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Fortean Whitby

henry

still speeding
Joined
Oct 23, 2005
Messages
3,794
hi all not normally one for chat ... but i wanted to ask if anyone had any recommendations of fortean places in whitby ... i have a teambuilding weekend this weekend and we are staying at a supposedly haunted pub the black horse ... ive never been before and aside from the dracula connection which i am looking forward to exploring the abbey are there any good psychogeographical locations ? theres also apparently a world music festival this weekend although that doesnt really boat my float im afraid - too catholic for that
 
I hope the weekend goes well! I have fond memories of Whitby from a childhood holiday. Its seagulls were the loudest we had ever heard and the fish and chips excellent.

Lots of whaling stuff in the museum and I recall the giant jaw-bones that formed a gateway to a park(?) On the beach, we delighted in finding the jet pebbles, which seemed oddly exotic. Jet seems to have been appreciated more in olden times: the Victorians used it for mourning brooches, but it's probably too plentiful to be valued today.

I have not visited Whitby since childhood and I gather the decline of fishing has left many once-proud Yorkshire ports in a depressed state. I doubt if the Dracula connection alone is going to turn things around economically, alas!

That whole eastern coastline has a foreign feeling for me, born on the opposite coast. It is full of haunted corners but I've no detailed psycho-geographical details. Any natives around?

Let us know how the weekend goes! :)
 
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apparentky the establishment we are booked into is haunted by a ghost monkey ... can vouch for the pubs after a long night on the tiles
 
Went there a few years for a FT meet up. Really nice harbour town. The Abbey's great, very atmospheric. There was a fish & Chip shop voted best in England by the Daily Mail and well worth checking out.

Some nice bars. Went for a few beers with one of former FT regulars and had a great time. Well worth a visit. :)
 
wow only just sobered up ! very quaint old town riddled with winding ginnels and alleys ... quite effective ghost walk ... although a bit run-of-the-mill for these i suppose ... a great time was had and the waitresses of whitby are safe once more
 
There's a very odd looking Bottle Window at the back of 19 Grape Lane... you might need a Flickr login to see that pic.

The caption says:

This is an 18th century grade II* listed building next to the Captain Cook museum but you can only see the window from the opposite side of the harbour.

I was shown that as a child by Annie who ran the fruit and veg shop on Grape Lane, cira 80s as her back yard faced it, I forget what is there now and have no idea if asking nicely for them to let you through would work!

There is at least one 'traditional' hand of glory that seems to do the round of whitby museums, not sure where it is at this time though.

Something I will say is to visit the Abbey House site of what is now Whitby Youth Hostel... am not sure it's particularly fortean but I'm still astonished that I never realised it was there, for the amount of time I spent there growing up.
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
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Something I will say is to visit the Abbey House site of what is now Whitby Youth Hostel... am not sure it's particularly fortean but I'm still astonished that I never realised it was there, for the amount of time I spent there growing up.
'T is a very swishy modern Hostel, these days. When I was there an old FT member was helping to run it. :)
 
Weird, I was last there during folk week 2009... was that the same era?

prior to that I'd only been at the old site which was empty in 2009... still had the old curtains in the windows!
 
apparentky the establishment we are booked into is haunted by a ghost monkey ... can vouch for the pubs after a long night on the tiles
I wonder if it was the one they charged as a spy and then hung?
 
Very interesting find while I was IN Whitby for the Regatta, I took a walk along the beach by the east pier, usually I don't go far along there as it's slippy and rocky and mainly full of fossil hunters chipping away.

When I first saw this, I thought it was part of a house that had dropped into the sea and been eroded:

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Then I remembered hearing some old stories about how during the war, a concrete ship was sunk in the harbour to stop German shipping getting in, it didn't seem big enough to be an obstacle though (and a lot less dangerous than nearby Saltic Nab) or in a particularly good place to stop anything.

Later I asked at the museum about this, it's actually an actual concrete boat that was built as an experiment in the early 20th century, it served as a tug boat for a few years and then they decided to scuttle it in deep water, which went pear shaped and it ended up on the beach. SO then they blew it up and the bits have been there since.

I'm more surprised than anything else that I'd never heard of the Creteblock before!
 
Concrete-hulled ships certainly aren't unheard of (I've even actually helped work on building one).

Weren't there concrete+straw barge-boats made during WW2?

And I also seem to remember reading about massive ice & straw container ships, perhaps in WW1 maybe even through until WW2.
 
I've posted before about old concrete structures near the shore to the west of Bognor Regis. You could reach them at low water. In my schooldays, I just took them for granted as part of the scenery, but years later I learned they were components of Mulberry Harbour, which was built on the Invasion beaches in Normandy after D-Day. It was a huge undertaking - story here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulberry_harbour

The remains at Bognor may have been faulty or damaged, or perhaps surplus to requirements, so never made it across the Channel.

Also there were concrete barges made to carry water and fuel across the channel. There are still one or two around Falmouth Harbour.
 
That reminds me of a Pratchett device which detects magical surges and gives a bearing to them..... the one about making films maybe?
 
Ah! I'm sure I saw that replica leech-device in Whitby way back. I loved the picture! :)

The replica has false-leeches, I know. Was there ever any plan to feed the real ones or were they just replaced as they starved? Their energy to climb the sides of the jars must have suffered.

The occasional child's finger would make for a livelier exhibit, should they choose to reinstall living leeches! Perhaps with a box for donations?

Just a thought! :D
 
Taking another look at the cast iron gravemarker/tomb? of the engineer George Chapman, I've mentined this before though the only info online about it seems to be here

iron%20grave%201_zpsbnfz4fnn.jpg


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The inscription doesn't just mention Chapman and his wife but also two of his children who died aged 10 and 2 1/2.

I'll snaffle the small amount of text from the link in case it evaporates, the title it's from sounds dull unless you're into the search for Dracula!

chapman_zpsau5px1fi.jpg


If I find my way up to the museum tomorrow I might see if I can tap the lady on reception for info, she fished out a lot of info on the Creterblock for me last time. :D
 
Turns out my memory of the unusual 'bottle window' was wonky, it's larger than I recall and partially in line of sight from a couple of places once you know where you're looking.

You can see the very top of it from about 1/3 of th eway across the swingbridge, set back behind the building with the tudor frontage type thing:

Bottle%20Window_zpskrxwyjds.jpg


The whole thing is just visible from further away and quite an oblique angle if you do further along the other side of the harbour.
 
Ok, so I asked in the museum about the cast iron grave marker, and they pointed me to a door where their archives people live.

Took a bit of digging, and I had to sign a release for the copy I took from the records of who is burried at St Mary's saying I won't give out copies, but in summary - contrary to what seems to be the case, George Chapman isn't burried there, just his wife and two of his children.

Chapman himself is on the south side of the same cemetary, died February 28th 1855 aged 73.

The records specify the cast iron monument first and funnily segue onto mentioning George with the line "Mors est inevitabilis" :D

Doesn't really tell us anything else, and George Chapman doesn't appear in their geneology of the Chapman family, though it's incomplete. So I guess after 170 years no-one knows.
 
I knew I'd frigging forgot something... the frigging friggers!

From Whitby museum, a selection of glass rolling pins given to women by their menfolk while they were away to remember them by... make of that what you will.

Sizes vary from a few inches to bloody humungous.

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The strangest thing I ever saw was looking over the cliff down at the sea from the graveyard, then suddenly the sea turned red. I don't know if it was sewage, or fish-guts, or what,but it was like a plume of red in the water. Or maybe the vampires' blood bank burst or something.
 
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