I'm not familiar with the Castle Hotel (I assume Berwick?). Could I get some details from you and I'll put it up.
In his book "
Haunted Berwick" the author Darren W. Ritson mentions 'The Castle' (as it's known locally) (and yes, it's indeed in Berwick-upon-Tweed) but refers only to The artist L. S. Lowry who habitually stayed there during his annual visits to the town. He doesn't make any claims himself that it's haunted.
My first full-time job during the Summer between leaving school and going off to college was as a barman in the Castle. The assistant manager of the hotel told me that it was haunted and the manageress (a no-nonsense Irish woman, the sister-in-law of the owner) seemed to agree with him. According to the assistant manager the ghost was of a cook who had hung himself in the kitchen from the exposed overhead pipes.
Everything was fine for the first few weeks that I worked there. Then one evening I came back to work (this was in the days of split shifts for bar-work - opening hours were 11am - 3pm and 7pm until 11.00pm) and was met by the manageress and assistant manager in the hotel lobby. According to them they'd heard a tremendous crash from the cellar half-way through the afternoon. They'd gone down to the cellar together (having to unlock the public bar itself and then the door that led behind the locked and shuttered serving area (there was the sound of further crashes as they were doing this)) and, according to the assistant manager, who'd been in the lead, they stepped into the cellar just as a crate of mixers was lifted into the air and flung across the room - hitting the opposite wall. The cause of the earlier noises that they'd heard was two crates of empty mixer bottles and a crate of empty beer bottles that had similarly been flung about the cellar.
I was somewhat skeptical about this - I thought that it might just be a trick being played on the 'new guy' (i.e. me). However, it seemed a fairly costly one as I had to spend a lot of my shift that evening cleaning up spilt orange juice and beer dregs and washing down lots of bottles and kegs that had sticky fruit juice and beer all over them as well as clearing up broken glass and mopping the floor.
From then on there was low-grade poltergeist type activity in the bar (and according to the waitresses and kitchen staff in the dining-room and kitchen too). Things would go missing such as order pads, corkscrews, and the knife that we used behind the bar to slice lemons. These things would invariably be found in the dining-room or kitchen (or occasionally behind the reception desk). One of the more annoying things would be the draught beer would stop working and I would have to go down into the cellar to turn it back on since the taps down there had been turned off (the woman who worked with me behind the bar refused point-blank to go into the cellar because of the ghost).
I finished my Summer job and went off to college but returned at Christmas and dropped into the hotel for a pint and to catch up with whatever staff were still working there. The assistant manager greeted me with great excitement and told me that the 'ghost' had been seen.
Michelle, one of the waiting staff during the Summer, had started working behind the bar when I left, and she was still there at Christmas. Apparently, one filthy wet, windy November evening mid-week there'd been no guests staying in the hotel and no-one booked to arrive and the manageress and assistant manager had gone out for a meal together leaving Michelle to be bar-maid (to an empty bar in an empty hotel). She'd been sitting reading a book at the end of the bar from where she could see into the hotel lobby. She heard the noise of the front door of the hotel swinging open and looked up to see a tall figure in a long black coat with 'layers on the shoulders' (I asked her at this point if she meant a sort of coachman's coat and she said yes). The figure walked into the lobby, turned left and then almost immediately right and went behind the reception desk. Michelle jumped down off her stool and dashed behind the reception desk but there was no one there - she then checked the office behind reception, but it too was empty, and there was nowhere for the figure to have gone. All this had happened in just a few seconds and it was only then that it dawned on her that the figure had been wearing a top hat!
She seemed quite calm and matter-of-fact about what had happened when she told me about it a few weeks later. She could, of course, have just been making it all up.
The hotel has changed hands at least twice since then (and the bar has been beautifully refurbished). The last time I was in I asked the barmaid if they had a hotel ghost and she said 'no' (while looking at me as though I was mad) - so maybe it's gone, or maybe it was never there in the first place.
I've never mentioned this on here before since there's nothing very conclusive about it and I never witnessed anything fortean personally. I don't think it really merits being included on your website DrPaulLee.
ETA: Sorry about the length of the above!
