two
women recount their experiences.
Once, says Marg, an old electric typewriter started up, all on its own.
It sounded for all the world like it was typing, except the keys weren't
moving.
"I sometimes feel someone poke me," interjects Holly, "or someone
pulling on my hair."
Just as we're wrapping up our interview, I happen to notice a security
camera in the ceiling.

As luck would have it, it's pointing exactly at the spot where Holly's
ghost appeared.
And as luck would further have it, even though it's now several days
after the fact, it turns out the Herald still has the tape of that
disturbing morning.
"Let's go see what's on the tape," I suggest.
Holly gets up from her desk. "Yes, let's!"
Tuesday: What the tape reveals, as well as lots more things going bump
in the night at the Herald and some clues.