By George! There’s a phantom in the shop…
A regular customer at a Colwyn Bay do-it-yourself shop is puzzling the assistants for he never pays for anything, despite touching the goods. The customer, christened “George” by the owner, Mr Jeff Gunning, and his assistants, is a phantom, who has made several visits to the premises in Abergele Road, in recent weeks. The building was at one time a dance hall.
“One day one of my assistants was talking to a lady customer when a ceramic tile suddenly lifted off a shelf and flew past them,” he said. “On other visits George has toppled over a solid six foot high cupboard and thrown about 100 working surfaces to the floor.”
Mr Gunning, who has owned the premises for about two years, said that several assistants, had seen what they thought were customers entering the private offices of the premises, but nobody could be found.
One of his assistants, Mr Bob Parry, who now manages a tile shop for Mr Gunning, said: “I have had several unnerving experiences in the shop. I have heard footsteps, but found nobody there, and felt the room go icy for no apparent reason.”
Liverpool Daily Post (Welsh Edition), 29th December 1973.
Things that go bump… in the store.
An unlikely haunt for a haunting, you may think. But in the prosaic surroundings of this discount store there do seem to be some very strange goings-on.
An eerie manor house on a windswept moor; a castle with a turbulent past… These are the fit and proper places for ghost. But a discount store in the hight street? Surely this is no place for things that go bump in the night, still less in broad daylight. However, members of the staff of Jeff’s Discount Stores in Abergele Road, Colwyn Bay claim there are strange goings-on among the kitchen units, the bathroom china and the wall cupboards.
It all started when a very large broom cupboard in the balcony area upstairs suddenly decided to crash forwards… and there was no-one anywhere near it. “It was all very odd,” said Mr Dave Mackie, the stores’ sales manager. “The unit was perfectly secure and it would have needed a strong push to topple it over.”
And Mr Mackie has also SEEN something – a figure in evening dress in the corner of an upstairs room. “He was tall, slim and middle aged. He just stood there and, in a second or so, disappeared,” said the sober, matter-of-fact sales manager not given to wild imaginings. A former employee, Roy Tebbitts, seeing a man going upstairs, went to see what the “customer” wanted. There was no-one there.
On several occasions footsteps have been heard… with no-one there to cause them. Then there was the peculiar case of the flying tile. One day Mr Mackie was standing near a packet of tile bath trims which were hangin on the wall. He was astonished to see a tile detach itself from the packet, move through the air horizontally, then drop on to the floor. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said. A customer, a woman from Gronant, also saw the tile behave in this odd manner.
Some members of the staff of Jeff’s regard the spirit – if that’s what it is – as almost a permanent feature of the place. They have called it “George” and they believe the apparition is friendly and wishes them well. One person who has neither seen nor heard anything is Mr Jeff Gunning, the proprietor of the discount stoes. “I don’t think the others really believe that what, they have seen or heard is a ghost, despite everything. – But I do,” he said.
It could be that “George” is kindly disposed towards the present tenants of a building that has been many things in its time. For business is good these days. In the past, despite their favourable position in Abergele Road, the premises have often seemed to have a jinx on them. Even an estate agent once used the term. This building has housed a cafe, a ballroom – which may account for “George” being in evening dress – and many other things as well. But businesses appear not to have really prospered, until now. Maybe “George”, the benign spirit, has broken a long jinx. A customer, who may or may not have been a clairvoyant, once remarked to an assistant: “A heavy cloud has lifted since you have been here.”
Jeff’s Discount Stores moved into the present premises at 59 Abergele Road from lower down the road two years ago. Said Mr Gunning: “We certainly feel that whatever it is, likes us. This has been a boom year for trade and we have no complaints, whatever has happened in the past.”
Apparently, before the last war, someone committed suicide on the premises, but that was a woman. The figure described as having been seen in a storeroom at 59 Abergele Road was clearly a man.
A definite disbeliever in any idea of a supernatural agency at work used to be Mr R. Dryhurst Parry, now manager of Jeff’s newly-opened Tile Centre at 44 Abergele Road. He was at the discount stores for a while and when Mr Mackie recounted the odd happening concerning the flying tile to him, he openly scoffed at the suggestion that there could be any ghostly thing involved. Later, in the cellar, he suddenly felt unaccountably cold – icy cold. And then, for no apparent reason, a number of worktops fell on him. “That,” declared Mr Parry, “was an unnerving experience.” He thinks somethin gmight have been trying to convince him. “There are more things in heaven and earth…” he mused. I believe “George” has gained a convert.
North Wales Weekly, 3rd January 1974.