I think this was probably over the summer of 2005, in the 'mid-period' of my time span there. It would begin late at night, in the last hour of the shift (9:30 - 10:30pm) and would take the form of a kind of awareness of a certain part of the shop-interior. As light fell from the day outside, there would be a barely acknowledged sensation of someone standing by the pizza-freezers (as we called them, they also contained frozen dinners, overpriced ice-cream tubs etc.) As twilight fell to full night outside, this barely acknowledged sensation would turn into fully fledged conviction. I would be serving customers at the customers, and be convinced there would be someone standing there, watching me. When I had the chance to look properly, there would be no-one there. Sometimes, out of the corner of an eye, it was almost possible to see the form of a figure there, a small human shaped shadow. An awareness of something that shouldn't be there, a darkness delineated under fluorescent strip lighting. A humming in the petrol station silence.
It really was rather eerie.
Wheares, after I had closed up the garage, I might linger for half an hour having a cup of coffee, reading the newspaper, now, when the garage would shut, I would collect my things and flee. In the darkened petrol station, the outside world seemed a million miles away, safe and bright, and far, far away from this unpleasant sensation that wasn't there a few months before.
In the reaches of my overactive imagination, I would give form to this shadow. I imagined it as a small woman, wrapped in a cloak, head hidden by a hood. Awful, staring eyes. I would imagine her gliding from the stock room when I went to turn off the power to the pumps. Would imagine her as I walked across the forecour staring at me from the night-still interior of the shop.
I was both alarmed and pleased when other people began to notice this phenomena too. Some of the part-timers said that they felt there was someone in the shop when no-one was there, and every person who worked the evening shift felt there was someone standing amongst the empty aisles, always in the same place, by the pizza-freezers...
One day, the manager was over the by the pizza-freezers. He said that he was replacing one of the interior light bulbs, which had burned out a few months before.
Then, that night... No more uncomfortable feeling of being watched. No more shadow. No more panicky need to flee the petrol station as soon as it was locked up.
It turned out that our haunting was no more than a broken light bulb.
It barely made any difference that light bulb. The freezer was a bit darker and that was all, but somehow, the subconscious had picked up on this new patch of barely perceptible darkness and had identified it as a threat. This threat, which had no basis in any real threat, had transformed itself into a supernatural incursion. Sick building syndrome. Petrol station panic attack. Nothing there but our own fears flung at a patch of shadow where we were not used to there being a shadow.
I was elated.
Elated not so much at the thought of the petrol station not being haunted, but the fact that a haunting had been solved. Fascinating too, and concurred with what I had thought that many haunted buildings may well be the result of bad angles, bad lighting, bad architecture. An unfortunate georgraphy, 'here be monsters', written on the maps of rooms.
A haunted cartography.
There were no more reports of being watched at the end of the evening shift, and I began to linger more for post-work coffees and attempt to finish the crossword in the Independent. I have a similar story with a vanishing black dog on a bridge which turned out to have a rational explanation too, but thats a story for another time, and despite the dog not turning out to be a hellhound, but a rather friendly shaggy mongrel, there was a strange coincidence involved, but I'll get round to that story another day...
Stood in front of the pizza-fridges on a return trip to the petrol station back in December of 2008
