Andy Owens in FT

 

The paranormal investigator and hospital porter, Andy Owens, has had a letter published in Fortean Times. MEP&DBP came to my attention a few months ago when he announced he was going to try and solve the mystery of a missing person in Glasgow from almost sixty years ago, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/03/hp-seeks-missing-boy.html. Fortean Times is a monthly magazine based in the UK that covers anomalous phenomena like ghosts, UFO's monsters and similar enigmas. Its name relates to the famous supernatural writer and researcher Charles Fort (1874-1932). I've been a regular reader of it myself for some years now. Along with Nexus, it is an essential journal for anybody with esoteric interests. Andy's letter can be found in the current issue at the time of writing, issue 450 for November 2024. Being a HP is actually the perfect occupation for a Fortean investigator because hospitals are one of the top places to find ghostly apparitions. There's a lot of discussion as to why that is. Generally such apparitions are often of people who have died sudden, unpleasant and/or violent deaths. Hospitals are buildings full of pain, suffering and fear; they are the place where people are most likely to die. It's a complicated subject though. The letter describes reports of strange encounters his colleagues reported in the hospital where he serves. These include unsourced sounds like footsteps and even seeing human figures where nobody should be there. Also, objects sometimes move when nobody is touching them. Andy himself experienced a strange sound when doing mortuary duty with a fellow porter during the nightshift. He also saw the door to an A and E cubicle move by itself. He shares my own frustration with the doors that were badly designed. I even kept a mental hit-list of all the malfunctioning pieces of equipment in my hospital that I knew off by heart. If only we had helpful ghosts that opened the doors for us, Andy laments. When my time comes, if I am trapped on the earthly plane I will do that favour for all my EP&DB&SP's still living.
See here for more information: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2021/12/hospital-pm-scares.html.
And: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2015/07/alyson-dunlop-on-hospital-ghosts.html.

Malinformation 2- Marjorie

 

See here for essential background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/11/malinformation.html.
A while ago I wrote an article about the pros and cons of civvy receptionists, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/04/civilian-receptionists-yay-or-nay.html. Along with Rebecca another character stands out in my mind. Her name was... I'll call her "Marjorie". Marjorie was different to the other receptionists brought in by ISS Mediclean when they took over the service. She was older, close to retirement, and had no experience or training with the company or NHS. She was local and lived around the corner from where I used to live, although I never knew her previously. She made herself very unpopular with the portering staff from the get-go because she immediately appointed herself de facto supervisor of the department even though she held no portering grade at all. Her role was receptionist and dispatcher in the Maternity unit, later the Women's Centre, with no formal authority over us at all. She was also made a minor celebrity by being featured in the hospital newspaper in the column Radcliffe People, a spot that gave a profile of a particular staff member in each issue. This was an honour never afforded to me in all twenty-three of my years, yet Marjorie made within a couple of months. She was the right kind of staff member, you see. It seems she was being groomed by management to play this role; she was encouraged to act like our boss even though she wasn't. I remember she insisted on always keeping the key to the lodge safe so we couldn't even access our payslips without her permission.

Along with the general sense of privilege Marjorie was encouraged to feel was a certain amount of malinformation. For some reason, when there was any kind of mysterious criminal behaviour in the hospital, porters were always the first to be blamed, especially by her. This is despite the fact that, as I've explained before, all the worst offences in the OxRad world were committed by civilians, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2015/05/killer-nurses.html. There was an instance in the late 1990's when a number of staff had complained that their lockers in the Theatres department had been broken into and items of value had been stolen. When I was speaking to Marjorie about it she didn't go as far as automatically to accuse the porters, but she did say: "I can't imagine a nurse doing that." I could have made the point that she had almost no experience of hospital life, let alone awareness of the scandals I have reported on, but I didn't. With retrospect it was just as well because it turned out that two porters were to blame. A pair of brothers who suddenly handed in their resignations and left the country just before the net closed. I'm the first to admit we HP's are not perfect, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2023/12/hps-and-psychos.html. Despite this, it annoys me that Marjorie was enticed deliberately by management into this narrow-minded and entitled attitude. She was clearly being used by them for some purpose... but I'm not sure what exactly.
(The illustration above is not an actual image of Marjorie.)

Malinformation

 

I'm a big fan of Neil Oliver, in fact I consider him to be the new conscience of the nation. He has a perception and passion that crystallizes many people's experience of living in today's world. A few months ago he made an interesting video about what he calls "malinformation". This term obviously emerges out of that infamous 2020's buzzword misinformation, but it's different in a crucial way. Misinformation is information that is false (allegedly), a lie, created to deceive. Malinformation is information that is true, but people being aware of it has a bad effect of some kind on somebody for some reason. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a5fBGUqfBU. In one of those strange ways, the other day I had two supposedly unconnected thoughts pop into my head at the same time. Firstly, it struck me that it was malinformation to be proud to be a hospital porter. In fact I've had so many conversations with others that prove this. I remember being on an overnight ferry to Ireland back in 2002. I had gone on holiday with somebody I really shouldn't have, as I found out later. We spent most of the journey on the standard argument... "but you just push a trolley, Ben!"... "Yes but"... and you know the rest. Despite the fact I won the debate easily, as I always do when it comes to this one; my "friend" refused to change his position and he doggedly doubled down, wasting what should have been, and could have been, a happy sea voyage for us both. By the time we docked at Cork harbour he was very agitated and found a pretext to hurl abuse at me in front of all the other passengers as we were waiting to disembark. He had been subjected to malinformation and felt hurt and enraged by it. For him, this was like an attack by me, as if I had physically struck him or stolen his car. This encounter was not the only time it happened; and it happened with many other people. What is it about being proud to be a HP that makes it malinformation? I'm still not sure after about thirty-five years of experiencing it. Maybe it's because it discredits an established piece of generally received opinion that most people regard as essential for making sense of their world. It is strange, but by far the most hostile recipients of my particular brand of malinformation are HP's or ex-HP's; especially the latter. The best example has to be "Jack Shaw", see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2023/05/i-lied-to-jack.html. Perhaps it would force him to admit that he had been lured away by the bright lights of civilian life because he couldn't bear the low conventional status of HPing. He resented me because I was standing up to something he ran away from. He envied me. He envied me as a prisoner envies his cellmate who achieves a jailbreak. Perhaps readers have other ideas and can enlighten me, in which case, please do post them in the comments section. The other idea I mentioned, on reflection, probably needs a separate follow-up article.