The Fleece Files

October 12

2011-10-13T19:27:00.001+01:00

Another 'doppleganger' moment.

I popped in to the Golden Fleece first thing, and was sat talking with Steph, various workman currently there, and the other staff. Steph came back from the front bar and stopped in her tracks when she saw manager Guy behind the bar - having just seen him behind the bar at the front of the building. We could all assure her he'd been where we could see him all along, and nobody else had been at the front whom she could have mistaken for Guy.

Strange times in the Fleece again...

Remember: keep your equipment dry, and your coffee strong

Rachel Lacy
Ghost Finder General

August 8

2011-08-09T19:28:00.000+01:00

At the end of the night, the last people in the back bar of the Golden Fleece were Steph (landlady), Caroline (bar staff), myself and two accountants enjoying the real ale and listening to our ghost stories.

Steph went to shut the till down, and as she turned away, there was a loud ping as it shot back open again. Its never done that before, so she shut it again and as she turned away, yes, it pinged back open again. People laughed and Arkwright's till in Open All Hours was mentioned, so Steph tried to close it again.

For a third time, it pinged open as she turned away. After requests from several people to let the till stay shut, it eventually did - on the eight attempt. If this becomes a regular thing, I suspect its a fault in the till. We shall see...

Mondays and Friday do seem to be the key days for strange things happening.

Remember: keep your equipment dry, and your coffee strong

Rachel Lacy
Ghost Finder General

July 15

2011-07-18T20:23:00.000+01:00

Another Friday, another strange happening...

End of the night, and I'm sat in the back bar with Steph (the landlady), the other staff that are still in the building, my daughter and a new friend who had just popped down from the psychic night at the Black Swan Inn (by co-incidence we'd never met her before, but just got chatting to find that I have worked with her husband for the last five months and we all hit it off).

The front bar was the first to have shut, the shutter being locked down, and the doors locked shut. We're just finishing off in the back bar and we hear the bell in the front bar chiming very loudly, so myself, Guy (barman) and Steph all run to the front to see what's happening - forgetting the keys. Seeing that it is all still looked up, Guy runs back for the keys, on his return he opens the doors to find the bell lying in the middle of the floor behind the bar.

The noise we heard wasn't the bell falling and hitting things on the way, it rang out clearly several times before it fell, as if it had been rung so hard it was wrenched off the wall. Thinking back, it hadn't fallen until Guy and myself were already half way up the corridor running to see why it was ringing. It had been on the wall in a corner, high enough above the bar that you could only just reach it to ring it. With the front bar locked up, there was no way anybody could have reached it, and besides, the bar was completely empty.

Falling off because the fixings had worked their way loose is one thing, but how come it was ringing for so long before it fell?

Ah well, its nice to know that the last two times I saw/heard something in the Golden Fleece, my first reaction was to run towards it. The sign of a seasoned investigator!

Remember: keep your equipment dry, and your coffee strong

Rachel Lacy
Ghost Finder General

July 8

2011-07-18T20:12:00.000+01:00

Firstly, a missing post from June, circa 19 (that was the date I was told this but it had happened a few days earlier).

Two of the staff had walked up to the back of the building, before opening hours, to find a pane of glass smashed in one of the shrubs below the back windows, and on the decking. Nothing too weird about that, except nobody can find where it came from - there are none missing from the building. So we're looking at one of two explanations here: somebody climbed an eight foot wall or gate to deliberately smash a pane of glass on our terrace for no reason over night, or it appeared from nowhere/dropped out of the sky. Third explanations welcome as neither of them appeal to me.

There are times when, as a paranormal investigator, you can have such a thing as a crisis of faith. I know its not just me from talking to other people, and it does worry me. The people I know who have been doing investigations for years tend to remain strong in their belief of ghosts/spirits/etc (usually mediums/psychics), or as time goes on they believe less and less (parapsychs etc). Falling in with the latter catergory as a paranormal historian, it depresses me. I've known a few investigations in recent years where that gut feeling that something could happen, and how much I want it to happen, has been lacking, and it takes the fun out of it.

An investigation a few months back at the Old Lodge, Malton on behalf of Spiritual Universe events was the first time in a long while I felt that buzz again. Working in the Golden Fleece has been a bit hit and miss: I don't get that buzz even when I'm wandering about the building alone, but I am sufficiently intrigued by the strange happenings to have started this blog.

Which brings us to July 8.

I'm stood in the back bar, looking up the corridor towards the front of the building, about 10am. The only other people in the building at this point is the acting manager, who is 'somewhere' in the building (i.e. I know he's on site but not where), some workmen in one of the top rooms, and four guests (two couples).

I see him come out of the door to The Meadery (the function room, as you leave the back bar heading to the front its the first door on the right), and head up to the front bar quite swiftly. I turn back to what I am doing, hear a noise, and turn round to see him behind the back bar. There's no way he could have moved fast enough to have been in both places at the times I saw him, so I go for the logical conclusion: a member of the public has wandered in, and must be apprehended. I did first ask where he had been, and he said the back cellar, as I reach my conclusion I say "then who just walked up that corridor?"

The staircase to The Meadery is off limits to the public unless the room is open for an event, so there shouldn't have been guests up there. The workmen are at the front of the building (guest bedroom staircase, not The Meadery staircase) and all in hi-vis vests over the work clothes, so I've run out of options.

I run up the corridor, followed by the acting manager, and nobody is going to be surprised when I say "and there was nobody there..." Of course not. This is about ghosts, so here we have one.

Now lets look logically at this. From where I was, they could only gone up the front staircase as they weren't in the front bar, the front door was locked, and they weren't in the toilets. I knew what all the guests looked like, and it wasn't one of them. I know what all of the workmen looked like, and hi-vis vests apart, it wasn't one of them. Thinking back, nor was it the acting manager: they both had mid-blue jeans on, and a dark blue t-shirt with white piping, but the style wasn't identical. Also, the figure I saw was that little bit shorter, little bit smaller frame, and had short hair (as opposed to an almost shaved head). So who - or what - did I see?

Crisis of faith averted? Possibly so. What worries me now is the amount of times figures in modern clothing are being seen in the Golden Fleece, especially ones resembling current members of staff. As mentioned in my first blog, the staff corridors are a bit of a rabbit warren, and chef Anna has frequently heard her name called, even glimpsing through a door who called her, but never quite catching up with them. On one occasion, she even phoned the member of staff she could hear calling her on the ground floor, to find that said member of staff was in the top guest room making up the bed. Who - or maybe that should be what - are we seeing?

My new seance nights start on Tuesday, July 19 - join us if you want to know more about this, sceptics welcome!

Remember: keep your equipment dry, and your coffee strong

Rachel Lacy
Ghost Finder General

June 24

2011-06-24T23:14:00.005+01:00

Stood in the back bar of the Golden Fleece this morning, landlady Steph asked me if I had heard the voice of a man coming from the corridor leading to the kitchen - about the same place as the ice machine, see June 22 for more on that.

I hadn't, and when she had heard it, Steph had assumed it was the one man on site talking to her. At that point, he was two floors above her and with several closed doors between them. Imagination? Misheard? Possibly. Half an hour later, round the corner from the same point, I heard a male voice from somewhere near the kitchen door. I was the only person on the ground floor at that point...

Remember: keep your equipment dry, and your coffee strong

Rachel Lacy
Ghost Finder General

June 22

2011-06-23T13:27:00.004+01:00

Today's report from the Golden Fleece doesn't seem like much, just a kettle being slammed down.

This particular kettle had been left on top of the ice machine in one of the staff corridors, with nobody near it at the time, and its not the first time something in that particular corner has moved. The heaviest thing to move so far was a large metal spanner!

It could be vibrations, but if so, why is it only things on the ice machine (there is a glass washer and shelves in the area which don't have things moving on them) that move? The kettle hadn't just slid, it had been slammed down with force which was heard by the two chefs in the nearby kitchen.

They looked just a tad nervous when I told them that's the most likely place a suicide victim landed...

Remember: keep your equipment dry, and your coffee strong.

Rachel Lacy
Ghost Finder General

View From The Bar... a bit of background information

2011-06-21T22:00:00.005+01:00

The Golden Fleece is reputedly the most haunted pub in the city which is reputedly the most haunted city in the world... working there, it would be rude not to start a blog on the day-to-day weirdness of the pub. It is, so to speak, a golden opportunity.

Without going in to too much background of the Golden Fleece itself and the reported hauntings, I will try to cover the odd little things that staff and guests report. Steph Macklewain-Cross took the pub over on May 16, started a huge clean-up operation, and made a number of changes. Well, they do say changing things stirs up ghosts!

During the first week, whilst the pub had to shut, the clean-up crew stayed on site. On the first night, three women sharing the same room (manageress Caroline, chef Anna and yours truly) heard a variety of strange things in the night: gramaphone records stuck in a groove being the loudest, but the most annoying was repeatedly hearing tiler Ron walking up and down the corridors. In the morning, Ron complained that he could hear people walking up and down the corridors in the night, leaving him too scared to leave his room... worst of all, the steps stopped outside his room, the continued up the stairs, coming back down again a short time later.

The pot-washer from the Black Swan Inn, Marcus, was on loan the Golden Fleece for the first few weeks it was open and reported the first full-on sightings in the pub. When Caroline noticed for the second time in the same night that the back cellar light had been left on, she questioned him about it. Marcus had seen the staff member who had turned it on both times, but hadn't thought anything of it. Until he described him, and (nobody's going to be surprised here, are they?) discovered that there was nobody in the pub, let alone on the staff, who fitted the description he gave.

There's been a number of incidents with keys and locks, most notably in St Catherine's Room. The first time, the lock had deadlocked itself from the inside, and needed to be drilled out. Replaced with another, better lock, last Sunday night the lock again jammed when the residents were trying to get in, despite it being a complete new lock.

Last week, Anna called Steph in to the kitchen as the bacon foil(!) was doing something odd: it was gently rocking back and forth to itself on a shelf. Possibly down to vibrations, that wouldn't explain why, when Steph called it to come to her, the foil roll moved forwards on the shelf. Steph called again, and again it moved towards her. The third time she tried, it spun 90 degrees, ending up pointing at her. Steph then called it down from the shelf, as if it was a dog, at which point it flew off the shelf landing in her arms... Afterwards, Anna said had she not witnessed it herself, she wouldn't have believed it. Did it roll? No, it was still in the square box...

Some of the phenomena may well be explainable: half-seen shadows in corridors as staff wander round calling each other (the back rooms are a bit of a rabbit warren) could just be nerves and shadows, but I'll note them anyway just in case it is anything more.

Similarly, the small things that go missing then randomly re-appear I will note. Lets start with the table numbers in the back bar. Some morning they are all there, some mornings they are not. They could have been stolen, or misplaced, or somebody is playing tricks, any of which I can accept as an explanation; what I struggle with is the things that re-appear the next day somewhere completely different, or in the case of the number 4, re-appears in a place that had just been cleaned twice and on both occasions, it definitely wasn't there.

Remember: keep your equipment dry, and your coffee strong.

Rachel Lacy
Ghost Finder General