The Dark Corridor
I would like to open with a brief introduction about the
place where I spent six years of my life - The Sue Ryder Home, Nettlebed, Oxfordshire.
The Sue Ryder Home is an old mansion designed in the Jacobean style. It is a very ornate building that consists of red brick with stone dressings, carved stone balustrade, niches, and dormers on the exterior to the Louis XV style mahogany panelling with wood ribbed ceilings and frieze on the interior. Of course the grand interior is only placed where the lord, lady and their guests would be - the servants and staff would see the less ornate, plain ceramic tiles and painted green walls around the living quarters and kitchens. The building itself sits grandly within several acres of lovely tree-lined grounds complete with fishpond and resident swans.
The building, originally called Joyce Grove, has developed and grown over a number of years and has had many owners. It has also suffered a couple of setbacks along the way - such as fire, which gutted the place. Presently, it is quite a magnificent building and has been used a number of times in programmes such as Jeeves and Wooster and Remains of the Day to name a couple. It was also home to Robert Fleming, grandfather of Ian Fleming - author of James Bond and Peter Fleming - an intrepid explorer. Eventually this home was passed on to Lady Ryder of Warsaw for use as a hospice. Nettlebed itself is a tiny village in the middle of large, dark wood between Henley-on-Thames and Oxford.
I left South Shields at the age of 19 to work as an auxiliary nurse. As you can imagine over my six years at the hospice, I witnessed a lot of deaths and some creepy moments.
One of these creepy moments concerns the corridor that takes you from the main hall in the house where the wards are situated, round the back of the kitchen, store rooms and laundry room to the rear courtyard (which is where we took the deceased patients to the mortuary). The corridor is tiled from floor to ceiling, virtually windowless, dark and cold. It must have been about 50 metres in length and had 5 right-angled turns before it freed you onto the courtyard.
This corridor is always cold and dim - but at night it was something else! Even with the lights on you were aware of an oppressive sensation that felt threatening and sinister. On one of my regular trips down the corridor with another member of staff, we were taking a trolley and its deceased passenger to the ‘little house’ (mortuary), when we both suddenly sensed being followed. The corridor seemed to get colder and darker. As this ‘thing’ was behind me, we had no choice but to carry on until we reached the back door. My colleague was going backwards as I pushed. We both tried to quicken the pace but the sharp corners held us up and I was worried that we would spill our deceased friend onto the floor if we were not careful. So I stopped and said to my colleague to stop. We both looked at each other with fear in our eyes as the cold, dark sensation turned our skin cold and then was gone. In my head I was saying, “I'm not scared of you, show respect for the newly dead and let us be.” A few seconds later and the feeling left us both. Needless to say, we cut through the garden back to the ward entrance rather than try our luck back through the corridor.
The majority of staff shared this experience but no one knew the origins of this sinister presence or for how long it has stalked the corridor. And whatever it is, it does not go beyond the corridor on either end. Whether or not it scares people for kicks or intends genuine harm is unknown, but as yet it has only scared people.
I used to test my bravery by coming in from the courtyard, turn the lights off and walk through to the house in the pitch black. Needless to say most times I found myself running for the first light switch on one of the corners. When this thing followed you, it made sure you knew it was there!
Since I left the Sue Ryder Home in 1996 to move back to South Shields, the staff accommodation has been turned into offices and the corridors all altered so that the mortuary is located in the building instead of outside that never ending corridor!
Surprisingly, my time at the Sue Ryder Home did not present that many 'paranormal' occurrences considering the amount of deaths that occurred there. I've worked out that during my six years at the hospice, there must have been close to 450-500 deaths - which averages around one to two people dying a week. Add to this the fear and sorrow which surrounds the majority of these, that's a lot of negative energy getting dispersed into the fabric of the building. And remember, that's during my time there. It had been a hospice many years before I arrived and another ten years since I left.
As much as I like to hide behind the sceptic’s shield, I still feel fear and sense things I can’t see. But it’s the absolute proof I need to fully embrace and believe. I’m sure time will tell.
This
story was published in Paranormal
Magazine, Issue 17.