My Ghost Experience at the Photolab

From: Richard (RSan631012@aol.com)
Story type: Ghost
Location: Germany
Source: Form Submission

Back many years ago as I was going to High School in Nuremburg, Germany, my friends had talked about a ghost in the photolab at the base we lived, Herzo Base. During WWII, Herzo was a nazi airstrip and has alot of the original buildings and a hanger from that time there. The photolab was in one of such building...as told, it was the officers quarters. One day I decided to go up there with them out of curiosity but nothing out of the ordinary happened. That was when I became interested in photography though....after watching all the things you could do there. I started to become a regular there for the photography not the ghost stories. The more time I spent there that's when the strange things would occur. Simple things, like in the film cage, which was only 2ft by 2 ft, you would have that eerie feeling of someone standing behind you watching. Those are things you could blow off as nothing but on several occasions you would be in the processing room and that is where things tend to happen.

On one side of the room was a picture washer. It was attached by a water hose from the sink and when turned on would rotate in the water to rinse the pictures after development. This wash bin would make a ticking sound as it rotated. I would be in there by myself and could hear it slowly starting to rotate, picking up speed very slowly. I would have to physically go to the sink and turn the knob back off. After awhile it would start up again and I would have to go back again to turn the knob off. This happened on several occasions.

Another time I was printing some pictures and had just opened a new package of paper. I tried printing a picture and half the paper was covered with what looked like a hand. It came out black on the paper which to me is a sign of a source of energy. I tried printing the picture a second time and again the same print. I open the projector and cleaned it out and made sure there was nothing wrong with the negative. I tried a third time and again the exact same print. I called the manager in to look at it and she did the samething..open the projector, cleaned it out and printed the picture. This time it came out fine..no hand print. She then asked me to watch the shop so she could run downstairs to get something to eat (photolab was on the third floor). She wasn't even gone for a minute whenI tried printing the picture myself...and there it was..the exact same hand print. That's when I stepped back and said "Ok...stop it Hans!". I tried the picture again and it came out fine. We kinda just named him Hans because we figured he was German and that was the first name we came up with. But it was funny that when things start getting weird like that all you had to do was say "Stop it Hans!" and it would stop. (I kept those pictures some where.)

Other thing that occurred there.....well since I had become a regular there, during the summer I was there almost everyday till closing. At closing I always helped the manager out. We would have to make sure all the projectors, timers, drying booth heater...everything had to be not just turned off but unplugged. When we would come in the next morning there would be a light on, timer plugged in and running, a projector turned on or the heater turned on...knowing that we had unplugged them the night before. I know you can say someone may have came in after we left and did that .....but that thought got blown out of the water one night. As we closed up every night we also closed the rotating door to the dark room to where the door was facing out. This one night I personally closed that door before we left. She locked up the lab and as we were exiting down the stairs we both heard that door start rotating. We both stopped and looked at each other and said "I ain't going back up there till tomorrow." Well the next morning we went up there and low and behold, the rotating door was swung open....what was spooky about it was there was a huge hand print on the back wall of it...it had to be 10" long. It looked like someone or something had stuck their hand in the developer tray and pressed it against the back of the door. I think that was the occurrence that really got me to believe.

Other occasions....you would be sitting in the office and hear the door to the lab open and hear footsteps walking down the hall.......there was nothing between the lab door and the office door but about 20' of hallway. Wooden floors make a very distinctive sound. You would wait to see who it was and when no one showed up at the office door, you would go look to see who's there.....the hall would be empty. That Hans...what a prankster.

There were all kinds of these experiences and I could probably go on and on but I think those would get the point across.....there was a ghost up there.