A Ghost in the Church

Hello CTB Family,

It’s your friendly, neighborhood, self-appointed Bishop here.  I work in an old, multi-floored, large church building.  Have you ever walked through an empty, old, church building?  They can be terrifying.  Especially when it is nighttime, and you are alone, and all the rooms and hallways connect like some demented maze so someone could be following you and you would never know it.

Closing up these buildings at night is the worst.   It sucks.  For example, one night a few years back I walked through the entire building to make sure all  the lights were turned off.  I got out to the parking lot, opened my car door, sat down in the driver’s seat, turned the ignition key, and took one last look at the building.  In a third floor window there was the silhouette of a man staring back down at me.

A little bit of shit was literally scared out of me.

I probably should have called the police, but I decided instead to shift my car into drive and just pull away.  There wasn’t anything in the building worth stealing anyway.

Now I work in a different church building.  It is also large, multi-floored, with oddly connecting rooms and hallways.  A little over a month ago we began noticing lights left on. We thought nothing of it. There are two congregations and a preschool sharing the space, so lots of people come in and out all the time.  Plus, as I said, its a big building with tons of out-of-the-way rooms.  When locking up, it can be difficult to find every light.  Often I will think I’ve turned everything off, only to get to the parking lot and see lights shining through windows because I’ve missed a random stairway or class room.

In response to the random lights being left on simple reminder emails went back and forth between the leadership. “Make sure you get everything when you leave.”

Then one morning, a staff member came in early to exercise in the church gym. There are four entrances/exits to the large central space. As she came in one door, she thought she heard someone exiting another. Unsure if she was imagining things, she pursued the sound. The hallways in the main building make a circle with a large room in the middle. As the staff member walked the circle, she felt like someone was intentionally staying just out of view. Then she thought she heard an exit door open and close in the distance. She went to it, but saw nothing. She looked out it and found no one. She reported it to the rest of it, but shrugged it off as most likely early morning imagination.

The instances of odd sounds and strange lights left on increased.

A staff member thought she heard someone making coffee in the kitchen. When she went to see, no one was there.

Another leader, the first to arrive at the building that day, thought she saw someone out of the corner of their eye exit the building out the back door as she was coming in the front.

Another staff member heard a shower in the men’s locker room running and a radio playing. She went to get others to help her investigate. When they returned, there was nothing.

I accused my staff of letting their imaginations running wild.  I joked that maybe its a ghost…a male ghost that likes to take showers and drink coffee.  It was funny until I met the ghost face-to-face.

At nine that morning, as I do most mornings, I dropped my four-year-old off at his pre-school classroom downstairs.  Then I sauntered down the hall and chatted with other parents.  I stopped and had a small celebratory conversation with the Pre-School director about how well a fundraiser went the night before. Finally I put my head phones in, turned on the sweet music of John Legend and the Roots, ascended the back stairway, passed through the gym, and walked down the hallway where my office is located.

My office is away from everyone else in a back corner of the building. I use to be in the main office complex, but a while back I gave up my original space so a new staff member could be by the front door and receptionist.  My new office is nice.  It has room for a desk, a couch, a small coffee table, and a few chairs.  I even have a mini-fridge in one corner.  I like it.  If I were going to hide in the building, my office is the spot I would choose too.

I scared the man when I flipped on my office lights. He jumped up from the chair he had been sleeping in.  Immediately he smiled said with enthusiasm, “Good morning!”  He extended his hand toward me.  He was a tall, thin, African-American man with a gray goatee and salt and pepper hair. He wore a blue track suit, tennis shoes, and an athletic brace on his right arm.

I shook his hand and asked, “Good morning. Are you waiting for me?”

He looked at me curiously and then said, “You know what? I think I’m in the wrong office. I think I should be waiting in the office down the hall. I’m sorry about that.”

“No problem,” I said moving past him to my desk. I put down my back pack, retrieved my lap top, set it on my desk, and then turned around with the intent of asking the man whose office he was looking for, but he was gone.

That was when it occurred to me who he was.  I had just met our ghost.

I bolted from the door and looked down the hall. He was no where to be found. I ran around the circle of hallways to the main office. Our office manager was there answering email. She hadn’t let him in and assured me he hadn’t come past her. I ran back to my office, down the stairs to where the preschool director was still welcoming arriving parents. She also had not seen him arrive or leave; but she mentioned to me there were weird lights on in the building.

After over an hour of walking the building, I found a door to the outside which looks like it could be opened with a strong tug. In the bushes next to the door was a small fort of cardboard boxes and blankets. If I had to choose between boxes in bushes and an empty church building, I take the building too.

We’ve had the door fixed and locked the building down.  On his way out he took a few hundred bucks in sound equipment, so we had to file a police report.

It’s been a little over a month now, and although I haven’t seen the man again, I still find myself looking over my shoulder whenever I lock up the building.