A former bank vault door has been filmed moving in the middle of the night deep below a city centre, leaving staff scared to venture downstairs.
The vape shop workers, who claim a video of the heavy door is not a Halloween trick, say they often hear “funny noises” and believe the basement which is home to the shop’s staff toilets has a “strange atmosphere”.
The three-year-old vaping company moved to a new address on Bennetts Hill, Birmingham between the Cosy Club (formerly Midland Bank) and JD Wetherspoon’s The Briar Rose pub.
But just days later bosses installed CCTV cameras all over the premises, which was first built in 1835.
According to local legend, the building first became a watering hole in 1883 and the then Bodega wine bar was popular with sportsmen and thespians.
On December 5, 1895, publican Henry Skinner reputedly made the mistake of crossing brothers Herbert and Arthur Allen, Birmingham Live reports.
Arthur worked at the pub but was sacked on the spot and a furious row over wages erupted. In a fit of rage his brother grabbed a gun and blasted the landlord in the cellar.
The legend goes on that Henry – the ghost – wears a bowler hat and there were said to be two more ghosts upstairs – of two girls who fell to their deaths.
Known as The Trocadero since 1912, a man behind the bar said: “Those stories were made up. I’ve been here for years and not seen anything.”
Lewis Felstead, one of the directors of e-liquids.com, set up a series of security cameras and couldn’t believe what he saw on Monday morning this week.
Lewis said: “We were putting a new office in upstairs and discovered this space down here.
“The builders didn’t almost want to be in here to explore because they were hearing strange noises.
“When they came down here they would often come straight back up so with that we weren’t sure what was going on.
“We needed to know what was happening with the building and that’s when we put in the expensive cameras.
“We found that things were moving on their own, including this door. It sends a shiver down my spine being stuck here in this space if I’m honest.
“When you come down here you can feel the atmosphere change in this space. One of our female colleagues was one of the first to come down here to have a look, but one of the first to run back up and to let everyone know what the experience was like.
“That was part of the trigger for looking to investigate further.”
