A FIDDLE IN THE BAR

Many inns add a ghost to their more conventional attractions, like the George and Dragon at West Wycombe, where a past landlord cannot bring himself to leave and can still be heard occasionally, playing his fiddle. The famous Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor is amply equipped with spectres and the Red Lion at Wirksworth plays host to a headless coachman, while guests in bed at the Lord Crewe Arms in Blanchland complain of a strange, unexplained weight on their feet. Ghosts haunt the Skirrid Inn at Llanfihangel Crucorney claimed to be the oldest pub in Wales: many men were hanged there and a beam inside still bears the marks of the rope.

At the Bull, an old coaching inn in Wargrave, a woman who died in childbirth in the house is heard piteously calling for her child, cold chills occur, a man in a long black coat and hat drifts silently through the bar and a woman occasionally goes through one of the bedroom doors without opening it. The customers seem stoically unperturbed by these manifestations.

Remaining unperturbed is not always easy. A man who ran a restaurant in the former White Lion on Ashbourne Road in Derby was knocked about and bruised several times by a spectral assailant, who shoved him against the walls of the former brewhouse. There was ‘a definite thickness in the air’, he said, and his dog would howl horribly. So there may be more to a drink or a meal out than meets the eye.