Some say they can hear the dragging of binders at night

My office is like many other offices all over the place. Open plan, full of the clicking of keyboard buttons and has a regular department newsletter. Ours is called the Bulletin. Its primary function is to disseminate information which is not high priority to staff. The stuff which doesn't need an e-mail or a shout across two desks. And much of it is as dry as you are probably thinking.

The usual fare is the latest bit of sector development, an upcoming social event or a reminder of a future bit of work scheduled.

That is until I came across a strange discovery. Files in the Vault rooms under the office, in the basement of the ancient building are old and of no use. But when I happened to find myself down there - the files had been moved. They were jumbled, mixed and cluttered.

I tidied them then, as anyone would, staked out the basement for weeks: Taking all manner of readings and noting all findings in a leather bound journal. My tenacity was rewarded when, many checks later, I noticed the files once more in the wrong order. I tidied them again and retreated once more into my Hide with my flask. You can imagine my delirium, then, when again I found the files out of sequence!

I immediately wrote an article for the Bulletin, my keyboard buttons clicking away in the open plan office:

Like the diamond biting wind, I write! Riding down the proverbial Bulletin chimney, ruddying the failing embers in the hearth. There is, of course, warm syrups and still, smokey hazelnuts to glow you golden into the deep blue night - but just now I wish to tell you a tale which contains a most serious review of mystery indeed.

I have dealt with 3 instances now where runs of files and volumes have been found on the shelves in the vault rooms in disarray. An entire series out of sequence, material untidy on shelves and books, generally, moved out of their proper location.

There is only one reasonable conclusion a near rational person can make from all this - these rooms are haunted by a ghost or, I am afraid, more inevitably, ghosts. I don't want to alarm anyone but they almost certainly are the souls of Burke and Hare searching for living bodies to drag to Limbo for medical research by dead doctors.

Should you witness any ghostly goings on or find evidence of activity, you suspect, by spookticles please let me know. I will be sure to arrange for you to sit in the vault rooms in the dark over night and you can record anything else you see or hear with a pad of paper and pencil.

I received no uptake on my offer.

Strangley, as a post-script to this blogette, I discovered [with no one willing to sit in a room in the dark until something happens who else was going to go to possibly extreme measures simply to find out what was going on with some binders no one uses and few cared about and, actually, even less had heard of before I wrote the article? Exactly] that the vaults were at one time an entrance, now bricked up, to the building. This entrance, though potentially convenient for those working in the building was in fact blocked by a local monger's workshop yard. The men spoke to the monger and agreed that should he allow clear passage with a new asphalt path and secure gate they would pay him for the work and the right to use the entrance. The men, the monger claimed, never paid him a penny for his work and took them to court. He lost.

So it seems I was way off. This was not Burke and Hare after all but is the spirit of the monger. Moving the books, most likely, trying to drag them to Limbo for literary research by dead doctors.