Crown and spectre
ALAN MURDIE catches up on a recent pub haunting and its sensational coverage in the press
With various circumstances preventing me from scrutinising new reports of ghosts and hauntings during the latter part of 2023 as closely as I would wish, by the start of this year I had accumulated quite a pile to review and reflect upon. Now following an extensive perusal in early January, I am pleased to report no decline in fresh ghost reports, with the last six months providing numerous interesting cases ranging from the routine to the downright eerie and disturbing.
Among stand-out cases is one from Cheshire headlined “Petrified landlord of ‘haunted’ village pub reckons ghost is ‘out to get him’”. This story was carried online for chesterchronicle.co.uk (26 Nov 2023) and also featured in several national daily newspapers.
Nigel Ramsay, 59, the licensee of the Crown Inn at Lower Peover, reports being left “fearing for his life” after experiencing a series of spooky, unexplained happenings. He wrote: “I took over the pub in March this year [2023], and in the first week I was in the back cellar and was closing the door on a Friday night and an iron bar fell down off a hook and hit me in the centre of the forehead.
“It caused me to have a
