Midland
Sprits & Spectres
by Anne Bradford & Barrie Roberts

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Contents 
 

"Do you believe in Ghosts?"

Birmingham

The Old Man in Pince Nez  (City Centre)

Walking Round the Table  (Balsall Heath)

The Haunted Bed  (Bordesley Green)

The Lady of the Loo (Bournville)

Midnight Tea  (Edgbaston)

Walking in the Park  (Erdington)

Footsteps on the Stair  (Hockley)

The Housekeeper's Room  (Moseley)

Sarah  (Northfield)

Lesley Gets Things Moving  (Northfield)

Through the Living Room  (Sheldon)

Riders in the Dusk  (Sutton Park)

The Vanishing Victim  (Witton)

A Horrible Low laugh  (Yardley)

"My Flat is Haunted."  (Erdington)

Cold Spots and a Cavalier  (Sutton Coldfield)

The Black Country

Mrs Peters  (Smethwick)

Floating at the Punchbowl  (Bilston)

The Spectre of Whittington Heath  (Kinver)

The Grey Man  (Brierley Hill)

The Second Key  (Walsall)

A Twisted Skein  (Walsall)

Chucking About Time  (Dudley)

Coventry

The Strange Death of Mary Clues  (Dugdale)

Cold Tracey  (Coventry)

Shropshire

The Room Where Time Moved Back  (Bridgnorth)

The Haunted Engine  (Horsehay)

Ring in the New  (Shifnal)

The Ghost Train  (Wellington)

Roman Horses  (Telford)

Laying a Ghost?  (Telford)

Staffordshire

“Are you alright, duck?"  (Barlaston)

Flying Home.  (Lichfield)

Old George  (Tamworth)

Anne in the Fog  (Featherstone)

The Nun on the Bridge  (Alton)

The Lamp Man  (Upper Tean)

Warwickshire

Messing up the Bedding  (Barford)

Miss Lucy's Hat  (Charlecote Park)

The Phantom Cat  (Copt Heath)

Lady on a Bicycle  (Coughton)

The Girl in White  (Kenilworth Castle)

Long Blue Dress  (Ladbroke)

The Mickleton Hooter  (Mickleton)

The Grey Nun  (Princethorpe)

Long Boney Fingers  (Quinton)

Housing Old and New  (Ryton on Dunsmore)

Small Hotel  (Stratford upon Avon)

The Feel of a Cat  (Studley)

Jenny Burntail & the Luminous Owls  (Avon Dassett)

The White Lady of the Springs  (Alcester)

Worcestershire

Chasing the Bear  (Redditch)

The Vanishing Customer  (Redditch)

The Curse of Dagnall End Farm  (Beoley)

The Girl at the Cross Roads  (Crabbs Cross)

Magic Boards  (Great Witley and Feckenham)

The Jumping Car  (Finstall)

Dark Figure in the Night  (Stourbridge)

The Great Hound of Worcester  (Tinker's Cross)

Whispering in the Wind  (Sambourne)

Out of Body  (Worcester)

A Long Black Coat  (Wychbold)

A Dark Hooded Cloak  (Tardebigge)

Running a Ghost Watch

Ghost Watch at Haden Hill House, Oldbury

Ghost Watch at Walker's Bingo Hall, Wednesbury

Ghost Watch at Horsehay Engine Shed

Sample Story

The Vanishing Victim
(Witton)

 David Bingham made headlines in the Birmingham Evening Mail on 2nd January 1996 when his car hit something strange: 

I'm under a plumbing contract to Birmingham City Council and on a 24 hour call out. Early this morning I finished a job at Kingstanding, and at 10 to 1 I was driving back from Kingstanding to Witton, making my way to Aston where I was lodging temporarily with a relative. I took a short cut down Moor Lane beside Witton Cemetery, when suddenly, about 150 yards from the junction with Brookvale Road, this bloke appeared. He was an ordinary looking man in his late forties with short black hair, a long black jacket and black trousers.  In the split second that he appeared, my car hit him.  As it hit him, he looked up at me, and I can't get the look in those eyes out of my head.  There was a solid thud as he hit the front of the bonnet. I slammed the anchors on and jumped out of the van, expecting the worst, but there was nothing on the road. I looked everywhere, under the van - everywhere, but I couldn't find anything.

I got back into the van and went as fast as I could to my mate's house a short distance away, and we phoned the police. They came straight out and interviewed me. We all went out and looked around but nothing was there. The strange thing was that there was not even a mark on the van.

People say that I saw a bit of fog or a snowman but that's ridiculous. I know what I saw and I heard that thump as it hit the bonnet".

The Second Key
(Walsall)

 Gordon Thompson is in his 50s, and has lived in Walsall for thirty five years.

 "About twenty five years ago I lived in a flat in a residential street in south Walsall. For a while I shared it with a girlfriend, but she moved on.

Several months after my girlfriend, Jane, had left, I went out one night with a friend. He drove me home afterwards in his Mini and we stopped outside my front door at about 1 o'clock in the morning.

As I opened the passenger door and started to get out, I felt my bunch of keys slide out of my right hand pocket. Something fell outside the car and I heard it hit the stone kerb.

I picked up my key ring and found that one key had come loose and was missing. It was the middle of a winter's night, so it had to be my front door key that had gone.

Bob and I searched all round the car door, but found no key. I was worried, because there was a drain grill just underneath the car and I began to suspect that the key had hit the kerb and bounced into it. The front door was the only way into the flat.

We moved the car and searched again; still no key. By then I was quite sure that it had bounced into the drain. Bob said `Do you think it might be in the car?' but I said, `No, I heard it hit the stone kerb outside'. Nevertheless, he searched inside the car.

I was looking at my front door, considering ways of breaking in, when Bob said, `There's a key here'. He had found a Yale key underneath the car's floor mat on the passenger side. I looked, but the key he had found was yellow metal and my front door key was silver.

In desperation I tried all the other Yale keys on my ring, but none of them would open my door. To my utter astonishment, Bob tried the key he had found and it opened the door. Even more astonishing, when I looked at Bob's key in the indoor light I saw that it was the duplicate that I had had made for Jane. I had marked it with a cross because she had several similar keys. The really peculiar elements of all this are that Jane had never returned her key to me, and Bob had never met her. So how did her key turn up under the mat of Bob's car just when I desperately needed it?"

 ******* 

Yes, you are all going to write to the publisher saying that there is nothing very paranormal about this one, and its obvious that .... All right cynics, but even if Jane had been in Bob's car, in some capacity, why should the only object she dropped be this single key? The odds against what happened occurring might be even longer than those of it being some paranormal event, if we had the faintest idea what the probabilities were?

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