One day I was working on my own in the Gun Room on the milling machine marked "A" in diagram, facing the machine with my back to the Model Shop door. I then heard someone walk behind me towards the coat hooks on the back wall, hearing footsteps quite clearly on the wooden block floor.
Ken Angel and Jerry Robins were not in that day so I assumed it was George Truman who kept his coat in the Gun Room. Without looking round I called out to George and did not get a reply, so I turned around but could not see anyone and thought whoever it was must be hiding around the back of the bench that lay between me and the coat hooks.
I got up off my chair and said, hey George what are you doing hiding behind the bench, but there was no reply so I went and took a look behind the bench but there was nobody there. At this point it went very cold in the room making me feel quite strange.
I thought George had come in and gone out again too quickly for me to see him, so I looked through the door into the Model Shop and could see George right up the far end working on the band saw, making it impossible for it to have been him. I have no explanation as to what happened that day, but quite clearly remember the situation to this day.
I was told later that the Gun Room was supposed to be haunted by someone who had shot them self but I don't know if this story is true.
George Pask was my training instructor when I was an apprentice toolmaker. George was around sixty years old when he came from Nottingham to work at Ekco, after time as a toolmaker with Raleigh. George said he had come to Malmesbury to wind down before retirement. He lived in the village of Willesley until retirement, when he said he was going home and returned to Nottingham.
One morning George was at a small milling machine which he had switched on for it to warm up and was sat reading his newspaper, it had just gone time to start work when Arthur "Darky" Hutchinson crept up and snatched the paper away from George leaving just a small piece in each of George's out stretched hands, and proceeded to give George a 'rocket' about starting work on time, needless to say I also suffered that day for not warning George of Darky's approach.
Another day I was stood in the Model Shop talking with Pete Savine, who worked in the waveguide section, discussing various topics when all of a sudden Peter let out an expletive, threw his hands in the air and ran off out of the shop at great speed in the direction of the Plating Shop, I was quite taken aback by his sudden departure.
He reappeared a few minutes later rather crestfallen and red in the face. I enquired about his sudden departure and he proceeded to tell me that he had taken some waveguide tubes to the Plating Shop, there they drilled a small hole in the end of the tubes to hang them from copper wires to immerse them in an acid bath for cleaning prior to brazing, and he had forgotten all about them. When he did remember them and rushed to pull them out all he found was a row of copper wire hooks in the bath without the tubes, the acid having eaten away all the aluminium, he took his rollicking quite well.
My father Albert Thomas worked on the Security Gate for a number of years when Basil Lord was boss of that department and he also worked with Eric Argyle. Father had been suffering for a number of years with a painful shoulder and it had been playing him up quite badly for some time, when he got talking with a Mrs Curd who came from Brinkworth who also worked at the factory. Albert was unaware that she claimed to be a 'medium' and she told him she would see if she could help?
Anyway after a couple of weeks had passed by, Albert's shoulder suddenly got better and he was now free of all pain. He once again spoke with Mrs Curd and mentioned his miraculous recovery, to which she was not at all surprised and explained to Albert that she had sent her "Blue Spirit" to cure him!
