This story concerns the now demolished Pinehurst People's Community Centre in Swindon, Wiltshire.
The Centre in later years became well-known for paranormal activity but at the time of my experience, in the summer of 1985, it was a boarded-up and disused Secondary School that had shut some years earlier.
I had been a Scout for some months and our meeting hut was situated at the back of the school complex. To get to the hut meant a walk around the far left wing of the school, which was bordered only by wide playing fields. The nearest houses were several hundred yards away. At the time of my experience the sun was getting low in the sky and it was a warm, peaceful day. At no point did I see anyone else: I was completely on my own.
As I rounded the corner of the school, thinking about nothing in particular, I became aware of the sound of someone playing a piano. I immediately thought it strange but in no way scary; in fact, thoughts of the paranormal had not entered my mind. All I knew was that I was hearing a piano. My instinct was to move towards where the sound was coming from and that was the old school.
I put my head against a boarded-up window and the sound became louder but no clearer in terms of a particular tune. The music seemed to be random and slightly muffled. I looked around and could not see anywhere else the music could be coming from.
As kids do, I abruptly gave up wondering about the music and decided that there must still be an old piano in the school and that someone had broken in and was mucking around with it. So I continued on my way to the Scout meeting.
The piano music bugged me next day at school. I was in my last year at Junior School and, seeing as it was part of the same complex as the old School, the same caretaker was in charge of the maintenance. I decided to ask him about the piano. He gave me a strange look and said the old school was completely empty and clear of any detritus. Not only that, but he was not aware of any break-in.
I thought no more of it and we now fast-forward to the mid-1990s, I was back in Swindon on a visit from University and got talking with my Mum about the People's Centre and how it was doing in its new role as a community hub. My Mum began reminiscing about her time at school and then she said, out of the blue: "of course, even though they've modernised it, it's still haunted." I asked her what she meant as I wasn't aware of the Centre having any ghosts. Mum told me that the far left corner of the building (at this time a nursery) was where the old music room was situated and it was in this area that most of the strange happenings occurred.
None of these happenings included ghostly piano music as far as I know! But over the years the People's Centre built up a reputation as being haunted and occasionally, when visiting the community bar at night, I would venture up the corridor to the toilets - the very corridor that led to the music room. Here, so I had been told, was where doors banged, lights flicked on and off, alarms were activated for no reason and dark shapes had been seen. The only thing I ever noticed though was that the corridor always seemed to be cold and the toilets, where you had to inevitably venture some time if you were at the bar, were never anything less than silent and creepy.
To this day I don't know if the experience I had was genuinely paranormal, if I had had some sort of time slip experience or if there actually had been a piano in the school and a tramp had indeed wandered in and fancied tinkling the ivories at the precise moment I walked by. But the Centre being haunted in the exact area where I had the experience makes me rather favour it being of the spooky kind.
2009 saw the final destruction of the grand old building and the erection of a gleaming new Swindon Academy. The familiar structure I knew has gone but I wonder if the ghosts remain?
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