Herm, an island where time stays still (my ghost story)

Growing up, I was conditioned to thinking that believing in ghosts is silly. Why actually? Just like God, they are spirits, invisible to mortals, sending their signs to the earth through mysterious channels. A few weeks ago I visited an exhibition about ghosts at the Kunstmuseum Basel, where I was definitely getting the chills nearby old ghost catchers' equipment. That inspired me to write down my own ghost story.

Let's jump back to year 2006. It was spring and I was a second year university student, trying to juggle studying, Student Union involvement, competitive synchronized skating and excessive partying. On top of everything, I needed to organize myself a job for the long summer semester break. Through a web portal matching youngsters and seasonal jobs in the UK I got an offer to work at a gift shop. Since it was a UK postal code, I accepted the offer. As June approached and I finally checked where to fly, I found out I was going to spend my summer on Herm, a tiny Channel Island between the UK and France. When I write tiny, I really mean tiny. The distance walking around the whole coastline of the car-free island is just 6km. With its picturesque beaches, cute eateries and an old-style grand hotel, it is a loved summer destination to may local vacationers. 

Completely ignorant of the island's history, I settled in my room upstairs of an old stone building. After a week or so, I had a very vivid dream that kept haunting me also in the daylight, despite being busy selling beach appliances and souvenirs to crowds of people arriving and leaving with the ferry. I still remember the dream of someone, probably a woman, strangling my throat as I was sleeping. It was such a suffocating feeling that I made sure to lock my door every night after (as if dreams cared about locks). As I became better friends with the other youngsters working the various summer jobs on the island, one of them asked where I live. As I pointed out my room in Pinetrees, he casually mentioned, "Ah, the haunted room. Has the ghost visited you yet? An old tale tells, a woman was strangled to death in that room." I stayed in the room, kept locking the door, and avoided any more nightly visitors. Only once, quite a bit later, I was waked up by the full moon that pulled me outside for a walk alone in the middle of the night. 

The house of my ghost

The summer went by; working, running around the island, drinking snake-bytes, gossiping, taking the ferry to Guernsey on my days off. When I flew back to Finland in the autumn, the quiet island life had recovered my student burnout. Quite soon other experiences took over and I hardly thought about Herm anymore. Until last summer in 2025, 19 years later, my intuition called me to visit the island again. Train, Brussels, train, Paris, train, St Malo, ferry, Guernsey, ferry, Herm, and there I was again, this time exhausted from over-performing on my holidays. I had booked a room at the White House hotel, which I had considered so up-scale and fancy when we youngsters had sneaked out the back way to the tennis court (that we were allowed to use when there were no hotel guests). This time I was paying guest, and all I wanted to do was to sit in the beautiful garden and read a book - to immerse the quietness, the still time of the island. 

After taking a long, luxurious bath I felt ready to explore again. First I headed to the gift shops, and to my pleasure everything was almost exactly like before. Even the outdoor baskets for beach balls were the same ones as 19 years ago! Then I let my memory guide me "home from work", up the hill, through an old courtyard, straight to the right building. A woman with a coffee cup was sitting outside on the stairs of my old home. I introduced myself as an old Herm summer worker and we got into talking. Yes, the food at the staff cafeteria was still uneatable, and youngsters still entertained themselves by getting drunk, hooking up with each other and gossiping about it. It turned out she lived exactly in my old room, and she even let me take a look inside, where nothing - including the leaking bath tub shower head - had changed. It was time to ask about the ghost. Luckily she had not been strangled at sleep. But she explained that at a certain spot on the way to Belvoir Bay she always felt the air cooling, like a sudden gust of wind, and something unexplainable present. She did not believe in ghosts, either. 

The gift shop - still the same!

This time around I was more interested in learning about the Herm Island. It was occupied by German forces during the second world war, and used for landing exercises, propaganda film shoots and recreational hunting. It has been the base of monks, artists and wealthy landowners. Of course, my main interest laid on ghosts. Herm indeed has a reputation with myths and legends, including several ghost stories and haunted locations, that are presented in story books and specific Haunted Herm tours. However, I did not find anything about the Pinetrees building or a strangled woman during my search. Maybe it was just a legend orally passed on between seasonal workers. What I still find strange, though, is that I experienced it before hearing anything about it. 

Unfortunately I could spend only two days on Herm. Despite the short stay I time-travelled almost 20 years back to still being a young staff member. It almost felt weird leisurely lounging at the gated hotel area, and I could have expected to be called to work anytime. Ghosts or no ghosts, Herm is a magical place where time stays still and I could feel the presence of those before us, and my old self, more clearly than elsewhere. Or maybe it was just the quietness that invited me to stop, listen and feel.