Walking with the Dead (Haunted Pub)

Mike Chapple Meets A Ghost Hunter In Liverpool's Oldest - And Most Haunted? - Pub, Daily Post

"BEFORE I bought this pub about two years ago, I was a non believer. I don't believe in God or ghosts - when you're dead you're dead. We're just big bags of water that's all."

These are the unlikely words of Adam Franklin on a sharp, bright spring morning with the sun dappling the tables of the city centre's oldest pub, The Slaughterhouse in Fenwick Street.

A hostelry since 1723, under Adam's management it's become a thriving, vibrant boozer with olde world charm, whopping Ulster fry breakfasts and a popular comedy club down in the cellar.

Anyway, despite the pub's popularity, tales had reached these ears of strange visitations and a bar staff reluctant to spend time alone there.

Especially so late on at locking-up time when a wicked wind, whipping in from the Mersey Bar, is rattling the rafters.

Adam understands - he has, as they say, been there. "About three weeks after we arrived, it was two in the morning, I was standing by the bar after everyone else had gone home," said the 32-year-old ex-RAF man from Ellesmere Port.

"This bloke appeared and walked across the room right in front of me. As he walked past, he kept glaring at me intently until he disappeared.

"I can go into dark cellars on my own because I'm a cynical, pragmatic businessman who doesn't believe in these things, remember, but this had me completely spooked. I just bolted for the door went home - and didn't want to come back.

"I've seen the film - the young, good looking, dude always gets it first and I didn't want it to be me." Since then, of course, he has returned many times, as have the rest of the staff who've grown used to the shades that occasionally flick across the corner of the eye.

Martyn Jones and Brendan McAleer are two of the barmen who regularly see and hear the spooks. Like Adam, neither is keen to be on their own for lock-up.

Says Brendan: "After everyone else has gone I've been here in the bar with a pint of Guinness and you can hear the toilet doors downstairs opening and shutting, opening and shutting, and you know there's no-one down there."

Figures have also been captured on the cellar's security CCTV cameras. Adam, Martyn and Brendan know that they're phantoms. Why? Because they've watched as people walked through them.

BRENDAN Riley, along with other witnesses, saw a glowing ping-ball-sized orb of light - traditionally an indication of paranormal activity - flash past him.

Others are afraid to stay the night in the green room upstairs which female comic Janey Godley claims has two ghostly inhabitants. She is also petrified of the cellar stairs adjacent to the toilets. She claims there's something evil there.

"I think there's potentially a few dead slaughtermen down here or maybe a few restless cows," jokes Adam uneasily as we later pace the gloomy cellar bar, which possesses an undeniable edge to its atmosphere, a sort of low voltage shock that tingles the spine and shoulder blades.

Adam's aware of the popularity of UK Living TV's Most Haunted, in which flamboyant Liverpool medium Derek Acorah flounces through ghostly houses accompanied by a screamingly hyperactive Yvette Fielding and clodhopping cameramen making enough noise to, pardon the pun, raise the dead.

He is also not especially keen on any cheap publicity gimmick to pull in more punters. But he is genuinely interested in finding out what is going on.

However, when yours truly announces that he is a very reluctant volunteer to spend a night alone in the cellar he becomes genuinely concerned.

"Even if the Post was to pay me £5,000, I wouldn't spend a night down there on my own."

Stout man that he is, he strikes a deal. He'll spend the night too and promises to bring along Brendan and Martyn for support.

Billy Roberts is a well known Liverpool medium and claims to come from a long line of psychics. A sickly child, he spent much of his early life in Alder Hey children's hospital with a serious bronchial disease.

It was there that he first saw dead people walk and where he developed a fear of the dark.

"The darkness would act like a screen for the lights and faces I would see there," says 57-year-old Billy.

One of his earliest recollections is, as a three-year-old, the death of the old lady who lived next door to his Wavertree home.

His mum told him that she had "gone to heaven after being taken away in the box".

What he couldn't understand was why, after the funeral, she had come in through the back door to greet him - something she continued to do periodically for years afterwards.

WHEN he was about nine, he was walking home and saw a well-dressed man drop down dead in front of him.

"He then stood up from the body, walked away and disappeared," explains Billy matter of factly.

Before that he had spent much of the 1960s and early 1970s on the road with such bands as the Kruzads - who supported the likes of the Stones, Chuck Berry and The Moody Blues - acquiring a life-threatening heroin habit along the way.

Since then he has written a number of books about the paranormal and lectured about the phenomenon in colleges and universities around the world.

It's just before midnight on bleak, cold night inside the pub's eerie, dimly-lit cellar and we've been joined by Adam, Martyn,

Joe claims he harbours a healthy cynicism for the histrionics of Most Haunted but admits to wearing protection all the same, a crucifix once owned by the saint, Padre Pio.

He's also carrying a "ghostometer" a hand-held detector that measures fluctuations in magnetic fields, a reliable indicator of paranormal manifestations. When a spirit comes calling, it's supposed to emit a high oscillating pitch and its dial indicator fluctuate wildly.

Billy doesn't need this device though. This is a visual aid purely for our benefit - being clairvoyant and clairaudient he says he can both see and hear the dead and doesn't need a machine to know that they're there.

"The voices that I hear can be very clear like a radio on inside my head," he says. "If there was something here I'd talk to it not like I'm talking to you. It will be a voice inside my head which is very specific."

So far he has heard and seen nothing - and has not been told anything of the manifestations he is expected to encounter.

Which is the way it should be. "I'm not easily led, I'm a very sceptical medium. And not all mediums are genuine and I don't like people filling my head with all kinds of s--t before I go into a place.

"I like to go in and work it out for myself. If we had a conversation on the phone beforehand, little things would be going into my mind. It can produce what's called retrospective analysis. The subconscious mind will hold on to things and bring them out later on when it's quite easy to imagine that you've felt or seen something."

"WHEN people frequent an establishment, they impregnate these subtle atmospheres with a sort of energy that can become visual and create images so that anyone in here alone might see an old person and surmise that its a dead person's spirit when it might be the image of somebody still living."

We decide to go walkabout. On the "evil" stairs leading out, the ghostometer begins to sound uncomfortable and Billy claims he feels a presence but nothing too strong and certainly not malevolent.

We proceed through the main upstairs bar where the rain is clattering against the windows from the empty streets outside. On the first floor landing is the green room, complete with table, settee and empty beer bottle left behind by a previous comic occupant.

Billy says: "If you go into an old house, sometimes you can get a lovely warm feeling. That's because of the people who lived there. They impregnate the psychic structure of the house and that becomes the representation of those people.

"And it can work the other way whereby an evil or unhappy family who've lived there will influence the minds of the people who subsequently come along."

We proceed to the top floor and it's here, at the top of the stairwell, that Billy first detects something.

"The impression that I get here is that there was some kind of self destruction that somebody committed suicide. Somebody died in this area but it must have been some time ago. It was a man who hanged himself here."

The ghostometer duly goes slightly bonkers emitting a fluctuating whine like that of the dentist's drill. We head a little more quickly back downstairs where, back in the bar, it's thought that it might be a good idea if Billy went back down in the cellar, alone this time, so as not to be distracted.

Minutes later Joe and I are perched on stools downstairs and after a brief surf with the divining rods - this area of the city apparently being awash with ley lines which convey psychic power - Billy has placed the ghostometer at the centre of the low stage at the far end of the room.

He then retreats to another stool on the far side where he sits occasionally stroking his chin apparently preoccupied in thought.

No words are spoken. The only sound is the warble of the ghostometer in mild distress.

Ten minutes later Billy springs up and walks over. "I've just been having a conversation," he says calmly and then points at the stage.

"It's a guy sitting over there. He says his name's is Walter Langton. He worked here in the 1800s. He's very rude and bad tempered and he says he wants to do me harm. I've told him he can't. He chooses to be here. He also knows that we are here and he wants us to go. But I don't feel intimidated."

Billy then says that there is another presence on the stage. It's a middle-aged woman dressed in grubby smock and bonnet. She's possibly from the 19th century and called Meg or Mary. She's unaware of us but is apparently looking for her son.

Needless to say neither Joe or I have seen or heard anything - it is, unfortunately, the drawback of the medium's trade that concrete proof is hard to produce.

Nevertheless there's an unnerving feeling that we're not alone and there's relief in finding the stairwell behind the bar - and not adjacent to Walter's alleged spot at corner of the stage - to return to a curious Adam and co upstairs.

It's now 3am and, despite his recent encounter, Billy remains surprisingly magnanimous to his erstwhile opponent.

"There's a lot of paranormal here but nothing malevolent. Walter's been here so long he just lives here now so a blessing by a priest would not make any difference."

"I'm sure there may be - but I'm not waiting around tonight to find out," he replies.

Figured I'd just copy my story from the website - here's the link for anyone interested - http://www.ghosts.org/stories/tales/airforce-ghost.html

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: Military Ghosts
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1994 18:15:00 GMT

Well, first off, let me say that this story does not represent the opinion of the United States Military in anyway, nor does it reflect on any offic- ial military history. It is personal experience, along with some recollec- tions from some folks that served in the same maintenance shop I was in. That disclaimer having been made, let's go...

I'm a Staff Sergeant in the Air Force, serving at Nellis AFB, Las Vegas, Nevada. I've been here nearly 10 years, having arrived on station in on 1 Nov 84. I was initially assigned to the Jet Engine Intermediate Mainten- ance Facility, Bld 858. I'm a jet engine mechanic.

Building 858 is a mutt of a building, initially being built in the mid 1960s as a single hangar. Later, they added a larger hangar behind the original and yet another hangar later. I don't know the full history of the building, of things that may have happened in it, or of the site that it is built upon. I do know from personal experience that there were some strange things happening in it.

My first experience with "the ghost of 858" was back in 1987. I was wor- king swingshift, acting as the NCOIC of the newly formed -220 maintenance section. The other squadron we shared the building with had gone home, as had the other maintenance sections. I was alone in the building, waiting for the last F-15 and F-16 sorties to come down for the night. I can't re- call the exact times, but it was between 0000 and 0100. I was sitting at a desk in the office, in front of an open doorway that faced out into our maintenance bay. The bay is approximately 40 feet wide, 100 feet deep, and about 2.5 stories tall at the top of the peaked roof. From my desk, I could look out the door and see almost wall to wall along the width of the building, and as the office was against the end wall of the bay, I could see the entire length of the bay.

I was reading a book, and suddenly I could hear footsteps. I was expecting the CRS Expediter to come in, so I immediately thought it was him entering the bay, but I didn't hear the fire doors open. I looked up, and could see no one in the bay. Leaving my office, I stepped out in the bay, called out, and got no response. Shrugging off the incident, I returned to my desk and my book. Then, through the peripheral vision above the book (hard to ex- plain what I mean... you're reading and see stuff above the top of the book) I saw someone walking across the width of the bay. I looked up, and saw no one. Now I start to get the chills. Reading again, I hear the footsteps again, and also see the person walking the bay once more. Looking up, though, there is no one there. I get up, walk a security check around the bay, find no doors unsecure, and no one is there. I get that spooky feel- ing though that I am being watched.

Shortly after this, CRS Expediter comes in, the fire doors banging (as us- ual) when he enters the building. These doors are the only entrance to the bay after hours. I convince him to walk a security check with me through the facility. We find no doors open, no one else in the facility.

I mention this to a friend of mine the next day, and he replies that it isn't unusual to hear footsteps in the bay. He had the same experience, numerous times, as well as seeing the figure in the bay. I'll continue in the next message.

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: More Military Ghosts
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1994 18:47:00 GMT

Next to the 220 bay was the J-85 bay. This bay ran the same length and width as the 220 bay, with a ceiling to floor wall dividing them. At the south end of the J-85 bay was a roll up fire door that led into a warren of offices. The hallway that fed these offices was wood paneled, about 30 feet long, and the walls were about 7 feet high, leaving the tops of the offices open to the roof of the building, approximately 7 or 8 feet over head. The J-85 bay and the 220 bay were joined by a double fire door, at the middle of their length. On security check one evening, prior to shut- ting down for the night, I stepped through the double door to make sure the 85 bay was secure.

I moved towards the hallway at the south end of the bay. All bay lighting was off, except for the emergency overheads (always on in case of power failures, or for entering the building) As I prepared to move down the hallway, I could see that "something" appeared to be on the southern wall where the hall "L"d to the east to join the break room. It appeared to be just a gray mass of dim light, floating approximately 5 feet off the ground, at the far end of the hall. Looking at it, it appeared to be slow- ly roiling upon itself. It was dim, and to the best of my memory, was cas- ting no light upon the ground. The hallway and office warren had no lights on in it, no emergency lighting was active in that section.

I stepped about 2 paces into the hall to investigate when all the hair on the back of my neck stood up, I got goosebumps, and something inside of me said that going down there could be a major mistake. Rather than stay and investigate or have it approach and investigate me, I turned and made a ha- sty retreat (read: ran like hell) back to the full lighting of the 220 bay.

I brought up this experience later on with a coworker from the other squad- ron, and he told me of an experience he had in the breakroom that the "L" in the hallway led too. He had stepped in there a month prior to my exper- ience, to get a soda. The double fire doors between the breakroom and the hallway were closed and latched. The lighting in the breakroom was off, the only illumination being from the soda machine and the candy machine. As he stepped into the room to go to the machines, he noticed a light in the cracks of the fire doors. Unlike mine, his was a bright light, as bright as a jetlight being held to the cracks (note, a jetlight is a work- light, made from an automobile headlight, and powered by wall current run- ning through a transformer, this gives you an idea of how bright this light was). The light was at the crack at the middle of the doors, halfway off the floor. It moved up to the crack at the top, moved slowly right and left, then back down. It moved to the crack at the floor and again moved left and right before returning to the middle crack, halfway off the floor. Brad said that the movement took approximately a minute and a half. He reached for the door, expecting to expose a co-worker in a prank, but as he touched the door, the light dimmed, and stopped moving. Jet lights don't dim, they go out completely, and like me, he got an immediate reaction from the hair on the back of his neck, and the goose bumps. He turned, as I did, and beat a hasty retreat back to his maintenance crew.

Several of us have had various experiences in the building, and were sit- ting around one night relating them to one another. People have seen lights floating in the dark and tried to explain them away as brake lights from a passing car, despite the fact that the only window in the bay was 1 foot by 1 foot, and 15 feet below where the lights were seen. People have seen figures walking the bays, footsteps when they were all alone. Doors slam in the maintenance bays at odd hours, equipment gets moved around, 2 ton cable hoists are seen swinging, when there is no one to be moving them.

Brad and I were teased by our supervisor regarding this. We were working in the 85 bay one evening, and she came down the hallway going "Whoooo... whooo..... hey guys, I'm talking to the ghosts!" We told her not to joke around... no telling who might be listening. We then closed our tool box, and left through the doors in the common wall.

As we were turning in our equipment, she came running up another hallway that joined two of the hangars. She was yelling at us, demanding to know how we did what we did, indignant that we tried to scare her. Seems that after we left, she went to shut off the overhead lights in the bay. As she hit the switches on the east side of the bay, she looked up at a light that hadn't gone out, but was quite dim. She then realized that it wasn't one of the overhead lights, but "something", assuming it was a prank Brad and I were pulling. As she took a few steps towards this light, which was appro- ximately 20 feet off the ground, it suddenly dropped, and began moving to- wards her. She then panicked (as I had done) and ran down the southern hallway, through the breakroom, down another maintenance bay, through the adjoining hallway and up to where Brad and I were inventorying our tools. She was attempting to hide her fear with indignation, but failed miserably. When she asked us to go investigate what it was, we refused. She then (jokingly) ordered us to do it. Again, we refused, explaining that if she was going to order us to do something, she'd have to be willing to do it herself, at which point she refused. When we later explained what happened to the Master Sergeant in charge of the shift, he also refused to go to the 85 bay to take a look, saying he'd rather do it in daylight. It seems (from talking one on one with him later) that he'd had several experiences in the bays as well, but vehemently refused to talk about them.

I'm still a skeptic, but less so after my father died. I was actually a diehard skeptic until that time. First off, let me tell you that I have personally not had any real experiences other than hearing things in my old office when I knew that I was the only person in the building. My mother could only be described as anti-paranormal if there is such a thing. She has never talked about ghosts or anything supernatural.
She would laugh when others talked about these type of things and she was a skeptic by just about any standard. My father
died unexpectedly of a heart attack in May 00. It was a huge shock to the family and his loss has weighed heavily on us since
that day. About two years ago, I was talking to my mother on the phone. I could tell something was up and that she wanted
to tell me something. I asked her what was the matter and told her that she sounded like she wanted to tell me something. She
then said "I don't know if I should tell you this or not..." Of course, my curiosity was peaked and I insisted that she tell me.
She then told me that during the previous week, she was sitting up in bed watching TV when she suddenly heard someone
whistle. Not just any whistle, but a unique whistle my father would do when he wanted to get her attention. She said it
souded like it came from about 8 feet away in the direction of the interior wall. There was nobody else in the house (she lives
by herself) and there was nobody outside of the house who would have been able to do this. She insisted that she was wide
awake and not dreaming, and that she was not hearing things. She also told me recently that he is still in the house with her.
She didn't elaborate on the phone, and she lives out of state. I will be seeing her within the next couple of months, so I will
get the full story then. There have been other instances, smelling his cologne, which hasn't been in the house in nearly 4
years. Sounds, things being moved, etc. She told me there's definitely a presence there. My mother never would have even
entertained this type of thing 5 years ago.... that's what makes this more intriguing to me.

All right, I did promise you ghost story.

Three of my best friends rented an old house years ago. It was built by an influential judge in the late 1880's early 1890's and is located in the neighborhood known as Hyde Park. The Hyde Park area was ritzy stretch of area which many of the cities elites lived in (now overrun with gays). The house was huge for the time - 3 stories and a basement and was referred to as a mansion. The house had a servants entrance and stairwell, many large rooms, and creepy unfinished basement with mortar walls complete with a shuttered and padlocked exit to the outside. Some of the original furniture was still inside the house because it was assembled there and was too large to get through the doorways. Today the house is recognized as historical landmark by the city.

My friends had rented the place from this lawyer and the lawyer did tell them it was haunted. The lawyer had some experiences there and actually claimed to have seen a ghost of a woman. He did some research on the history of the house. It seems that back in the day the judge (the original owner) had a maid that had a torrid relationship with the gardner of the one of the rich neighbors, but the man got jealous and murdered the maid in a rage. The gardener was hung, in good old Missouri style justice.

The lawyer actually had a medium come in and check out the house, to which she claimed there were actually two ghosts - one of the gardener, an angry spirit which seemed to stay in the basement area and a freindly spirit of wife of the judge that stayed in the upstairs of the house. The lawyer joked that he believed that the ghost wife of the judge had tried to communicate to him that she did not trust his real life wife, of which he divorced years later.

Now my friends lived in the house and heard plenty of noises in their time in the house. Old houses make noises regardless, but there were lots of bumps in the night that awoke them, which was unpleasant because Hyde Park was on the edge of a really bad neighborhood by the 1990's and there were occasional break-ins in the area. My friends got the impression at times that they were not alone and one of them felt as if a woman was breathing on them and tucking them into bed one night. Occasionally items like sunglasses or other small objects would be moved.

The scariest part was the dank basement, which had unevenly cut and brick and mortar walls and the lighting was awful. The only reason anyone wanted to go down there was to do wash to retrieve a tool from the tool bench.

One frightening incident happened one night. There was a large crash which awakened everybody in the house. My friends had seriously believed that someone had broken in the house. After retrieving their guns they walked downstairs to find the basement door wide open. The door was double locked, but both were unlatched. They went into the basement to see if someone had broken through the cellar shutters (there is a specific name for those types of doors, but I can't remember it) from the outside - but the cellar doors were still padlocked and barred.

I actually winesssed something at a summer barbeque party at their place. The lights kept on coming on in the basement and my freinds had to repeatedly go down their and shut them off. Between retrieving beers, someone could have walked down their and turned on the light as a joke, but it was highly unlikely.

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Walking with the dead