Haunted Pub

From: Lindsey Jeffs (L..A..Jeffs@wlv.ac.uk)
Story type: Ghost
Location: Worctershire, England.
Source: Form Submission

This happend a couple of years ago on a cold October evening . We (myself and my husband), decided to go out for a drink at a lovely pub in a market town near the river.

The pub was very quiet, in fact we were the only two people in the lounge, we chatted drinking a pint of good traditional beer and deciding whether to have another or drink or not. I was sitting with my back towards an old inglenook fire place and my husband was sitting opposite me. I suddenly had a feeling that there was someone standing next to me, I told my husband and he also had the same feeling.

The only way I can describe what happened next is that the atmosphere became electric, my husbands hair stood on end, I have to say that I found this amusing especially when the colour drained out of his face too. We both saw very fleetingly a figure of a man, there was no colour except black and white, he was standing just behind my right shoulder. I then sensed him move towards my husband and across the room towards the gents toilets, then the atmosphere changed, it felt like it just dissipated

My husband now was thoroughly shook up and decided that we would certainly have the second drink. When he was ordering at the bar he asked the landlady if anyone had ever had a ghostly encounter in her lounge. She actually became very protective, asking him to explain. When my husband and myself told her what had happened she softened slightly and said that since she had kept the pub (approximatly 14 years) she and her husband had never experienced anything, but we were the 12th customers who had told her very similar stories to ours including being pushed down the steps of the gents toilets, also all of the experiences had occured in the same area in the lounge, but usually nearer or in the gents toilets. The incidents always happend in the winter months, never in the summer.

When all this was happening I had the feeling that this entity was very old, I was picking up 17th century and that he had somthing to do with the river, and was quite a rogue. I later found out that parts of the pub went back to the 16th century and houses had been knocked together which now formed part of the lounge. The area was also notorious in the 17th century for river piracy.