October. It’s the time of year when the nights are drawing in, the temperature drops and we love to spook ourselves with tales of ghosts and ghouls. Jo Evans loves a good ghost story and most people, whether they believe or not, know a chilling tale to tell.
Britain is a treasure trove to plunder when looking for ghosts, with every self-respecting castle or stately home having a Grey Lady or headless aristocrat. Within the historic walls, there are often famous spooks. The busy ghost of Anne Boleyn is said to haunt Hever Castle, Blickley Manor, the Tower of London and Marwell Hall and I’m not sure which highways Dick Turpin plundered in life, but his ghost could write a travel blog about the many places around the UK in which he is seen.
But the most interesting are Britain’s haunted pubs. Yes, some have a celebrity spectre, good old Dick Turpin is seen in many, from The Chequers in Bromley to The Blue Boar in York. All that travelling is thirsty work. But mainly they are ‘normal’ people, apart from the fact that they are dead, of course, and many have a tragic story to tell. Like the ghost of the jilted bride in Shrewsbury’s Prince Rupert Hotel – just a stone’s throw from Tanners HQ - who has been seen in the room in which she hung herself. In the same hotel is the ghost of a young man who killed himself when his fiancée ran off with his best friend. I’m surprised there’s been no TV dating show trying to get these two together. Another tragic tale is that of Florrie in The Red Lion at Avebury, whose husband murdered her. Legend has it that after returning from the Civil War, he caught her in the arms of another man and killed her in a fit of rage, throwing her body down the well that is still seen in the pub today. Poor Florrie is said to emerge from the well and roam the pub whenever bearded men are around. She must have had a busy time with the recent fashion for facial hair.
My favourites are the many ghosts who hang around pubs for no reason other than they like it, I suppose they remind me of myself. I can’t think of a better way to spend eternity than haunting my regular boozer, mixing with the local, living patrons. Bodmin Moor’s famous Jamaica Inn has a ghost reputed to be the spirit of a man murdered outside the Inn, who returns to the bar to finish the pint he left before dying. Well, I would too at those prices. We’ve all spent time waiting patiently at the bar to be served, just like the Lady in Red at The Druid’s Head in Brighton. Sadly, she always vanishes into thin air before she can order. The Golden Fleece in York has a grumpy ghost who sits at the bar, glaring at customers and The Black Swan in Helmsley has a man in a bowler hat who literally hovers in a corner. Who are these ghosts, I wonder, who spend the afterlife in search of a pint?
There are many haunted pubs with ghosts who lend a helping hand, like The Old Post Office in Shrewsbury, where a maid is said to tuck you in at night. How comforting, if you ignore the fact that it’s her ghost creating the chill. The landlady of the Lansdowne in Cardiff had a spooky surprise when empty chairs tucked themselves under the table before her eyes and Manchester’s legendary pub, The Peveril of the Peak, claims to have a helpful ghost who levitates glasses off the bar into the dishwasher. He’s welcome around my house anytime.
Some pub ghosts seem rather annoyed with the living, and there are numerous reports of smashed bottles and glasses and drinks being pushed off tables for no reason. The ghost at the Morpeth Arms in Westminster goes a step further, with many customers complaining of having their drinks knocked violently from their hands by an unseen force. Perhaps he disagrees with their choice of beer.
Edinburgh’s White Hart Inn has a pesky poltergeist who loves nothing better than to play tricks on the staff, slamming the door and shutting them in the cold store and detaching the gas cylinders from the beer taps. A member of staff went downstairs to reattach the cylinders, but by the time he got back upstairs, they had inexplicably come undone again. The Bow Bells pub in London’s East End has a ghostly presence in a surprising place. For over 20 years, the ladies' loos have been subjected to strange happenings, with spontaneous flushing surprising many bare bottoms and baffling numerous plumbers. When a séance was held to ask the ghost to leave, a toilet door burst open with such force that it smashed a mirror. I can think of far better places to haunt than a pub toilet, but each to their own.
There are many haunted pubs in which you can stay overnight, but you may want to do some research before checking in. The Feathers Hotel in Ludlow, Shropshire, has a disgruntled ghost known to attack women who stay in Room 211, pulling them out of bed by their hair or throwing ice cold water over them in the night, although spookily the sheets remain dry. Men staying in the same room report a different story, being lovingly caressed on their cheek instead, which is just as terrifying in my opinion. The Mermaid Inn in Rye have had numerous guests claiming to have witnessed a duel between two men in the upper bedroom. The ghostly duel is loud enough to wake people who watch the dramatic clashing of swords before both ghosts disappear through the wall.
I suppose it’s no wonder that, if the spirits of the dead can return, you’d find a lot of them in the pub. After all, many of Britain’s pubs have been standing for centuries and are the hub of communities. Rather like the Queen Vic, a soap opera of drama plays out - love stories, tragedies and arguments – which you can watch with a drink in your hand. The Stone Tape theory explains hauntings as energy that is recorded onto the fabric of its surroundings, particularly quartz and stone. In 1982, an experiment happened in the Prince of Wales pub in mid-Glamorgan, where the landlord had heard noises from an empty room. Electrodes were connected to the wall and 20,000 volts were fed through before they turned on a tape recorder, leaving the room empty for several hours. When played back, it had recorded voices speaking in an old version of Welsh, the sound of an organ being played and a clock ticking. Could this explain those ghosts repeating an act over and over again like a video on a loop?
Here at Tanners, we recently had an unexplained incident in our Shrewsbury Cellars shop when a box of wine was discovered smashed one morning. The wine (Odelouca, Black Label, Quinta do Francês, Algarve) had been stacked on another case and CCTV showed the box appearing to be shoved sideways with some force. The sceptical amongst us said a leak had caused the cardboard to disintegrate, but how does that explain the strange sideways movement? Was it a ghostly shove or a soggy bottom? Alas, we will never know. Until we pass to the other side and think that a little bit of haunting might be fun! If that’s the case, I’ll see you in the pub.