Very haunted or desperate for custom?

Fisherman​

Location: Weymouth (Dorset) - Golden Lion Hotel
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 2023
Further Comments: A total of five ghosts are reputed to haunt the hotel; a fisherman who stands at the bar, two ladies who roam the landings, and another two women heard laughing in the courtyard. It is worth noting that the pub's website notes 'the ghosts do not bear much historical scrutiny', although more recently staff have reported spotting shadowy figures passing the side door and dance floor.

https://www.paranormaldatabase.com/recent/index.php
 
When I was down at my son's pub (for Book Club, I'm not hanging around pubs!) the staff were talking about the ghost; something had happened. Unfortunately I then got swept up into talking about the book and didn't hear what had gone on. I'm off on my holidays next week with my family - son and his wife also, so I'm hoping to give them a proper grilling (probably appropriate, since we'll be in Crete) about what goes on there, and shall report back. This will be the first time I get to spend an significant amount of time with them in quite a while.

But they are definitely sure that 'things happen'. The dog collar noises and things moving are chief among them, but I want to know what's happened lately.
 
Very haunted or desperate for custom?

Fisherman​

Location: Weymouth (Dorset) - Golden Lion Hotel
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 2023
Further Comments: A total of five ghosts are reputed to haunt the hotel; a fisherman who stands at the bar, two ladies who roam the landings, and another two women heard laughing in the courtyard. It is worth noting that the pub's website notes 'the ghosts do not bear much historical scrutiny', although more recently staff have reported spotting shadowy figures passing the side door and dance floor.

https://www.paranormaldatabase.com/recent/index.php
All those details sound almost identical to haunted hotels I've worked in. The Red Lion, The Cliftonville's ballroom and The Sandcliff in my home town report all of these things although not all in one hotel.
 
The Terrible Treasure Holt Story

I loved the comment by the lady pointing out that there were no active monasteries nor monks in the area at the time when the recorded events supposedly happened (the English civil war).

Although the story of "Simon the monk" is pleasantly told, I guess it probably never happened.
 
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I loved the comment by the lady pointing out that there were no active monasteries nor monks in the area at the time when the recorded events supposedly happened (the English civil war).

Although the story of "Simon the monk" is pleasantly told, I guess it probably never happened.
It has been pointed about by @RuthRoperWylde and others that pretty much everyone used to wear hooded cloaks that ere nowadays associated with monks, it was how they kept warm and dry
 
The Angel at Market Harborough is in These Haunted Times Volume 3
I didn't go in the Angel, unfortunately, I went in the Sugar Loaf - in Brixworth I went in the George, and the barmaid confirmed that it was supposed to be haunted but looked a bit embarassed about talking about it, so I didn't push.
 
A couple of months ago I decided to change village pubs. The pub I frequent now is ancient building built circa 1450, and for almost 450 years was lived in as a house, until it was converted into a pub in the late 1890’s.

Admittedly it’s not as nice as the other pub, doesn’t do any food but it’s over £1.20 a pint cheaper, and since I started going in there, I have developed a fondness for the old landlord, a nice old fellah whose wife sadly died back in January.

Anyway, I was its only customer when I popped in there for a pint on Friday lunchtime, and at one point the landlord asked me to keep on eye on things as he needed to pop over to the village post office and that he wouldn’t be long.

As I’m standing at the bar, I distinctly could hear the sound of someone walking around upstairs. The sound of footsteps was very very clear and went on for well over a minute, then stopped completely.

Couple of minutes after that the landlord came back and I asked him who was upstairs. Absolutely no one he told me. I told him about the sound of footsteps, and he said that he has heard them himself many times over the years, and once he was in an adjacent room to the bar, and heard the sound of someone coming into the pub and sitting down on a barstool, but when he immediately went back into the bar area to serve the customer there was nobody there. Another regular to the pub (who I shall see and ask him about it tomorrow) told the landlord that he saw a figure of a man wearing red sitting on a chair by the fire. When the regular glanced over to the man again a moment later, the chair was empty.

I’m in there most lunchtimes when I’m working from home, so I will keep you all informed of any further paranormal activities.
 
Told to me this afternoon by the Landlord, of my new spooky watering hole. I like this one

Early yesterday evening it was a little bit quiet in the pub, so he decided to make himself a late lunch- a sandwich. As he was just about to cut the Sandwich in half, he accidently dropped a kitchen knife, which fell into a tiny gap between the oven and the kitchen sideboard. A gap so small that not even a broom handle could prise it out. He didn’t worry too much about and used another knife.

This morning, he came down from his flat above and there was the kitchen knife lying very neatly on the kitchen table, alongside a set of keys that he thought he lost 6 months previously.
 
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Told to me this afternoon by the Landlord, of my new spooky watering hole. I like this one

Early yesterday evening it was a little bit quiet in the pub, so he decided to make himself a late lunch- a sandwich. As he was just about to cut the Sandwich in half, he accidently dropped a kitchen knife, which fell into a tiny gap between the oven and the kitchen sideboard. A gap so small that not even a broom handle could prise it out. He didn’t worry too much about and used another knife.

This morning, he came down from his flat above and there was the kitchen knife lying very neatly on the kitchen table, alongside a set of keys that he thought he lost 6 months previously.
Oooooooooo!
 
I might have mentioned this before...

Two years ago I interviewed a landlady at one of her old pubs. Nothing spooky had happened there apart from one incident.
She got up early in the morning and was preparing the pub but before she did so, she sat at the bar reading stuff on her phone. She went away to attend to something and she folded her glasses up and put them on the phone.
When she returned her glasses were gone and she couldn't find them. This caused some upset as her vision was extremely poor without them and she considered getting a new pair.

A few days later there was a delivery of beer barrels and these were rolled from the street down into the cellar on to a crash mat. At the end of all this and the barrels placed in their allotted spaces she happened to glance down at the crash mat and there, folded neatly right in the middle, were her glasses.
 
A couple of months ago I decided to change village pubs. The pub I frequent now is ancient building built circa 1450, and for almost 450 years was lived in as a house, until it was converted into a pub in the late 1890’s.

Admittedly it’s not as nice as the other pub, doesn’t do any food but it’s over £1.20 a pint cheaper, and since I started going in there, I have developed a fondness for the old landlord, a nice old fellah whose wife sadly died back in January.

Anyway, I was its only customer when I popped in there for a pint on Friday lunchtime, and at one point the landlord asked me to keep on eye on things as he needed to pop over to the village post office and that he wouldn’t be long.

As I’m standing at the bar, I distinctly could hear the sound of someone walking around upstairs. The sound of footsteps was very very clear and went on for well over a minute, then stopped completely.

Couple of minutes after that the landlord came back and I asked him who was upstairs. Absolutely no one he told me. I told him about the sound of footsteps, and he said that he has heard them himself many times over the years, and once he was in an adjacent room to the bar, and heard the sound of someone coming into the pub and sitting down on a barstool, but when he immediately went back into the bar area to serve the customer there was nobody there. Another regular to the pub (who I shall see and ask him about it tomorrow) told the landlord that he saw a figure of a man wearing red sitting on a chair by the fire. When the regular glanced over to the man again a moment later, the chair was empty.

I’m in there most lunchtimes when I’m working from home, so I will keep you all informed of any further paranormal activities.
@Dick Turpin Lucky you, what a fascinating experience, you can keep yer Disclosure and demons, this is why I come on these forums...!
 
As a continuing service to my readers of HH1, I've created a corrections and updates page. Most of the entries are from newspapers since publication of the book but there are a couple of updates from friends, contacts - or from myself. I've yet to go through all the books brought out, which includes Ruth Roper Wylde's books so my listing is incomplete at present.

At present I'm just collecting and compiling locations. When time permits I'll do some more research into these places.

https://www.paullee.com/ghosts/gpub.php
 
I might have mentioned this before...

Two years ago I interviewed a landlady at one of her old pubs. Nothing spooky had happened there apart from one incident.
She got up early in the morning and was preparing the pub but before she did so, she sat at the bar reading stuff on her phone. She went away to attend to something and she folded her glasses up and put them on the phone.
When she returned her glasses were gone and she couldn't find them. This caused some upset as her vision was extremely poor without them and she considered getting a new pair.

A few days later there was a delivery of beer barrels and these were rolled from the street down into the cellar on to a crash mat. At the end of all this and the barrels placed in their allotted spaces she happened to glance down at the crash mat and there, folded neatly right in the middle, were her glasses.
That sounds like the playful style of pranks poltergeists are infamous for.
 
My favourite thing about haunted pubs is when you see stories featuring them on the news, there’s the inevitable ‘But it’s not just the spirits behind the bar causing problems’. You could bet your house on that inclusion.
Or... regular Fred thought he must have had one too many when he saw the monk/white lady/cavalier/black dog walk straight through the wall.
Or... Talk about dirty habits! Barmaid Lizzie reckons the monk must have been a randy old friar, as he keeps pinching her bum.
 
My favourite thing about haunted pubs is when you see stories featuring them on the news, there’s the inevitable ‘But it’s not just the spirits behind the bar causing problems’. You could bet your house on that inclusion.
Ditto a perhaps 50% likelihood of "Little Green Men" for UFO reports in local newspapers.
 
@Floyd linked me to this thread regarding my job in a haunted pub. I originally wrote a post about it on The New Member's Thread. I hope it's OK to duplicate it here in the more appropriate place.

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:pitch:
 
Update on the pub.

I spoke to one of the owners this morning - he's a lovely chap and while not a believer, not a hardcore sceptic either. In hindsight I probably should have done this after I cleaned the pub rooms. :worry:

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 owner looked surprised when I asked him about this. He said yes, he often saw the reflection of someone walking past.

I did follow it up by enquiring about the direction of the figure, but my question was too leading. For what it's worth, he did agree with me that the reflection always walks right-to-left.

We have discussed the possible mundane explanation that it's a reflection of a reflection, but it's not a very satisfying answer when the pub is empty!

One night he was outside with a cigarette and heard his name being called in a voice he described as "demonic".
I cannot attribute this to the supernatural without more evidence. The owner is a bit of a joker and this is the sort of thing he would do.

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 mystery has been solved. According to the owner, there is one specific room she won't clean on her own. This is said to be the room where the most activity happens. I wasn't actually aware there was an epicentre but it makes a LOT of sense in hindsight, for reasons I shall detail below.

The owner has two dogs that bark and growl at the rafters in one particular corner.
I have not been able to verify this specific claim (which was told to me by a colleague and not the owners) but he did tell me another story. Before he got the second dog, he often spent evenings in the pub with no one else around - no one in the bar and no guests in the upstairs rooms. The first dog is a hyperactive border collie which is always on the go. However, on a few occasions and for no apparent reason, the collie would get very nervous, quieten down and hide in the corner (presumably not the aforementioned corner) until it fell asleep.

And now for a couple of anecdotes about the most haunted room in the pub, Room 5, which Colleague C will not enter alone.

  • The door has been known to slam shut and lock people in. The slamming part is unsurprising, given the large gap between the door and the floor (the floor slopes because it's an old building with wonky floorboards), the weight of the door and the need to prop it open with something resistant. The door locking itself is much stranger. On one occasion some guests were trapped inside Room 5, even though they had the key, and had to drop the key out of the window so the owner could let them out. He said it was difficult to get the door open because the key kept jamming, but he was unable to replicate this later. This also happened to Colleague C.
    • I was reminded of an anecdote of my own. On one of my early shifts, the other owner was cleaning Room 5 while I finished up in the one next door. Upon trying to access Room 5, I found the door locked. The owner opened the door from inside and said it wasn't locked, just heavy. I remember being very puzzled because I had really tried to get the door open (not wanting to look silly in front of her), but took her word for it. I have never had a problem with that door since, and it is not that difficult to open.
  • The TV spontaneously turns on. I'm a little sceptical of this one, because I can hear an electric buzz near that room, and I'm wondering if there could be a bit of dodgy wiring. I have raised this with the landlord.
    • On a related note, I am definitely wondering about the possibility of infrasound. Any Forteans on here who are also electricians? I might also investigate to see whether the pub is known to be built on an underground waterway. Passing cars and lorries could possibly contribute.
  • Having been told about Room 5, I remembered a second anecdote, of something that I had ignored at the time. This happened maybe 2 weeks ago. While cleaning the room, I noticed the coat hangers were swinging on the rail. (There is no wardrobe in there, just a rail fitted in an alcove). Obviously I just assumed I'd set them off when I'd walked past them, but it's a small room and I've never seen them do it since.
Hopefully this is a satisfying enough update.
 
I wasn't actually aware there was an epicentre but it makes a LOT of sense in hindsight, for reasons I shall detail below.
I forgot to mention there is a strange vibe in that room. Had I been asked to guess which room was the main focus of activity, I would absolutely have assumed it was Room 5. I have often felt very stressed in that room, especially when something like a stubborn duvet cover delays me - almost as if my subconscious can't wait for me to leave. When I clean the mirror in the ensuite bathroom, I always half-expect someone to be in the bedroom behind me, and I feel a similar way if I step into the shower to clean the door from inside. The ensuite in Room 6 is identical, but doesn't fill me with the same foreboding.

Strangely enough our spooky patron is said to be quite a kind person! Still, I've taken to speaking my thoughts aloud when I'm in that room - it feels almost polite to let her know what I'm up to in there.
 
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