Henry's Home

Since March of 2004 I’ve worked in a warehouse in the Holabird Industrial Park in Dundalk, Maryland. It didn’t take long to realize we were not alone in the warehouse. I’m just one of many employees who have seen "Henry" as we’ve decided to call him.

Here is some background information that will come in handy: The warehouse is basically just a large square. The employees work on the left side of the warehouse and the storage is on the right side. The company sells books on amazon.com and the books are stored in boxes on shelves from the middle to right side of the warehouse. The books come in from Salvation Armies in bins and it is quite usual to find things other than books in the bins. The desks we sit at aren’t actually desks, they are two sheets of plywood on a two metal shelves. The ends of the metal shelves are basically posts that stand about 6 inches from the second sheet of plywood. I’ll fill you in on the history of the warehouse later in the story.

In the summer of 2004 my friend Cass, who sat beside me, found a child’s costume helmet in her bin. For some reason it reminded me of a Darth Vader helmet, but it was more or less the type of helmet a knight would wear. We thought it would make a nice addition to our desks and we hung it from the post that connected our desks together. Weeks went by and we pretty much forgot about the helmet. Then one day as we were both entering books, we heard a noise like something had fallen. We both turned at the same time and found the helmet on the floor. We both just shrugged it off and replaced the helmet to its post. The next day we were both engrossed in our work and heard a noise like something had fallen again. Once again, we turned at the same time and found the helmet on the floor. Cass and I both thought this was odd that the helmet had hung on the post for weeks and now all of a sudden it didn’t want to remain there. I asked Cass if she might have kicked the post. She said no. So I hung the helmet back on there and tried shaking it off. As much as I pushed on the metal post it didn’t budge and the helmet remained perfectly still. Cass and I joked that it was the ghost. A few days later we were entering books when we heard something fall. Noises are so common at work that I usually don’t even look to see what it was, until Cass said, "uhh?Nichole?" I turned and found the helmet had fallen off the post again and landed about 4 feet from the post. There was no way it could have landed that far away without bouncing, but neither of us heard it bounce. It would have had to fly off the post to land that far. Cass didn’t want to touch the helmet and I wasn’t too keen on the idea myself, but I didn’t want to leave it on the floor.

A few days later, I was working late and was the only one in the warehouse. The office is open to the warehouse in a few rooms, so I could see directly into the office. All of a sudden I got cold chills all over and I turned to look at the right end of the warehouse. There was a semi- transparent guy standing there. Actually he wasn’t standing; he was more or less floating because I couldn’t see his body from the mid-thigh down. He was wearing a blue or gray military uniform so I knew he was a soldier but I could place it to a specific time period. The guy wasn’t old, probably in his mid-twenties and I could sense he was sad. I blinked a few times and he was gone.

Another day or so later, after Cass and I had just walked away from our desks, the helmet landed on the floor. Cass said, "we must really have a ghost." And that’s when I told her what I saw. We both have seen ghosts before so it wasn’t too shocking, but I really wasn’t expecting to see one at work. We eventually got rid of the helmet. I had also been getting books out of the bin when I saw someone in a blue shirt with short hair run by. Needless to say, no one I worked with was wearing a blue shirt or had hair as short as I saw.

Since then, I have moved to the shipping department in the back of the warehouse. Shipping spends a lot of time on the right side of the warehouse. I never felt scared, but after a few days of working in shipping, I asked my co- worker, Emily, if she ever felt like she was being watched when she was back there. She said all the time. I said I think we have a ghost. I never told her about my first sighting of Henry or what happened with the helmet. A few days later she comes up to me and said that she saw the ghost. She told me that she was working in the back aisle of the warehouse (called the ZB aisle) on a Saturday when she was the only one in the warehouse. She looked up and saw a young man in a military uniform floating there. By the time she realized what she was looking at, he was gone. She said she never felt scared or threatened. I told her I saw the same exact thing and that I named him Henry.

Now that we talk about Henry openly, and many people in the warehouse know about him, he makes his presence known more often. Emily and I have both seen Henry twice on separate occasions in the ZB aisle. Another worker, Stacey, had overheard us talking about Henry the ghost one day, but never heard the description of Henry. She came over to Emily and I and told us what she saw, describing him perfectly. A few of the workers are scared to stay late or be alone in the warehouse because they don’t feel comfortable, but Henry has never created a threatening presence.

Henry also likes to mess with the light in the shipping department. It randomly flickers on and off at will. Once it stayed off for 3 days and then just turned on again. A roll of masking tape, lying flat on a shelf, randomly rolled off and landed on the floor. A bin, sitting on the table, somehow moved 6 inches to the end of the table and landed on the chair. The chair then rolled about two feet from the table.

Now any time that something out of the ordinary happens, we just say "Henry!" He usually only does one thing a day, but sometimes he can be really active. Whenever I walk into the ZB aisle I say hello to him.

We’ve done as much research as possible on the area. Before it was an industrial park, the area was used considered Fort Holabird and used as barracks for the war. All the information we found says that no one was ever killed there and no wars took place on the land. We found out that jeeps and other military vehicles were tested there, and since we can’t see Henry’s legs, we assumed that he lost them in some type of vehicle testing and possibly died from it. There are no records indicating what the land was used for from the 1930’s to the 1950’s and then again in the 1960’s. So we have no idea where Henry came from, but we don’t mind him being around.

If anyone has any idea of where Henry could have come from, or remembers any deaths or accidents that happened in the area, please contact me.