frame 32 October 2022
Mary’s Scary Story
by Mary Cooper
Though Francis Bacon did not believe in God or the afterlife, he was superstitious.
And, like most of us, he was divided. As science reveals, more is concealed: flickering brain functions, the quantum realm, multiverses – what’s going on? Few of us can entirely dismiss night-time noises in ancient houses. But a modern hotel, in the middle of a city, in broad daylight?
Harriet Vyner asked her sister-in-law Mary Cooper to give us her account of events she experienced. The result is this wonderfully evocative and chilling story.
"The un-conscious's relation to consciousness is like that of a super-massive black hole around which orbits a small star, oblivious to the gravity of its invisible neighbour.”
Chris Bucklow, from FRANCIS BACON: SHADOWS
In the early 1960s, my father sailed from St Lucia to England, as part of the Windrush generation. Caribbean men had been called over to the UK to help with labor shortages there. He left my mother on the island, pregnant with me. As soon as she’d given birth, she left for England to join him – I was given over to my Gran to bring up.
And so, as I grew up, I assumed that Gran was my mother and that the family there were the only family I had. I felt that the rain forest we lived in, with trees, undergrowth and rivers, was the entire universe. It was the only world I knew or needed.
However, when I was five, my Gran suddenly informed me out of the blue, that in two days, I was leaving St Lucia to join my family, including my brother John, in London.
I didn’t understand.
... London?
Mary Cooper
I assumed at least that Gran would come too – but she dumped me on the boat, telling me simply that I would be looked after.
The nursery unit staff tried their best, but no one spoke in the semi-French Patois that I knew. I ran round the boat screaming, chased by an adult just wanting to protect me probably – I thought that she was a monster! But there was one teenage girl who spoke my language. She took charge of me throughout the voyage and walked me off the ship, after 14 days, to my unknown family.
What was the girl’s name? If only I could contact her to say thank you. She must be 74 now. If she’s reading this – thank you.
London was scary – unfamiliar machines were roaring round and my parents and brother John only spoke English. They wanted me to forget Patois. Like a sponge at that age – I soaked up English and now can’t speak French at all.
I got the impression that my mother disliked me. Perhaps no bond had been created since she left me when I had just been born. Even on her deathbed – I wasn’t going to push it as she was dying but I felt – the lady just doesn’t like me.
I met Neil Cooper when we both worked at the Empire Leicester Square in the early 80’s. I was behind the bar and Neil was working as the ticket man on the door. It was instant attraction. After some months, he said he didn’t like London – he was going back to Hull. He asked if I might come too. I thought why not? I’ll see what it’s like. I liked it immediately and have never left. I got married to Neil and had three girls, Roxanne, Shaka and Ry.
Everyone smiles in Hull and is friendly – the opposite of London.
Photograph by Mary Cooper
But in 2017, I got a cleaning job at the Holiday Inn Express, at 80 Ferensway. It was hard – for each room, we were allotted twenty minutes – the toilet, bathroom, make bed, hoover. Rooms were always pigsties. I was used to hard work and liked it. But this was like a workout. On every shift, sweat poured off me. I lost over a stone in a year.
One lady was very sensitive to spirits. She said there are things going on on the 4th floor – an ancient man smiling and a woman in an old-fashioned nightdress, always looking for a child.
Never stop singing – she told me – they like it.
I thought – oh, alright then, fair enough.
From what the lady had said, it appeared that they liked me singing or humming Bob Marley’s Redemption Song as I went from room to room, which I tended to do. I felt slightly safer doing so now, hearing that it might be pleasing whatever was around me.
But I was silently hoovering the stairs one time, going backwards, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the spectral woman – or did I? Just a flash of fair hair.
The sensitive lady said – if you thought you saw her, you did.
The 4th floor did have a strange vibe. I heard that the cleaners had finished with an unoccupied room, went back with the towels – and a black pebble had been placed on the newly made bed.
One day the bar staff said a telephone went flying off the wall for no reason. Now why would they make that up out of the blue?
Maybe everything was true.
I remember, one afternoon, the 4th floor seeming especially strange.
I knew I wasn’t getting ill but I began to feel more energy disappear with each room I cleaned. When I got to the final one, I felt a deadening weight spread over me. I could hardly lift my limbs. I staggered to the door – called my friends in. They moved me to the bed and rang down to the supervisors. Two came up – but strangely, as if they had had the experience before – there were no questions. Just as with my friends, the cleaning team, there was no surprise.
The supervisors said only ‘right, we need to get you out of here.’
I could hardly walk, so they helped me to the lift, down to the staff room, got me a cup of coffee. I still felt as if something had taken over my body. Everything was heavy.
They thought I should go home, so called my daughter Roxanne to fetch me. She did and as soon as I was out of the hotel, I was back to normal. Whatever shadow that had overcome me, had left.
Roxanne told me that I was not going back to work there. She got me an admin job, which suited me fine.
The hotel is still there and operating. The old morgue was on Spring Street, near St Stephens Mall. The shops there report strange goings on – Topshop, H&M and the like.
Did I imagine it? But I remember how I felt. Something had taken over me. When I left – it fell away and I was walking into sunshine.
“Bacon's shadows, pooled around feet or falling across the image, are stains that allude to a moral darkness, intimations of guilt or the realm of death.”
Amanda Harrison, from FRANCIS BACON: SHADOWS
A special thank you to Nora Cooper.