This summer I've been helping out at a friend of a
friend's cleaning service, not a bad job for extra cash between
semesters. Mainly I just vacuum for a couple of hours a day
at Branford Hall in Southington, while the guys do all the
hard work.
Branford Hall was once a movie theater and a bowling alley, I am guessing it was gutted around 30 years
ago if not more; now it is home to a technical college,
various law and medical offices and gift shops. One of the
law offices I clean on Saturdays is shaped like a letter U.
Usually my co-worker Josh will mop and clean the bathrooms
while I collect trash and vacuum. I plug in at the beginning
of one hallway, when I reach the bridge I will have to
replug the vacuum across the "bridge" of the U. Now these
are two long hallways using the entire length of a
commercial vacuum cord.
Over a month ago now while cleaning that office something odd occured. I had finished the first
hallway and offices that extend from it, but when I went to
unplug the vacuum, the plug had been moved to a different
outlet, one in a more impractical spot underneath a small
table. I figured Josh wanted me to use that plug for some
reason and switched them on me, so I brushed it off. Then a
couple weeks later the vacuum was mysteriously unplugged in
the same hallway, when I mentioned it to Josh he told me
little strange things happen like that in the building
often. I told him about my earlier experience, and decided
it could not have been him plugging in the vacuum elsewhere
on me, as the vacuum was on the entire time I was down the
other end of the hall but for the 10 seconds I shut if off
to bump up over a door frame, and Josh would have had to
have been waiting with his hand on the plug for such an
opportunity, not to mention the fact that I think he was in
the other hallways when it happened. So Josh and I got to
talking about creepy things and ghost stories that day, and
I showed him a very old wooden beam in the law office
coincidentally in a conference room right across from the
outlets in question. Now I know this building had been
dramatically renovated, but I believe that part of it
pre-dated the movie theater/bowling alley, as this wooden
beam is definitely not from those days, it is a dark
rough-hewn wood and has several gaps in it where other beams
once connected.
My boyfriend lives in a historical farm
house that was built in 1750, and the beam in the law office
looks very similar to the ones in his house. Upon further
investigation I did find some more of the old beams down the
hallway. As Branford Hall is in the center of town, I'm sure
it was once an historical house or town building. I'd love
to know what went on there hundreds of years ago.
Contact me here: TangerineStar6@yahoo.com
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