The first time I had the story told to me as a new hire, the ghost was that of an old women who had been found dead on one of the bus station benches. The spoor of the spooky story, melodramatic at heart, hintied heavily that she’d been waiting for someone who never arrived to meet up with her there at the depot. No clarity or clue as to whether she or the one she was waiting for was the one in transit, but a clear hinting that some level of heartbreak was involved. A lovelorn’s simple romantic jilting? Or possibly something far more tragic? It was never made clear in my first hearing of the story. It may have been that the story’s specifics, when passed along to me for the first time that night, were a bit clouded in all the pot and bottled beer through which the woman’s story was told and heard.

The bud of the ghostly yarn was vague, but the details surrounding the haunting were delightfully crisp, as all good ghost stories have to be in order to function as good ghost stories. The focus of the haunting back then still was the women’s bathroom, the more vivid and eerie accounts all involving wooden stall doors flapping and slamming well after closing time. Oddly, most if not all the strange detailed anecdotes regarding the haunting happened just after or well after close. A string of freshly laid out cleaned ashtrays flying and twirling, one by one in procession, down onto the parqueted dancefloor. Xeroxed concert bills stapled to wooden walls seemingly ripping themselves from same and then spinning dervishily atop the floor. DJ’s watching the needle and tone arm of their Technics turntable bounce and bound crazily over a spinning record. Weird, uneartly screeching and murmuring heard through headphones by the same DJs. The bleating of sheep and instanteous chilling shifts of air temperature deep down within the bowels of the basement. Straying mute old women sighted well after close trailing amidst the pinball machines and pool tables who would never be found even after a full search was commenced.

I was never privy to stories of the girl in the army jacket who hung herself in the fifth stall. That variation was obviously something that came later well after my tenure at the club, but it too is in keeping with all good stories…especially those that are communal and are representative of their day. No doubt, the story and the details of the ghost will change in the future…as they should.