Mick Jagger's Service Confirmed

 

See here for essential background: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/07/hospital-porters-who-changed-world.html.
Following the above article that I wrote over ten years ago, I remembered the rather vague reference to Mick Jagger's porterhood and whether there was anything else out there about it. There is, from 2014 and from a very reputable source. NME- New Musical Express has been running since 1952 and has been the go-to one-stop-shop for all kinds of gossip from the music industry. The article has a very bad title: 28 Boring Day Jobs Musicians Did Before They Were Famous. That's not only deeply patronizing and ignorant of the NME journalist, it is untrue for nearly everybody who has ever expressed an opinion. I have only known a tiny number of people, a low single digit number, who described hospital portering as "boring". Adjectives more commonly used are: "fun", "satisfying", "interesting", "inspiring", "involving", "stressful", "challenging", "frightening" and "tiring". Anyway, the important point is that it comments on Mick's porting career at number seven: "Mick Jagger- Hospital porter. Jagger worked part time as a porter in Bexley Psychiatric Hospital when he was eighteen. An unlikely place for romance, legendary lothario Mick actually lost his virginity in the hospital to a nurse in a store cupboard." I personally doubt very much that Mick Jagger lost his virginity at eighteen; he must have done so years earlier. What's more I know of not one single HP who does not relate tall stories of the most impressive sexual escapades involving nurses and store cupboards, especially when they're in the social club and they've had a few. Source: https://www.nme.com/photos/28-boring-day-jobs-musicians-did-before-they-were-famous-1427661. Bexley Hospital closed on the 19th of September 2001, a hundred and three years to the day since it first opened. Today most of it has been demolished and redeveloped. Portering in psychiatric acute care is very different from general clinical work. It involves very different skills and aptitude. Although because I was at a general hospital my entire service I did some psychiatric work. When Mick Tweeted a merry Christmas to all his followers, I replied: "Merry Christmas, Mick. From a fellow hospital porter." Source: https://twitter.com/Porterhood/status/1474875165691498497. If he likes or replies, I'll let you know. Happy New Year all HPWA readers!

Hospital PM Scares

 

I'm a big fan of the YouTube channel "The Darkest Secret". It is presented by a lady from Mexico who produces very well-designed videos featuring spooky photos and footage, usually of ghosts and related phenomena. Hospitals are hotbeds for the presence of such phenomena. Nobody knows why for sure. Believers in the paranormal say that it is caused by the amount of pain, suffering, fear and death that goes on with their walls. This generates a kind of "psychic charge" that causes rifts between our world and the "spirit-world". Skeptics claim that these are hallucinations brought on by overworked and stressed out healthcare providers or drug induced in the case of patients. I can honestly tell you that I never saw anything definitively spooky in all my twenty-three years as a hospital porter; however I heard stories from other staff along those lines. On one occasion, I came on duty for a night shift at ten PM and was deployed to A and E. There I heard that the previous nursing shift, that finished about an hour and half before the portering late shift, was buzzing with excitement over an incident in the Clinical Decisions Unit (This is really just an extension of A and E where patients can be moved to so we can falsely claim we are beating the waiting time targets). A nurse on duty in the unit saw a glowing spectral humanoid figure standing in one of the corridors of the ward. The source for this apparition is unknown and there were no independent witnesses. However, a patient was undergoing CPR in Resus, about forty yards away, at that time. Was this the patient astral travelling? This video includes skin-crawling evidence gathered in hospital post-mortem suites. It's a terrifying thing if you're not used to it, but occasionally dead bodies can move slightly and even make sounds. Indeed, I've had to comfort one or two new rookies over the years when they experience this for the first time and run screaming from the department. This is caused by the contraction of muscles as rigor mortis sets in; and vocal chords being active so when air flows in the lungs and respiratory tracts as the porters move the cadaver, it moans and groans. The case in the thumbnail image, of the body sitting bolt upright and screaming, has been known; but this is due to the misdiagnosis of death. Fortunately it is very rare nowadays, but was quite common in the past. People in very deep unconscious states were wrongly pronounced dead and later came to while being processed for burial. What a horrible experience! The most famous modern case is that of Dannion Brinkley, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDrDYPzbvlc.
 
The video image of a Grim Reaper-like black figure is one of the most frequently reported phenomenon. It could be that there really is such a thing. The ancient Greeks called it an "asphyx", an aetheric being that comes down from the spirit-world to collect a soul when it departs a body at the point of death. This concept led to what I consider one of the finest horror films ever made, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RlB9NiNGr4. Could that little amateur video clip be evidence of a real asphyx? Alternatively it could simply be somebody actually dressed like that. The providers do not react to its presence; so either they know what it already or they can't see it. Sometimes creepy images can appear in photographs where what is depicted is not visibly present. The car selfie is a good example. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGixwPeFIWU. Of course this image could be faked. It is easily possible to produce digital images using modern available electronics like this that look as real as if they were truly there. That is the current burden for all kinds of paranormal research, UFOlogy, Loch Ness, ghosts etc. Photographic evidence no longer carries the same weight that it used to and there is a terrible signal-to-noise ratio problem as a result. However images like the one taken can sometimes be seen in older photographs that predate that technology. Hospital ghosts are a very scary and yet interesting topic, regardless of your opinion of their factual nature.
See here for background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2015/07/alyson-dunlop-on-hospital-ghosts.html.