It's a small village pub with maybe 10 people on its staff, so I'll stay quiet on its exact identity for the time being, but I'm happy to share some stories! I haven't worked there very long so most of these are secondhand.
The pub is supposedly haunted by a notorious local woman who died just over 200 years ago. The initial stories I read, many years ago, indicated that she mostly wandered the pub garden. However, my colleagues have indicated the activity can be found in the bar area, the guest rooms, and the staff accommodation.
My experiences are very tame. I've glimpsed movements out of the corners of my eyes when I've been cleaning the bar on my own during the day when the pub is closed. However, the pub is "sunken" due to its age and the windows are quite close to street level, so the lighting is odd and the reflective surfaces don't help. Of the two strangest incidents I personally recall:
- Our storage outbuilding is adjacent to the back of our pub. The door to that building has glass in it. On several occasions I have glimpsed someone's reflection in that door, as though a figure were walking past it. It could have been my own reflection, but I can never replicate the movement and besides, the person is always walking right-to-left. The angles involved would make it difficult for it to be me.
- The toilets are in a narrow corridor separated from the bar by a door. One day I went to clean them (we were closed at the time), and I heard the pipes and flushes making a real racket. They do make noise from time to time but this was extremely loud and sounded almost like the hand dryers were blasting too. I could feel a wind blowing in from under the door to the ladies' toilets. Unfortunately I did not feel up to investigating and decided to hang back for 5 minutes until my colleague arrived for her shift. When we went to clean the toilets together, it was silent.
My colleagues have some much more interesting experiences:
- Colleague A lives in the staff accommodation. He often hears knocks and banging sounds, and sometimes at night he'll hear footsteps running up and down the corridor. One night he was outside with a cigarette and heard his name being called in a voice he described as "demonic". However, he seems unfazed by it all.
- Colleague B has had her pint knocked over in certain parts of the pub, and once felt an unseen finger tap her on the shoulder when she was cleaning one of the guest rooms. She's slept in the guest rooms a few times. One night she told someone off for coming into the room while she was trying to sleep, but the person who was with her didn't see anyone. On another occasion she stayed in a different room and heard things being thrown around the bar in the early hours.
- Colleague C refuses to clean the guest rooms on her own. I'm not sure exactly what happened but Colleague B says the ghost doesn't like her.
- The owner has two dogs that bark and growl at the rafters in one particular corner.
- A shadowy apparition has been seen crossing part of the bar and disappearing into the wall. This was when the staff were socialising in the pub after closing time and everyone who was there saw it.
Guests have also reported small incidents such as their TVs turning on by themselves (but only in the old pub rooms and not in our new-built garden accommodation). Back in the 90s one guest reported a lady in a blue dress getting into bed with her. Make-up and toiletries also go missing, although if the ghost ever tries nicking my horrid little hotel-sized bottles of shampoo and shower gel - she and I will be having words! I hate running out of those and having to traipse down to the storage outbuilding for more
