Sunday 24 December 2017


Sunday 24th December 2017

Just a quick post to wish our page visitors and friends 'A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR' from everyone at the 'West Midlands Ghost Club'....!!

However you're intending to celebrate over the Festive Season, please stay safe and have a wonderful time!!

Tuesday 5 December 2017


Tuesday 5th December 2017

A reasonably amazing coincidence occurred within the last week, when - within hours of each other - I happened to speak to 2 separate people who reported experiences with what appeared to be 'ghostly policemen', wearing antique costume!?  In all - including these two encounters - I believe there are only a very small handful of experiences incorporating this particular motif for the whole West Midlands region..... so to discover 2, unrelated stories in the same day was most peculiar, to say the least!?

In the first instance, the witness and his wife were driving along a lane in the Walsall area, late one night, when the figure of a policeman was suddenly illuminated by the vehicle headlights.  The figure was holding his hand aloft, as if warning them to keep clear of the spot, so they ended up going back the way they had just come.  After only a few meters, however, man and wife looked at each other in one of those 'Hang on a minute!!' moments.........

..............The figure that they'd seen was wearing an old fashioned 'cape' and had what appeared to be a metal spike on top of his helmet!?  His face was white - almost skull-like - and was sporting a handle-bar mustache.

Immediately turning and returning to the spot, there was, however, nothing at all to be seen......!?

As soon as I was told of this experience, I took a look at the history of the spot concerned and the only matter with any possible connection was a piece in a local  newspaper, from near the turn of the 20th Century, reporting on an attempted suicide in the lane concerned.  Luckily, the man involved had failed in his endeavours to kill himself, but, coincidentally, the press report mentioned mainly covered evidence being given in court by a local policeman who had been called to the incident!?!

The 2nd account involved a small party of people who - one icy, Winters day, almost 20 yrs ago - were out taking a walk in some Black Country woodland.  As they carefully cleared a stepped incline with a bridge at the bottom of it, they found themselves passing by a figure dressed in old-fashioned police uniform, complete with cape......!?  The person relating the encounter admits that they didn't take all that much notice of the figure, because they were more concerned about addressing the matter of the icy bridge... but the policeman apparently acknowledged at least two members of the party, by tipping his helmet and speaking!!

Only a matter of seconds later - after crossing the bridge - the witness looked around..... but there was no sign of the policeman anywhere!?  They told me that the party had taken a long time to navigate the incline, icy as it was, so there was no way that the man could have done the same - though ascending, of course - in the time that it had taken them to literally turn around!?  Of considerable interest was the simple fact that no footprints from the policeman could be seen on the ground!?

Again - as a matter of interest - the history of the woodland was briefly looked into and it was clear that the region would have surely been rather well-known to Black Country constabulary over the space of many decades.....  While secluded, the woods had played host to both illegal 'cock-fighting' rings and, later on, 'dog baiting' too.....  Raids by the local law had been carried out and many arrests made!  At least two sexual crimes had been carried out there during the Victorian era too, so it's no real stretch of the imagination to consider that the land involved would have most probably featured on the 'beat' of many a copper over the years!?!    

Tuesday 5th December 2017

I the late 80's I saw a guest on the topical chat-show, 'The Time, The Place', talking about a spooky encounter that he'd once had. He said that he had been speaking to an elderly lady - standing right next to her - when she had suddenly started to glow... before vanishing in front of his eyes!! Describing this 'glow effect', he had stressed that she didn't actually emit or radiate light - as a bulb would (for example) - but gave the impression of being 'lit from within'; colourless, with every little detail of the figure becoming razor sharp during this process.......!?

Interestingly, the mans description of this effect understandably stuck with me..... and I've actually heard the same account being given for 'other', supposed apparitions over the years, including two separate, unrelated sightings of female figures in the Great Barr / Barr Beacon area of Walsall. (Both of the latter were reported to me independently - years apart - by totally unrelated people, involving completely different parts of the Great Barr region).

Moving forwards to only a few nights ago, I was speaking to a young lady about a peculiar sighting that she and a friend had in a suburb of Birmingham, one night, when she mentioned that the seemingly male figure she'd witnessed had struck her as being the same beige-like colour, top to toe - all over - and that he 'wasn't glowing', but she could 'see through him clearly', as if he was close by, though he was actually situated many yard distant!? Detecting what I believed was clear consternation in trying to describe the figure concerned, I pushed for more details and was told that the night / area was pitch black.... there was no light source locally..... but she stressed that she was 'surprised by the detail' that she could see the figure in!?

Now, at this point I have to emphasise that I'm invariably an advocate of 'purity' when cataloguing accounts and testimonies and, while I always try to record as full as story as possible, I am always conscious of the ways in which I question witnesses and extract the stories involved, etc. However, in this instance - having got as full a story as possible and noting the apparent difficulty in adequately describing the figure concerned - I HAD eventually mentioned the examples cited earlier in an endeavour to discover whether the witness saw any similarities......?

"Yes..... the bulb thing is spot-on!!" came the reasonably definite response!