Things that go bump in the night!
The famous ghost that haunted a Leighton motorcycle workshop.
If any of the residents of Aveline Court, next to the library, hear things that go bump in the night, or find property being moved around, they need not worry it may be Sid Mularney’s ghost! Before Aveline Court was built, the site was a motorcycle shop belonging to Sid Mularney and some really strange things happened there in May 1963.
The story was carried on the front of the Beds and Bucks Observer which records it all began when Mr Mularney decided to take down a partition in his workshop which housed racing motor cycles used by World Champion racing driver, Mike Hailwood. The next morning after removing the partition Mr Mularney found the door he had left closed had been opened and three bikes were on the floor. A few days later when he was working on a gear box some weird things started to happen. First of all he felt something rush past him, he looked round and spanners flew off hooks on the wall and a tarpaulin covering a bike soared into the air.
Mr Mularney told the paper: “I was scared stiff. I grabbed a hammer and got out of the room as fast as I could and made straight for home.” Other odd things continued to happen and neighbours complained of strange noises in the night.
Owner of the Coach and Horses restaurant next door, Mrs Cynthia Ellis, said when she was working during the night on several occasions she heard “strange banging and clattering” but every time she looked out the window there was nothing there.
Meanwhile things went from bad to worse for Mr Mularney who was particularly alarmed when he found a large box of nuts and bolts, too heavy for a man to lift, scattered all over the floor. Petrol tanks were also moved and large bolts went missing.
The newspaper interviewd a Mrs Lilian Bierton, aged 76, some of whose family had lived there in a large rambling house most of which was pulled down before the days of Mr Mularney’s business. She said her sister-in-law’s son had died there in a fit when he was only two weeks old. Her sister-in-law also died there. “I have never seen anything like it, it seemed if insects were crawling from her skin,” Mrs Bierton said. She said there was a huge cellar under the house which stretched under the area of Mr Mularney’s workshop. She did not go down there “because it was so old and weird.”
Mr Mularney’s widow, Pearl, a lively 81-year-old who lives in Southcott Avenue, said her husband died 15 years ago. She felt he did not carry on the story in the paper because he was fed-up with having his leg pulled about it. “But I am sure something definitely happened, because he was not the sort of man to be scared,” she said. After the paper carried the story there were a few more incidents and Mrs Mularney said her husband was visited by some people involved in psychic activities whom she never met, but there seemed to be no trouble after that. It was possible they carried out an exorcism. Another odd thing was that the family dog always refused to go into the workshop. Mrs Mularney said the workshop was part of the original house that stood on the site and was used by basket makers, one of whom had hanged himself there. The theory was that when her husband pulled down the partition it let loose the man’s troubled ghost.
Leighton Buzzard Observer and Linslade Gazette, 18th June 2002.