Military AircrewA forum for the professionals who fly the non-civilian hardware, and the backroom boys and girls without whom nothing would leave the ground. Army, Navy and Airforces of the World, all equally welcome here.
In the RAF decades ago, many air bases had their ghosts. When I trained at Leeming in '66, the Officers' Mess staff took pleasure in recounting the story of the Mosquito navigator who crashed and burned in the war, and who appeared periodically to walk through walls looking for his pilot or whatever. There was also a ghost at Lindholme, though he has probably now been scared off by prison inmates. I was just wondering if there are any ghosts left out there on current military flying stations? I would hate to think they had all been disestablished!
Was told this story by a lady in her fifties that lives in Cranwell village, and have no reason to disbelieve it!
She was walking from the camp to the village with a friend of hers on a cold winters late afternoon, very dark, and when they were some way up the path near to the end of the airfield boundary, they both looked up to see a gentleman walking passed who wished them a good evening and tipped is hat to them. They both looked at each other as if to say that doesn't really happen often in this day and age, then looked behind them and no-one was there.
They thought nothing more of it until the next week, when the first lady who was one of the cleaners at Cranwell, was instructed to go and clean a different building which just happenened to be the Engineer/Supply Officer training building. She walked through the door early on the Monday morning to find herself staring at the chap she had seen a few night before! Sir Frank Whittle!
CK I can vouch for 229 being spooky, particularly round the galley area (did the poor soul pass away through food poisoning?), darkness never came into it, anytime of day there was a weird feeling on that aircraft. That said ghost stories abound at military stations, Lyneham is rumoured to have one wandering around near the wash bay hanger & of course only the brave went near a "black" Herc after it had landed. As for Halton - well now, I did see many ghosts there, although they always appeared through a drunken haze for some reason!!
When I was at Scampton in the late 1980s the Officers' Mess staff didn't like going down to the bar cellar alone. I spoke to a sergeant about this and he said that a "bad presence" was often felt in the narrow corridor behind the bar, leading to the top of the cellar steps. More than one person had felt that they were being pushed or bumped, whilst no-one else was actually there.
An acquaintance of mine, locking up the mess building about midnight, was shocked to see a figure by the ante room fireplace, wearing WW2 flying kit! The figure faded away before his eyes. Although to be fair, he was a member of the Reds so he might have been suffering from a delusion .
After spending a year at Swanton Morley which was quite a busy little airfield during the war but now belomgs to the Army there were many stories.
Certain houses on the married patch were supposedly haunted and the Padre used to wing how busy he was carrying out exorcisms. Apparently there were sightings of someone cin cold weather flying gear dating from the war. It is interesting that these same houses had a history of these apparitions, even when the crabs were thhere.
Also it was rumoured that a lonely piot used to loiter around the corridors in the mess, and was occasionally seen enjoying a dunhill in the Ante Room.
Cant say I ever seen anything, but knowing this story made me a bit on edge when staying in myself over the weekend on duty.
Anybody seen the Ghost at Linton? Believe him to be WW2 pilot that searches for his crashed Spitfire or Hurricane that went in near the tower. Back in't the day he was quite well known as he often visited the tower. Any more info on this ghost, my mother once had an encounter with him back in the 70s.
During WW2 Wittering took a bomb that blew out the front of the Officers' Mess. Apparently it killed an Army officer in the ante-room. When I was OC PMS this tale was related to me by the mess staff who also said that they sometimes felt "a presence".
About 18 months after I had departed for the hallowed halls of Adastral House my wife was posted in to Wittering as OCPMS and, while we decided to go in MQ or not, she had a room in the Mess. It was upstairs above the ante room. Normally, officers are not accommodated in this area - tends to be reserved for VIPs and senior officer 'favourites'.
Those who know Wittering also know that at the southern end of the upstairs corridor, next to the VIP suite, there is a flight of stairs leading down to a locked door on the ground floor.
One evening my wife swore blind that she heard someone walk down the corridor and down the stairs. She heard the door open and close. No one else was accommodated on the top floor at the time. She also said that she regularly awoke at about 3.30 am with some kind of sense that someone was there.
Apparently the bomb hit at about 3.30 am.
I had not told her the story before she went there.
I heard a story about the hotel at Tees Side airport when it used to be the Officers' Mess, RAF Middleton St Geaorge.
IIRQ a Meteor overshot the runway and crashed into the corner of the building. The pilot survived the crash, but as he was clambering out of the wreckage a large piece of masonary fell in him and killed him. Evidently the particular room is still haunted.
While at Leeming Mess there were a few storys that would come out all about chaps in WW2 flying clothing walking around. BUT
The strangest one that happened while I was living there was after a big mess function . Pilot wakes up from his drunken slumber in TV/ back up bar room chair On his way to the toilet he observes 10 plus pint glasses lined up perfectly on the floor at the back of the room. He is only impressed that somebody was sober enough to line them up Returning from little boys room after a normal length of time to drain the main vain he returns to Chair. The pint glasses all have clean breaks at the base and are arranged perfectly again on the floor with the top sections all to one side in a line
I saw one of the glasses later that day .I could not see how myself sober could have broken a pint glass in that fashon let alone 10 plus in the time it takes to go powder my nose. with out mention he did not see/or hear any body else in the mess
Civvy PPL, nervously venturing onto Mil territory without clearance, please be gentle!
Working at the then newly-built Culham Laboratory in the mid sixties I was the first SAO's to inhabit the end of the F4 block, setting up the Microwave Diagnostic Lab before the rest of the research group transferred from AERE Harwell. Even during the daytime it was wierd to walk down the corridors which had double swinging doors - the glass reflected the slight movements of the other sets of doors.
Now, as an impressionable 18-year old at the time I listened to the old storekeeper who had worked at Culham when it was an RN airfield that repaired and serviced Seafires and Sea Hurricanes during the war. He said that there had been a fatal crash at one end of the airfield and that a new building or hangar had been erected near the site. "Several workers" had been startled on many occassions by an airman carrying a flying helmet appearing to walk out of the wall and fade after a few footsteps.
Brilliant story, with all the correct ghost tale credentials.....
At the back of Culham outside the wire the Nuneham estate begins. Well hidden amonst the trees and overgrown bushes lies Pegusus Camp. I'm pretty sure that it was a POW site, but have no details.
XV229 may have been odd but I felt strange on every Nimrod in the fleet.
Unfortunately Station Ghosts were phased out in the early 1990s under Options for Change. It is rumoured that a rapid reaction ghost will be available in a variety of flying kits of yesteryear at a central location, ready for deployment at a moments notice to the airfield/barracks that used to be an airfield/new housing estate of your choice.
I heard the hangar that houses the Lincoln bomber at Cosford has a resident ghost. Folk have claimed to have seen a figure sitting in the cockpit and one engineer was apparently given some (good) verbal advice whilst trying to fix something on the aircraft. Strangely, no-one was there when he turned round and no-one had been near him at all.
I heard a radio program some years back about an investigation which took place one night by a group who sat in the Lincoln aircraft. These folks reportedly experienced strange pinpricks of light floating about in the aircraft and heard strange clicking noises which were later traced to be the same as the magneto switches being operated.
.
