Weird Warwickshire

A ghostly white lady on a riverbank

Your spooky ghost stories, part III

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

By Elaine Robinson

At my 16th birthday party when everybody but me, my then boyfriend and my siblings had gone home, the lounge door suddenly opened.

It had obscured glass panels but my boyfriend was sitting to the left of the door and he could see somebody walking into the lounge through the glass. He said it was a really old man, scruffy-looking, with only one leg.

Now for years, my dad’s socks went missing, but only in ones, I know lots of other people say this happens to them, but it's never happened in my own house. We also used to have strange things happen, like heating tanks being unplugged and my sister swore that she never did it.

For years we took it as a bit of a joke until about three years later we were all talking about the ghost and really old relatives, when my mum started talking about somebody who used to come and visit when she was a young girl.

He was a very distant relative and a bit of a down and out and nobody else would have anything to do with him except my mum’s parents, who always invited him in.

I asked what happened to him and she said he had died soon after having his leg amputated because of gangrene.

The whole room shivered when she said that, but from then on I wasn't scared because I knew it was a friendly ghost.

Spooky!

By H Stokes

My elder brother and father worked in the 50's for British Road Services out of the Quinton Road depot and did for a long time had a night shift on the breakdown lorry.

One night, they were called out to somewhere near Rugby and they set off. Somewhere on the way, I'm not sure where, a cyclist came out of nowhere. There was no time to swerve and the result was a horrible crunch as the bike went under the lorry.

Ghostly shenanigans with an HGV?

On examination, nothing was found. They called into the next police station and reported what had happened. The on-duty policeman just laughed and said not to worry, it was a common occurence on that stretch of the road!!

After relating it at the garage, it was found that several drivers had had the same thing happen.

Another spooky thing to happen to my father came before the war, when he would drive down to Bristol several times a week during his night shift.

Speeds were much slower then but dad said when they did about 40 mph, a woman would jump onto the running board and look into the cab, scream then disappear!!

By Mike Oldroyd

I thought I should tell you about something that happened a few years ago when I was a student at what was then Coventry Polytechnic.

For a little while, I lived in a small terraced house in the Hillfields area of Coventry sharing with three other students. Shortly after we moved in, we noticed that a quite a large number of cats seemed to congregate regularly in the back garden.

This happened day after day, and only in our garden. None of the neighbours' gardens seemed to interest the cats at all.

A cat in the snow

One day, I noticed our next door neighbour in her garden hanging washing. I went out to see her and ask about all the cats. She told me that before we had moved in, the house had belonged to an old lady who used to go out every day and feed any cats that were there.

The old lady had died the previous year but perhaps the cats were still turning up in the hope of a free meal.

That winter we woke up one Saturday morning to find a thick layer of snow on the ground. Despite the snow the cats were in the garden as usual.

By then, my housemates and I pretty much ignored the cats, as they ignored us. A couple of them glanced at us briefly as we started building a snowman.

I still have the photograph I took that day. You can see the snowman, and my grinning housemates, and then in the background, the figure of a small elderly lady, bending down with a bowl, cats rubbing up against her legs....

By Roger Worrod

Dr Wahlmann was infamous in Coventry in early 1940. A note in my Baby Book: "... a lot of rumours about his nationality.

Press statements denying his internment mean that a fine doctor can continue his job despite the attempts of foolish, wicked and misguided persons to stop him"

He was our family doctor throughout my early childhood, through measles, mumps and impetigo. He gave us our smallpox and cholera jabs before we set off in spring 1948 for a new life in Kenilworth... Kenilwarth, South Africa, that is.

Unlike our neighbours who had left with us on the Winchester Castle, we were back in Coventry by the end of October.

A shadow in the fog

Picking up the pieces, going back to Folly Lane that had mysteriously become Gosford Park, finding out that my childhood sweetheart 'for life' had not waited for my return, 'being sent to Coventry' when soliciting "a penny for the Guy"...it was not easy.

Bonfire Night was bitterly cold and thick with fog and smoke. So thick that soon I was definitively lost. And very alone.

I was sitting on a garden wall, snuffling and trying in vain to warm my hands on the
candle I had stuck in a jam jar, when a gentle voice said: "You are a long vey from home".

Dr Wahlmann smiled down at me. "Lost your vey, hef you?" I nodded "Come". Within ten minutes we were at grandma's front door. "Keep vell", then he was swallowed up by the fog.

Crumpets and Oxo and In Town Tonight... and grandad pointing out the obituary in the Evening Telegraph, but I knew better. I'd been lost and he'd brought me home.