M Shed

M Shed, housed in a 1950s transit shed on Bristol’s historic waterfront, has preserved not only the city’s industrial heritage but apparently some of its working souls as well. Since opening as a museum in 2011, staff have reported encountering figures in dock worker’s clothing - flat caps, rough jackets, and heavy boots - moving among the exhibits as if still going about their daily labor. These apparitions appear most frequently near the museum’s collection of cranes, cargo handling equipment, and maritime artifacts that once defined Bristol’s working docks.

Security personnel conducting evening rounds report hearing the distinctive sounds of the docks’ heyday - chains rattling, cargo being loaded and unloaded, shouted orders, and the clang of metal on metal. These phantom industrial sounds seem to emanate from the building’s original structure, echoing through the modern museum spaces. Some guards describe seeing spectral dock workers operating machinery that has been stationary for decades, their ghostly forms going through the motions of the backbreaking labor that once sustained Bristol’s economy.

The museum’s exhibits on Bristol’s industrial history, including the city’s involvement in the slave trade and the tobacco and sugar industries, generate particularly intense paranormal responses. Visitors and staff report feeling overwhelming emotions - anger, sorrow, and exhaustion - in certain gallery sections. Some witnesses describe experiencing brief, vivid visions of the brutal working conditions endured by dock laborers and enslaved people who passed through Bristol’s port. The building’s authentic industrial architecture and waterfront location seem to have preserved the spiritual echoes of the countless workers whose lives were spent in these docks.