Things that go tap in the night.
How an Elsham woman spent 14 years living on the airfield with a ghostly friend.
Report by Michelle Lalor.
The ghosts which are said to roam Elsham’s old airfield have returned to haunt a Humberside woman, who lived with them for 14 years. Elema Drewry left her home on the airfield when it was due to be demolished seven years ago. But she remains fascinated by the ghostly goings-on she and her family experienced and now she is hoping to bring those experiences back to life by writing a book.
For 14 years Elema, her father Leslie, her mother and her four brothers lived in the old control tower on the Elsham Wold Airfield – converted into a house after the war. Elema was four when the family moved into the control tower. Now 25, married and living in Scunthorpe, she remembers the ghostly experiences vividly. Elema and her family firmly believe Elsham Airfield is haunted by the ghosts of airmen killed during the Second World War – they say they know, they have seen them.
“My mum was the first to hear it. She was in bed and heard a noise and then felt someone tapping the bed – she saw what looked like a man,” recalled Elema. There followed sighting after sighting of the man in the smart blue uniform and with the gleaming white smile. “The first time my younger brother saw him he was in the shower, and he came flying down the stairs with nothing on.”
After a while Elema’s family became so used to their ghostly lodger they called him “Friend” and would talk to him. “Our dog Sooty would always know where he was – he would sit there and stare into space, but he would be staring at Friend.”
They discovered one thing about “Friend” – he did not like arguments in the house: “Relatives who had come to stay were arguing and my mum heard something behind a door. She opened it and a knife had been thrown, but no-one was there.”
Tapping was also a regular occurrence in the Gregory household. The family believed it was a ghostly morse code. “Strangely enough when they pulled down the control tower they discovered transmission wires, which were used for morse code, in the building itself – it makes you think,” said Elema’s husband Martyn. Sounds, very much like planes taking off, were often heard – and members of the family would have vivid dreams about tragic wartime flights from Elsham, which were uncannily realistic when checked by experts.
The Gregory family were forced to leave the house when it was demolished and Elema’s parents now live at Bonby Top, near Brigg – where they still have a small part of their ghostly past. “We managed to save a door from the house – and a couple of small things have occurred around that door, but we are not sure whether they are anything more than coincidences,” laughed Elema. She remains convinced ghosts still roam the lonely airfield and is hoping to go back and camp there for the night to try and meet “Friend” again. In the meantime she will be giving a talk on her experiences to a special convention and she is hoping to write a book: “I love that place and will never forget it – or Friend,” she said.
The Gregory family pictured outside their control tower home in 1975 when the Evening Telegraph first broke the story of the ghosts of Elsham Wold.
The Gregory family today – Leslie and Maureen with their children Elema, Luke (back right) Chris (front right) and Shane.
Grimsby Daily Telegraph, 18th October 1991.