Lurgan baker recalls seeing 'pans flipping' and a ghost while working at the old Golden Crust bakery

Jim Jordan, who works as a baker at the Golden Crust bakery in Edward St, served his time as an apprentice baker in the old Golden Crust bakery which was near McMullan’s Bar but has since been demolished to create the new Millennium Way.

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"It was across the road from Danny Doran’s nearly beside the bar,” said Jim who started working as an apprentice aged just 17.

“It was good craic. Padge Scullion, Maurice Haughian, Malachy Toman, Stevie Toman and Peter Nash and Eithne. We all worked together and were a good team,” he recalls.

"I was an apprentice and Stevie was an apprentice. They taught me well because they made me the baker I am now. I can’t say anything bad about them. All nice lovely people,” he said adding that sadly Padge had since passed away.

"It was great craic back then, plenty of banter. Everybody was coming in and out of the bakery, all the local men would have called in for a chat.”

But he revealed: “The place was haunted.”

Jim explained the old bakery was over 4 floors back then with a bakery below the shop and a store room above it as well as a fourth floor .

Jim recalls being on his own above the shop getting changed when pans were ‘flipping over’. “It was just real spooky. I would never have went to the top floor,” said Jim.

Once, when Jim was getting changed in that store room, he recalls: “I thought I had seen something at the side of my eye and I turned around and it was like a blurred vision.

"There was this ould boy walking across the room. I shouted ‘Alright Padge’. He stopped and looked across and walked as if he was going towards the bathroom.

He explained Padge Scullion used to change in the bathroom and Jim assumed it was him although he never spoke.

"Two minutes later I went downstairs and there was Padge in the bakery. I said to him, ‘how did you get down so quick?’.

"He says, ‘what are you talking about?’” Jim said. He told Padge he’d just said hello to him in the store.

“Padge says, ‘I’ve been down here all the time. Who the hell put them sodas on? So it wasn’t Padge I saw,” said Jim who recalls the roller blind which was down after the shop closed, suddenly shoot up by itself.

"I got to the point where I wouldn’t change upstairs anymore. I seen too many things,” he said.

Although the shop and building has gone now and the building is a car park, Jim believes the man is still walking the area.

Jim stayed at the Golden Crust bakery for 3 years serving his time there until he went to a bakery in Tandragee and then moved to Johnston’s bakery for 20 odd years before returning back to the Golden Crust.

“It’s handy for me to go home and they are all nice people in here,” he said. “It’s a good family place to work. Plenty of craic and everybody just works well together.