From early 2019 I have enjoyed swapping emails with FT’s own Barry Baldwin. These started off with high academic aspirations, but pleasurably descended into exchanges about Hovis Presley, football and forteana. Although Barry now lives in Canada, it’s safe to say that “you can take the lad out of Lincoln but you can never take Lincoln out of the lad”. Indeed, he still follows the travails of his beloved Lincoln City and recently wrote an article for The Lincolnshire Poacher entitled “Strange Shire Goings-on”.1 I loved his quoting HenryVIII describing Lincolnshire as “that most brute and beastly of our counties”. The article highlighted the wide range of weird phenomena that occur across what was the second largest county in England in terms of area: mysterious singing, hospital hauntings, pubs with poltergeists, invisible grasping hands, possible UFOs, meteorological mayhem, choked chickens, and quotes from both Charles Fort and Lincoln-shire lass Margaret Thatcher!
This article pulls together all of the remaining first and second-hand testimonies that I received during my Lincolnshire researches and completes my series of fortean tales relating primarily to the roads of the county; viz. “The Ruskington Horror” (FT401:32-38, 402:38-43), “Weird Wheels from the Wolds” (FT407:48-51), and “Scary Stories from Scunthorpe” (FT411:48-52). It has similarities to Barry’s piece in that it covers very diverse phenomena. One story I cannot include concerns a lady seen on a bridge in Edwardian dress by a driver and his passengers – there was very heavy wind, but her clothes did not move at all. Unfortunately, the witness did not follow up on his telephone call, despite my best endeavours. Nevertheless, I have more than sufficient stories to tell, and arguably I have saved the best until last – there are two in which the high strangeness metre goes “up to 11”. I will let readers be the judge of this, but for hors d’oeuvres I summarise a collection of county-wide reports from the pages of FT (roughly in chronological order) before presenting the first and second-hand ‘real-life’ experiences that I have received.
FORTEAN LINCOLNSHIRE
Back in 1998 a lorry was overtaken by an ostrich running at about 45mph (72km/h) on the A45. It had escaped from a farm near Grantham and was eventually shot (). Historian Paul Cantwell wrote to the Queen asking for various saints’ body parts to be returned to Lincoln Cathedral from the Tower of London. These had been seized on the order of HenryVIII (him again!) and included: the head of St Hugh (the first saint of Lincoln), a finger of St Catherine, a tooth of St Paul and a bone of St Stephen (). Jason and Claire Foster moved to an isolated farmhouse in Ludford and kept finding old pairs of footwear at the end of their drive every Sunday morning – 30 pairs over five months! They ranged from toddlers’ sandals to designer brands and roller blades; some worn and some brand new. Covert video surveillance showed the culprits to be an elderly couple tossing shoes from a green vehicle. The deliveries stopped after publicity and the Fosters auctioned the shoes for charity (). The White Hart Hotel, close to Lincoln Cathedral, has so many ghosts that it issued a leaflet for guests and visitors; these include a lady in crinoline, a highwayman and a man in a 1920s smoking jacket (). Michael Fletcher described his ‘It Happened to Me’ experience of meeting up with a ghostly Knight Templar on horseback one foggy night near Navenby (). Back in the 18th century, Epworth Rectory was the scene of poltergeist phenomena which included a ghostly badger and a phantom white rabbit (). Lincoln Cathedral itself was the subject of a Fortean Traveller piece which described how Dean Jackson believed the Cathedral should be exorcised because a battle between good and evil centred on the ancient building. Ted Harrison then discusses the folklore relating to the Cathedral’s (in)famous grotesque – The Lincoln Imp – and its north-facing window being called ‘Lucifer’s Eye’. He also refers to Ellis CTaylor’s claim that the Cathedral has its own code (à la ) and hides ‘The Ark of Lucifer’, the diabolic equivalent to the Ark of the Covenant! (). More recently Diana Lyons described her ‘IHTM’ experience of a ghost verger in the Cathedral (). Switching to cryptozoology, Bigfoot might have been caught on film in a nature reserve in Friskney () with claims of “Bigfoot sightings that run up and down the A15” (). A humanoid entity was spotted running across a road near Humberside Airport, with ripped fencing and severed deer legs found the next day (). Finally, an antique gypsy caravan at the Gordon Boswell Romany Museum in Spalding is haunted by the spirit of a giggling gypsy girl ().
