Weird Warwickshire

A ghost in the Belgrade bar

Your spooky ghost stories, part II

Click on the links at the bottom of the page for more of your ghost stories.

By Sue Rivers

We were late approaching Middle Lock - light was fading and we had to complete the Hatton flight before dark. "Alf," I yelled from the towpath, "Go ahead – it’s empty. No-one’s around."

The boat entered the lock. Without warning, the lock gates slammed shut and the top paddles began winding furiously. Clankety, clankety clankety; like a driverless train, going faster and faster, out of control.

Water flooded into the chamber in massive torrents. Vicious whirlpools formed, rocking the boat violently, sucking it downward into the murky depths…

I dashed towards the paddles, clasping my windlass - then froze: a huge horse was heading straight towards me. Its hoof marks rose up from the dust as if embossed there. I leapt aside. It passed right by me, its nostrils flaring. It was towing something.

A ghostly horse thunders past the canal

It vanished into the mist beyond the lock. A young woman appeared behind it carrying a wicker basket and crying, "Alfred, don’t leave me. It’s your child!".

Numb with shock, I turned round to find the water completely still and our boat safe in the lockkeeper’s hands.

"Go careful past Asylum Wharf," he growled, "Eleanor don’t like disturbance. She were laundress at the County Lunatic Asylum (pointing to Hatton Park). Put in there ‘cos she got in trouble by one of the canalmen. They’d meet up ‘ere. Turned out he was already wed. Broke her ‘eart it did. She comes back whenever she ‘ears ‘is name…"

Later that night after we’d reached the top of the flight, we met up with some other boaters and told our tale. They were astounded - apparently there hasn’t been a lockkeeper at Hatton for years.

The last one threw himself into Middle Lock in the 1860s when his daughter died in childbirth in the asylum…

By Simon Hall

My story starts when I was very young having just moved house to Coventry. We knew very little about the previous occupants. We had not been there that long before the very night in question happened.

I went to bed as normal, for a not so normal night. I'd started to dream about my toys being alive and talking, as you do when you're a kid. My toys were stored in a blanket box at the end of my bed.

When toys go bad....

Then it happened, the toys started to scare me. They were dancing around me, laughing at me, screaming at me. I woke up a very scared young boy, but had I woken up? The room had turned into a wooded out room, with me on my bed in the middle. The blanket box was open, and the toys dancing around my bed.

The nightmare was saved by my Mum, who had heard the noise and come to save me. Was it real or was it a dream? We later found out that a young girl had died in the very room, which in turn had made her Mum commit suicide. Let's put it this way, we moved very soon after.

By Annabel White

In the early 1960's, my mother and father rented a gamekeeper’s lodge attached to a large manor house on the outskirts of Warwickshire.

The manor house had been empty for many years and was in a partially dilapidated state, surrounded by orchards and large gardens.

One night my mother woke with surprise to feel someone or something sitting on her bed. The room was pitch black so she jumped from her bed to reach for the main bedroom light switch. She switched the light on to find the room completely empty!

Feeling a little startled she decided to pop the kettle on to have a cup of tea. Whilst in the kitchen, she heard a car pulling up on the stone/shingle driveway. Thinking it was our father returning early from his night shift she opened the front door but could see no sign of any vehicle.

The next day, my mother, father and brother were in the kitchen.

Suddenly, my brother told my mother he had just seen a woman outside the window. They all rushed outside and spotted an old lady, with grey hair tied up in a bun dressed in a long black dress with a high white collar heading away from them.

My brother shouted out to the lady but she never looked back and disappeared though a corrugated iron fence.

A spooky lady in a wood

They later discovered the ghostly lady was probably the mistress of the house. She often passed the gamekeeper’s lodge on her way to the orchard but never looked into the lodge, as in those days they were servant quarters.

The fence she floated through wasn't there all those years ago, so she must have been taking the same route she took in the 1800s.

By Sarah Givens

In March 1809 in Coventry, Jake Elliot was murdered. Peter Jameson was wrongly arrested and hanged for the murder two days later.

Jake and Peter had grown up together and were friends right through childhood, until the day their friend William died. The three were walking up near the quarry and Peter and William were arguing.

Jake was walking ahead, when he heard a scream. He turned around to see William at the bottom of the quarry dead. Since that day, Jake and Peter hadn’t spoken, as Jake believed that Peter had murdered William, and was not quiet about his suspicions.

The feud was still raging 20 years later when Jake’s 17-year-old daughter, Anne, and Peter’s 19-year-old son Steven had fallen in love.

Jake and Peter met up in the pub to discuss keeping their children apart, and by all accounts, the discussion soon became an argument with Jake shouting: "I don’t want my only daughter marrying into the family of a murderer!" and storming out of the pub.

Jake walked home past the pond behind the cathedral to clear his head, when Steven came up to him to beg him for permission to marry his daughter. Jake was incensed, and the two men fought. Steven hit Jake so hard that he fell back into the pond, hit his head on a rock and drowned. Steven ran off home.

The following day Peter was arrested and charged, and hanged 24-hours later in the square outside the Cathedral. Jake’s ghost looked on smiling as his enemy died.

In the years that followed, locals would swear that on misty March mornings you could hear the two men still arguing, with Jake saying: "see, I was right about that son of yours…".

By Nicol Oddy

Last Hallowe’en, I was grabbing a quiet pint in the Butchers Arms pub in Fillongley, near Coventry. There are a number of baileys (castles boundaries) near by, and I was completing some archaeological excavation research before the winter set in.

Across the bar I spotted a university friend, Melissa. I called her over, exclaimed how pleased I was to see her, but as she slipped into the seat opposite I was shocked to see how gaunt and pale she was.

When I pressed her on her decline in health she shivered and took a swig from her glass of whisky.

"Do you believe in ghosts? No? Neither did I until last year. I was working near here, on the priory remains at Maxstoke. We excavated a burial, south of the old chapel - a hideous male skeleton with a noose around his neck, and his feet cut off.

"To the north of the chapel we found, through geophysics work, a lead lined burial, containing the feet.

Is this the skull of a murderer?

"We took him to the lab, catalogued the bones and laid him out, adding the feet to ensure they all matched.

"I had a horrific nightmare that night. I was chased by a half-hidden man with a noose in his hands. When my roommate woke me, "Melissa’s voice broke, "....the dig professor had been strangled in his sleep. The police were following us around, the suspicion was terrible.

"I had the dream the next night and in the morning, once again, one of the team had been murdered.

"I wasn’t sure what to do, so I did a terrible thing. At the end of the day I stole the feet and the lead casing and reburied them in a churchyard near here. The dreams stopped, but so did the deaths. You see, he can’t walk any more…"