This week in 1996

Things that go bump on the site

Chill down your spine? Impending sense of dread? Perhaps you’ve been thinking about the effect of Brexit on your business or perhaps the answer is something more sinister. For, once again, Halloween is upon us.

This week, 20 years ago, Building chose to mark the spooky festival with a piece about haunted building sites. These industry anecdotes included ghostly footsteps on the refurbishment of an 18th century building in Kent; a sinister ringing servants’ bell in a cathedral precentor’s house that was undergoing modification and a chilling presence in a city centre market building, both in Lincoln; and a series of ghostly goings on in the Albert Hall, then being managed by Taylor Woodrow Management.

But surely construction folk are hardy, rationalist people, I hear you say? “I’m not convinced that ghosts exist,” said Tony Bower, site foreman on the Kent project. “But there are some things that need explaining.”

So if, when All Hallows’ Eve comes on Monday, things that go bump on the site are keeping you up at night, don’t be scared. Remember, 1996 was a more superstitious, less technologically advanced time. Now we’d be able to explain all these things by collating some data with BIM.

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