When You're A Ghost, Which Parts of CH Will You Haunt And Why?

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Karl Thompson
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When You're A Ghost, Which Parts of CH Will You Haunt And Why?

Post by Karl Thompson »

I think I'd probably haunt the old Library and the Dominions Library next door. I didn't often go into them, but I rather liked them on the rare occasions I did stray in there and of course they overlook the Garden Quad and who didn't like that?.

Possibly I'd also haunt the entire length of the Avenue at the dead of night and maybe also Eastlands Copse across the railway, which was a rather nice airy and mossy coppice wood as I recall.

I wouldn't haunt Chapel or Big School, nor the Dining Hall (because I have no stomach for adolescent prattle). My old house has been turned into a girls' house, so no point in haunting there. The Prep Block? Well, the top floor was already haunted and I wouldn't want to cramp someone else's style.

The sports pitches? You've got to be joking. Too many memories of miserable mud-spattered ordeals which effectively exorcised me from Big Side and Wapplegate when I was still alive and still a teenager.
Last edited by Karl Thompson on Fri Apr 17, 2015 1:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Oliver
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Re: When You're A Ghost, Which Parts of CH Will You Haunt And Why?

Post by Oliver »

I’d haunt my old house, since my most deeply engrained memories are centred there. But even before I become a ghost, something of me already hangs around the place.

But when was the Garden Quad so named? In my day it was the Science Quad. Where/what is Wapplegate?
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Re: When You're A Ghost, Which Parts of CH Will You Haunt And Why?

Post by michael scuffil »

My old house has been turned into a girls' house, so no point in haunting there. All the more reason to haunt it, surely?

As for the Garden Quad: that's what it was christened when it was laid out in 1930 (there's a slate plaque in the ground near the pond). It was named after a quad in London. But certainly no one ever called it that before 1965 at least, for us it was always the New Quad.

The New Science School had a very specific odour (of the ghostly sort you very occasionally get a whiff of elsewhere) and as it was also the scene of my first lesson, I might find myself haunting it.
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Ajarn Philip
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Re: When You're A Ghost, Which Parts of CH Will You Haunt And Why?

Post by Ajarn Philip »

Interesting question. First, I'd have to decide whether I wanted to haunt somewhere I was happy or somewhere I hated.
It would also have to be somewhere where there is some action - a bored ghost is a sad ghost.

If the former, it would have to be the theatre.
If the latter... golly, what choices...
Big School? The scene of exams, but also the venue for plays before the theatre was built.
The bed I slept in during my first year, the scene of frequent torture by 2 ars***oles who shall remain nameless? No, they don't have those dorms any more, do they?
The cross-country run route, if I could remember it - past Shelley's Wood, over a style and up a b****r of a hill - the rest is a blur thankfully.

Come to think of it, there's very little I disliked about CH, so I'll settle for the theatre.
Karl Thompson
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Re: When You're A Ghost, Which Parts of CH Will You Haunt And Why?

Post by Karl Thompson »

Oliver, Wapplegate (or alternatively Wopplegate) is that area of sports pitches next to the cinderpath, i.e. the dead straight driveway-cum-footpath linking Big Side with Two Mile Ash.

You'll probably now tell me that Wapplegate has been given a fearsomely naff new name - likewise the cinderpath - or that they've both been obliterated by a vast new housing complex for retired bokkers.

Whatever, even in my day the cinderpath was properly metalled, with nary a cinder in sight, so let's hope the name still survives against the odds.

I'm now wondering whether any of the dew ponds survives. Maybe they bowed out along with the dairy herd. A shame if so.

Michael, I well remember that distinctive smell of the New Science School, a blend of faintly-seeping gas, dismembered frogs, fishtanks and grimy parquet flooring. The Old Science School barely even had a smell (unless we count the smell of boredom), though some of the fume cupboards had a sulphurous von hanging around them and then there was the sandbucket full of tab-ends outside the door of P G Matthews' lab.

I wonder if the Arts Centre foyer, toilets and stairwells still smell like they used to many a long year ago. A smell of grout, mastic, carpet and ever-so-slight pretentiousness.

(Or do I mean pretention? Or pretence? Nurse, the dictionary and quick.)
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J.R.
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Re: When You're A Ghost, Which Parts of CH Will You Haunt And Why?

Post by J.R. »

Definitely the entire length of the Avenue Tube. I detested having to use it at first, but grew to love the strange atmosphere down there.

In my day, it was dark, damp and smelly and also the scene of a 'bocker' suicide around 1959/60, so it may well already BE haunted !!
John Rutley. Prep B & Coleridge B. 1958-1963.
Oliver
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Re: When You're A Ghost, Which Parts of CH Will You Haunt And Why?

Post by Oliver »

Thanks, Karl. Have a good weekend.
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Re: When You're A Ghost, Which Parts of CH Will You Haunt And Why?

Post by sejintenej »

For me the question is "why". Would I want to terrorise the present pupils (not my style) or revisit old haunts? Having "been back" to places I knew 60 and even 40 years ago I have disliked the changes I have found. To see Col A as it was for the 50 year reunion it simply was not the place where I spent too many years.
There is a certain ex Uni professor in NZ whom I will haunt instead.
What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
Karl Thompson
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Re: When You're A Ghost, Which Parts of CH Will You Haunt And Why?

Post by Karl Thompson »

Dave, believe me, I didn't envisage terrorising pupils and staff as part of the job description for haunting (though JR will doubtless opt to terrify small children in the Tube). I'm merely anticipating a state of disincarnate existence which would allow one to drift to any location one's thoughts might drift to.

Mind you, for all I know, being a ghost might be pretty scary for the ghost himself (or herself). As I recall it, being alone in the Maths Block or Classics Block after dark was a pretty unnerving experience at the best of times, so why would it be any less unnerving if one were a ghost? The resident ghosts might attempt to give one the bum's rush in no uncertain terms for trespassing on their territory.

I wouldn't mind betting that Basil Gregory haunts CH every now and then. The place was his life, so why wouldn't he? Mind you, latter-day developments such as Grecians' East, Grecians' West, Barnes Wallis Avenue and Bluecoat Pond may well have driven him away in tears for all time.
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Re: When You're A Ghost, Which Parts of CH Will You Haunt And Why?

Post by Angela Woodford »

Back at Hertford - I always felt the most atmospheric place was the gound floor of the Science Block but it's gone now! But then the very old houses called "Nines" have great haunting potential. It's probably a happy wholesome place now.

No, I'm choosing the passage that led to the Ante Room and DR's office, where I was so often summoned for various crimes. Whoooo!
"Baldrick, you wouldn't recognise a cunning plan if it painted itself purple, and danced naked on top of a harpsichord singing "Cunning plans are here again.""
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