right all the requests are for: drunk curator stories; ghosts in museums; weird things in museums; SO

have i told y'all about the time i was drunk in a palace at two am and Stuff Began Occurring https://twitter.com/oldenoughtosay/status/1385705335357382660

as always, some of you know this story/will recognise the setting; please keep it to yourself for my reputation may be damned but that is no reason to embarrass anyone else

anyways, many years ago, when i was a broke grad student™, I took a summer job at a Historic Property in the English Countryside. in addition to all of the normal benefits of A Job, it came with free room and board.

Now, this was before Downton Abbey was really a 'thing', like it existed but country houses had not yet adapted all of their tours and interpretations to reflect how the Downstairs lived. So the room and board was, somewhat ironically, the old servants' quarters.

The attic, basically. Several neat and tidy single rooms for us young summer staff, a kitchenette, communal bathrooms, all tucked up under the eaves. I can't tell you how old this building is without giving things away but, you know, it's old enough to have Seen Some Stuff.

The 'downstairs' part of the downstairs, the old butler's room and such, were staff offices and collections' care rooms and the like. And of course the servants stairs were intact, so you could get from where we were staying to the offices without going through the state rooms.

There were, I think, six of us living on site that summer? Somehow I was the oldest, and therefore deemed the responsible one.

ANYWAYS. After the site and grounds closed each day, we basically had the run of the place.

This was extremely, extremely fun.

Like if you think I'm ridiculous now, I need you to imagine me, with the keys to what is, essentially, a palace.

We did yoga in the Queen's Bedroom. We played hide and seek in the follies. We watched Bake Off in the grand library.

And one night, we watched a particularly devastating episode of GBBO, you know the one, and we retired to the village pub to drown our sorrows.

At some point it became apparent that the weather was going to drown *us* if we weren't careful, so we headed back via the offie.

Like most of these properties, it's surrounded by grounds and fields and then some more fields. By the time we got our drinks, it had started raining in earnest, so rather than walk the long way, we cut through one of the sheep fields, jumped the ha-ha, and sprinted inside.

And then proceeded to continue drinking. Now, I know I regularly say that British weather is very mild, and it is.

This was, and still is to date, the worst summer storm I have witnessed on this island.

Have you ever heard thunder crashing through a portico? Seen lightning glance off gothic follies? The house is, naturally, built on a hill, and the heart of the storm hit us direct. It was beautiful.

By one am, hail was crashing into our bedroom windows, and we huddled together in the corridor. Within the hour, lightning hit something on or near the house, blowing out the power.

Now this is, despite being an Old House, also an up-to-date heritage conservation property, so two things happened immediately as the power cut out.
First, every single open door throughout the building slammed shut. Second, every single alarm went off. At once.

Take a minute to imagine this. It is two am, you are intoxicated, and suddenly, you are cast into utter darkness. Your body is shaking from the reverberating force of, I do not exaggerate, approximately 300 doors being thrown shut by powerful magnets, *at once*.

And then about a dozen alarms go off.

It was possibly the eeriest thing I have ever witnessed.

Remember, I'm the responsible one.

I can't remember if I called or texted my boss or security or what, but somebody told me to get down to the office and cut the alarms at the fuse box.

I made everyone else come with me, because like hell was I doing this alone, and we began trekking. We made it down one floor.

Did I mention that access to the servants' stair is through doors hidden in the wall panelling? When every door closed and all power went out, well.

We couldn't find the door we needed.

Just straight couldn't find it.

We were gonna have to go through the house.

So we're weaving through a house old enough to not have corridors in parts, lit only by our cellphones and flashes of lightning, with paintings of angels and demons glaring down at us from the ceiling.

We hear a thud.

It was not thunder.

No worries. Maybe one of the doors didn't close immediately. We continue.

Another thud.

Now we know the house is haunted, because of course it is, but it's been six or so weeks and nobody's had a bad run in yet.

Thud.

We turn out of one room to take the Fancy Stairs to the piano nobile.

Thud.

The stairs are not where they should be.

Thud.

I turn in a circle, looking for the missing stairs.

Thud.

One of the others screams.

Thud.

I whirl around.

Thud.

There's the stairs- and a flash of glowing lights.

Thud.

Two glowing eyes.

Thud.

They vanish.

The alarms are still going off. I try to focus. The two most sober of the party have bolted back upstairs- sound choice, honestly- and I cannot, for the life of me, remember the other way to get down to the cellar.

The thuds seem to stop. We sprint for it.

We fall over each other, gasping, down the main stairs, take a mad dash through the house and tumble down the servants' stairs, finally landing safely in the office. I slap at the fuse box, throwing switches at random until the alarms cut off and the dim emergency lights come on.

Thud.

From outside the officer door.

I don't think any of us breathed for a solid minute.

I tried to call my boss, who knew the resident ghosts better. You know what doesn't exist on the ground floor of old historic houses? Phone reception.

Outside, lightning flashes. Thunder booms. And the door, that door, THUDS, with a force hard enough to shake it in its frame.

And as we stare, at the rattling hinges, we hear, echoing through the servants' hall.....

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Turns out a sheep had followed us over the ha-ha earlier, and somehow made its way inside to shelter from the storm before all the doors closed.

And that is, to this day, the weirdest thing I have ever found in a museum.

a live sheep.

We went upstairs, called the farmer, we all lived, we had a great time explaining the entire thing to the senior staff the next day, I don't know how *you* expected this story to end but I hope you enjoyed it anyways, good night.

I really need to set up a ko-fi or something to fund Future Drunk Adventures but in the mean time, if you enjoy these and you have some spare change, please chuck it at your local heritage site; they absolutely certainly need it.