Ghosties And Goulies

[Flatiron]

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!

[circle kay]

They Do say that Nimrod XV229 (numbers add up to 13!) has a ghost and that some of NLS have met it on a dark night on the pan.

[TheBeeKeeper]

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!

TheBeeKeeper
(DH82b)

[circle kay]

http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/125/achievements/whittle/telgraph.htm
So... Sir Frank went for a Sunday walk in the fifty's, as he didn't move to the USA till 1976 it's not exactly Steven King is it?

[TheBeeKeeper]

In HER fifties dear boy, not THE fifties.......

Struggle with words do we?

TheBeeKeeper
(DH82b)

[circle kay]

Sorry I no spell wright. Style over content....

[arfur-sixpence]

my mother-in-law saw a ghost in their quarter at RAF Middleton St George (aka Teesside airport).

Her mother was actually chatting to it, thinking it was her husband (it wa sbehind her).

[Rocket2]

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!!:\

[ShyTorque]

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 :E .

[rej]

I heard a story that the Officers' Mess at Headley Court was haunted by a relative of Oliver Cromwell.

Not sure how true it is .

Maybe I just looked gullible...... or do the staff use it as a ploy to increase the rehab rates of the patients living there!

[Gainesy]

Here you go: "Lindholme Willy" a strange affliction and its cure.

http://haib.50g.com/lindholme1.htm (http://http://haib.50g.com/lindholme1.htm)

[Fanstop]

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.:ooh: :ooh:

[ppf]

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.

ppf :rolleyes:

[allan907]

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.:ooh:

[Arclite01]

Have also heard that a hangar at Syerston is haunted and that the RAF Police Dogs would not go in there - anyone heard if that is still ongoing ?

West Malling was certainly haunted when I was flying there in the late 70's & 80's - many Ghost stories and sightings often

Suggested reading on Ghosts is 'Ghost Stations' series of books by Bruce Barrymore Halfpenny

Arc

[Reichman]

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.


Reichman.

[prang one]

While at Leeming Mess there were a few storys that would come out all about chaps in WW2 flying clothing walking around.:sad:
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 :yuk:
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:uhoh:

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:confused:

[Ripline]

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.

OK, back to JetBlast......

Ripleline

[J.A.F.O.]

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.

[ShyTorque]

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. :ooh:

[Gainesy]

I once saw a phantom at Wittering.:uhoh:

[Trumpet_trousers]

.....Jag mates are always putting the willies up each other, allegedly.....:p

[BEagle]

Once saw the shadow of a former proud and mighty Royal Air Force in a little country called Britain........

[ZH875]

From ShyTorque 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.

Unfortunately, the whole story of the ghost of Lincoln B2 RF398 was a hoax. The Manchester Air & Space Museum wanted an Avro Aircraft and the Cosford Museum's parent unit (RAF Hendon) volunteered the Lincoln. The Museum Society wanted to keep her, and as the museum also had a Shackleton, the ghost and all the happenings were invented. The whole story lasted 17 Years, and was finally admitted to during filming for 'Michael Aspels Strange But True Encounters' which had a Lancaster Crew talking about life on the Lincoln.

I know, for I was one of the 'Lincoln Crew'

[Flatus Veteranus]

As Reichman mentions, a student on the Meteor conversion course at No 205 AFS, Middleton St George in the early 1950s was killed attempting (it was thought) a single engined touch-and -go landing. This manoeuvre was never a starter. Crit speed at full thrust on one engine and with full opposite rudder applied (ie with the rudder hard up against the mechanical stops)was about 130 kts. Touch down would have been at about 100 kts.

The poor sod ploughed into the Mess through what was then the ladies' room (now the bar of the Hotel St George). The MO at the time opined that he had survived the impact but had been killed by falling masonry (no bone domes in those days).

On my last visit the barman said that hosties from an airline operating from Teeseside would not accept room reservations at that end of the hotel, because the ghost of the student haunts the corridors. I have tried to identify, without success so far, the aircraft's tail number and the name of the pilot. I wonder how one induces the poor soul (if indeed there is one) to RIP. Sounds like a Bell, Book and Candle job.

I suggested to my vicar that I might try my old Asymmetric Long Briefing, which might at least bore the poor ghoul into quiescence.
The vicar was not particularly amused.

MIddleton was the nucleus of a Canadian Lancaster group during WW2. They hold occasional reunions there and there are some interesting photgraps around the walls of the bar. Somehow the hotel has managed to retain some of the atmosphere of a mess. Worth a passing visit. :sad:

[Flatus Veteranus]

MIke Jenvey

Super post! Many thanks for the links. I can only add that during my period as a QFI at Middleton (Feb 52 - Jan 54) I never experienced or heard of the ghost of Fg Off Norman. Mind you it was always cold at Middleton in those days and there was quite a heavy drinking culture. If he had sat on my legs I would have groaned and muttered "legless again, I suppose". :) :)

[ShyTorque]

ZH875,

A HOAX! Disgraceful. That sort of thing gives good ghost stories a bad name.

The perpetrators should be given a sound thrashing!

I'll send you my birch twig.

:ok:

[Hueymeister]

My father has used the hotel several times and on one occasion had cause to ring reception to tell them the heating was dud in his room.....(not sure which room it was)it wasn't...the radiator was on full blast, but the room was like a fridge..they didn't tell him about the ghostly Fg Off, but now he knows...says he'll stay again though.

[RFCC]

Stumbled across this one....
http://haib.50g.com/cottesmore.htm

:ooh:

[arfur-sixpence]

Mike Jenvey,

I wonder if your MSG ghost is the one the MIL saw?