S07-E04 - Take Care, Caretaker
Haunted UK Podcast: History, Hauntings and the Unexplained
Steven Holloway
4.5 • 652 Ratings
🗓️ 25 October 2025
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A community hall should feel familiar.
Stacked chairs, stage curtains, children’s parties, committee meetings, tea urns, and lights switched off at the end of the night.
But for Jan, the ordinary became something far darker.
In this listener-led episode of Haunted UK Podcast, Steve shares Jan’s disturbing account from a community centre in the northwest of England — a building that seemed, at first, completely unremarkable. After recovering from a major heart attack and stepping away from office work, Jan took a part-time role as cleaner and caretaker, hoping to feel useful, valued, and involved again.
What began as light cleaning after parties soon became a series of increasingly strange experiences: doors banging in an empty locked building, a toy pushchair moving across the hall by itself, cold and oppressive atmospheres, voices, footsteps, objects shifting, and the repeated appearance of something connected to the building’s past.
Other staff had their own stories. A man in an old-fashioned suit had been seen near the stage, a possible former headmaster from the days when the building was part of a school. But alongside him was something else — a darker presence, described by witnesses as a black shadowy figure, a smoky mass, or a hooded form moving silently through the hall.
The most unsettling moment comes after an evening pantomime, when Jan is alone in the building and sees a strange blue ball of light grow in the darkened hall before shooting through the double doors. The next morning, a local teenager arrives with his own account of what he saw through the rear window: a huge shadow figure following Jan across the room.
Atmospheric, strange, and deeply unnerving, this episode blends witness testimony, haunted workplace activity, possible residual spirits, mediumship, shadow phenomena, and the uneasy suggestion that something inside the community hall was never meant to be disturbed.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Have you ever had a moment that made your skin crawl? A shadow where there shouldn't be one? A whisper in an empty room or something you simply can't explain. If so, we want to hear from you. Here at the Haunted UK podcast, we're always on the lookout for spine-tingling stories to feature in our end-of-season |
| 0:22.0 | listener episodes and our short haunt series. Whether it's a chilling encounter, a mysterious |
| 0:28.5 | experience or something that's haunted you for years, we want your tale. Send your story to contact |
| 0:35.6 | us at haunted UK podcast.com. |
| 0:39.3 | And don't forget to follow us on social media. |
| 0:42.3 | Facebook, X at Haunted UKPot, TikTok and Instagram at Haunted UK Podcast, or visit our website |
| 0:50.5 | www.w.w.wantedukpodcast.com. Now Now if you love what we do and want even more haunted goodies, |
| 0:59.5 | then you can support the show on Patreon and coffee. We've got two brilliant tears, |
| 1:04.8 | possessed and spooked, both packed with bonus content, exclusive episodes and extra material that'll keep you up all night. |
| 1:13.5 | But that's not all. We've launched a brand new sister podcast, Haunted UK Fiction, |
| 1:19.9 | and we're calling all storytellers. Whether you're a published author, an aspiring writer, |
| 1:25.4 | or someone with a natural gift for spinning eerie tales. |
| 1:29.1 | We're looking for original fictional short stories and novellas with strong paranormal or supernatural |
| 1:34.7 | themes. Think suspenseful, mysterious, atmospheric, terrifying, thought-provoking, even darkly magical. |
| 1:43.1 | If your story is selected, we'll professionally |
| 1:45.9 | narrate, record, mix and master it into an audiobook style format, then feature it on the show. |
| 1:52.4 | You'll get a copy of the finished production to use however you like, and you'll retain |
| 1:57.3 | full ownership of your work. Submit your story to Haunted UK Fiction at |
| 2:03.0 | hotmail.com and follow us on Instagram at Haunted UK Fiction. So whether it's truth or |
| 2:09.6 | fiction, if it's haunted, we wanted. Now, sit back and enjoy the episode. |
| 2:32.3 | I took a huge breath and walk through the door. |
| 2:36.0 | I found nothing. No one. A very cold and dark feeling swept over me. |
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