08-05-2025
A ghostly encounter at Newspaper House
There are many stories to be told about Newspaper House in Baakens Street, but perhaps one of the most enduring is the mysterious 'ghost' with which one former employee had a more-than-close brush and which left her more than a little rattled.
Former The Herald photographer and chief librarian Judy de Vega remembers only too well her encounter with the 'fleeting, shadowy' form which paid her a visit when she was all alone in the building.
She was processing photographs on a Saturday night in 2009 when, out of the blue, the light suddenly went off.
De Vega said the light had in fact been switched off.
'I thought: 'What the hell is going on?'.
'And then I heard what sounded like someone coming into the office at the goods lift at the back of the building, but I was alone.
'The air was ice cold and it sounded like a lady walking in heels. There was this fleeting shadow.'
De Vega said she had seen the shadow walking behind her — the reflection was on her cellphone screen.
When she turned to look, there was no-one.
But as she left, De Vega witnessed through a glass panel of a door a figure sitting at a desk staring at the lift.
De Vega said the amusing part was that a colleague, a Mrs Planter, had told her about a ghostly woman visitor and had said De Vega should 'just talk to her'.
'But I initially just laughed it off.'
De Vega started a job as a casual worker for just two weeks involved in the circulation department and as a library assistant — but she would ultimately spend 28 years working for The Herald and its sister publications.
One of her crowning achievements came when she won a national photographic award for one of her pictures — and it was all because of a visit to the doctor.
'I had to go to the doctor at lunchtime and around the corner in Military Road there was absolute chaos.
'There were these ladies — huddled on the pavement — who had got caught up in a protest where police were firing stun grenades.'
So in the spur of the moment, De Vega did her journalistic duty and snapped the award-winning shot of several women cowering on the pavement as other people fled in different directions during a protest by contractors during which police fired stun grenades.
De Vega said her job as a photographer had always been a fascinating one and she had managed to avoid any threats or confrontations apart from one occasion when a man tried to snatch her camera while she was covering a protest story.
But she wasn't having any of it.
'I got hold of him and pulled him towards me in order to save my camera equipment and I ended up elbowing him in the mouth, which started bleeding — I was determined to protect myself and my camera.'
The Herald
