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Railway Ghosts

Today Techy dropped me off at the station and I pointed out the service lift to him. We spotted the lift repair man in his van nearby so after Tech left I popped over to chat with him.

What a sport he turned out to be! I told him about the scariness and he expressed gratitude that he'd only heard about it after spending the bed part of a couple of days in there. :chuckle:

He then kindly took me over to the lift and opened it it for me. It was a bit dusty inside, not surprisingly as it's been (I learned) in and out of commission for a year. Nobody wants to get stuck in there!

I might volunteer to give it a good cleaning and mopping. See what I can flush out. :bthumbup:
 
I haven't see the allegedly haunted station lift used since my last posts about it a few months ago so on my next shift will ask around once more.
Is the lift still faulty? Might the friendly engineer still be waiting for parts? More interestingly, could there be an unofficial mass eschewing? :)
 
escargot said:
Today Techy dropped me off at the station and I pointed out the service lift to him. We spotted the lift repair man in his van nearby so after Tech left I popped over to chat with him.
What a sport he turned out to be! I told him about the scariness and he expressed gratitude that he'd only heard about it after spending the bed part of a couple of days in there. :chuckle:
He then kindly took me over to the lift and opened it it for me. It was a bit dusty inside, not surprisingly as it's been (I learned) in and out of commission for a year. Nobody wants to get stuck in there! I might volunteer to give it a good cleaning and mopping. See what I can flush out. :bthumbup:
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nintchdbpict000274774232.jpg
 
escargot said:
More detail required, please.
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Noting I don't think I have already posted, but what I have taken for ghosts about 4 of them have
been to short to get the cam out, what I have taken to be UFO's I have pointed out to other people
and we have been standing looking gob open and never reached for the cam, not wanting to take
your eyes off things like that plays a part.
 
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A guy this week told me before they split up his girlfriend in Dersingham was awoken by the smell of coal smoke. She looked out of her bedroom window and saw an old locomotive steaming by.
There was a line, from kings lynn to Hunstanton, but it was closed down in 1969 and was about half a mile from the house (this ghostly sighting was probably 1980s, early 90s; they split in 1992).
What the girl saw a train passing by the bottom of the garden, but in the right direction!
 
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From the liner notes of the recent reissue of the Squarepusher album "Feed Me Weird Things" (1996):

Our house's garden backed onto the East Coast main line. Sometimes, late at night, we'd position my bass amp to face out of the window, set a tape running at maximum volume and then rave it up on the railway. One night we saw a railwayman in the distance who subsequently vanished into thin air.
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DrPaulLee said:
A guy this week told me before they split up his girlfriend in Dersingham was awoken by the smell of coal smoke. She looked out of her bedroom window and saw an old locomotive steaming by.
There was a line, from kings lynn to Hunstanton, but it was closed down in 1969 and was about half a mile from the house (this ghostly sighting was probably 1980s, early 90s; they split in 1992).
What the girl saw a train passing by the bottom of the garden, but in the right direction!
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Reminds me of a story on the Obiwan website, where rows of houses were built either side of a railway track.
The line was closed and the tracks removed. Residents would talk of a ghostly steam train that was heard/seen moving along between the house gardens.

This was around the same time as we came across the Dancing Cows.
Gave me a certain picture of the weirdness of small-town America for which I will alway be grateful. :nods:

I've tried looking at the website again but keep seeing warnings that it's actually a data-scarfing page. Very disappointing.
 
escargot said:
Reminds me of a story on the Obiwan website, where rows of houses were built either side of a railway track.
The line was closed and the tracks removed. Residents would talk of a ghostly steam train that was heard/seen moving along between the house gardens.

This was around the same time as we came across the Dancing Cows.
Gave me a certain picture of the weirdness of small-town America for which I will alway be grateful. :nods:

I've tried looking at the website again but keep seeing warnings that it's actually a data-scarfing page. Very disappointing.
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You can look at saved copies of earlier versions of the website via archive.org, if that helps.
 
DrPaulLee said:
A guy this week told me before they split up his girlfriend in Dersingham was awoken by the smell of coal smoke. She looked out of her bedroom window and saw an old locomotive steaming by.
There was a line, from kings lynn to Hunstanton, but it was closed down in 1969 and was about half a mile from the house (this ghostly sighting was probably 1980s, early 90s; they split in 1992).
What the girl saw a train passing by the bottom of the garden, but in the right direction!
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Great tale.

A quick look at Dersingham shows the old station still in situ and being used by a builders merchant and the adjacent track bed in use as a footpath. Do you have any idea as to which street they lived in?

Dersingham has a lot of history:

https://dersinghamhistory.info/treasure_trove.html


Edit - Bingo! The line is haunted by a phantom train:

"Across the old railbed, dismantled many decades ago, the distinctive rumble of an approaching train has been heard by people passing nearby: a ghost train making a fateful journey that saw six people lose their lives."

https://www.edp24.co.uk/lifestyle/20617453.weird-norfolk-ghost-train-kings-lynn/
 
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This is from a group on Facebook:

Taken from the book Phantoms of the Railways. W B Herbert. 1988.

THE TRAIN IN THE NIGHT!
The village of West Dereham lies on a branch line that served four villages, Denver, Ryston, Abbey and West Dereham and the terminus at Stoke Ferry. The Great Northern line that runs south from King's Lynn to Ely and the branch line was situated almost half way between the two towns. Passenger traffic was withdrawn on 22nd September 1930 and final closure to goods and the cessation Of railway services took place on 31 January 1966.
The feature of our story, West Dereham was formerly known as Abbey, then was West Dereham on 1st January 1886. The name was changed again on 1st July 1923 to Abbey and West Dereham and that is how it stayed until the closure of the station.
Mr. A. Dixon of West Bridgeford near Nottingham writes to tell me of a very strange occurrence that happened to him and his wife whilst they were living in West Dereham in 1954-5.
Mr. Dixon worked on a local farm on the outskirts of the village, which in those days only had the benefit of a goods service, which I suspect only ran when demand warranted it. The farmers used it to convey their produce, and general goods were carried on occasions.
One night Mr. Dixon woke with a start, he could hear a noise; he leapt out of bed and peered out of the window. The Dixons' house commanded a view over the railway where it ran through the village. Mrs. Dixon, waking up, wanted to know what the excitement was about. She soon joined her husband at the window; they both listened, they could hear the sound of a train coming to the village, the clear night seemed to amplify the unmistakable sound of a steam engine getting nearer. They looked at each other, then peered out of the window again, then they saw it — an engine pulling two coaches passing slowly along the rusting line. As it slowly chuffed out of sight the Dixons were puzzled, where would a passenger train be running to at around 3am, who would be opening the gates and operating the signals? Still wondering they returned to bed and sleep.
The following day Mr. Dixon mentioned the incident to his workmates on the farm. They looked at each other and grinned, one man said 'You've been dreaming, no passenger train has run down this line for years.' But the Dixons were adamant, they knew what they had seen and it was very real to them and neither could be accused of romancing or being under the influence of drink.
Mr. and Mrs. Dixon went to have a look at the line; it was very rusty and overgrown and there was no sign of anything having travelled on it for a long time, although the goods did use it occasionally.
No solution has been offered to solve this incident and so it will remain an unanswered mystery.
 
I have Railway Ghosts and Phantoms as well, "The train in the Night" is in there so it may be a compilation work.

Unfortunately it isn't indexed and there are 100 stories with titles like "The Visitor! and "The Man in the Mist" which don't tell you much. I'll have a look through when I get a moment but on a quick look nothing obvious for Norfolk.
 
Tunn11 said:
I have Railway Ghosts and Phantoms as well, "The train in the Night" is in there so it may be a compilation work.

Unfortunately it isn't indexed and there are 100 stories with titles like "The Visitor! and "The Man in the Mist" which don't tell you much. I'll have a look through when I get a moment but on a quick look nothing obvious for Norfolk.
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I think it was a reprint comprising two previous books in one volume, but I don't have it to hand at the moment, so can't check.
 
SimonBurchell said:
I think it was a reprint comprising two previous books in one volume, but I don't have it to hand at the moment, so can't check.
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It is, but only says so on the "blurb" on the inside of the cover! The actual bibliographic citation unusually doesn't say so, just; first published 1989; this edition 1992 by BCA by arrangement with David & Charles.

In Chris Bates' foreword he does say that "a good many"of the stories are from Lincolnshire.
 
Tunn11 said:
I have Railway Ghosts and Phantoms as well, "The train in the Night" is in there so it may be a compilation work.

Unfortunately it isn't indexed and there are 100 stories with titles like "The Visitor! and "The Man in the Mist" which don't tell you much. I'll have a look through when I get a moment but on a quick look nothing obvious for Norfolk.
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I think I might have read that in the 1990's from my local library and another 2 books were about Pub Ghosts and Theatre Ghosts.
 
Saw this just now.
Facebook knows what I like! :nods:

The most 'haunted' London Underground station where Tube workers 'had to quit after seeing ghosts'

Back in 1897, a renowned Victorian actor known as William Terriss was entering the Adelphi Theatre in the heart of London's West End to prepare for an evening's performance when he was stabbed to death by his former prodigee, Richard Archer Prince

Since then, sightings of his spirit have been reported lurking around in the tunnels of Covent Garden Underground station, with documentaries produced by Channel 4 and the History Channel featuring Londoners who are insistent on having seen his wandering body.

Its even been claimed that tube workers were so spooked by his ghost that they requested to be moved to another less haunted station.
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Edit - there is some pretty poor use of English here. :chuckle:

For a start there's no such word as 'prodigee'. The writer probably meant 'protégé'.
 
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